The cellar of the Fan family's old residence was bone-chillingly damp. Shen Xitang’s leather boots crunched over scattered salt permits. Xiao Heng flicked open a camphor-wood chest with his Xiuchun Saber, sending stacks of "Fish-Scale Land Survey Maps" tumbling out. Amidst the ink dated to the ninth year of Wanli lay a fresh vermilion imperial annotation: "Three hundred qing of military farmland in Datong Left Guard, now reassigned to Pingyang Guard."
"A clever sleight of hand," Shen Xitang remarked, her armor scraping against the edge of a map. "The Ministry of War’s official tallies have become the ultimate weapon for the Shanxi merchants to annex land."
Deep within the cellar, a mechanical click suddenly echoed. Twenty corpses, preserved in tung oil, slid out from a hidden compartment. The silver wire tangled amidst their rotting flesh gave off an eerie blue glow under the torchlight—these were the Brocade Guard scouts who had gone missing in the Tongzhou canal transport case a month ago!
Chapter 140