This is the discarded draft section of Chapter 62. The Fatty wasn't lazy; it just didn't work out.

After seeing off the two worthies from Chu—or rather, considering them worthies for the sake of argument.

At any rate, Lu Wu felt that the examples cited by Grand Master Qu were insidious and venomous, masked in a sanctimonious veneer, and that the man was no good sort.

Lu Wu had Qiutong summon Plum, Orchid, Bamboo, and Chrysanthemum into the room, and asked, "How are matters with the tasks I told you to look into?"

"Young Master, we only managed to find out that the Swallow Twin Swords' Swallow Manor is located at the foot of Fire Plain Ridge, sixty miles north of Nanhe City; there is also a congenital master wielding an axe, who is likely General Suppressing the South Xie Qi, though we could not ascertain the identities of the other two," Red Plum reported.

Although most congenital masters were regional overlords, outsiders to that elite circle might remain entirely unaware of them.

"Was there no news regarding the identity of the expert who wields the hammer?" Lu Wu asked.

Lu Wu was not particularly inclined to go all the way to Swallow Manor to commit a thorough massacre, but he very much wanted to track down the escaped congenital master and eliminate him.

"No, Young Master. We are strangers in a strange land here, and people are watching us. Even if we wanted to spend money to buy information, we couldn't find a way in," Red Plum said, sounding somewhat aggrieved. She had been running about for two days for the sake of these scraps of intelligence.

"Hm, never mind then. Have you found anyone deserving of death?" Lu Wu asked.

"There are three households here fit to be killed.

The Luo family on North Street operates as high-interest moneylenders, and just last month they drove a family of nine to their deaths. They also run the Hundred Flowers Pavilion, where they force the daughters of debtors into prostitution.

The Zhuang family in the south are river pirates, though most of the time they are away.

And there is yet another—the Ma family, proprietors of the Immortals' Welcome Inn where we are currently staying. To acquire the ancestral pawnshop property of the Ye family, they had the river pirates of the Zhuang family fence stolen goods, and then colluded with the city guards to prosecute them, utterly destroying the Ye family.

The entire Ye family perished, save for a lone orphaned girl not yet fourteen, who was sold by the Ye family into the Hundred Flowers Pavilion," Green Bamboo reported.

Night fell.

Nanhe City did not observe a curfew, and this was even more true outside the city walls.

Lu Wu walked down the street with his five maidservants, eating candied pears first, followed by clear broth bamboo shoot noodles, and then roasted fish. He ate all the way along, gradually reaching the end of the long street and melting into the darkness.

An old farmer followed far behind.

A woman clad in red, meanwhile, turned at a street corner and slipped into another brightly lit thoroughfare.

The old farmer rounded a wall in absolute silence, only to find six pairs of eyes staring back at him with cold detachment.

***

The following day, at the Prefecture Garrison.

Qu Wenyi awoke early, took his seat in the administrative hall, and awaited the reports of pending matters from his subordinate officials. This was the routine daily business of any governing official.

"Lord Governor, the corpse of General Suppressing the South has yet to be recovered; I fear he has already been fed to the fishes."

"Continue the search. If he is not found within three days, the officer in charge shall receive ten strokes of the heavy paddle."

"Lord Governor, two separate cases of family annihilation and mass murder occurred in the southern district of the city yesterday, leaving fifty-seven dead."

"Order Lü Changbai, magistrate of the southern district, to solve the case within five days—such a monstrous crime could not have been committed by a single individual."

Under normal circumstances, Qu Wenyi would certainly have investigated such a heinous crime with the utmost scrutiny.

Yet now, with even General Suppressing the South having fallen in battle, alongside nearly two hundred elite soldiers, Qu Wenyi had no spare time to concern himself with the slaughter of commoners.

"Lord Governor, two of the spies I assigned to monitor General Lu have gone missing. My subordinate reports that an old farmer followed General Lu and his five female bodyguards out of South Street in the southern district, and never returned. The other missing person is undoubtedly connected to General Lu as well."

After concluding his report, Song Yunbiao, the magistrate-lieutenant of the southern district, tentatively added, "Your subordinate suspects the old farmer and the other agent were slain by General Lu. May I summon General Lu to the court to investigate this matter?"

In addition to serving as the magistrate-lieutenant of the southern district, Song Yunbiao was also the deputy director of the Inspection Bureau of Nanhe City for the State of Chu, responsible for receiving spies dispatched by Chu into Wu, while concurrently holding intelligence-gathering duties.