The morning light cut across the dusty floor of the main warehouse office.
Steward Zhao's men were already there, three burly guards who stood with their arms crossed, trying to look casual.
They hovered near the ledger shelves, a human wall between Li Xian and the truth.
Steward Zhao himself was absent. He'd sent his dogs to watch the rabbit.
"Young Master Xian," one of the guards grunted. "The Steward said we are to assist you in your audit."
Li Xian offered a tired, harmless smile. "Your assistance is appreciated, but unnecessary. I require only the original logbooks from the last month, and one junior clerk who knows the filing system."
He pitched his voice to sound weak, like a scholar unused to conflict. He was a threat to be managed, not eliminated.
At least, not yet.
The guard's eyes narrowed. He motioned to a dark corner, and a pale, terrified young man scurried out.
"Fine," the guard said. "But we'll be right here."
He watched Li Xian with the cold patience of a man holding a knife, just waiting for an order to use it.
Li Xian didn't just read the ledgers. He parsed the entire operation like a faulty piece of code, searching for the exploit.
He tracked the flow of wax seals from the Steward's office to the dock foremen. He cross-referenced cargo manifests with the duty rosters for the night shifts. He mapped the pattern of minor inventory discrepancies over the last three weeks.
His questions to the junior clerk were simple, almost stupid.
"Why are the pages for the third watch of the night shift bound with different thread?"
"This foreman's signature seems rushed, but only on Tuesdays. Was he ill?"
Each question was a probe, designed to look innocent while systematically cornering the clerk. A clever art of questioning by a former hacker and detective.
The young man's answers grew shorter, his face paler. The small anomalies, dismissed as clerical errors by anyone else, began to form a clear, undeniable trail.
They all orbited a single point of failure.
Every significant discrepancy, every missing page, every forged entry happened on a night when a specific foreman was on duty, using a seal that was issued directly from Steward Zhao's personal supply.
Li Xian closed the final ledger and looked at the clerk.
The young man was trembling, avoiding his gaze.
He lowered his voice. "They're setting you up, too. When this is over, they'll need someone to blame for the faulty records. A junior clerk is the perfect scapegoat."
Fear flared in the clerk's eyes.
Li Xian offered him a simple transaction. "You are a loose end and so am I. Help me, and you might live. Stay silent, and you will surely disappear."
The clerk's composure finally shattered. He leaned forward, his voice a ragged whisper.
"It's not just forgeries, Young Master. He… he ordered pages removed. From the master logs."
"Where are they?" Li Xian asked, his voice flat.
The clerk pointed a shaking finger toward the back of the warehouse, where the faint smell of smoke tainted the air.
"They're burning them."
Li Xian found a single dockworker feeding scraps of paper into a small brazier, the kind used for warmth on cold nights. The man was jumpy, his eyes darting toward the office every few seconds.
He wasn't destroying random trash. These were ledger pages, torn carefully from their bindings.
Li Xian kept his voice low and conversational. "Cold night for a fire."
The worker flinched, dropping a page. "Steward's orders. Clearing out old records."
"That looks like last week's manifest," Li Xian said, pointing to a half-burnt scrap. "Hardly old."
The man's face went slack with panic. He was a simple thug, not an actor. Under Li Xian's calm, unwavering gaze, he broke.
"Steward Zhao… he said this page can't exist anymore. He said it was poison."
Heavy, hurried footsteps echoed from the main warehouse floor. Someone was coming.
Someone was coming to silence them both.
There was no time.
"Help me," Li Xian commanded the worker, his voice suddenly sharp as steel. He grabbed a block of shipping wax and a blank sheet of paper from a nearby table.
He pressed the wax onto the largest unburnt ledger fragment, taking a perfect impression of the foreman's seal and the crucial timestamp next to it.
At the same time, he used a piece of charcoal to make a quick, frantic rubbing of the handwriting on another scrap.
The footsteps were closer now.
With the evidence secured, Li Xian created chaos. He stumbled "accidentally" into the worker, sending the man sprawling.
The brazier tipped over, scattering hot coals and burning paper across the stone floor.
"Fire!" Li Xian yelled, his voice ringing with manufactured panic. "Guards! Fire!"
A heavy-set thug rounded the corner, his eyes locking onto the scene.
He ignored the fire completely.
He lunged, grabbing the terrified worker by the collar.
...
Li Xian slipped away in the confusion, melting back into the warehouse shadows as other guards arrived to stamp out the "accidental" fire.
The worker who burned the evidence was dragged away, his mouth covered by a meaty hand. Another loose end, neatly tied up.
As he made his way back toward the docks, whispers followed him. Two merchants, thinking they were alone, spoke in hushed tones.
"… a complete river closure. The River Gate Sect patrol had the whole channel blocked for an hour."
"Strange. That's the exact time the Li family's barge was logged as departing."
The pieces clicked into place. The impossible timestamp on the forged ledger was impossible for a reason. No ship could have left.
This was a conspiracy protected by the Sect. The Li family was merely the stage.
Suddenly, a passing dockhand brushed his shoulder, muttering without looking at him. "Keep digging, Young Master, and you'll drown again. This time, no one will be there to watch."
...
Back in the safety of his small courtyard, Li Xian laid out the wax impression and the charcoal rubbing.
It was proof.
The seal was Zhao's. The timestamp was a lie. The conspiracy was real.
Proof was also a death warrant.
The cold dread in his gut was a familiar sensation, a feeling he knew from his old life. It was the feeling of finding a vulnerability in a system that the system's owners would kill to keep hidden.
He didn't find a clue.
He found the reason they tried to erase him.