Chen Ye paid no attention to the storm raging throughout the city outside.
He sat in his little room, preparing for the operation three days away.
He had chosen such a public approach, even announcing it in advance, not out of arrogance.
He simply wanted to test how much an operation under the gaze of countless people could bring him, and whether it could once again push his profession and skill levels to a breakthrough.
Of course, a test was a test, but he never did anything he wasn't confident about. Before he had left the message on the wall, a complete plan had already taken shape in his mind...
Night fell once more.
As the vast majority of people in the capital focused their attention on the heavily guarded Duke Anguo's residence, a dark figure slipped soundlessly into the night.
This time, Chen Ye's targets were the businesses owned by the Duke of An.
When the Duke of An, Li Jun, recalled all the elite men from his household to protect his precious son, his shops became empty shells, imposing on the outside but hollow within.
With the experience Chen Ye had gained from his previous outings, two banks and a pawnshop were all robbed in a single night.
As for the silver he obtained, Chen Ye did as he had last time, breaking it into smaller sums and distributing it all to the poor at the bottom of society.
When the news spread, the capital was shaken.
Li Jun was so furious he nearly spat blood. Pointing at the people from the Arrest Bureau, the Six Gates, and the other offices before him, he launched into a tirade.
"A bunch of wine bags and rice sacks! Does the imperial court keep you fed so you can watch a flying thief do whatever he pleases in the capital? Huh?"
No one dared speak. Everyone kept their heads lowered.
Li Jun was caught between a rock and a hard place. If he continued to keep all his men at the residence to protect his son, his other shops would be undefended slabs of meat, ripe for the carving.
But if he sent men to protect the shops, how could he guarantee his son's safety if the Moon-Treading Great Thief really came knocking?
Worst of all, he still didn't know whether his adversary was a man or a woman, tall or short. The frustration was unbearable, so he unleashed all his anger on the people from the Six Gates and the other offices.
Zhao An and the others were drenched in abuse, but they could only meekly accept their orders and take their leave. They then mobilized all their forces, launching another nearly frenzied search of the capital.
But the common people refused to cooperate at all, so after a whole day of commotion, they ultimately came away empty-handed.
Unlike the chaos outside, Cheng Zhiwei's room was perfectly quiet.
She hadn't gone out with the others to hunt for the thief far and wide. Instead, she stood quietly before a huge map.
She had spent three years personally walking every street and alley to draw this map of the capital. Its level of detail far surpassed the copies kept in the government archives.
Several red dots had been conspicuously marked on the map in vermilion ink. They showed the locations of Granary Full of Fortune, Everlasting Prosperity Bank, and the properties belonging to Duke Anguo's Residence that had been robbed the previous night.
Cheng Zhiwei's delicate brows knitted slightly as her clear eyes moved slowly over the map, trying to find some pattern among the seemingly unrelated red dots.
From time to time, she also sketched lines on scrap paper that outsiders would have found difficult to understand.
Just then, Cheng Ming pushed the door open and entered.
"Zhiwei, have you found anything?"
Cheng Zhiwei shook her head with a wry smile. "No. I wanted to use the locations of these cases to roughly determine the area where this person operates, or find a pattern in how he chooses his targets, but I failed."
"This Treading the Moon acts like a heavenly steed soaring across the skies, without any discernible method, but..."
Cheng Zhiwei paused, then said, "It wasn't entirely fruitless. I marked the locations of all the Duke of An's properties, and taking into account this person's fondness for robbing the rich to aid the poor, I narrowed it down to three of the most likely places."
At this point, they could only treat a dead horse as though it were still alive.
Cheng Ming made the decision at once. Grandfather and granddaughter took a squad of elite constables and quietly headed to the most likely of the locations Cheng Zhiwei had identified.
It was a silk shop in the western part of the city, also one of the Duke of An's properties.
The group silently concealed themselves in the shadows around the shop, holding their breath and focusing as they waited.
Time trickled by, and by the early hours of the morning, even the night watchman's clapper sounded feeble. The constables lying in wait had grown weary, their heavy eyelids struggling to stay open.
Only Cheng Zhiwei sat beneath a tea stall at the street corner, her eyes clear and without a trace of sleepiness.
Rather than keeping her gaze fixed on the silk shop's entrance, she swept her eyes over the surrounding rooftops and alley entrances from time to time.
Suddenly, a burst of orange-red flame shot into the sky from the silk shop's rear courtyard without warning!
"Fire!"
"Quick, put it out!"
The quiet night was torn apart in an instant. Everyone lying in wait was startled and instinctively started to rush over to fight the fire.
Cheng Zhiwei likewise sprang to her feet, but instead of rushing toward the fire, she did the opposite, sprinting toward the streets and alleys outside the silk shop!
As she ran, Cheng Zhiwei drew the mechanical repeating crossbow she carried at her waist.
She had practiced martial arts with her grandfather since childhood and was no weakling. Her aim with the crossbow was especially precise.
Yet when she raced around a street corner, her feet abruptly stopped.
On the eaves of a building across from the alley entrance, a figure in black stood quietly.
The man wore black from head to toe, his face covered by a black cloth, his figure straight as a sword.
Behind him hung a crescent of waning moon, curved like a hook.
Cheng Zhiwei's heart shook violently, and she raised the repeating crossbow in her hand almost instinctively.
But the instant she took aim, the figure on the eaves merely glanced at her, then flickered and vanished into thin air.
Cheng Zhiwei stood rooted to the spot, crossbow raised, staring blankly. The cold moonlight fell on her slightly pale face, and her eyes were full of bewilderment.
A moment later, she abruptly came to her senses. She quickly pulled out the charcoal pencil and paper she carried in her robes and began drawing swiftly by moonlight.
She didn't draw the figure that had seemed like a god or a demon, nor did she draw his distinctive black clothes and face covering.
What she drew was the pair of eyes that had been deeply imprinted in her mind during that brief glance.
A moment later, Cheng Ming hurried over. When he saw the portrait his granddaughter had drawn, his spirits lifted.
"This is..."
"That's right, it's him!" Cheng Zhiwei said softly. "I saw him just now, right up on those eaves."
"But before I could make a move, he vanished without a trace."
Vanished.
Cheng Ming turned the word over in his mind, waves surging in his heart.
He knew his granddaughter's abilities, and he knew even better how skilled she was with her repeating crossbow. To depart so calmly the instant she took aim-such movement technique was simply shocking.
But then Cheng Ming felt a flicker of excitement.
This was the only clue they had obtained so far about the Moon-Treading Great Thief.
Although finding someone in a vast sea of people by a pair of eyes was no different from fishing a needle out of the ocean, they at least had a clear direction now!
Meanwhile, in the crowded courtyard, Chen Ye had returned to his shabby little room.
He took off his night clothes and changed into his coarse, short work clothes, washed pale with age. Once again, he blended into the everyday bustle of the common people at the bottom, as though he had never left.
He had naturally seen the female constable who had rushed out of the alley.
When everyone else had been drawn by the fire, she alone had calmly deduced his escape route. Among the Six Gates' crowd of rice buckets, such sharpness and decisiveness truly made her a crane among chickens.
She really is a little interesting!
Chen Ye smiled, but didn't take the matter to heart.
Tomorrow would be the last day of the three-day period.
He closed his eyes and went over the entire plan in his mind. Only after confirming that nothing had been overlooked did he lie down to rest.
A new day was coming.
He hoped that tomorrow... would bring good weather.