115 An Anonymous Letter, an Investigation (1/2)

”Senior Pei.” The young woman dressed in floral cotton greets the young man formally before sitting across from him on a small cushion.

”Ah Yu, how many times do I have to tell you, you don't need to be so formal.” The man who is sitting behind the table says with a gentle smile.

Her rank was lower than his yet for some reason, he did not want her to be so formal to him all the time. If there was a time they could talk face to face as equals, then he would look forward to that day.

The young woman lowers her head slightly and says ”There are formalities that have to be kept up with.”

”Just call me Senior Pei.”

”Yes.” The young woman said woodenly, almost seemingly out of habit, but it did not seem that she was prepared to discard of the formalities.

The man, seeing that she was unwilling to continue the conversation decided to change the topic, asking ”What did you find out?”

The young woman nodded before saying ”A few weeks ago on a heavily raining night, madam Lu made an urgent trip to a small alleyway where there was a rice merchant by the name of Ma Wei who died. His body was quickly discarded into an unmarked gravesite five li from the town. Madam Lu spent the next few days trying to figure out who he had been in contact with over the next few days. On new year's eve, there was was a fire that killed a family of four. I asked around, and it was a man by the name of Sun Cheng, who was Ma Wei's assistant. After that came the death of her associate whom she once went out to meet privately. Recently at the Hundred Flower Hall, there was a lady that came. She seems to be highly respected, though as I was spying on the Hundred flower Hall, I found that madam Lu may have enmity with her.”

Senior Pei closed his eyes as he took in the summarized information from Ah Yu. It was not as though he had not heard of these events, but these events were happening at different times in the span of merely a few months made people wonder if there was some connection between all these events.

The rice merchant's death shouldn't have been much of a concern after this was the Northern lands, far away from the imperial courts' influences, as it should be. There were plenty of unlawful organizations that were running rampant, and that wasn't in much of their interest to care. Yet, it was now their task to find out how deep their roots ran. An anonymous letter had landed in the hands of the investigation bureau and at the center of everything that had happened stood the brothel.

With a headache, Senior Pei slowly massaged the place between his eyebrows. They were merely tasked with observing and gathering information first to confirm the validity of that letter first, there was no need to act. Perhaps the easy-going nature this was why he had decided to bring Ah Yu along with him and take this as an outing for the new year, but now that time had passed, and there were just more mysteries that appeared.

”Okay, we are sure that madam Lu did not give the order to kill Ma Wei.” He said, establishing the fact.

”He may have been colluding with her, which is why she seemed on edge after seeing him that way.” Ah Yu said as she was reminded by the shallow grave she dug up to examine the corpse. At first, she had also thought madam Lu had a hand in doing it, but after seeing the corpse for herself, she determined the man must have been tortured for information. She saw why madam Lu would be distressed at looking at such a scene.