Where Immortals Once Walked

Chapter 274: The Eldest Young Master’s Foresight

There’s no way that Hong Chenglue would have lugged all those cheap household odds and ends with him when he left. He should have been invited back by Beijia to serve as a supreme or main commander or something like that. There’s no way he would have been transferred to another little town or township to work as a cook.

He Lingchuan’s attention stayed on the bedroom. “There’s blood on the floor in here, and someone clearly tried to scrub the whole place down. Hong Chenglue probably didn’t want us to find anything useful in this room. Open your eyes and search properly. I want every inch of this place combed through.”

The three men agreed in unison and began a thorough search of the place.

However, Hong Chenglue was clearly no amateur when it came to such things. The four of them turned the room over for the time it took half an incense stick to burn, checking every crack between the bricks. They even discovered a hidden compartment in the wall behind the bed headboard. Yet, they still found nothing useful. There were no private belongings or personal effects left behind.

“At the time, he’d already killed three constables. He had to clean this place in a hurry and carry his paralyzed wife out, so he must have—hmm...” He Lingchuan suddenly caught Mao Tao and threw him a meaningful look.

Mao Tao gave the slightest nod. Immediately after, he slipped lightly to the courtyard gate and, in one quick motion, yanked it open.

“Ah!” A small elderly woman tumbled straight in from outside.

Her back was hunched, and her mouth was sunken, but she moved with surprising agility. She staggered once, then regained her footing and turned to bolt.

Mao Tao grabbed her by the collar and lifted her clean off the ground, carrying her straight over to stand before He Lingchuan.

Arms crossed, He Lingchuan said coolly, “We’re here on official business by order of the provincial government. You were eavesdropping?”

“Ah?” The old woman strained her neck, cupping a hand around one ear in exaggerated confusion. She raised her voice until it nearly became a shout. “What did you say?”

“You live in this alley too?”

“Speak up!”

Mao Tao could not help but laugh. He turned to He Lingchuan. “Boss, this old auntie’s deaf and half-blind. Let’s ask someone else.”

Ten copper coins jingled loudly in He Lingchuan’s palm. “If we’re bringing a reward, we might as well look sincere.”

The old woman’s eyes went straight to the coins. Her voice dropped at once, and she stopped pretending at once. Ten copper coins meant several days of full meals for her. “I can hear, I can hear just fine! What do you want to ask?”

“How well do you know the couple who lived here, Hong Chenglue and his wife?”

The old woman quickly replied, “I know them well. I came over to visit often. A’Jin couldn’t move from bed, so I’d pour water for her to drink. When that killing happened a few days ago, I-I was the first one inside. I made the report to the officials.”

“How did the killings happen? Do you know anything about that?”

“Ah, I remember that day clearly. So many things happened. First, those Liu boys got their heads chopped off. Then the officials came back to search for grain. They even took from my—”

He Lingchuan cut her off. “Wait, why did the authorities come to search for grain?”

“Liu Yalin must’ve borrowed courage from heaven. After he stole military grain a few days back, he went door to door handing it out as if he were some legendary hero.” The old woman smacked her lips. “They caught him, of course. The authorities said the military grain had to be reclaimed. In the end... Wait, what did you say earlier? Who did you say sent you?”

“We were sent here by the main government office of Xia Province.”

“So you’re higher-ranked than our local officials?”

“Much higher,” said Jiao Tai, his voice rumbling like a drum. “Far, far higher.”

“Oh.” The old woman’s eyes lit up with a new sort of hope. “Well then, those constables searched for more than grain! They took several rabbit feet from my house, too. My lord, can you help me get them back?”

“You said a lot happened that day,” Mao Tao prompted her. “What else?”

“After Hong Chenglue came back, I heard A’Jin crying,” the old woman recalled. “Then three constables arrived with shackles in their hands. It looked like they were there to make an arrest. But once they went into his house, they never came out.”

She smacked her lips again in distaste before continuing, “A little while later, a carriage stopped at his gate. The man who climbed down wore silk and satin, and he looked like a merchant. He went into the courtyard too. After about half an hour, Mr. Hong and his wife came out and got into that carriage. I asked where he was going, but he wouldn’t say.”

Then, her voice dropped almost to a whisper as she said, “It seemed strange to me. Why hadn’t the three constables come out? So I went in to check. When I went in, I saw a leg sticking out from behind the stove in the kitchen. I knew at once something was wrong, so I ran to report it.”

He Lingchuan asked, “So you were the first person on the scene?”

“Um, I suppose so.”

He Lingchuan smiled faintly. “If you were the one to go in first, then all the pots and bowls in the kitchen ended up with you, didn’t they?”

The old woman denied on instinct. “No, not me, I didn’t!”

Mao Tao clapped a hand on her bony shoulder, making her jump. “Listen, old lady. We need the Hong Family’s things as evidence. Hiding them is no different from sheltering a criminal, which would make you an accomplice. For something like that, you’d lose at least two of your fingers!”

As he spoke, he caught her hand and made a sharp cracking sound with his mouth. The sound was convincing enough that the old woman shuddered from head to toe.

He Lingchuan did not even bother to smile. It was a blatant bluff, but such talk worked particularly well on elderly villagers.

Sure enough, the old woman gave up the game. “Th-They’re all at my house.”

The four of them followed her back to her home.

Her home was diagonally across from Hong Chenglue’s. Only one other person lived there, which was her husband, but he was out at the moment.

The moment He Lingchuan stepped through her door, a thick, greasy stench of old oil and grime hit him. Then he saw the interior and courtyard, both crammed with a mountain of miscellaneous trash.

Bottles and jars, rotten planks, coils of hemp rope, torn sacks... It was like he had walked right into a junkyard.

Has this old woman never thrown anything away in her life?

She led them inside and began rummaging.

Sure enough, the Hong Family’s pots, pans, and bowls were all there.

There were many other odds and ends as well. She claimed they all came from the Hong Family. Given that A’Jin had been bedridden and Hong Chenglue was often away, the conclusion was evident that the old woman’s “visits” had always been light-fingered ones.

For He Lingchuan, this was an unexpected bonus.

He sorted through the pile and pointed to a comb among the clutter. “This belongs to Hong Chenglue’s wife, A’Jin? You’ve seen her use it?”

“Yes, yes.” It, too, had been “borrowed” by the old woman.

“Have you ever used it yourself?”

“No, never!” Most of the things she had dragged home had not even had time to be used.

He Lingchuan picked up the wooden comb and tilted it toward the light. “Then the hair on this would belong either to Hong Chenglue or A’Jin?”

“That... should be the case.”

He set ten copper coins on the table. “Anything else I should know?”

The old woman actually took a moment to think seriously, then shook her head. “No more.”

The four men left at an easy stride.

He Lingchuan sent Shan Youjun to the logging grounds north of Bailu Town.

There, just as the captive had said, were the traces of a large group having stayed—horse prints, trampled grass, and even fresh horse dung. However, the people were long gone, and the grounds were now empty.

Clearly, once Hong Chenglue succeeded with his strike, he pulled his men out immediately, not giving Xia Province so much as a chicken feather to grab.

After they left, time crawled by for the space of half an hour. Only then did someone sneak into that alley, glance left and right to make sure no one was watching, and climb over the wall into the old woman’s courtyard.

She was in the yard, rummaging for kindling to cook with, when a hand suddenly clamped down on the back of her neck. A low voice growled into her ear, “What did those people just ask you?”

“Ah...” More people? The old woman nearly fainted with fright. “They... they were from the provincial office. They asked about what happened yesterday...”

She did not finish. A muffled thump sounded behind her, and the grip on her neck loosened at once.

The old woman looked back and saw a man sprawled on the ground, with Mao Tao standing behind him, grinning from ear to ear.

“So they really did leave a lookout behind in the town.” The eldest young master really has a mind like a god. He told me to slip back halfway, sit here, and wait. And sure enough, someone came.

Mao Tao pointed at the unconscious man and asked the old woman, “Is he from town?”

Still shaken, she shook her head so hard her bun almost flew off. “I, I’ve never seen him!”

After that, Mao Tao hoisted the man up like a sack and carried him back to Hong Chenglue’s empty house, shoving a wad of cloth into his mouth.

When the captive woke under a splash of cold water, the first thing he saw was Shan Youjun flexing his hands, his knuckles cracking like firecrackers as he approached with a wild grin.

* * *

A little under half an hour later, the gate of Hong Chenglue’s courtyard swung open without warning.

Once again, the old woman nearly toppled in from outside, barely catching herself. Once again, Mao Tao was there to steady her arm.

Her fixation on peeking through door cracks was truly something else.

“Ah...” Even she looked a bit embarrassed this time, at a loss for an excuse. There had indeed been sounds from inside earlier—someone’s voice, muffled as if a hand were clamped over their mouth. Then everything had gone quiet; even straining her ears, she had heard nothing more.

Mao Tao did not bother to press her. Instead, he asked, “Old lady, do you know the mine up in the northwest? The abandoned one.”

“The mine?” The old woman’s eyes darted thoughtfully. “I think I’ve heard of it...”

Ten copper coins appeared once more in his hand. “I just saved your life. You remember that, don’t you?”

The old woman gave two dry little laughs. “There’s only one little mine up in the northwest. It’s been dry for ten years now. Are you going there?”

“That’s the idea.”

She stared at the coins in his hand, eyes glued to them. “That path’s buried in the forest; it’s not easy to find. Give me a bit more money, and I’ll find you a guide.”

“Fine.” Time was tight, so Mao Tao did not even bother haggling. His master was not exactly short on cash.

“Wait here then.” She stumped off with her bow legs, but for all her posture, her speed was far from slow.

In a few dozen breaths, she returned with an old man in tow. He was under sixty, dried and thin, but he was still walking ramrod straight.

“This is my old man. He worked in that mine for two years. He knows the place like the back of his hand.”

He Lingchuan invited them both inside. “What did you do at the mine, sir?”

“Whatever needed doing,” the old man answered honestly. It seemed that the old man was much more straightforward than his wife. “I cut stone, dug ore, carved the road, shored up the supports... and set the explosives.”

He Lingchuan paused. “You used explosives?”

Now that’s modern. I recall that they relied solely on raw manpower when I visited the mines in Qiansong Commandery.

“Sure, it saves a lot of effort. We’ve been using explosives for work here for many years.” In other words, an old, well-honed craft. “When the mine was shut down, there was still plenty of black powder[1] left unused.”

Shan Youjun and the others could not hold back a muttered curse.

Now they finally knew where the explosives that killed the officials escorting Dunyu’s grain had come from.

The same thought crossed He Lingchuan’s mind. His eyes glinted. “You wouldn’t happen to still have some of that black powder at home, would you?”

“No, no.” The old man waved both hands. “Who’d be dumb enough to keep that stuff around? If your house blows up, it’s not worth it.”

“Uh...” The old woman beside him, however, wore a particularly awkward look. “The gunpowder you’re talking about... would that be the stuff in the black-and-white jars?”

After decades of marriage, the old man needed only that one expression to guess her meaning. His face drained of color. “Don’t tell me you hid gunpowder at home! I threw that away!”

She laughed weakly. “It would’ve been a shame to waste it...”

He Lingchuan snapped his fingers. Heaven really was lending him a hand.

“Then I’ll have to trouble you to dig those jars out for me,” he said, smiling slightly. He then turned to his men and said, “We ought to say one thing to Hong Chenglue, courtesy demands reciprocity.”

1. Note that this is just an older term for gunpowder. ☜