Fishing

The capital evaluation was Great Feng's system for assessing officials in the capital. Held once every three years, it used the "four standards" and "eight methods" to determine promotions and demotions.

Officials who failed were demoted or even stripped of office and reduced to commoners.

His future was at stake, so that was easy to understand. The other man also had a distant relative who was a supervising secretary. If that relative impeached him later, he'd be finished.

The backlog of murder cases in Changle County could give his political enemies grounds to attack him.

"How did he die?" Xu Qi'an asked offhandedly.

"He went to the countryside to collect rent and came back in the middle of the night. He ran into a gentleman on the beams in his own inner courtyard and got himself cut down," a colleague said with a click of his tongue.

"Any witnesses?" Xu Qi'an asked.

"His wife heard a disturbance and went out to check, but he was already dead in the courtyard. We did find footprints by the outer wall, though."

"Could an enemy have disguised himself as a thief to kill him?" Xu Qi'an poured himself a cup of tea, took a few pieces of candied fruit from his colleague, and tossed them into the cup.

His tone was just like it had been when he discussed murder cases with his colleagues at the police station.

"We asked his wife and children, the servants, and the neighbors. The deceased hadn't made any enemies recently."

"Did you ask the soldiers on night patrol?"

"The Imperial Saber Guard said no suspicious people were seen in the area that night."

The capital had three sets of walls: those of the palace city, the inner city, and the outer city.

Although soldiers patrolled the outer city at night, there was no curfew. The city gates remained open all twelve hours of the day and throughout the night. Merchants could pass freely through them as long as they registered in advance and carried their papers.

This policy had greatly increased trade in the capital and promoted economic development.

Xu Qi'an nodded. "In that case, if it was a thief, he must have been someone familiar with the Kangping Street area, someone who knew it like the back of his hand."

"What makes you say that?" The runners were taken aback.

"The thief could get in and out of the residence at night without being spotted by the patrolling soldiers. That means he'd scoped the place out and knew the Imperial Saber Guard's patrol patterns by heart." As Xu Qi'an laid out his reasoning, he instinctively reached into his pocket for a cigarette.

His hand came up empty, leaving him wistful.

He couldn't help recalling his days at the police station, when everyone would sit together in twos and threes, smoking and discussing cases.

By keeping company with ink, he too had been stained black and picked up a smoking habit.

Several colleagues looked at Xu Qi'an in surprise, sizing him up.

"That makes a lot of sense."

"How did we miss that?"

"Ningyan, one trip to jail and you've grown sharper."

In those days, there were no systematic training courses. Constables relied entirely on experience to solve cases, and whoever got the best results became head constable.

"You didn't think of it, but Head Constable Wang surely did. Have you asked around in the west of the city?" Xu Qi'an kept a low profile and didn't show off.

His colleague replied, "We've been asking for two days, but we haven't identified a suspect."

The west of the city was a slum, full of petty thieves and all sorts of people, good and bad mixed together. Whenever there was a public-order problem, the runners would usually take the unpaid constables over there and were sure to make an arrest.

"How much silver was taken?" Xu Qi'an asked, unconsciously piecing the case together in his head.

A colleague glanced at Xu Qi'an, thinking he sounded a little like the county magistrate, then answered, "None. The deceased had just come back from collecting rent, and what he collected was all silver fragments, copper coins, and grain. How could the thief have fled with a whole chest of money after killing him?"

That's not right!

Xu Qi'an narrowed his eyes. If I were the thief and had scoped the place out, I'd definitely have chosen to steal from him the next day, not today.

He kept his doubts to himself, cracking melon seeds as he continued listening to his colleagues shoot the breeze.

"What a shame for such a lovely woman, left a widow so young. That figure of hers, tsk, tsk. You couldn't find a woman that fine even in the pleasure houses. I'd pay a tael of silver to sleep with her for a night."

"She's not that young. She was just twenty years younger than that fellow Zhang. She seemed to be in her early thirties. Women that age have the hardest time remaining chaste as widows."

Hearing this, Xu Qi'an remarked, "Women in their thirties are great. They're understanding and know how to care for a man."

His worldly-wise words won no agreement from his colleagues. They looked at him and burst into laughter, teasing him.

Those who pursued the Martial Dao could not lose their virginity before breaking through the Qi Refining Realm. Once their Yang Qi dispersed, opening the Heavenly Gate became difficult.

Thus, Xu Qi'an had yet to subdue a female demon.

In the rear quarters where the county magistrate lived.

Head Constable Wang, dark-skinned and looking like an old farmer from the fields, hung his head and listened dejectedly to the magistrate's scolding.

The magistrate's surname was Zhu. A stout, fair-skinned man from Yan Prefecture, he had earned a third-tier jinshi degree in the twentieth year of Yuanjing's reign. He was skilled at currying favor but not at official business-a scholar whose professional abilities were nothing to speak of, but who knew the ways of officialdom well.

On the positive side, he had a reasonable conscience. He took small bribes but not large ones, and though incompetent, he didn't harass the people.

His shortcomings were that he had a bad temper with his subordinates and was prone to letting flowers fly from his mouth.

"Incompetent! How utterly incompetent!"

County Magistrate Zhu was furious to learn that Head Constable Wang had again come up empty-handed the day before.

"You're an experienced old hand, at least. It's just a murder case, yet after all these days you still haven't got a clue."

Sweat beaded on Head Constable Wang's forehead, and he felt as though thorns were stabbing his back.

With the capital evaluation approaching, County Magistrate Zhu had grown increasingly irritable. Registrar Li didn't dare interrupt, even though he and Head Constable Wang had been friends for more than a decade.

Registrar Li knew that the magistrate had always wanted to climb higher. A promotion required two things: a backer and a record of achievement!

With a backer but no achievements, one was easily impeached and one's position was unstable.

Only with both achievements and a backer could one rise steadily and securely.

Where were those achievements to come from?

The capital evaluation was an important standard of assessment.

A quarter of an hour later, County Magistrate Zhu looked away, picked up his teacup, and took a sip.

The rule in officialdom was: lift the tea to send the guest away!

Seeing this, Registrar Li tugged at Head Constable Wang, who was standing there with his head lowered, saying nothing. The two left in disarray.

Head Constable Wang returned to the rest room with an ugly look on his face. The noisy room fell silent at once, and everyone watched him cautiously.

"Boss, did County Magistrate Zhu scold you again?"

Head Constable Wang rolled his eyes, grabbed a teacup, and gulped some down. "Damn it, the man's dead and the thief's gone. Where am I supposed to find him? My luck's been rotten today. I even dropped a mace of silver."

So you were the one who dropped that money. Xu Qi'an shrank back and drank his tea to hide his guilty conscience.

Clearly, that silver wasn't fated to be yours.

After listening to Head Constable Wang's complaints, a junior constable offered him a lousy suggestion. "How about we go fishing?"

Xu Qi'an's brow twitched.

Fishing was a technical term in the lower ranks of officialdom!

It meant finding a scapegoat.

Limited by technology and equipment, most cases in ancient times went unsolved, and the case-solving rate was extremely low. Sometimes, when officials wanted achievements or were under pressure from above, they would find a scapegoat to take the blame and close the case.

The process went like this: local clerks first selected a group of habitual troublemakers who regularly broke the law. Their names were written on slips of paper and folded up, and an official drew one at random.

Whoever was drawn became the scapegoat.

That was why it was called fishing.

Once the unlucky soul was chosen, the clerks went to arrest him and bring him back to the yamen. After he went through an assembly line called "beating a confession out of him," even the toughest man would confess.

The higher-ups were satisfied, the officials in the middle won their appreciation, and the clerks received rewards. Everyone came out happy.

The scapegoat wasn't wronged, either. He was a rotten person anyway, and sending him into reincarnation early was a favor to the people around him.

There were many, many other such tricks in officialdom.

Head Constable Wang nodded. "That's the only way. Little Li, you take care of it. Pick a few who are more disreputable and older."

Little Li was just about to nod when Xu Qi'an frowned and said, "Wait! Boss, there are plenty of suspicious points in this case. It's not as though there's nowhere to start."

Xu Qi'an didn't accept that reasoning.

Although he had left that world, the values he had formed since childhood were still intact.

The man might be a lawbreaking troublemaker, but his crimes didn't warrant death. Even if he deserved to die, one thing was one thing and another was another.

If they found someone to take the blame here, wouldn't the real killer get off scot-free?

Head Constable Wang's face darkened. He said nothing, but gave Xu Qi'an a displeased look.

Everyone hurried to persuade him.

"Ningyan, don't stir up trouble."

"The boss gets scolded every day. There's nothing else he can do. Besides, it's just some troublemaker who's always breaking the law."

Those closer to him said, "Boss, Ningyan's family has just suffered a great calamity. It's only natural he'd be sensitive about this sort of thing."

Head Constable Wang turned a deaf ear. He stared at Xu Qi'an, displeased, his face dark. "You tell me, how do we investigate it?"

"Give me the case file!" Xu Qi'an said bluntly.