As Chen Baoxiang was led forward by him, a slight downward glance showed red rashes breaking out on the inside of his wrist near his cuff.

There was dirt under his fingernails, and the straw sandals didn’t fit.

But this man looked a great deal more confident than the last time — chest out, chin up, as though heading off to battle.

Laughter rose in her eyes. She fell into step beside him and asked quietly: “What work has been arranged for us?”

“I’m in charge of tallying the output quantities; you’re in charge of overseeing the salt boiling.” Zhang Zhixu said. “We finish at dusk and meet at the crossroads when the shift ends.”

Chen Baoxiang blinked.

She asked: “How much did Ningsu spend to buy these two positions?”

“Buy?”

“These two jobs are easy and light — no heavy labor required, they come with the title of a minor attending official, and they’re subsidized by the court.” Chen Baoxiang clicked her tongue. “On the black market, a spot like that would fetch at least a hundred thousand coins.”

Zhang Zhixu was taken aback.

A position this unremarkable — not even a proper official post — could actually be sold? And for that high a price?

How was something like that even sold?

His expression darkened and he strode quickly into the saltworks, finding the contact Ningsu had mentioned.

“Zhang Three and Chen Six, is it?” Commissioner Xu looked the two of them over from head to foot, then curled his lip. “Get in there. I’ll say this plainly upfront — if the work isn’t done well, I’ll swap you out, and no refunds on the money.”

So it really had been purchased.

Zhang Zhixu drew a quiet breath, followed the man in to acquaint himself with the surroundings, then took up his assigned position and began to observe.

Chen Baoxiang, for her part, was perfectly at ease: the moment she arrived at the salt-boiling works, she started cracking sunflower seeds.

The supervisor nearby stared in bewilderment: “What is this person doing?”

“Got in through connections, by the look of it. Judging by the manner, the connections run pretty deep — don’t provoke her, let’s just watch.”

Compared to the other supervisors, Chen Baoxiang was plainly ignorant of salt production. When she saw them adding soybean milk to the vats, she let out a cry of genuine wonder and grabbed someone to ask: “How much salt comes out of one vat like that?”

Her colleague’s expression grew complicated. Engage with her and look like a fool; ignore her and, given her air, she seemed to have real backing behind her — not wise to offend. So he gritted his teeth and answered: “About two shi per vat.”

“Goodness, that much.” She spat out a sunflower seed husk and began counting on her fingers. “A dou of salt in Shangjing is two hundred coins, so one vat is four thousand coins, and there are so many vats here… my word, would our monthly wages come out to a hundred or eighty taels or so?”

All her colleagues burst out laughing: “You’ve got quite the imagination. For supervisors like us, two taels a month is the ceiling.”

“How can that be,” she said, genuinely puzzled. “This operation makes so much money — shouldn’t the people below be receiving their fair share of the earnings too?”

“The high salt price is profit for those at the top. What’s that got to do with us?” Her colleague kept shaking his head. “From drawing brine to refining and jarring the salt, adding in the salt tax, the cost is no more than eight coins a dou. Think carefully about where the rest of the price comes from.”

Chen Baoxiang blinked with an innocent expression: “I couldn’t work that out if I tried. My family just sent me here to idle my time away — they didn’t explain any of this.”

Her colleague nodded knowingly and said no more, simply telling her with an air of great profundity to watch and learn more.

Chen Baoxiang very naturally made a tour of both inside and outside the saltworks.

There were no collapses anywhere, no other disasters obstructing operations. The entire salt well and saltworks were producing normally.

Shangjing was not a major salt-producing area — Shuzhou produced far more well salt. Even if Shangjing’s salt wells had a problem, salt transport would promptly supplement from elsewhere.

The problem was not with the salt wells themselves.

Then where was the problem?

At dusk, Chen Baoxiang and Zhang Zhixu finished their shift together.

The original plan had been to come just once during the day off and get a feel for the situation, but in the fading light of the setting sun, Zhang Zhixu lowered his gaze and spoke: “I may come back for a while longer.”

Chen Baoxiang turned to look at him.

He had clearly seen many things he had never encountered before; the fury in his eyes was being suppressed by reason and yet kept spilling over — and beyond the fury there was a measure of bewilderment, as though he needed more evidence still.

“Of course,” she said with a smile. “Come as often as you need. I’ll walk the same road as you.”

·

Zhang Zhixu was meticulous in everything he did — verifying back and forth, writing carefully and precisely. Chen Baoxiang had grasped the whole picture in under half a month; he labored over his account for more than a full month.

But a month later, a remarkably thick memorial appeared on Li Bingsheng’s desk.

“Who dragged a wall brick in here?” she asked, puzzled.

Hua Lingyin almost burst out laughing — she had to run through every sad thing she could think of to keep her composure — then cupped her hands with a proper, solemn expression: “Respectfully submitted by Master Zhang of the Ministry of Justice.”

“I knew it was him. No one else could do something like this. He writes this much every time — beautiful calligraphy doesn’t mean you have to use it like this — my eyes are going blurry.” Li Bingsheng was scolding even as she opened it.

After turning a few pages, she sat up straight, her air of casual indifference gone.

The Ministry of Justice’s Minister Zhang Zhixu lodged a formal charge: of the twenty-eight salt wells in Shangjing, twenty-three had been the sites of deaths. The victims who could be verified numbered over seven hundred; the youngest was only twelve years old, scalded to death by brine; the oldest was sixty-seven, dead of exhaustion.

This was no small matter, but it was still a cumulative series of deaths — send the Ministry of Justice to investigate and be done with it.

But then Zhang Zhixu went straight on to formally charge the current Salt and Iron Transport Commissioner himself, accusing him of deceiving those above and concealing matters below, artificially inflating salt prices, embezzling for personal gain, and buying and selling official positions.

The charges were so grave that Li Bingsheng almost snapped the memorial shut.

Yet reading on, she came to the section where Zhang Zhixu used Shangjing’s largest saltworks as a detailed case study —

The process of producing one batch of salt. The basic labor required. A breakdown of costs.

The working conditions of the salt laborers. How minor officials held nominal posts to pocket money. How the saltworks’ recording commissioners engaged in buying and selling.

How many government offices and officials a jar of salt passed through in the process of having its price set. How those who set the price kept inflating it higher.

Finally appended was a comparison of the salt tax revenues that Great Sheng had collected in past years against what the tax revenues should have been at current market prices.

Li Bingsheng would have liked to say that salt was the foundation of the nation and could not be lightly disturbed, or that he was a man of the Ministry of Justice who ought not to be venturing unsolicited opinions on these matters — but after reading line after line of those characters, she found she could not say any of it.

Zhang Zhixu was a madman. He had even appended a full roster of officials connected to Shangjing’s salt transport.

Looking at that dense list of names — every single one of them backed by a web of complex connections — and he had dared to write them all down, plainly and directly.

Among them were even his own paternal uncles from the Zhang family.

Li Bingsheng closed her eyes and pressed a hand to her forehead, her emotions momentarily unreadable.

“Your Majesty, Chen Baoxiang requests an audience,” came an announcement from outside.

“At this hour?” Li Bingsheng looked up in surprise. “She doesn’t sleep, but I do.”

“Your Majesty—” Chen Baoxiang’s voice carried in from far away.

Li Bingsheng pressed a hand to her temple: “Fine. Let her in. Howling like that in the middle of the night — people who didn’t know would think something had happened to me.”

The female official hastily went to open the door.

Chen Baoxiang came rushing in, and in the blink of an eye she was beside the pile of memorials. Standing on tiptoe to peer through the gaps in the stack, she said: “Would Your Majesty kindly write an imperial directive?”

The way that was said was even more presumptuous than last time.

Li Bingsheng tapped the edge of the desk: “Chen Aiqing, I hope you understand that I am an emperor who holds the lives of all under heaven in my hands — not a scribe for hire at your front gate.”

Who asks for an imperial directive like that?

“Write it, please, just write it.” She blinked. “It’s only summoning Cheng Huaili to the palace — nothing major.”

The middle of the night, wanting to see someone that disagreeable — what for?

Li Bingsheng hesitated, but looking at Chen Baoxiang’s expression — pitiable, earnest — it was likely she truly had some use for it.

With a resigned sigh, she picked up the brush, wrote a few lines, applied the seal, and set it down: “Take it.”

Chen Baoxiang received the directive with both hands, took a few steps back — and then her expression turned serious. She swept aside her robe and knelt.

“Your servant reports to Your Majesty: General Cheng Huaili, charged with defending the northern frontier, has defied the imperial decree. At the beginning of the hai hour, he led three hundred troops to break through the city gates and flee in the direction of Nanzhou.”

She held the imperial directive aloft with both hands, her voice ringing out so clearly that even the eunuchs on duty outside the hall steps heard every word.

“Your servant has failed in her duty. I beg Your Majesty to grant permission to mobilize troops in pursuit, so that I may atone for my failure through meritorious service.”

Li Bingsheng: “……”

There’s such a fortunate turn?

She had just been thinking that as long as Cheng Huaili behaved and gave her no cause, he could likely keep himself alive for several more years. And now somehow this man had lost his mind, taken troops, and broken through the city gates?

Was this not heaven-sent thunder?

Composing herself and pressing down the corners of her mouth, Li Bingsheng assumed an expression of imperial fury: “What is the meaning of this? How dare General Cheng defy the decree?”

“This man apparently harbors treacherous intentions.”

“After all the consideration I have shown him.” Li Bingsheng struck the armrest of her chair. “Hua Lingyin — summon immediately the Ministry of War, the Ministry of Personnel, the Ministry of Justice, the Imperial Censorate, the Minister of State, and the Court Historians to the palace to deliberate a response.”

“Yes, Your Majesty.”

What strategy could the Court Historians deliberate? The historians could only stand to the side, brush in hand, and record: Cheng Huaili’s ambitions remained unextinguished; at last, after the new Emperor’s ascension, he launched a rebellion, seeking to avenge his former master.

His Majesty, in great magnanimity, dispatched Chen Baoxiang to invite him back, indicating that if Cheng Huaili came without resistance, he would still be permitted to serve as General of the Northern Frontier.

Very good. Very flawless.

Cheng Huaili, who had slipped out of the city in disguise with his men, knew none of this.

He only felt that the guards at every city gate tonight had been infuriatingly thorough, inspecting his luggage and travel documents again and again before finally letting him through.

When at last he was released, Cheng Huaili felt an almost giddy sense of having escaped certain death. He immediately ordered his men to ride hard — they must reach Nanzhou before anyone in the city discovered he was gone.

The carriage raced forward at full speed.

Cheng Huaili turned and gazed back at the city of Shangjing from a distance.

Blazing with lights, towering and magnificent — this was the city that had witnessed his ascent to the highest reaches of power and glory. Though he was leaving it for now, one day he would return, bearing with him the rank and wealth that were rightfully his.