Three days later, encouraging news finally came from Hall Master Ying’s side.

Yan Qing was in the middle of reading the geographical records of the Five Borders Region that Long Yunxiao had given her when she saw Dihuai hurrying in. She knew at once that news had arrived.

“How did it go?” Yan Qing quickly snapped her book shut.

“Miss, Mr. Long says the person has been found.”

“Really?” Yan Qing was overjoyed and immediately followed Dihuai to the front courtyard.

From a distance, she could see Long Yunxiao seated in the center of the parlor. Standing before him were two people — one was Hall Master Ying, and the other was a short, gaunt man who appeared to be around thirty years old with an unremarkable appearance.

Standing before Long Yunxiao, the man was visibly ill at ease, his eyes daring only to stare at the floor.

Long Yunxiao, seeing Yan Qing approach, finally spoke: “The person has been found.”

Yan Qing looked the man over. He was plain-looking, and judging from his body language, he was timid at present — someone who probably didn’t speak much and simply endured whatever came his way.

Yan Qing sat down on the other side of Long Yunxiao.

Long Yunxiao asked, “What is your name?”

Hall Master Ying gave him a clap on the shoulder — nearly knocking the man flat — and said, “He’s asking you. What’s your name?”

“My name is Yang Yongkang,” the man said, trembling.

“Do you know Lin Zhi?”

At the mention of Lin Zhi’s name, Yang Yongkang nearly dropped to his knees. “Brothers, I have nothing to do with Lin Zhi — please don’t kill me. We’re not blood relatives.”

Hall Master Ying clapped him again. “Don’t be afraid. We won’t do anything to you. We just want to ask you about Lin Zhi.”

Yan Qing shook her head helplessly. Hall Master Ying had already struck the man twice while trying to reassure him that there was nothing to fear. It was a wonder Yang Yongkang hadn’t wet himself from fright.

“Mr. Yang,” Yan Qing said gently, “don’t be afraid. We mean no harm. We only have a few questions about Lin Zhi we’d like to ask you.”

Yan Qing’s voice was soft as water, pleasant and melodious. Yang Yongkang heard it, and his nerves settled considerably.

“So you do know Lin Zhi?”

Yang Yongkang nodded. “Lin Zhi was my wife’s eldest brother.”

“Then do you know how he died?”

“He was already dead before I came to the Lin household,” Yang Yongkang said, “but I later heard from my wife that her elder brother had offended someone and been killed.”

“What did he do to offend them, and who exactly was this person?”

“Her elder brother used to have a woman he was close to, but someone else set his eyes on her. That person forcibly took her away, and the next day she came back and hanged herself. Her elder brother went to seek revenge and was shot dead — his body was thrown out into the wilderness. By the time the Lin family found him, wild animals had gnawed him down to nothing but bones. The Lin family knew he had offended someone formidable, and fearing retaliation, they became reclusive after that, barely leaving the house. When they did go out, they never ventured more than half a kilometer from home. I was the only one who came along later and dared to leave and go to Huxi Town.”

“And do you know who the woman Lin Zhi was close to was?”

“I was told her surname was Chen. Her family dealt in spices.”

Yang Yongkang’s words sent a surge of excitement through Yan Qing. After all this investigation, a thread of a clue had finally pointed toward the Chen family. Though it wasn’t yet certain this Chen family was connected to Chen Lingling, just hearing that surname thrilled her.

Long Yunxiao tilted his head to look at her. Her eyes sparkled like stars — extraordinarily bright.

“What else do you know about this woman?” Yan Qing forced down the excitement threatening to burst from her chest. “Her family structure, her name?”

Yang Yongkang shook his head. “I only know that the woman’s surname was Chen and that her family was in the spice trade. However… I do have some of Lin Zhi’s belongings from back then.”

“Belongings? Wasn’t the Lin household burned down?”

At the mention of the fire, Yang Yongkang still shuddered. “Ah, I barely escaped with my life on that one. On the day it happened, I had gone to Huxi Town to buy medicine. A round trip to Huxi Town takes a full day, and nobody dares travel back to the Five Borders Region at night. So I always stayed one night in Huxi Town and returned the following morning. When I got back to the Five Borders Region that afternoon, I saw a crowd gathered outside the gate, and people were carrying out blackened, burned corpses from the courtyard. Then I looked at our yard — already a heap of ruins. I remembered what my wife had told me about how her elder brother had once offended powerful people. Fearing those people had come back to settle scores with the Lin family, I took the opportunity and ran.”

Yang Yongkang hadn’t run far, only to a farm where he had once worked when he first came to the Five Borders Region — familiar faces. For the past few months he had stayed on at the farm to help out, not daring to go home.

“Everything is here.” Hall Master Ying had one of his men bring in an iron chest. “Someone left behind at the Lin house spotted a person sneaking in last night and digging around in the eastern wing room. My man didn’t startle him, and only grabbed him once he’d dug up whatever he was after.”

Yang Yongkang flushed at this. All those days at the farm, he had been thinking about the things left at the house. He had finally found a chance to sneak back, only to end up being brought here.

“This is my wife’s personal savings,” Yang Yongkang said. “It was buried under the floorboards beneath the bed in our room. I figured the fire couldn’t reach the bricks under the bed, so I’d been waiting for a chance to retrieve it.”

One of the men placed the chest before Long Yunxiao and asked, “Mr. Long, shall we open it?”

“Open it,” Long Yunxiao said.

Both Long Yunxiao and Yan Qing’s gazes fell on the chest. He hoped they would find something useful to Yan Qing inside.

The chest had been sheltered beneath the bricks and was thus undamaged by the fire, though its surface was coated in black soot.

When the man opened it, inside — apart from a few silk garments — were gold and silver jewelry and silver banknotes.

At the sight of these items, Yang Yongkang swallowed hard, his eyes going wide.

He had always known his wife kept things in the chest but had never dared to ask about it, let alone open it without permission. As a man who had married into the household, he had no standing within the family; one word too many would earn him a scolding.

With the Lin household burning down, he had lost his support — but thinking of these possessions, hope had returned to him.

“My wife said her brother left some belongings that she had put away,” he said. “Because she feared being implicated, she had always kept them hidden in this chest and never once taken them out.”

Yan Qing stepped forward, ignoring the gold and silver jewelry, and drew out a small redwood box. There was a lock on it, but it was not fastened.

She removed the lock and gently lifted the lid.

Inside the box there were no gold or silver ornaments — only a stack of letters, and beneath them, a few black-and-white photographs.

Photography had not been well developed fourteen years ago, and those photographs had grown brittle and yellowed with age. But the faces in them were still discernible at a glance.

In the photograph was a woman dressed in a blouse and skirt. Though the black-and-white image could not render colors, even so subdued, the woman’s beauty was striking — she gazed into the camera with bright teeth and clear eyes, a matchless grace about her. She was, beyond all doubt, a peerless beauty.

Yan Qing looked at her, and in her mind the silhouette of a figure in monk’s robes suddenly took shape.

She turned to the second photograph. Beside the woman stood a tall, handsome man. The woman sat in a chair while the man stood at her side, both facing the camera with warm, spring-like smiles. Though it was merely a photograph, the tender affection between them radiated through the thin paper, making anyone who saw it sigh with admiration.

Yan Qing held the photograph out to Yang Yongkang. “Is this Lin Zhi in the photograph?”

“That’s him,” Yang Yongkang said with certainty. “I’ve seen his photograph at the house.”

Yang Yongkang had never met Lin Zhi in person and naturally had never seen the woman in the photograph, so Yan Qing asked no further.

She then looked through the letters — evidently correspondence exchanged between the two, mostly filled with tender words and heartfelt confessions. From these letters, Yan Qing found no clues of any real value.

“Did your wife ever tell you anything else about this woman — for instance, what the person who took a liking to her did for a living? Lin Zhi was a deputy hall master at the time, a man of some standing. What sort of person would he have had to offend to end up in that condition? If it had been a simple rivalry between factions, Lin Zhi would not have been utterly helpless — the Dragon Cloud Society’s influence in this region was formidable.” As Yan Qing said this, she glanced at Long Yunxiao, who gave a confirming nod.

“As the Dragon Cloud Society’s deputy hall master, he naturally had power. But when he was killed back then, Hall Master Ying said the Sunshine Hall had not made any great moves over anything — which suggests Lin Zhi’s matter was very likely a personal vendetta, and that he did not involve Sunshine Hall’s people.”

Yang Yongkang listened to them talk, thought hard, then slapped his thigh. “I remember now — my wife said the person Lin Zhi offended was someone even the gangs didn’t dare provoke easily.”

“A warlord?” Long Yunxiao said the words almost before he could stop himself. “Fourteen years ago, there were indeed warlord conflicts here. Two factions fought over this territory.”

Hearing the word “warlord,” Yan Qing’s long lashes gave a gentle flutter. “Was it a warlord from Bei Di?”

“It seemed so.” Hall Master Ying answered. “I was just a green recruit in the gang back then and can’t remember clearly, but there were definitely warlords fighting here — that much is true.”

“Have someone investigate which factions were fighting here back then,” Long Yunxiao said.

“Yes, Mr. Long,” Hall Master Ying said quickly.

“The key is still finding this woman,” Yan Qing said.

“I’ll have the photographs printed in large numbers and distributed house by house to search for her,” Long Yunxiao said. “I believe there will certainly be people who have some impression of her.”

“This woman was from Huxi Town and her family dealt in spices. If we’re going to search, Huxi Town is where we start.”

She believed that with Long Yunxiao’s connections, finding someone with information shouldn’t prove too difficult.