“The Pure Gate’s Sect Leader?” Hua Yitang let out a burst of laughter. “Han Tai Ping, do you think I’m as stupid as you? Bingsi — pour the ritual water!”

Bingsi gripped Han Tai Ping by the throat and hoisted him up, tipping the black ceramic vial to his lips. Han Tai Ping let out a terrified scream. “I’m not finished — this isn’t the same Pure Gate!”

Hua Yitang narrowed his eyes and signaled Bingsi to release him. Han Tai Ping dropped back onto the ground with a thud, drenched in cold sweat.

“Are you saying there is a second Pure Gate?” Lin Sui’an said.

Han Tai Ping swallowed hard and gave a rapid nod.

“Now that is interesting.” Hua Yitang picked up a cup of plain water, pulled a stool over, and sat down facing Han Tai Ping. He passed the water to Han Tai Ping. Han Tai Ping checked it carefully before chugging it dry in a series of gulps. His whole bearing collapsed.

“What does County Officer Hua wish to know?” This time, Han Tai Ping actually used a respectful form of address.

“Have you ever seen Third Master’s face?”

Han Tai Ping shook his head. “He always wore a mask, a great cloak, and altered his voice. Not only his face — I couldn’t even tell if he was a man or a woman.”

“You’ve never even seen his face, and yet you were willing to serve him with your life?”

“A monthly salary of a hundred gold. For that, I’d work for a pig if I had to, let alone someone who just didn’t want their identity known.”

Yun Zhong Yue’s eyes went round: a hundred gold a month?!

Ling Zhiyan’s brush quivered in his hand, visibly tempted.

The only two unmoved were Lin Sui’an — whose monthly salary was eleven hundred gold — and Hua Yitang, who was himself the source of the money.

Hua Yitang even made a dismissive “tch” sound. “How did he make contact with you?”

“The messenger was never the same person twice. Sometimes an old man, sometimes a small child — women, beggars, foreigners, blacksmiths, butchers… too many to remember.”

“A thousand faces—” Hua Yitang murmured, and every gaze in the room drifted toward Yun Zhong Yue.

Yun Zhong Yue immediately protested: “That has nothing to do with me!”

“Not disguise — different actual people,” Han Tai Ping said. “These messengers also seemed unaware of what they were conveying. They simply handed me a slip of paper with a time and location written on it.”

Probably randomly selected passersby. That method was actually more concealed and secure than using a fixed contact, Lin Sui’an reflected. The only question was how Third Master had kept track of Han Tai Ping’s movements — could he have a network similar to the Pure Gate’s?

“And after meeting?” Hua Yitang asked.

“Third Master would give me the next month’s salary and tell me the next task.”

“How long did each meeting last?”

“Less than the time it takes to burn a stick of incense.”

“Did Third Master ever have anyone with him?”

“Third Master always came and went alone.”

“So you met once a month?”

“That was before. Since I arrived in Cheng County, I haven’t seen Third Master in over a year.”

Hua Yitang raised an eyebrow. “Which means you haven’t received a salary in a year?”

“The salary still comes every month, on the first day of the month. Someone delivers it to my room.”

“Have you ever seen the delivery person?”

“Never. They come and go without a trace — less like a person, more like a ghost.”

Everyone’s gaze shifted again toward Yun Zhong Yue.

Yun Zhong Yue went frantic: “It truly has nothing to do with me!”

Lin Sui’an found herself strangely astonished. This Third Master had quite the sense of fairness — never withheld a payment, never missed a deadline. Was he perhaps also providing employees with benefits?

Hua Yitang was equally struck. “Just for that, you were willing to do so much?”

Han Tai Ping lifted his eyes and looked at Hua Yitang wearily for a moment. “Along with the salary that was delivered, there were also letters from my mother and wife saying they were well.”

A collective understanding dawned on the room: Hua Yitang had been right — Han Tai Ping’s family had long been taken hostage.

“Where are your mother and wife now?” Hua Yitang said, his brow creasing.

Han Tai Ping shook his head. “I don’t know. Before I came to Cheng County, Third Master had already taken them away.”

“How long have you known Third Master?”

“Five years.”

“What work were you doing for Third Master before this?”

“Before…” Han Tai Ping’s eyes went distant, as if from another lifetime. “I looked after a few foreign spice shops for him. Made some runs for foreign trading caravans. All legitimate business — nothing unusual. I always assumed Third Master was just a merchant.”

Hua Yitang had Han Tai Ping write down the names and locations of all the spice shops, the names of the trading caravans and their leaders, and all the routes they had traveled. He studied the list with a furrowed brow, then passed it to Lin Sui’an, who could make even less of it than he could, and handed it to Ling Zhiyan for the record.

“How did you first come to know Third Master?”

“I lost money at a gambling den. The den tried to make me sign a contract selling my wife. I refused and fought back—” Han Tai Ping let out a short, humorless sound, “—put five of their men down. They say one of them didn’t make it through that night. I was left with half a life, thrown into the den’s private cell. The next day, someone from the gambling den came to tell me that someone had paid off my debts.”

Lin Sui’an understood. This man was not only a gambler but a desperate fighter. And he had an elderly mother and a wife as vulnerabilities. A perfect candidate for criminal recruitment. No wonder Third Master had chosen him — the shopkeeping and caravan work had probably been a trial period. Cheng County was his official posting.

“The one who paid your debts was Third Master?”

Han Tai Ping nodded. “I thought I’d found a great patron. I thought I was going to rise high and make a name for myself. But as it turned out, even the best-laid plans are overturned by fate. It came to this.”

Hua Yitang caught the key phrase in Han Tai Ping’s words with a sharp ear. “What do you mean by ‘rise high and make a name’?”

Han Tai Ping hunched his shoulders and began to shake all over. Lin Sui’an initially took it for fear — but quickly saw it was not. He was shaking with excitement. The emptiness that had been in his eyes ignited into small flickering flames. The corners of his mouth spread open, exposing blood-red gums.

“Third Master said that the current Pure Gate in the jianghu is a joke — an utter disgrace to the Pure Gate’s name. Third Master also said that he is the true Sect Leader of the Pure Gate, that he intends to rebuild the true Pure Gate and restore its former glory!” Han Tai Ping let out a gurgling laugh from deep in his throat. “As long as I could breed a real Breaking Army — just like—” He looked at Lin Sui’an, his eyes wild with fervor. “Just like the current Bearer of Qian Jing. A pity that the Bearer of Qian Jing should rightfully belong to the true Pure Gate, but has strayed off the path—”

Lin Sui’an, unmoved: Dream on.

Han Tai Ping withdrew his gaze and continued sinking into his own delusion. “If I succeeded, I would be an Elder of the Pure Gate. My cultivated subordinates would be the founding disciples of the Pure Gate. From that day forward, I would stand second to none, commanding all under heaven, none daring to defy — hahahahahahaha! None daring to defy, hahahahahaha—”

Hua Yitang let out a derisive laugh. “And there it is — the lives of your family were only ever an excuse. Everything you did, you did for your own ambition and desire.”

Han Tai Ping’s laughter snapped off mid-note. He recoiled and shook his head frantically. “No! I did it all for my mother, for my wife and children — otherwise how could I have done something so terrible? I am a person, I am not a beast! I am a person! A human being!”

Lin Sui’an quietly let out a sigh. This man had never swallowed any ritual water — yet his mind had long since gone mad. In its own way, it was another kind of walking corpse.

Hua Yitang waved a hand with a composed expression. Ita and Bingsi dragged Han Tai Ping away. The jail seemed still to reverberate with his cries, the sound slow to fade.

This round of interrogations had held an enormous amount of information. Even a simple mental review left Lin Sui’an feeling her cognitive faculties were slightly overloaded.

Ling Zhiyan was frowning over the freshly recorded testimony, occasionally glancing at Lin Sui’an, clearly wanting to say something but stopping himself. Yun Zhong Yue was even more direct — his eyes practically glued to Lin Sui’an’s face, mouthing silently: Wow.

Hua Yitang, the one who had conducted the primary interrogation, quietly sat back down, eyes blank, his little fan entirely forgotten. Without noticing what he was doing, he picked up a cup of Ita’s leftover tea broth and began sipping from it with some enthusiasm — until Zhu Dachang, returning from the outside still green around the gills, called out “County Officer Hua” and jolted Hua Yitang back to himself. Hua Yitang startled as if struck by lightning and nearly flung the teacup across the room, coughing until his face turned blue.

Lin Sui’an found it funny. So she laughed.

Hua Yitang turned to look at her with a knitted brow, cheeks puffed out like a river puffer fish.

“That was a productive interrogation,” Lin Sui’an said. “Well done.”

Hua Yitang gave a world-weary old-man sigh and brought down his fan. “Bring in Qiu Hong!”

The third prisoner brought for interrogation: Qiu Hong.

Hua Yitang’s approach to this interrogation was quite distinctive in its own right.

The two major principals who had come before were met with layer upon layer of pressure, step-by-step pursuit, probing for the weakest point in their psychological defenses before delivering the decisive blow and bringing them to utter collapse.

Interrogating Qiu Hong, Hua Yitang was evidently worn out from the previous two sessions and appeared on the verge of lying down entirely. He slumped sideways against the armrest, feet swinging casually, fanning himself at a desultory pace, and asked in a languid drawl, “Qiu Hong — at this point, whatever you want to come clean about, go ahead and put it all out.”

This single line seemed to press a switch that opened Qiu Hong’s floodgates. He bulged his eyes open, raised his voice, and began talking in a torrent.

“County Officer Hua sees all clearly! Everything was Xuanming who coerced me! Imprisoning the Magistrate Qiu, confining the late Manor Master, poisoning the late Manor Master, stealing the Magistrate’s official seal to issue orders — all of this was Xuanming’s doing. I was truly compelled, with no choice but to comply!”

Hua Yitang raised a weary eye. “And Han Tai Ping?”

“Heaven and earth are my witnesses — I truly knew nothing of this! The late Manor Master was already poisoned and out of his mind, he never passed me the map to the hidden tunnels of Xian De Manor. I myself didn’t know there was such an enormous underground cell beneath Xian De Manor. But the late Manor Master used to be on tea-drinking terms with Xuanming, so it must have been the late Manor Master who told Xuanming, and then Xuanming who told Han Tai Ping — yes, yes, it must have been exactly like that!”

Hua Yitang smiled in a way that was not quite a smile. “Oh, by the sound of it, Manor Master Qiu has been deeply wronged.”

Qiu Hong let his tears flow freely, knocking his head on the ground repeatedly. “County Officer Hua has the keenest of eyes and the most discerning of judgments! I was indeed deceived by a villain. For a moment of inattention I committed a grave error!”

Zhu Dachang rolled his eyes so hard they nearly left their sockets. “Shameless!”

Hua Yitang clicked his tongue, shifted to a different angle, and continued sprawling — fanning himself with a little more energy, as if a degree of enthusiasm had been kindled. “Persuading the Zhu clan to produce embroidered goods, hiring jianghu hired swords to transport the ritual water, dispatching Qiu clan members to open shops selling the ritual water?”

“That is an even greater injustice! How could I have known the ritual water was poisonous?! That scoundrel Xuanming deceived me terribly. From beginning to end, I always believed the ritual water was a healthful medicine with life-prolonging properties — that’s why I believed his nonsense and staked the entire Qiu clan’s fortune on it. I was also victimized by Xuanming!” At this point, Qiu Hong covered his face and wept, full of grief and indignation.

“Oh, how terrible. How terribly unfortunate,” Hua Yitang said, his brow ever so slightly furrowed.

Qiu Hong: “Sob, sob, sob — isn’t it just! Sob, sob, sob.”

The reek of insincerity was overpowering. Lin Sui’an thought she might be sick.

Yun Zhong Yue’s face was a mask of contempt. Ling Zhiyan set down his brush and gave Hua Yitang a deeply aggrieved look.

“How deeply sorry Flower feels for you—” The crease in Hua Yitang’s brow gradually eased into an ominous, ingratiating smile. “You’re just so extraordinarily foolish!”

Qiu Hong’s weeping faltered. He showed one eye. “Pardon?”

Hua Yitang rose and shook out his sleeves, drawing out a scroll from the case bearing the label “Qiu Dog Droppings” and dropping it on the floor. “This is the inventory from when the Guangdu Prefect, together with Clerk Zhu, searched and confiscated your family assets. Take a look and see if anything has been missed.”

Qiu Hong lifted his head abruptly. His tears were still streaming, but the expression on his face had changed — from grief to calculating malice.

“Total cash and silver seized from your household: five thousand seven hundred and thirty-three strings of cash. Forty-six property deeds for residences in the Guangdu administrative region. Two hundred and twelve shop deeds for embroidery houses and spice shops across the five great cities.” Hua Yitang clapped his hands together. “My, my — remarkable, truly remarkable. In just two years, you have managed to earn the equivalent of precisely one season’s profit from a single embroidery shop of the Hua Family of Yangdu.”

Everyone turned to look: was this real? Surely this boaster was at it again?

Qiu Hong’s face twitched. “Is County Officer Hua flaunting the wealth of the Hua Family of Yangdu?”

Hua Yitang waved his hand. “Manor Master Qiu misunderstands. I only wished to point out that for all the staggering human effort and resources expended, and even landing yourself in prison in the process, you earned all of this—” Hua Yitang rubbed two fingers together, “—which is to say: you have absolutely no talent for commerce.”

Qiu Hong’s face went blue.

“However, there is one area in which you have far surpassed the Hua family,” Hua Yitang said with a sunny smile. “Over the past two years, you have taken ten additional concubines — three kept in Cheng County, seven in Guangdu. The seven in Guangdu have produced four children, with another due imminently.”

“What exactly are you getting at?!” Qiu Hong snapped.

“Two years ago, citing your son’s education as the reason, you sent your parents, wife, and children to Guangdu City. Is that true?”

“What of it?”

“Guangdu City is over two hundred li from Cheng County — a journey of seven or eight days by fast horse. With you running back and forth between both places, plus one formidable legitimate wife and seven lovely concubines all requiring your alternating attention, do you have the stamina?”

Everyone: Ahem! Ahem!

“This is my personal affair! County Officer Hua is overstepping quite a bit!” Qiu Hong snapped.

“Flower is merely curious — since the concubines in Guangdu have children, why did the three concubines in Cheng County produce nothing? And so I looked into it. Your steward told me: your Cheng County concubines were required to drink contraceptive medicine every month, without exception. But why?”

Qiu Hong’s eyelid twitched.

“These past days the county office has been distributing Hundred Flower Dew to the entire population for detoxification — even the prisoners in the jail have all received their share, without exception. But Manor Master Qiu — why did you pour your Hundred Flower Dew away in secret, refusing to drink a single drop? Could it be you found Flower’s Hundred Flower Dew not to your taste?” Hua Yitang fanned himself as he drew close, lowering his voice, “Flower found this deeply puzzling. And so he had the jailers put a sedative in your food, and while you slept, asked my Doctor Fang to conduct a full physical examination.”

Qiu Hong’s face went white as a sheet.

Zhu Dachang let out an extended round of: “Ahem, ahem, ahem, ahem!”

Ling Zhiyan set his brush down with a snap, his expression that of someone who simply could not write another word of this record.

Lin Sui’an was listening with great interest. Yun Zhong Yue even joined in, asking, “What did the examination find?”

Hua Yitang brought his fan down with a crisp tap. “Oh, you won’t believe it! What do you think, everyone — it turns out Manor Master Qiu’s body shows not the slightest trace of ritual water toxin.”

Everyone: “Oooh—”

Ling Zhiyan picked his brush back up.

“And so Flower arrived at a theory: Manor Master Qiu, having known all along that the ritual water was poisonous, made an early point of relocating his parents, wife, and children. As for the concubines left behind — having consumed the ritual water and carrying residual toxins in their bodies, they naturally could not conceive. And as for himself — he kept completely clear of even a drop of ritual water.”

Hua Yitang swayed back and forth as he stood, then fanned himself toward Qiu Hong in a leisurely manner. “Manor Master Qiu was not upright about this at all. Clearly knowing the ritual water was poisonous, and yet still assisting Xuanming in his vile work, allowing it to harm your clan members. Ah, if Flower should, just by some slip, let this information get out — tsk, tsk. One really does wonder whether the honest and upright folk of Cheng County would go all the way to Guangdu City to pursue and attack Manor Master Qiu’s family.”

Qiu Hong’s eyelid gave a small quiver. He closed his eyes. “Hua Sijie, I, Qiu Hong, know full well my crimes are grave. But these are my own doing. Do not implicate my family.”

Hua Yitang spun on his heel with a flash of energy. “Oh? I never expected Manor Master Qiu to turn out to be such a forthright man!”

Qiu Hong opened his eyes, regarding Hua Yitang with cold composure. “Hua Sijie — you were born into the Hua Family of Yangdu, pampered and privileged from childhood. How could you ever understand the meaning of poverty? I’ll admit it: I knew early on that the ritual water was problematic. But what was I to do? Cheng County is too poor. Too poor to sustain life. As head of the Qiu clan, I was obligated to provide for my people and find a way out for them.”

Qiu Hong paused. His eyes reddened, and he stretched out his neck like a defiant rooster. “I know that the people of Cheng County suffered greatly during those two years under my partnership with Xuanming. But I had no other choice. At the very least, the Zhu and Qiu clan members all survived. We were terrified of being poor. Poverty is the thorn in our hearts, the sin upon our backs! To pull out that thorn of poverty, I was willing to stake everything on one throw!”

Everyone was struck speechless: this Qiu Hong had apparently cast himself in the role of a hero who had saved his people.

Lin Sui’an reflected: so Qiu Hong’s entire argument boiled down to this — society is guilty, others are guilty, the world is guilty, the very cosmos is guilty, even passing ants are guilty, and only he himself is a pure, spotless little lotus blossom.

Hua Yitang blinked. Blinked again. He raised his fan to cover his mouth, and once again exploded into laughter — his loudest laugh in all three interrogation sessions, so hard he shed tears. “Hahahahaha! This is the first time in my life I have heard someone describe the most vile and despicable baseness in terms so self-righteous and refreshingly novel — hahahahaha! To hell with that! Eat dog droppings!”

Then without warning, Hua Yitang kicked Qiu Hong in the face.

Qiu Hong went flying and landed face-down, a footprint on his cheek, staring up at the ceiling in a daze.

“Those shops and residences are all registered in your name, Qiu Hong — what do any of them have to do with your clan members? While the people of Cheng County were mired in suffering and the Qiu clan members were charging forward as cannon fodder, you were hiding behind them all, wallowing in comfort — and you still have the face to say it was all for your people?! You are more putrid and revolting than a maggot in dung!”

Qiu Hong scrambled furiously to his feet and snarled back, his face livid: “How can someone like you understand what’s in our hearts?! Poverty is the splinter in our souls, the sin on our backs! We had no other choice! Being poor feels more shameful than any crime. We feared poverty more than death itself. To rip out that root of poverty, I was willing to throw everything on one roll of the dice!”

“Hahahahahaha, my goodness!” Hua Yitang wiped his eyes, his gaze turned downward toward Qiu Hong, filled with the most profound pity. “I, Hua Sijie, consider myself fairly experienced and well-acquainted with the world — and yet never in my life have I encountered someone quite as stupid and quite as hopeless as you. You were sitting on a golden bowl and went out to beg for scraps. Hahahahaha, to hell with that, you’ll be the death of me, hahahahaha!”

The mask of fierce, unyielding defiance on Qiu Hong’s face fractured and began falling away piece by piece, exposing something raw and bleeding beneath. “What do you mean by that?! What golden bowl?! What is the golden bowl?! Just say it!”

Hua Yitang swallowed his laughter and waved his fan lazily in Qiu Hong’s direction, his tone entirely airy: “I. Refuse. To. Tell. You.”

“Hua Yitang! Say it! What is the golden bowl?! What is it?! Say it, say it, say it, SAY IT!!”

Qiu Hong was dragged out still screaming; his shrieks and Hua Yitang’s laughter set the entire jail ringing and vibrating in unison.

Everyone gazed in the direction of Qiu Hong’s departure, each full of their own reflections:

Three interrogations. Three interrogated. Three broken.

True to form — Hua Sijie. Truly terrifying.

Side story:

Jin Ruo sneezed again, rubbing his nose: I have a sudden feeling I’m about to make a lot of money.