Night had fallen.
The weather was turning unsettled once again.
A thin layer of clouds covered the sky, and fine snowflakes began to pelt down fiercely.
In the middle section of Jiangtanzi Street, at the entrance of Mican Alley, if you walked about a dozen paces deep into the alley, there were a few small stalls along the roadside.
A row of little square tables lined up by the alley’s wall, each topped with big oilcloth umbrellas.
The air was thick with the pungent smell of fried stinky tofu.
That sharp, nose-wrinkling scent easily overpowered the savory aroma wafting from the nearby stalls selling grilled lamb skewers and roasted pig’s trotters.
Old He held a roasted pig’s trotter in his left hand.
Several plates and saucers sat before him, while his right hand grasped a pair of chopsticks.
With a bowl of soybean milk by his side, he happily alternated bites of stinky tofu and pig’s trotter, eating with great satisfaction.
At a neighboring table, five burly men with fierce expressions were holding bowls and chopsticks, gulping down steaming hot wontons drenched in red chili oil.
These five men were the so-called “Dili Gui” — literally “ground ghosts.”
They were all idle riffraff of Haojing City, the lowest scum in society.
Yet, as the saying goes, shrimp have their own ways of swimming.
These scoundrels had their own means of survival.
No matter if it was the Sikoutai (the Judicial Bureau), the office of various neighborhood wardens, the Imperial Prison, or even the General’s Mansion, the Censorate, the Ministry of Finance, or the Ministry of Household — all sorts of matters required the help of these “ground ghosts.”
Especially the Imperial Prison — whether it was gathering intelligence, engaging in brawls and skirmishes, taking the blame, or even carrying out death missions, these kinds of unsavory and covert tasks desperately needed temporary help from these “hired hands.”
These five Dili Gui were Old He’s regular subordinates.
Normally, they just loitered about the streets and alleys.
Old He gave them a fixed monthly allowance.
If anything happened, with one call from these five Dili Gui, they could quickly sweep up a group of twenty or thirty men from the street.
Now it seemed Lu Qian had made some discovery, and Old He immediately gathered them together.
Lu Qian sat at the same table as Old He.
In front of them were two bowls of noodles, but the cold wind had already caused a white layer of oil to congeal on the surface of the broth.
Under the dim glow of the oil lamp on the stall, Lu Qian flipped through a small white notebook.
It recorded the developments from the twentieth day of the twelfth lunar month until today regarding the case of the attack on Anle Ward’s warden, He Jun, investigated by the Imperial Prison.
Old He wasn’t high-ranking enough, or rather, even their team leader, the three-star enforcer Lu Tianxing, didn’t have a very lofty status.
The intelligence recorded in Lu Qian’s notebook was very limited.
The most classified information wouldn’t be written down in such a small notebook.
What Lu Qian could see were only some open and ordinary details.
Among these were detailed reports on the losses of Imperial Prison guards in Lu Tianxing’s team over the past few days.
The information Lu Qian needed was exactly related to these casualties.
He carefully read through the notes almost word by word, then closed his eyes to mentally summarize all the information.
After silently pondering for a while, Lu Qian pulled out a complete map of Jiangtanzi Street, Youlouzi Street, and Zhenglong Alley, obtained through Old He’s connections.
These two streets running north-south, along with the east-west alley, together shaped a “Wu” character (a shape similar to a squared-off “E”), forming the jurisdiction that Lu Tianxing and his team of Imperial Prison guards usually managed.
Jiangtanzi Street boasted over a thousand shops and several thousand households, along with numerous restaurants, brothels, and gambling dens.
It was a bustling human scene in Fengdiao Ward, a top-tier place of ordinary life and commerce.
Youlouzi Street housed several hundred workshops of all sizes — furniture makers, gilders, silversmiths, and more — every kind of handiwork you could imagine could be found here.
Zhenglong Alley was a distinctive street.
It had nothing to do with steamed buns or dumplings.
Along both sides of the alley stood well over a thousand secluded courtyards, each housing young girls and newlywed wives engaged in semi-private business.
Their status was extremely high — their prices ten times that of their counterparts in the brothels.
Two major streets and one large alley, full of shops, workshops, residences, and various entertainment venues — the population was incredibly diverse, commerce thrived, and the profits were substantial.
Lu Tianxing usually led over a hundred prison guards managing these two streets and one alley.
Their bellies were full and their fortunes not insignificant.
“This Liu Wu family, they have a shop on Jiangtanzi Street!”
Lu Qian pointed decisively to the map, near the intersection of Jiangtanzi Street and Youlouzi Street.
“A silk shop, not very big, not even ranking among the notable shops on Jiangtanzi Street,” Old He said, clearly having done his homework.
The moment Lu Qian brought up the topic, he immediately chimed in: “They produce silk yarn in-house and have hired some female workers for the silks.”
“But their cocoons are of excellent quality. The problem is the female workers' skills are poor, so the finished silk products are only of medium-grade quality.”
“The silk shop itself doesn’t make much profit.”
“What’s more, the shop itself is family property. This shop has two courtyards back to back, the front courtyard has a three-story storefront, and the rear courtyard is impressively neat and grand… Tsk tsk, I wonder which bigwig might end up getting a bargain after everything.”
Lowering his voice, Old He murmured with envy, “This shop on Jiangtanzi Street — if it doesn’t go for at least one million guan (strings of coins), no one would even dream of owning it.”
Lu Qian blinked at Old He.
Old He seemed to think Lu Qian didn’t believe him and subconsciously raised his voice a bit: “Don’t doubt it! In Fengdiao Ward, such a two-courtyard commercial property like this goes for that much.”
“Don’t think it’s expensive. Many rich newcomers from other provinces, carrying gold and silver, wouldn’t even find a decent shop on Jiangtanzi Street to buy with all their money. If a shop is run well in this street, it can be passed down for generations — a blessing for descendants forever!”
Lu Qian nodded and tapped several spots on the map with his finger.
“The brothers who were killed the day before yesterday… the location where they were murdered was near the intersection of Jiangtanzi Street and Huangjiang Alley.”
“See, it’s not far at all from this silk shop.”
“Of course, this silk shop probably has nothing much to do with the brothers’ deaths. It’s too conspicuous, too much of a target. Unless Liu Wu is an idiot, he wouldn’t foolishly show himself around this shop at such a deadly moment.”
“Also, of the eighteen brothers who were killed, three of them, along with nineteen nearby Dili Gui, were slain with a single sword strike each. The sword techniques were extremely fierce, ruthless, precise, and efficient — one strike to the throat ended their lives without any excessive injury.”
“The other fifteen brothers, along with sixty-three Dili Gui, had much more complicated wounds.”
“Knives, swords, daggers, short stabbing blades, bull horn axes, hammers, whips, maces, brass knuckles — you name it. According to the coroner’s analysis, there were twenty-nine different weapons involved in their wounds. What’s more, most of these weapons were poisoned, and the poisons were varied — mineral poison, animal poison, plant poison, all kinds. One brother was even struck by a mixed toxin.”
“They also had injuries caused by fists, palms, and finger strikes.”
“These fist, palm, and finger techniques came from thirteen different schools of boxing, palm arts, and finger arts.”
“But there was one shared trait among these hand techniques — they were extremely insidious and venomous. Their power traveled along soft, yin paths, penetrating internal organs, shattering bones and severing tendons. On the surface, the skin remained intact, but inside the attacked areas, the flesh rotted like bean dregs.”
Old He closed his mouth and listened obediently to Lu Qian’s analysis.
To be honest, investigating cases and chasing criminals, gradually unraveling the truth from scraps of clue and capturing the real culprits — these were the specialties of the Sikoutai’s constables.
The Imperial Prison, on the other hand, was better at “casting wide nets,” “listening to the world,” “weaving charges,” and “raiding families and destroying clans.”
Lu Qian’s analysis seemed to open a new door for Old He, showing him a whole new realm he never imagined.
Like the five men sitting at the next table, also listening intently, their eyes were wide with amazement as they looked at Lu Qian.
Though they still didn’t grasp the deep meaning behind his words, it all sounded very professional and impressive.
Lu Qian closed his eyes.
His pupils shimmered with a greenish glow.
In his mind, the lotus-shaped soul light quivered slightly, vast light waves floated about, and his thinking operated at several times the normal speed, striving to analyze the information Old He provided.
Based on all this data, Lu Qian followed a kind of instinctive intuition to summarize and infer the most likely analysis result.
“Two groups of people.”
Lu Qian murmured, “Two groups of people killed our brothers.”
“One group was precise, efficient, and of remarkable background. They should be connected to Liu Wu. They are the ones who cleaned up whatever clues Liu Wu carelessly left behind. They’re the ones who killed those three brothers with the extremely fierce sword techniques.”
“Look, those three brothers died earliest — on the twenty-third, twenty-fifth, and twenty-sixth day of the twelfth lunar month. On those days, they probably uncovered some reliable clues but, greedy for glory, they tried to claim the credit alone, so they slightly exposed themselves. Then they were noticed and decisively killed.”
“The places where they died must be connected to Liu Wu.”
“After those three deaths, Liu Wu was likely warned or intimidated and so he went into hiding, no longer showing his face. The later deaths of the other brothers have nothing to do with the group skilled with the sword.”
“The other group was disorganized and cruel. They were violent and had no discipline. But judging from their palms, fists, and finger strikes, they originated from the same school. Their cultivation method belonged to one family.”
“The other fifteen murdered brothers had many unnecessary wounds. The attackers not only wanted to kill them but also to vent their rage, conduct brutal torture, or intimidate opponents.”
“There is a big fish hiding within our territory.”
Lu Qian opened his eyes and looked clearly at Old He.
The instant he opened his eyes, it was as if two cold sword edges shot out from his gaze.
Old He and the five burly men didn’t dare meet his eyes and quickly turned their heads away.
Lu Qian tapped on the map.
Near Jiangtanzi Street, Youlouzi Street, and Zhenglong Alley, close to the canal on the east side of Fengdiao Ward, there was a large neighborhood marked faintly in red.
It comprised three streets and five alleys.
“Jiji Ward — no one has thought to investigate it?” Lu Qian asked Old He.
Old He shuddered violently, then shook his head frantically:
“No one dares. Nobody dares. The generals above, the eunuchs, none of them dare!”
(End of chapter)