As the medicine cart neared the narrow passage, Shi Lei barred its way with his scabbard held crosswise.
The draft animal shied and turned its head. The driver jerked the reins, and the right wheel struck a roadside rock. A man in brown jumped off the cart and reached for his waist, but before he could draw his short blade, the end of Shi Lei's scabbard was already pressed against his chest.
"Put it down."
Another patrolman came down from the slope to block the rear of the cart. Chen Xiuyuan hurried over and first steadied the medicine basket that had been jolted askew. Just as he was about to examine the long tube beneath it, a hand suddenly reached out from the other side of the cart and pushed its mouth toward the ditch.
He grabbed the tube, but the other man yanked it back.
They each pulled one end from opposite sides of the cart bed, the pressure biting painfully into Chen Xiuyuan's fingers. The other man was stronger, and the tube slipped away inch by inch. If Chen Xiuyuan kept holding on, he would only be dragged onto the cart. Instead, he pushed forward with the pull, wedging the tube crosswise between the cart bed and the upright beside the wheel, then retreated behind the wheel and braced his feet against the ground.
When the other man pulled again, the long tube jammed.
"Shi Lei, behind the cart!"
Shi Lei did not rush blindly past the driver in pursuit. He first ordered the patrolman to hold the reins, then circled to the side of the cart. The man in brown had only just raised his drawn short blade when the scabbard struck his wrist bone. Chen Xiuyuan dragged the long tube down as the man let go, while another patrolman twisted the man's arms behind him.
The lid knocked open, spilling half a bundle of slender wooden rods. Two yellow-leaf packets rolled out from underneath them.
Chen Xiuyuan stopped immediately and called for everyone to keep their distance. Auntie Sang caught up at the foot of the slope. After a sniff, she told a patrolman to find a dry cloth and wrap the leaf packets separately. She would only say that the smell resembled what had been at Broken Stream. They would have to open them to see exactly what was inside.
The restrained man beside the cart suddenly looked toward her.
Shi Lei fixed his eyes on the leather belt at the man's waist. "Stand straight."
The man turned his face away. A patrolman lifted his arms, and his sleeve slipped down, revealing a newly scabbed wound near his elbow. Shi Lei studied the belt for a moment, then turned to Chen Xiuyuan. "The one who fought Shi Duo at the edge of the gully wore a belt like that too. His face was covered then. We can't identify him for certain from this alone."
Chen Xiuyuan looked at the man but did not answer at once. He had been at the bottom of the gully then and had only seen a hem and a blade tip flash along the rocky edge. He had never seen the face clearly. Neither that scar nor a similar belt could identify the man for them.
"Question them separately. Take the driver over there first."
Shi Qiren arrived, heard what had happened, and ordered the two men held separately. At the same time, word came from the medicine stall nearby: Du Huai had used his agreement to compensate for the goods as a pretext to follow the owner into the rear shed to look for the accounts. By the time the patrolmen went there again, the back door was open and he was gone.
"Did you search by the gate?" Shi Qiren asked.
"We did. No sign of him. There were too many people. We couldn't tell which way he'd gone."
Shi Qiren immediately sent more men to seal off the nearby roads and had the cart hauled inside the gate first, leaving its baskets and ropes exactly as they were. Chen Xiuyuan went with the cart instead of chasing Du Huai's shadow into unfamiliar alleys.
Once inside the gate, the driver began protesting his innocence, saying he only hauled medicine for others and did not even know where Broken Stream was.
Chen Xiuyuan waited until the patrolmen had secured the two men in brown before asking the driver which route he had taken on his previous trip.
"Loaded at South Entrance, unloaded at the market, then delivered into Blood Stone," the driver said quickly. "Same route there and back. Didn't go anywhere else."
"After you delivered into Blood Stone that time, where did you stop the cart?"
"Still at South Entrance."
Chen Xiuyuan took out the route the porter had drawn in his medicinal herb identification booklet but did not unfold it yet. He only asked, "Two empty baskets were missing. Who told you to go back for them?"
The driver raised his head. "He even told you that?"
"Just tell me whether you went."
The driver sat down, rubbing the mud on his knees, and said the cart had stopped below the Broken Stream fork for half the night, supposedly to wait for the people fetching the baskets. Chen Xiuyuan went on to ask who had left the cart that night and what they had taken, but the driver's answers grew vague, and he began saying someone else had told him about it.
"Who told you?"
"The escorts. Said there were herbs in the mountains and they were going to get some."
"Did you see them gather herbs yourself?"
The driver shook his head.
"Did you see what they brought back?"
"They came back empty-handed. Started arguing as soon as they returned, saying the rope hadn't held."
Shi Qiren noted that down, then had the driver recount everything he had heard before and afterward. The driver said someone had complained that the other end had failed to stop them. He had been busy feeding the animal at the time and had not heard everything; afterward, Du Huai had come and urged them to leave as early as possible.
"You saw Du Huai yourself?"
"Yes. He came for the medicine accounts. I held a light for him."
Only then did Chen Xiuyuan lay the porter's old route beside him. The stopping place matched, while the stretches of time they could not align remained blank. Seeing that Chen Xiuyuan had not filled in his vague statements for him, the driver instead pointed to one spot and volunteered a correction.
"Fetching the empty baskets was an excuse. I knew all along the baskets had been left in Blood Stone. I was afraid you'd ask why I'd still driven the cart over there, so I didn't dare say."
In another room, the man in brown with the wound near his elbow was far more defiant than the driver.
Shi Lei laid his own arrow in front of him, and the man laughed. "Who doesn't have a few wounds? You carry a bow, I carry a blade. Does having met make us enemies?"
When Chen Xiuyuan entered, Shi Qiren was stopping a patrolman who wanted to haul the man to his feet. He had Shi Lei explain clearly where he had been and which way the chase had gone, acknowledging only what he had seen with his own eyes, then placed Chen Xiuyuan's small sketch of Broken Stream on the table.
The man in brown glanced at it, and his smile faded.
"What was under the bridge?" Chen Xiuyuan asked.
"Water."
"What else?"
"You fell down there. Don't you know?"
Chen Xiuyuan took back the sketch and turned toward the door. "Please ask Auntie Sang to come in. Have those two leaf packets been fully examined?"
Auntie Sang separated the small amounts of crushed leaves and powder she had unpacked and brought them into the room. She identified several ingredients that could attract wild beasts, but also stated clearly that she had not prepared the mixture herself and could not use these alone to determine who had laid the bait.
The man in brown finally spoke. "You're arresting me just for having that? Who can't carry some to ward off beasts while hauling a cart?"
Chen Xiuyuan looked at him. "If it was for warding off beasts, why throw it into the ditch?"
"I was only throwing the tube."
"Then you knew it was at the bottom of the tube."
The man in brown fell silent.
Shi Qiren took over the questioning, asking who had loaded the long tube onto the cart and who had ordered the two packets brought along. The man blamed everything on the driver. But in the separate questioning next door, the driver had already made it clear that this man had personally carried the tube out through the medicine stall's back door, with an escort there to witness it. Though the escort refused to admit anything about Broken Stream, he was at least unwilling to take the blame for what was right in front of them on the arrested man's behalf.
Chen Xiuyuan carried the empty basket to the doorway and let the man look at the patched arrow hole.
"All five of us came back. Ge Ping hurt his arm, and Shi Duo hurt his shoulder. There are people who can testify to all of that. I don't know which arrow came from your hand, and I won't invent one for you. But if you were at the bridgehead, you know who else was there besides you."
The man lowered his eyes to the bamboo strips. After a long while, he asked, "If I talk, will you let me go?"
Shi Qiren said, "You must answer for hurting people. Whoever ordered you to do it must answer too. Explain it clearly, and we'll pursue each separately."
"Then why should I talk?"
"You're keeping his secrets for him, but he's already abandoned you along with the cart."
After saying that, Chen Xiuyuan put the basket back outside the door. The room was quiet for a while before the man in brown suddenly raised his head and asked whether Du Huai had already run away. Shi Qiren only answered that he was not at the stall and that they were investigating his whereabouts. He did not frighten him with false information.
The man in brown gritted his teeth. "He hasn't given me everything he promised yet."
Shi Qiren told him to continue.
Du Huai wanted the Scarlet Whisker Root from Broken Stream to move exclusively on his own carts and refused to let Blood Stone's herb gatherers follow the old route to dig it up. When he first recruited them, he had spoken of cutting the bridge ropes to frighten off anyone entering the mountains; later, he had also handed over the leaf packets and ordered them to lure beasts nearby. If anyone forced their way through, they were not to let them take the herbs out.
When Chen Xiuyuan heard the last part, he asked, "What did he say? Give us his exact words."
"He said, 'Beasts have appeared at Broken Stream. If someone dies in the mountains, who can pin it on a medicine seller?'"
Shi Lei shot to his feet beside the table, his chair legs scraping backward across the floor. Chen Xiuyuan felt his chest tighten too. The rope that had come loose on the bridge and the arrow through the bottom of the basket suddenly had the same man's voice behind them.
He held down his booklet and first wrote those words down.
"Where was the payment settled?"
The man in brown said it was behind the shed at South Entrance. They had already received a portion of blood food and medicine, and the rest was recorded in Du Huai's supplementary accounts that traveled with the cart. He could not read all the words and only recognized three notches beneath a cross. Three of them had gone together: two had shot arrows, while he had gone behind the bridge to cut off those fleeing.
"What about the archers on the other side?" Shi Lei asked.
"Not on this cart. They're waiting for Du Huai to pay the rest."
Shi Qiren sent men to search the cart for the supplementary accounts. Before long, a patrolman found an oilcloth bundle beneath the cart bed. Inside were tallies of medicinal goods, along with several expenditures recorded only as items and tally marks.
Before the man had seen the original accounts, Chen Xiuyuan had him explain in full how he had collected the goods, where he had collected them, and what he had received. Once the account board was brought in, he took it to question the driver. The driver recognized a packet of blood food he had loaded at the time and pointed out where it had been handed over; the medicine stall's owner recognized the marks in the supplementary accounts and said they were the sort of credit entries Du Huai always told him to keep.
No single piece was enough, but with several linked together, that night at Broken Stream was finally more than a few people shifting blame back and forth.
Near nightfall, Shi Qiren called Chen Xiuyuan to the gate and told him and Auntie Sang what had been verified: the driver had concealed his route, and his responsibility would be investigated separately; the blade-wielder had admitted taking part in intercepting them and would remain in custody; there was now testimony that Du Huai had hired men to cut the bridge and place beast-luring medicine, corroborated by the cart's accounts and the goods' route, and the men pursuing him were following those leads.
"Once we bring him back, we'll have to verify it again. Tomorrow, each of you should list everything you lost and every injury you suffered."
Auntie Sang asked whether they could first send the good medicine to the injured people's homes. Shi Qiren answered that they had to distinguish the goods' owners from buyers who had already paid. The confirmed portion could be handed over that night so the injured would not have to keep waiting.
Chen Xiuyuan put away his medicinal herb identification booklet. Only when he stood did he realize his fingers were still somewhat numb. He had used too much force wedging the long tube earlier, leaving a deep red mark along the side of his palm.
Shi Lei saw it and tossed him a small roll of cloth.
"If you'd really tried to match strength with that man today, you'd have lost the tube and hurt your hand too."
"That's why I called you."
"Good call. Next time, don't just focus on grabbing things. Check his other hand first."
Chen Xiuyuan nodded. Outside the gate, patrolmen had already strung the warning rope back up. Fewer people were coming and going, and the porters who remained inside the gate had moved to a room farther in to rest. Shi Qiren gave orders for rotating watches through the night, with particular attention to medicine carts and unfamiliar cargo escorts.
Du Huai still had men outside. Finding out the names had not made those blades disappear from the roads.
Shi Lei put a wooden saber into Chen Xiuyuan's hand and picked up another himself.
"We're not training strength tonight. Show me that cut you failed to stop last time."