Xuanqing Guard-Chapter 57: Cold Cases

When Shen Hao woke up early in the morning, he immediately felt hungry; yesterday he’d only focused on drinking and barely touched the dishes on the table.

Soy milk and fried dough sticks.

The cook, Aunt Zhang, originally didn’t know how to make fried dough sticks—she could manage the soy milk though. As for the dough sticks, Shen Hao roughly taught her a few times, and Aunt Zhang figured out the rest herself; the flavor was almost indistinguishable from what Shen Hao remembered. 𝒻𝑟ℯℯ𝑤𝑒𝑏𝑛𝘰𝓋𝑒𝓁.𝒸𝑜𝘮

The only pity for now was that they couldn’t make white sugar yet, only red sugar as a substitute.

Shen Hao always believed that sweet soy milk was the true way!

"Master, Ms. Xin’Er said she wants to visit the residence to thank you in person for helping her Lin Family take such great revenge," Xia Nu stood by, tending to Shen Hao’s breakfast while gingerly bringing up the matter.

"Tell her it’s not necessary. Maybe next time if there’s a chance. I’m busy these days."

"Oh, alright. But last night, Master, you smelled a lot like a woman!"

"You really do talk too much!"

Shen Hao finally finished off ten fried dough sticks and three big bowls of soy milk before feeling satisfied, casually giving Xia Nu’s pointed ear a little tug, which put him in a great mood.

...

As soon as he sat down in the Public Office, his attendant brought tea at just the right temperature and set today’s incoming documents on the desk.

The top two files were the ’Investigation Target Proposals’ from Wang Jian and Zhang Liao.

This was an assignment Shen Hao previously gave to the two—having them independently prepare and decide targets for investigation within the framework of the Black Banner Battalion’s powers.

But after skimming both proposals, Shen Hao shook his head and set them aside. Clearly, he wasn’t satisfied with either.

The reason was simple: Wang Jian and Zhang Liao had both targeted cases within Li City Xuanqing Guard, planning to repeat Shen Hao’s previous tactic with the Li Family.

Is that feasible?

Theoretically, not a problem. But in practice, absolutely not—unless you had a death wish.

One Li Family incident was enough; stirring up more would mean deliberately making an enemy of everyone in Li City Xuanqing Guard. By then, even Tang Qingyuan would probably not back the Black Banner Battalion.

That’s precisely why Shen Hao arranged for ten Copper Cabinets to collect tip-off letters—he wanted the Black Banner Battalion’s focus not just locked onto the Xuanqing Guard’s internal affairs. After all, their jurisdiction also included external matters.

Besides the two proposals, there was also a thick stack of documents on the desk—a registry of "complaint letters" collated by the staff below and submitted every three days for Shen Hao’s personal review.

It’s now been a month since the Copper Cabinets were put in place. The news has had time to spread to every city under Li City Xuanqing Guard’s authority.

As of a few days ago, the type of complaint letters Shen Hao longed for had finally started to appear.

The new wave of complaints were no longer flowery or eloquent; on the contrary, they were straight to the point, some even riddled with typos and poor grammar, the handwriting often barely legible.

From Shen Hao’s perspective, the main reason for the Copper Cabinets was exactly to get these authentic, grassroots reports.

He picked out the "dog-eat-dog" complaints from the new registries of the past few days, then carefully read through the rest, marking those that interested him to have the originals fetched for review.

In the afternoon, Shen Hao summoned Wang Jian and Zhang Liao.

"The investigation proposals you submitted aren’t viable. For now, cases like those aren’t in our purview. Also, establish Copper Cabinets as soon as possible in all cities under our jurisdiction. For cities outside Li City... let’s start with three. The rule remains: check out every person who comes to submit an allegation. If you’re short-staffed, recruit some temp help.

By the way, Wang Jian—how are those vagrants you’ve been training?"

"General Flag, you can rest assured. With ’Capture to Death’ at hand, those vagrants behave like tame water rails. They train diligently, and after more than half a month, they’re basically up to the task now."

"Any word from the Alchemy Room?"

"The Alchemy Room heard that you were requisitioning, so they didn’t restrict ’Capture to Death’ too much; only warned not to exceed ten doses a month."

"Ten doses—split them, five each for you and Zhang Liao. If someone gets unruly, just use the medicine. But remember—the Copper Cabinet work is urgent. I can’t have any slip-ups. Every three days, I want a sorted registry of complaint letters on my desk. Understand?"

"Understood, Sir."

Shen Hao nodded, pushed that recent stack of complaint registries toward the two, and pointed to a few red-marked entries. "Focus on cases like these."

Cases like these?

Wang Jian and Zhang Liao hurriedly checked:

"Niu Qi borrowed twenty-five taels of silver from my family the year before last and is refusing to pay it back."

"Widow Li has been seducing my husband since last year. Lord Qingtian, please uphold justice for me!"

"I reported my cow missing to the authorities three years ago but still haven’t got it back," and so on.

All the red-marked cases were of this very down-to-earth nature. Wang Jian and Zhang Liao quickly exchanged a glance—neither seemed to understand why these happened to be highlighted. Surely, the mighty Xuanqing Black Banner Battalion wasn’t going to start investigating such petty trivialities?

"You can’t spot the key point?"

"Your subordinate is dull—please enlighten us, General Flag!"

Shen Hao snorted, shaking his head. "Every one of these are old cases reported years ago. The Government Office either ignored them, handled them poorly, or just left them unresolved—a bunch of long-standing legal cases, in effect. When you sort through the complaints, focus on these backlogged cases."

Investigating old cases?

Only then did Wang Jian and Zhang Liao finally get it. Nodding hurriedly, they rushed to implement Shen Hao’s latest instructions.

Since they’d already made ten Copper Cabinets and the molds were ready, it took the Xuanqing Guard’s craftsmen just a day and a half to complete several dozen more shiny new Copper Cabinets, which were immediately dispatched to the other cities in the Li City Guard Station’s jurisdiction.

Using Li City as a pilot, and waiting for the word to spread until the common folk start taking the system seriously—after that, the plan was full coverage. This was Shen Hao’s intention from the start.

As for results—they far exceeded expectations.

The first batch of collected complaints, after preliminary screening, still amounted to over a thousand that landed on Shen Hao’s desk!

Among them, there were more than a hundred long-standing cases separately listed by Wang Jian and Zhang Liao.

Shen Hao personally sorted these, categorizing and selecting by type.

Unlike previously targeting the Li Family for a life-or-death struggle, this time was the Black Banner Battalion’s second major case, and it couldn’t be another internal affair. The case needed to stand out, and be suitably challenging.

If prosecuting the Li Family’s rebellion was about demonstrating the Black Banner Battalion’s internal investigation capacity, then the second case was meant to showcase their strength in external investigation as well.

Crossing out the internal Xuanqing Guard cases from the backlog, then excluding those involving the Local Government Office, and finally choosing only the representative ones—there actually weren’t many left.