The Three-Day Limit
Li Ze stepped out of the academy. The morning mist still lingered over Tianqi City as street vendors fired up their oil pans and townsfolk hurried by with rough steamed buns in hand. Everything looked normal—too normal. As if no one knew that beneath the city's surface, a case was festering—one that could ignite public fury.
The official story from the Relief Department was a "warehouse fire," but after reading several secret documents in the academy archives, Li Ze had learned the truth: in just two months, seven border counties had mysteriously lost their grain stockpiles—always during times of disaster relief. Nearly a thousand famine victims had died, not from disaster, but from starvation.
Those deaths weren't statistics. They were lives.
And what disappeared? Seven full warehouses of grain.
---
Li Ze first went to Cangshui Street—the most impoverished refugee settlement in Tianqi City.
The streets were muddy, shacks leaned like drunks, and the air reeked of rot and excrement. He lifted a worn curtain and saw a dozen near-dead refugees. Someone was boiling tree bark into soup; a child gnawed on dry grass roots in the corner.
He approached an old man with one arm and respectfully asked:
"Elder, do you know anything about the grain disappearance from half a month ago?"
The old man looked up, eyes burning:
"Disappearance? It wasn't lost—they came with blades and took it! A dozen convoys moved the grain overnight, claiming it was 'military emergency reallocation.' Fire? What fire? You think we're blind?"
Li Ze's chest tightened. He asked, "Who were they?"
"Who? No official uniforms. They carried relief badges and claimed to be 'sent by the Commandery,' not our local officials." The old man sneered. "Strangest thing was—they brought ten constables and detained several warehouse guards. Those guards? All vanished."
"Were any bodies found?"
"One," the old man said grimly. "Strangled, dumped in the south river.
He was my son."
Li Ze said nothing. He bowed and left. As he looked at the streets of chaos, the forgotten people, the numb-eyed children, a fire began to burn in his chest—one he'd never felt before.
---
That evening, Li Ze disguised himself as an apprentice and slipped into Hengyi Granary, the largest private grain distributor in the city.
Hengyi controlled 60% of the city's grain routes and had close ties to the government. In the warehouse, he found sacks marked with the Relief Department's codes—but the seals had been altered to read "Commercial Transfer Grain."
At midnight, he sneaked into the accounting office. Among the ledgers, he found a list that left him speechless:
A batch of government grain worth 8,000 taels had passed through three shell companies and eventually ended up in the Southwestern Border Military Depot. Every transfer was signed under one title:
"In Custody."
In custody by whom? Who had the power?
Li Ze tore out the page and hid it. Just as he turned to leave, footsteps echoed behind him.
"Who's there?"
He bolted. Shadows and grain piles blurred around him. A hidden dart grazed his neck. He dove into a pile of rice sacks, tumbled out a back window, and landed in a sewage ditch, reeking from head to toe.
That night, for the first time, he realized that truth wasn't just logic written on paper—
It could kill.
---
Dawn, the third day.
Li Ze sat at his desk, clothes torn, body bruised. He compiled every clue: ledgers, testimony, names. Every word cut like a blade.
He didn't use the formal language of the court. Instead, he wrote a "report within a report," recording the people's suffering, the officials' greed, and the empire's silence in the plainest terms. At the end, he wrote:
> "The people's suffering is not from the disaster,
but from power.
There is grain in the warehouse, but none in their homes.
This is no act of heaven—this is man-made.
If the heart of the empire is colder than river water,
then I shall be fire, blade, and voice."
He sealed the report in a letter tube and slipped into the Hall of No Lanterns—the academy's most secretive place for whistleblowing. There were no guards. Only a lantern long extinguished for over a hundred years.
Li Ze stepped out. Dawn painted the sky in pale gold. Standing atop the steps, he gazed at the still-slumbering Tianqi City, his fingers clutching a bloodstained corner of paper.
This was his first true battle.
No troops.
No orders.
No authority.
Only a single unshakable belief—
Speak the truth.
But would truth be heard? Would it be accepted?
He did not know.
He only knew this:
From now on, the empire would no longer be able to ignore him.