This was a question no one could answer.
Li Yuchun said, "What's the reason a demonic creature would steal the tax silver?"
Prefect Chen mused, "Demons act on impulse. They do as they please, and trying to find a reason is just looking for trouble."
The young woman in the yellow skirt disagreed. "Isn't human flesh tastier? ... Hmm, wait a moment, let me finish my bun."
She "munch-munch-munched" her way through two large meat buns, her face puffing up like a dumpling. After swallowing and taking a sip of tea, she returned to the topic, now free to talk about human flesh.
"Demonic creatures act without restraint, but silver might not be as tempting to them as living people. Even if they wanted silver, a simple theft or robbery would be more discreet than openly stealing tax silver."
In the capital of the Great Feng Dynasty, stealing tax silver in broad daylight was an enormous risk.
Prefect Chen nodded. "That's a valid point. We can't rule out that they were acting on someone's orders."
Li Yuchun's eyes narrowed. "Then who would order a demonic creature to steal the tax silver? What's the motive? And why specifically this batch, and why exactly 150,000 taels?"
"Let's think about it this way," Prefect Chen said, a thought dawning on him. "The mastermind needed a large sum of money, but couldn't cause too much of a stir. More precisely, they couldn't acquire wealth recklessly."
"So they set their sights on the tax silver?" the young woman said, licking her brightly colored lips.
"The tax silver transport route was decided at random by the Imperial Blade Guard's commander, Ye Hongtu, yet the demon could lie in ambush in the river beforehand... There's a strong possibility that there was an accomplice within the escort team," Li Yuchun said, glancing at Prefect Chen.
"Should we go to the White Deer Academy and ask a Confucian master for a truth-divination?"
The young woman gave him a sidelong glance. "Are you looking down on our Si Tian Jian's Qi Observation Technique? I already told you, all the soldiers involved in the escort were completely unaware."
The line of thought was dead-ended again, and the three of them fell into silence.
The air became still.
Li Yuchun lowered his head to scrutinize the case file, while Prefect Chen sighed deeply. The young woman fiddled with the compass on her waist, thinking that before sunset, she should leave the prefecture and go to the palace to grab a meal with the princess.
The palace chefs' skills were the best in the world!
Compared to them, the young woman, named Caiwei, served more as an advisor, assisting with the case. She held no official position, and while she was one of the people in charge, she didn't bear a significant amount of responsibility.
Prefect Chen's eyes flickered. "The case is progressing slowly, and time is of the essence. It's making me anxious. Lord Li, why don't we consult with Duke Wei?"
The middle-aged man shot him a cold look and snorted. "You civil officials have your evaluations, and so do we Night Watchmen. To be honest, this is Duke Wei's test for me."
Prefect Chen gave a bitter smile. "If we can't solve this case, I probably won't be able to keep my position. The entire court is watching us."
They looked at each other in silence, the atmosphere heavy.
"If it was a demonic creature's doing, then I'm completely helpless!" Ye Tian's face turned pale. He could feel the deep malice of fate.
Demons existed in this world. The demon race had been around since ancient times, hunting and consuming each other, as well as humans.
In the Hundred Thousand Mountains of the Southern Frontier, there was a Myriad Demon Kingdom, the largest gathering place for demons.
Five hundred years ago, the Western nations, led by the Buddhist sects, declared war on the Myriad Demon Kingdom in the Southern Frontier. They fought for sixty years and finally wiped out the demon kingdom.
Historians named this war "The Sixty-Year Demon Purge."
Since then, the demon race's fortune was damaged and they gradually declined. The Buddhist sects, on the other hand, soared to prominence.
Based on his modern-day knowledge, Ye Tian understood this as humans winning the battle for the top of the food chain.
If a demonic creature was behind the tax silver incident, then only by recovering the silver could he save himself and the Ye family.
As a "Silver Rank" cultivator at the peak of essence refinement, Ye Tian felt there was no way he could turn the situation around.
It was autumn, and the weather was damp and cold, but a cold sweat broke out all over Ye Tian's body.
He was scared!
He had merged with the original host's memories and knew he couldn't possibly escape from prison. He also knew that in this society, where imperial power was absolute, human rights were incredibly fragile.
Life and death were decided on a whim by others.
He used to fantasize about traveling back to ancient times to recite poems and show off, thinking it would be awesome. Reality had now slapped him hard in the face.
Even after time-traveling, he was still being "beaten down by society."
"No, this is just a guess. It's just the Jingzhao Prefecture's guess. I can't let their guess influence me. I'll do it myself, I'll analyze it myself... I can still save myself, I can still be saved..."
A strong desire for survival made him calm down quickly, and his logic became rigorous and clear again.
"Why would a demonic creature steal tax silver? Isn't human flesh tastier?... Even if they needed money, there's no need to target tax silver... I heard in stories that demon women are all incredibly beautiful and have captivating figures... I wonder if there are cat girls or dog girls..."
Slap! Ye Tian slapped himself. "Rethink it!"
The most important part of deduction is subtraction: listing out the clues one by one and sorting them out.
Otherwise, it's just a tangled ball of yarn that gets more and more confusing the more you think about it.
The two most obvious clues in the tax silver case were:
The strange wind!The explosion after the silver fell into the river!
Aside from martial artists, all cultivation systems have the ability to create strange winds. Therefore, "Clue 1" only served as proof that a "cultivator" was involved; it couldn't provide a more detailed target.
This reduced his second uncle, who was a martial artist, of suspicion, although it didn't rule out that he conspired with someone else.
The explosion in "Clue 2" was an illogical detail. It was normal for high-level cultivators' fights to cause explosions. However, in this tax silver case, there was no physical confrontation, so the presence of an explosion was illogical.
"Unless the explosion was unavoidable!" Ye Tian murmured.
"Among the major cultivation systems, which professions require an explosion to achieve their goal?"
Ye Tian thought for a moment and came up with nothing. Then he realized he had made the same mistake as the Jingzhao Prefecture.
The prefecture's line of reasoning went wrong from the start. They judged the culprit to be a demonic creature based on the most obvious clues in the case, and then they ran with that idea, never looking back.
This wasn't entirely wrong; the problem was that the judgment was too hasty.
Although Ye Tian had merged with the memories, he was still guided by his modern-day mindset and his past life's experience. He preferred to deduce by carefully examining the file, dissecting those subtle, hard-to-notice details, and then forming a conclusion.
"I can't figure out this path for now, so I'll try a new approach and break through from somewhere else. I'll rule out a demonic creature's involvement for now and assume this was a carefully planned, man-made event."
"In that case, the perpetrator would have to leave a flaw in the case."
"Locard's Exchange Principle tells us that whoever commits a crime will inevitably leave direct or indirect traces at the scene...
There are all sorts of traces, which can be divided into two main categories—I can't remember the specifics, but they include footprints, fingerprints, vehicle tracks, tool marks, and so on."
"The flaw isn't in the two most obvious clues, but in all these other various traces..."
Based on the case file's description, Ye Tian replayed his second uncle's process of escorting the tax silver in his mind.
His adrenaline was pumping, and his brain cells were highly active. If pheromones could be personified, they would be like koi fish in a pond, fighting wildly for food, causing the surface of the water to boil.
He replayed and scrutinized the events over and over again.
The various information and clues from the case file converged, and his brain acted like a high-speed CPU.
As the different pieces of information came together, the case became clearer and clearer.
Unconsciously, Ye Tian felt himself entering a certain state. His soul floated up lightly, breaking free of his mortal body and the building, rising above the capital city.
Time seemed to flow backward. A faint light appeared in the east as the sun was about to rise. Ye Hongtu led a group of armored soldiers to escort the tax silver to the Ministry of Revenue.
It was 6:30 a.m.... They traveled to Guangnan Street when a strange wind suddenly blew, startling the horses and sending them charging into the river.
BOOM!
The river exploded, and the murky waves emptied.
The sound of that explosion seemed to echo in Ye Tian's heart. He reflexively kicked his legs and woke up.
His eyes were filled with exhaustion, but his face was full of excitement and elation.
"I know! I know it! Hahaha, I've solved the puzzle!!"
Ye Tian laughed wildly, forcefully pounding on the bars. "Help! Someone! Get me someone!"
The on-duty jailer was startled. He came over with a metal rod in his hand and yelled, "What's all the racket? You have a death wish or something?"
He rattled the bars to intimidate Ye Tian.
Ye Tian took a step back, letting go of the bars to avoid getting his fingers broken. He said in a low voice, "I want to see the prefect."
"A prisoner wants to see the prefect... You should go look at yourself in the mirror." The jailer laughed in exasperation, shoving the metal rod through the bars to poke Ye Tian.
Ye Tian stepped back to dodge it again.
"You dare to dodge?" The jailer grabbed the keys from his waist with a sinister grin. "I'll break your legs today."
"I have a vital clue about the tax silver robbery case. I need to see the prefect. If you delay the investigation, you'll be held responsible," Ye Tian said, staring at him.
The jailer's face froze.
In the inner hall, the young woman continued to gnaw on her sugarcane. From time to time, she would pull out a few candied fruits from her deerskin pouch to eat with it.
On one side, the atmosphere was one of despair, while on the other, she was carefree.
"His Majesty has ordered us to solve the case within five days. The longer this drags on, the more likely the tax silver can never be recovered," Prefect Chen paced back and forth, unable to sit still.
"But with so little time, we are at a loss," he said. Solving a case takes time.
The prefect clapped his hands together with a firm look. "I'll personally go to Duke Wei. Give me the case file."
Li Yuchun hesitated for a moment. "I'll go with you."
The young woman in the yellow skirt glanced at him and smiled enchantingly. "That's fine. With our Great Feng Dynasty's grand master getting involved, the two of you won't be held accountable by His Majesty."
"However," she said, showing two small, pearly-white canine teeth as she smiled, "losing face with Duke Wei is much more serious than being held accountable by His Majesty."
The middle-aged man's face darkened.
A yamen runner in a black uniform hurried in, bowing. "My lord prefect, a jailer reports that Ye Hongtu's nephew, Ye Tian, just said he has a crucial clue about the tax silver robbery and wishes to meet with you."
The three of them's eyes narrowed at the same time.
Ye Tian... If they remembered correctly, he was just a marginal figure with no connection to the case. After the initial interrogation and torture, he was deemed to be an irrelevant individual.
Prefect Chen pondered for a moment, then said, "Bring him over."
A moment later, Ye Tian was brought in by a yamen runner. He was wearing a prisoner's uniform with dried bloodstains, and the handcuffs and leg shackles clanged as he walked.