FENG XIAO LOOKED back at him, the picture of innocence. "Form is emptiness, emptiness is form. You've strayed from the path of enlightenment, Cui-xiansheng." He tapped the paintings with his fan. "On the surface they look like erotic paintings, but in fact, they are hiding something much more meaningful."
On hearing these words, the assassin fell into deep thought. If these weren't ordinary erotic paintings, what kind of extraordinary paintings were they? Could there be some profound martial arts forms hidden within those poses? If I'd discovered those paintings earlier, could I have escaped the fate of an assassin and embarked on the path of a martial arts master?
Feng Xiao had no idea his casual words had prompted such soul-searching. But unlike the assassin and Rong Qing, who was likewise shocked beyond words, Cui Buqu lived up to his reputation. He hadn't been led astray by Feng Xiao, and after a moment's silence, he discovered a hint within those lurid scenes: The faces of the men depicted were all, without exception, the same.
"Did Li Yan hire someone to paint him and his mistress enjoying themselves?"
"Clever!" Feng Xiao struck his palm with his fan. "I told you, they're not ordinary erotic paintings!"
Custom erotic paintings featuring oneself as the subject. It was certainly a niche interest. Li Yan had looked very serious and proper when they met him; who could have known he was so broad-minded behind closed doors?
"Did you see where they took these scrolls from?" Cui Buqu asked.
Feng Xiao smiled. "As expected, you've cut to the heart of the matter. The paintings were packed in a box, and the box was hidden beneath a floor tile beneath a bed. The tile had been covered in heavy boxes, all of them filled with gold and silver jewelry. Li Yan's salary would never allow him to accumulate so much wealth, even if he worked for another twenty years."
Cui Buqu pondered this. "These paintings are shameful, but they're not valuable. He hid the worthless pictures in the safest place but left the more valuable gold and silver jewelry in the open. Strange, to say the least."
"I agree. After his wife knocked him out, I stayed until Li Yan woke up. What do you think was the first thing he did when he woke?"
Cui Buqu raised his eyes and looked at Feng Xiao.
When Cui Buqu focused on a person, his eyes were particularly bright. Sharp and cold, yet with a hidden sentimentality to them, like flowing spring waters concealed beneath ice and snow.
Feng Xiao had only meant to take a single look, but found himself taking an additional two or three. It wasn't until Cui Buqu raised an inquisitive brow that he coughed lightly and continued, "When Li Yan woke up, he didn't look at the gold and silver scattered on the ground. Nor did he run around to find out how much of his property had been stolen by his wife's servants. He went straight for the box containing the erotic paintings. Lady He thought he was still attached to them and became so furious she chased him out again." Feng Xiao clicked his tongue. "You should have seen it; it was quite the commotion!"
"Records." Cui Buqu ignored Feng Xiao's gloating and said succinctly, "These paintings are the records we're looking for."
***
"They took the records!" Li Yan wailed.
Wu Yi looked at Li Yan's bruised and swollen face. His nose was leaking snot. Wu Yi moved a little further away, then tossed over a handkerchief and said in disgust, "Wipe it!"
Li Yan couldn't have cared less. He was in a full-blown panic over losing something so important. "I checked everywhere. The servants refuse to admit they took them! They're a pile of worthless paintings. Even if they stole them, they couldn't sell them. What in heaven's name did they do with them?"
Wu Yi sneered. "Who told you to hide such an important thing in erotic paintings? And you kept them locked away even more securely than the gold and silver. Doesn't that make it obvious they're valuable?"
"How could I have known Lady He would bring so many people!" Li Yan wept piteously. "Any normal thief would never have found them! What do we do now? You're the one who said we should keep the records to blackmail Yang Yun. Well, Yang Yun will be fine, and we'll be the ones in hot water!"
"Pull yourself together!" Wu Yi said coldly. "What does it matter if they find the location in the records? The governor has planned for everything. They went to Qixia Villa, and you saw what happened there. So what if the Zuoyue Bureau stands behind Rong Qing? Even the most powerful dragon can't defeat a snake in its own garden. As long as the governor doesn't wish for them to find anything, they won't!"
For a moment, Li Yan was stunned. His befuddled expression, coupled with his two black eyes, looked exceedingly ridiculous, but his appearance was the least of his worries. "Do you know something?" he asked hurriedly. "What did Yang Yun—no, the governor—say to you?"
"Just before you arrived, I paid him a call. He told me we could rest easy." Perhaps Wu Yi was in a good mood. Despite looking down on the cowardly Deputy Magistrate Li Yan, he poured him a cup of wine. "In a few days, everything will be tied up neatly."
Li Yan became only more confused. "Neatly? How can it be neat? Even if they don't find the grain stores, doesn't Huang Lüe's death indicate some sort of foul play? The governor said he'll ensure they take all the blame, but it can't be that simple! It all hinges on whether His Majesty believes him, and whether the court believes him."
"And what if neither the censor nor anyone backing him is alive to testify?" Wu Yi asked darkly.
Li Yan trembled. His eyes were so swollen he could hardly open them. Even trying with all his might, he could only widen them a crack. Through those cracks, he saw that Wu Yi's smile had become sinister. "What are you proposing?"
What can you do with no guts? At least Huang Lüe had the courage to play double agent; this Li bastard sniveled and cried like the sky was falling when his paperwork was stolen. He was more useless than a vengeful woman. Wu Yi cursed him inwardly, yet his expression remained amiable as he pushed the wine across the table to Li Yan.
"It's not what I'm proposing; it's what the governor's proposing."
"What does that mean?" Li Yan said suspiciously.
"Rong Qing's memorial will never be delivered. As for the Zuoyue Bureau, even if Cui Buqu files a complaint, we have people in the capital who will smooth things over. Cui Buqu has the trust of the empress, but the governor is a Yang. If we didn't have allies in the capital, could our operation have gone as smoothly as it has? The only new variable this time is Cui Buqu. If Rong Qing had come alone, this would have long been resolved." Wu Yi paused before continuing confidently, "As for the other members of the Zuoyue Bureau, we needn't worry about them. The governor has made plans to silence them permanently. It's all over once you're dead—at that point, right or wrong is determined by others."
Li Yan took in Wu Yi's confident expression and said nothing. Wu Yi hadn't been like this two days ago. He'd been just as anxious as Li Yan, just as terrified that their crimes would be exposed and that Yang Yun would make them scapegoats. Yet suddenly, he seemed almost a different person. The only possible explanation was that he knew something Li Yan did not.
Cui Buqu was the empress's trusted aide, while the Zuoyue Bureau served as her teeth and claws. But Wu Yi had insinuated that none of this mattered to Yang Yun at all. Li Yan had thought that since the chief of the Zuoyue Bureau had come in person, he must have martial experts at his side. Although Yang Yun held immense power within Guangqian Commandery, he might not have the charisma to attract his own experts and annihilate Cui Buqu in a single strike. Unless…
Unless there was a greater power behind Yang Yun. A larger, more complicated organization, far beyond Li Yan's imagination.
Li Yan felt a chill run up his spine.
He snatched up the cup of wine and downed it in a gulp, hoping it would calm his nerves. But as the wine slid down his throat, his heart raced faster. "Did the governor say when the dust will settle?"
Wu Yi held out two fingers.
"Within two days?"
Wu Yi smiled mysteriously.
***
"The paintings have no interlayers."
"There's nothing hidden in the scroll either."
"Then the key must be within the images themselves."
Had anyone opened the door at this moment, they would have thought they'd entered some low-class brothel by mistake. The tables, floor, and walls were all plastered with erotic paintings.
Unfortunately, no beautiful women graced the room, but two men.
They sat facing each other, expressions stern as they carefully examined the paintings—or, more precisely, Cui Buqu looked stern. Feng Xiao would never stand if he could sit, and never sit if he could lie down. He reclined against a plump cushion, one leg drawn up as he admired the paintings he'd found in Li Yan's mistress's residence.
"Honestly, where did he get the idea? If I were Li Yan, I would never think of hiding account records in dirty paintings."
"Then no tigress will chase you all over the yard any time soon," Cui Buqu said without looking up.
Feng Xiao laughed. "I didn't expect Cui-xiansheng to love them so much he'd be unwilling to put them down. If I'd known you liked this sort of thing, I'd have sent you a heap of them. You could look to your heart's content."
"If you were in the painting, I wouldn't just like it," Cui Buqu retorted. "I'd give copies to the entire Zuoyue Bureau. Everyone would get one, guaranteed."
Feng Xiao nodded. "And what if the other face were yours?"
Cui Buqu gave him a look that said, Would you like to die standing or lying down? and spoke coldly: "I know where the records are hidden."
Feng Xiao perked up, no longer invested in their bickering. "Where?"
"Right here." Cui Buqu pointed to the painting in front of him. "It's signed third year of the Kaihuang era, twenty-first of the twelfth month. That date is in the future. Why would Li Yan sign a date two months in advance? If you look at the painting again, you see these two people copulating in the wild. There's a mountain in the distance and a villa halfway up the slope. Isn't that Qixia Villa?"
Feng Xiao almost fell to the ground laughing at how seriously Cui Buqu said copulating in the wild. Before Chief Cui could make any vicious remarks, he tucked away his smile and took a serious look at the painting. "You think the date represents an amount of grain?"
"At least one of the numbers does. We've been to Qixia Villa, so we can recognize it. This painting is the easiest to interpret. As for the rest…" Cui Buqu looked around the room. "I can identify three more places at the moment. Fengyun Tavern, Zhao's Teahouse, and a villa belonging to the Ding family. Identifying the rest would probably require someone familiar with all the pavilions and houses in the streets and alleys of Guangqian County—but we don't have that much time. The third one, the Ding villa, is on the southern outskirts of the city. The area's flooded, so we can eliminate that one. That leaves only Fengyun Tavern and Zhao's Teahouse."
"How did you recognize those two?" asked Feng Xiao curiously.
Cui Buqu pointed to his own forehead with a slender finger. "Before I arrived, I looked at a map of Guangqian County and roughly memorized all the landmarks in the city. On my arrival, I walked the streets. But I can only remember these two locations."
Merely reading a map and seeing the actual place one time had been sufficient for Cui Buqu to match the names with their respective locations and commit them firmly to memory. Remembering even a single place was impressive; few others—Feng Xiao included—would have recalled even that much.
But the Zuoyue Bureau didn't need others. One Cui Buqu was enough.
Feng Xiao had witnessed this ability of Cui Buqu's countless times by now, yet each time, he found himself struck by surprise and a little admiration. The things Cui Buqu paid most attention to were the details others often ignored. Those details might seem useless to most, but there was always a chance they'd come in handy. And sometimes, they determined the difference between victory and defeat.
"Fengyun Tavern or Zhao's Teahouse. Pick one," Cui Buqu said.
Feng Xiao scowled. "Why me? I've worked for days pretending to be Li Shisi. I pretended to be someone's grandson, fought Xiao Lü at Qixia Villa, and now you want me to be your errand boy?"
"Then should I go? I don't really care," Cui Buqu said evenly. "I'm merely worried that if I don't die from fatigue on the way, I'll be felled by a single strike once I arrive."
Feng Xiao sneered. "Don't try that with me. Get your Qiao Xian to go!"
"Qiao Xian is injured."
"She's injured, not missing her arms and legs. She can handle one more fight. If she can't win, she can simply run away. You cherish your beloved subordinates so, but you won't spare a mote of concern for me? Is that it?"
Without warning, Feng Xiao leaned in, catching Cui Buqu off guard. He was so close Cui Buqu could feel the warm puff of his breath. Cui Buqu tried to retreat, but Feng Xiao grabbed the back of his head and held him firmly in place. Their eyes met. Slowly, Cui Buqu blinked. The jut of his throat bobbed, the motion so small it was almost imperceptible.
Before Cui Buqu could get angry, Feng Xiao laughed and pulled back first. "Cui Buqu, you're blushing!"
"It's hot in here," said Cui Buqu expressionlessly.
Feng Xiao brushed aside his excuse. "You really are fascinated by my beauty. You're only pretending you're not!"
"I'm not. Pick one. I'll send Guan Shanhai to the other."
"You'd rather send Guan Shanhai than Qiao Xian, even though his injuries are more serious? Do you really treasure her that much? Or could it be"—Feng Xiao drawled the words, heavy with implication—"that you suspect her?"
Cui Buqu said nothing.
Feng Xiao smacked his fan into his palm. "Every time you show that blank expression, I know I've got it right. I never thought you'd suspect her. Since when?"
Before they'd left the capital, Cui Buqu had entered the palace to meet Empress Dugu and inform her of his investigations regarding the Thirteen Floors of Yunhai. When Empress Dugu asked him what help he needed, he'd asked for a person.
Everyone thought Guan Shanhai had been forced upon him by the empress, and that his presence proved she didn't trust Cui Buqu. No one had guessed that Cui Buqu had asked for Guan Shanhai himself.
Despite this misunderstanding, neither he nor Guan Shanhai had clarified things to anyone. The misunderstanding was precisely what they needed.
Feng Xiao had also originally drawn the same conclusion, but he'd quickly discarded it. From what he knew of Empress Dugu's personality—not to mention her trust in Cui Buqu—she didn't need to control her officials and aides via such ham-fisted methods.
Guan Shanhai wasn't here to monitor Cui Buqu. He was here to monitor Qiao Xian.