You Can Reason Things Out in a Xianxia World Too

No one could answer that question.

Li Yuchun said, "Why did the demon steal the tax silver?"

Prefect Chen pondered briefly. "Demons never question their hearts when they act. They do as they please. Looking for a reason is only asking for trouble."

The girl in the yellow dress disagreed. "Wouldn't human flesh taste better? Mm, wait a moment. Let me finish my buns first."

She munched her way through two large meat buns, her own face swelling into a soup dumpling. She struggled to swallow, took a sip of tea, and only then returned to the topic, free to speak her mind about human flesh.

"Demons act without restraint. In their eyes, silver might not be as tempting as living people. Even if one wanted silver, stealing or robbing it would be safer than taking the tax silver outright."

In the Capital of Great Feng, stealing the tax silver in the middle of the street was far too risky.

Prefect Chen nodded. "That makes sense. We can't rule out the possibility that someone put it up to this."

Li Yuchun narrowed his eyes. "Then who would have instructed a demon to steal the tax silver? And why? Why did it have to be this particular shipment, exactly one hundred and fifty thousand taels?"

"We could look at it this way: the mastermind needed a huge sum of money, but couldn't make too much of a commotion. More precisely, they couldn't amass wealth without restraint." A thought occurred to Prefect Chen.

"So they set their sights on the tax silver?" The girl in yellow pursed her brightly colored lips.

"The route for the tax silver escort was chosen at random. Xu Pingzhi, the Imperial Saber Guard's hundred-man commander, decided it at the last minute. Yet the demon was able to lie in wait in the river ahead of time. There was very likely an accomplice in the escort party." As Li Yuchun spoke, he glanced at Prefect Chen.

"Should we go to Cloud Deer Academy and find an expert from the Confucian School to question their hearts?"

The girl in yellow shot him a sidelong glance. "Are you looking down on our Bureau of Astronomy's Qi-Watching Technique? I already told you, the soldiers escorting the tax silver were all completely in the dark."

Their line of thought hit another dead end, and the three fell silent.

The air went quiet all at once.

Li Yuchun lowered his head to study the case file, while Prefect Chen sighed repeatedly. The girl in yellow fiddled with the feng shui compass at her waist, thinking she had to leave the Capital Prefecture before sunset and go to the palace to mooch a meal off the eldest princess.

The palace cooks' skills were the best in the world!

Unlike the other two, the girl in yellow, Caiwei, was more of a guest retainer, assisting with the investigation.

She held no official post, and although she was one of the people in charge of the case, she didn't have to bear much responsibility.

Prefect Chen's eyes flickered. "The investigation is progressing slowly, and we can't afford to lose a moment. It's enough to make one's heart burn with anxiety. Lord Li, what if we sought Duke Wei's advice?"

The middle-aged man shot him a sidelong glance and snorted. "You civil officials have your capital evaluations, and we Nightwatchers have ours too. To tell you the truth, this is the test Duke Wei gave me."

Prefect Chen smiled bitterly. "If this case isn't solved, I'm afraid I won't be able to keep the seat under my backside. Everyone at court and beyond is watching us."

The two men looked at each other in silence, the atmosphere heavy.

"If a demon was behind it, then there's nothing I can do!" Xu Qi'an went pale, feeling Heaven's profound malice.

Demons existed in this world. The Demon Race had been around since ancient times, hunting and devouring humans just as humans hunted and devoured them.

In the Hundred Thousand Mountains of the Southern Frontier, there was a Kingdom of Ten Thousand Demons, the largest settlement of the Demon Race.

Five hundred years ago, the western kingdoms, led by the Buddhist School, declared war on the Kingdom of Ten Thousand Demons in the Southern Frontier. The war dragged on for a full sixty-year cycle, ending with the demon kingdom being razed.

The history books named this campaign the "Sixty-Year Demon Purge."

From then on, the Demon Race's fortune was damaged, and it gradually declined. The Buddhist School, meanwhile, soared into the heavens, and the Buddhist path flourished.

As Xu Qi'an understood it with his knowledge from a later age, humanity had won this battle for the top of the food chain.

If a demon had taken the tax silver, then he could only save himself and protect the Xu Household by recovering it.

As an Unyielding Silver at Peak Essence Refining, Xu Qi'an felt he had no way to turn the tables.

It was autumn, and the weather was damp and cold, yet Xu Qi'an broke out in a cold sweat.

He was scared!

Having absorbed the original owner's memories, he knew there was no chance he could break out of prison. He also knew all too well how little human rights counted in this society, where imperial authority stood high above all else.

Life and death, reward and punishment-all rested on a single thought from someone else.

He had once fantasized about traveling back to ancient times, copying poems and showing off. He had thought it would be great fun. Reality had slapped him hard across the face.

Even after transmigrating, he still had to take a beating from society.

"No, that's just a guess. It's only the Capital Prefecture's guess. I can't let their guess influence me. I'll do it myself, analyze it myself. There's still hope, there's still hope."

His fierce desire to survive quickly calmed him down, and his reasoning became rigorous and clear again.

"Why would a demon steal tax silver? Doesn't human flesh taste better? Even if it needed silver, there'd be no reason to target the tax silver. The storytellers say every demoness of the Demon Race is enchanting, with a shapely figure. I wonder if there are catgirls and doggirls..."

Smack! Xu Qi'an slapped himself. "Start reasoning again!"

The most important part of reasoning was subtraction: listing the clues one by one and sorting through them.

Otherwise, they were a ball of yarn, and the more he thought, the more tangled they would become.

There were two particularly obvious clues in the tax silver case:

First: the demonic wind!

Second: the explosion after the tax silver fell into the river!

Apart from martial artists, all the major cultivation systems had the ability to whip up a demonic wind. Thus, the first clue could only serve as supporting evidence that a cultivator was involved; it couldn't point to a more specific suspect.

That made his second uncle, a martial artist, less suspicious, though it didn't rule out his having conspired with someone.

The explosion in the second clue was a questionable detail that didn't make sense. It was normal for explosions to occur when high-level cultivators fought. But in this case of the missing tax silver, there had been no fight, so the explosion made no sense.

"Unless it had to explode!" Xu Qi'an murmured.

"Among the major cultivation systems, what professions need explosions to achieve their goals?"

Xu Qi'an thought for a while without getting anywhere. Then he realized with a start that he had made the same mistake as the Capital Prefecture.

The Capital Prefecture's thinking had gone wrong from the start. Based on the most obvious clue in the case, they had decided the culprit was a demon, then raced down that path, never to return.

That wasn't wrong in itself. The problem was that the conclusion had been too hasty.

Although Xu Qi'an had absorbed the memories, he still thought primarily like a modern man and relied on the experience of his previous life. He preferred to unravel the threads in a case file, chew over the easily overlooked details, and only then reach a conclusion.

"I can't make sense of this line of thought for now, so I'll try another approach and find a breakthrough elsewhere. First, I'll rule out a demon and assume this was a carefully planned act by a person."

"In that case, they must have left a flaw somewhere in the case."

"Locard's Material Exchange Principle tells us that whenever a crime is committed, direct or indirect traces are bound to be left at the scene.

"Traces of every kind can be divided into two broad categories. I can't quite remember the specifics, but they should include handprints and footprints, fingerprints, traces left by carts and horses, and traces left by tools and implements."

"The flaw isn't in the two most conspicuous clues, but in those traces of every kind..."

Using the case file's account, Xu Qi'an replayed his second uncle's escort of the tax silver in his mind.

Adrenaline flooded his body, and his brain cells became highly active. If pheromones could take shape, they would have been like koi in a pond, frantically fighting over food until the water boiled.

He replayed it again and again, scrutinizing it over and over.

The information and clues from the case file converged, and his brain was like a CPU running at high speed.

As he pieced the information together, the case grew clearer and clearer.

Before he knew it, Xu Qi'an felt himself enter a certain state. His soul floated lightly upward, breaking free of his mortal body, passing through the building, and arriving high above the Capital.

Time seemed to flow backward. The east was just beginning to brighten, and the sun was about to rise. Xu Pingzhi led a group of armored soldiers, armed and ready, escorting the tax silver to the Ministry of Revenue.

It was the second quarter of the hour of the hare. As they reached Guangnan Street, a demonic wind suddenly swept in. The horses panicked and plunged into the river.

Boom!

The river's surface exploded, muddy waves surging skyward.

The explosion seemed to sound in Xu Qi'an's heart as well. He kicked out reflexively and came to his senses.

His eyes were tired, but his face was full of excitement and wild joy.

"I know! I know! Hahaha, I've solved the puzzle!!"

Xu Qi'an laughed wildly and pounded on the bars. "Someone! Someone! Get over here!"

The jailer on duty was alerted. Carrying a fire iron, he shouted, "What's all this racket? Tired of living, are you?"

He struck the bars hard to frighten Xu Qi'an.

Xu Qi'an stepped back and released the bars to keep his fingers from being broken. "I want to see the prefect," he said gravely.

"A prisoner wants to see the prefect? Why don't you piss and take a look at your own reflection?" The jailer laughed in anger and thrust the fire iron through the bars at Xu Qi'an.

Xu Qi'an stepped back again, dodging it.

"You dare dodge?" The jailer reached for the keys at his waist and grinned viciously. "I'll break your legs today."

"I have an important lead in the tax silver robbery. I want to see the prefect. If the investigation is delayed, you'll be held responsible." Xu Qi'an stared at him.

The jailer's expression stiffened.

In the inner hall, the girl who had finished her meat buns was now gnawing on sugarcane. Every so often, she took a few pieces of candied fruit from her little deerskin pouch to eat with it.

On one side, clouds of gloom; on the other, not a care in the world.

"His Majesty ordered us to solve the case within five days because, if it drags on too long, we may never recover the tax silver." Prefect Chen could no longer sit still and paced back and forth in the hall.

"But time is so short, and we're at our wits' end." Solving a case took time.

The prefect clapped his hands together. "I'll go and beg Duke Wei myself. Give me the case file."

Li Yuchun hesitated. "I'll go with you."

The girl in yellow glanced at him and smiled sweetly. "That's more like it. With this grand master of Great Feng taking the field, you two won't have to answer to His Majesty."

"But losing points with Duke Wei is far worse than being held accountable by His Majesty." She smiled, revealing two small, pearly white canines.

The middle-aged man's face darkened.

A yamen runner in black hurried in with his head lowered and bowed. "Lord Prefect, a jailer reports that Xu Pingzhi's nephew, Xu Qi'an, just said he has an important lead in the tax silver robbery and wishes to see you."

All three sharpened their gazes at once.

Xu Qi'an. If they remembered correctly, he was just a peripheral figure with no connection to the case. After the initial questioning and torture, he had been deemed an irrelevant outsider.

Prefect Chen pondered for a moment. "Bring him here."

Shortly afterward, Xu Qi'an was brought in by the yamen runners, wearing prison clothes and covered in streaks of dried blood. His handcuffs and shackles clattered as he walked.

PS: As an eighteen-year-old newcomer writing my first book, I'm feeling nervous.

That's all for today, just three chapters.

This book isn't a tragedy, so everyone can read in peace. Don't worry. The synopsis was mainly meant to make the protagonist sound impressive.