Pang Yu slapped his thigh, a hand as big as a palm-leaf fan, and bellowed: “Hall Master! That Lu bastard’s getting desperate! He saw the Tongjin Lock lowered and his two big boats can’t leave port, so he spent a fortune to call in reinforcements from the Punishment Water Hall!”
“That Living Yama, Third Master Tie, is leading over a hundred blade-wielding men and bearing down on the pier right now! They’re threatening to kidnap our sailors and force them to work the ships!”
Xu Wuyou sat steady, holding his tea bowl, nudging aside the coarse tea leaves floating on the surface.
“What’s the rush? The sky won’t fall.”
He set down the tea bowl, reached out to roll up the ledgers from the Huipeng Bank lying on the desk, and stuffed them into the wide sleeve of his robe.
Turning to Lao Zhou, who stood waiting nearby, he ordered: “Lao Zhou, get the umbrella. We’re going to the pier to teach this Accountant Lu a few lessons about river rules.”
Outside, the wind howled in gusts, driving heavy rain against the door. The Jiang River’s murky waves churned, slamming against the iron lock gates and throwing up tall foaming spray.
On the pier before the Tongjin Lock, chaos had already erupted.
Rain pounded the wooden planks.
Over a hundred bare-chested men, with short blades strapped to their waists, clogged the entrance to the pier.
The man leading them had a scar slashing from his brow bone down to his cheekbone—it was none other than Third Master Tie, the Incense Master of the Punishment Water Hall.
Under pressure from these blade-wielding thugs, the Water Journey Hall’s lock keepers had been backed into a corner, shrinking their necks, barely able to hold their wooden staves steady.
Lu Wenzhao, wearing a rain cape made of straw, stood beside Third Master Tie.
Gone was his usual air of bookish refinement. His face was flushed crimson, his neck strained, and he was grinding his molars in sheer desperation.
He held high a customs clearance document stamped with a vermilion seal and cursed at the cornered clerks:
“Are you blind! This is the Ministry of Revenue’s approved clearance! Your Water Journey Hall unlawfully lowered the Tongjin Lock to block the court’s grain transport. According to the Guild’s rules, that’s a capital offense punishable by three stabs and six cuts! Open the lock immediately!”
The clerks exchanged uneasy glances. Not one dared reply, let alone approach the heavy winch wheel.
“Quite the show of power, Mr. Lu.”
Through the torrential rain, Xu Wuyou’s voice cut through clearly.
Everyone turned to look. There he came, ambling along the path, Lao Zhou holding a big black umbrella over him. Xu Wuyou glanced down at his boots, scraped the yellow mud off the soles on a dry plank at the edge of the pier, and irritably flicked his robe. Then he lifted his head and scanned the hundred-odd blade-wielding men.
He didn’t draw a knife. Didn’t unsheathe a sword. Made no unnecessary moves.
Xu Wuyou just stood there, brazenly facing those gleaming blades of the crowd, eyeing them as though appraising livestock.
Third Master Tie, seeing the man himself appear, snorted a burst of air through his nostrils and thumped his heavy ghost-head cleaver against the wooden planks.
“Hall Master Xu!” Third Master Tie took up his moral stance. “Our Transport Guild worships the same founding patriarch and drinks from the same river. Boats on the water run by route permits and harbor tokens. Mr. Lu’s papers are in order—on what grounds are you holding his ships? If you don’t lift the Tongjin Lock today, the Punishment Water Hall will have to settle accounts with you in the name of our Chief, by the laws of the jianghu!”
As his words fell, the hundred blade-wielding men behind him took a unified stride forward, their hands gripping their hilts, drawing their blades halfway out.
Xu Wuyou listened to these jianghu catchphrases and burst out laughing.
“Laws of the jianghu?” Xu Wuyou shook his head, fixing his gaze on Third Master Tie. “Third Master Tie, is that head of yours only good for showing how tall you stand? How much silver did Lu Wenzhao promise you to bring your brothers here and cover their funerals alongside him?”
Third Master Tie’s face darkened as he cursed: “What kind of nonsense is that! I—”
“Shut up!” Xu Wuyou’s expression shifted, his shout sharp and commanding.
He took two steps forward, closing in on Lu Wenzhao, and said: “Zhen Hai Hao and Po Lang Hao—both of them drawing a full three and a half feet of water! Accountant Lu, do you really think everyone in the Water Journey Hall is blind? The cargo holds of those two ships don’t contain a single grain of rice. More likely they’re packed with over a hundred thousand silver taels!”
At those words, the pier fell silent, leaving only the sound of rain.
Even Third Master Tie stood still, turning to stare at Lu Wenzhao.
Smuggling huge sums of silver out of the capital on grain-transport boats was a crime that cost you your head in the Transport Guild.
Lu Wenzhao, caught between rage and dread, gripped his document and roared: “Nonsense! What I ship in my boats is none of the Water Journey Hall’s business! I have Ministry of Revenue official papers with seals! The seal orders passage—that’s the court’s rule! Holding my ships is an affront to the Ministry!”
The paper shook noisily in his hand, the crimson seal standing out starkly in the rain.
Xu Wuyou gave that red seal a sideways glance and let out a faint snort.
“The Ministry of Revenue’s seal?” Xu Wuyou raised his voice loud enough for everyone to hear. “Lu Wenzhao, Shang Qitai was taken into the Imperial Censorate’s prison last night. The entire Shang household is about to be executed and their clan wiped out.”
“You, a dog slinking off from a ruined house, still think you can put me in check with an old man’s defunct stamp?”
Lu Wenzhao took a deep breath, struggling to steady himself as he retorted to Xu Wuyou: “So what if the Minister of Revenue has been thrown in prison! This seal is genuine, and the documents are authentic too! You don’t hold any official government writ, so what makes you say it’s useless?”
Xu Wuyou extended two fingers from his sleeve and pointed toward the capital. “Just this: yesterday at the morning court, the Emperor personally decreed the new rule of the ‘Four-Seal Joint Verification’!”
“All previous documents bearing old seals are now worthless paper! From today onward, without the combined stamps of the Ministry of Revenue, the Ministry of War, the Court of Judicial Review, and the Grand Secretariat, any slip of paper is less useful than a rag too rough for wiping your backside!”
Xu Wuyou’s words cut like knives.
“Lu Wenzhao, you’re trying to slip away with a scrap of waste paper and a boatload of dubious silver. Under the Great Qian law, that’s called illegal transport of contraband!”
Lu Wenzhao’s legs went weak, and he nearly stumbled into the muddy water.
The Four-Seal Joint Verification? When did this happen?
He’d been holed up at Tongzhou Dock, and no matter how sharp his intelligence, it couldn’t outpace the eight-hundred-li express courier from the Xu manor.
Xu Wuyou didn’t give him a moment to recover. He turned his gaze, locking onto Third Master Tie, who still gripped his cleaver.
“The Waterway Hall dropped the gate today on imperial business—specifically to catch smugglers!” Xu Wuyou raised a hand, pointing at the gang of blade-wielders. “You street thugs, if any of you dare to ram through the Tongjin Gate today, you’ll be resisting the imperial court! That’s rebellion!”
The word “rebellion” crashed down like a thunderbolt, silencing every man on the pier.
“Summary execution on the spot, and your entire clan wiped out!” Xu Wuyou pressed his intimidation.
Rebellion? Clan execution?
The Waterway Hall crew usually just bullied merchants and extorted money. Their worst crimes earned them exile or the autumn beheading. But to be tagged with rebellion—obstructing imperial business—that meant death by a thousand cuts and ancestral graves dug up!
Third Master Tie studied Xu Wuyou’s fearless demeanor, his heart pounding with doubt.
This Hall Master Xu usually seemed so unreliable, yet today he faced a hundred blades without backing down an inch.
The Xu family had already crushed the Minister of Revenue—they were ruthless! And then there were the rumors drifting through the underworld about Xu Wuyou’s martial prowess…
Bottom line: he probably couldn’t take Xu Wuyou in a fight!
“Could it be that thousands of imperial troops are already lying in ambush outside Tongzhou, just waiting for me to walk into the trap?” Third Master Tie’s teeth chattered.
For the Xu family to crush a minor faction leader like him would be easier than stepping on a cockroach!
With a sharp clang, Third Master Tie threw his cleaver onto the wooden planks. He stepped back three paces, wiped the rain from his face, and clasped his hands at Xu Wuyou.
“Hall Master Xu! A misunderstanding! A colossal misunderstanding! We of the Waterway Hall just came to admire the river view—we had no idea this boat was carrying anything illicit!”
Then he spun around and cursed his men: “Are you all deaf or what?! The Waterway Hall is working for the imperial court—why are we butting in! Sheathe your swords! Everyone fall back!”
A clatter of steel followed as the blade-wielders, relieved beyond measure, slid their weapons back into their scabbards.
They scurried away like mice, leaving Lu Wenzhao alone in the middle of the pier.
He stood in the rain, still clutching the rain-softened scrap of paper—now worthless.
He glanced at the fleeing thugs, then back at Xu Wuyou standing beneath his umbrella.
He had lost. Lost before he could even play his final card. Xu had smashed the entire table, chairs and all.
Xu Youde had pushed through the Four-Seal Joint Verification at court. Xu Wuyou had dropped the Tongjin Gate at Tongzhou.
Two events that seemed utterly unconnected snapped together in Lu Wenzhao’s mind, locking him into a perfect trap.
He had always thought his embezzlement of the Minister’s silver went unnoticed. He had always thought Xu Wuyou was just a useless wastrel, lazy and cowardly, who’d holed up in the Waterway Hall doing nothing because he lacked the nerve.
Now that window paper had been ripped to shreds!
The father and son had been eyeing this fortune all along!
Xu Youde hadn’t pushed the Four-Seal Joint Verification to hunt down corrupt officials—he’d used it to legally invalidate the old seals and cut off Lu Wenzhao’s escape route.
Xu Wuyou had sat idle at Tongzhou, waiting for Lu Wenzhao to load all the silver onto his ship, waiting for the moment he panicked and tried to flee—so he could spring the trap and catch him like a turtle in a jar.
