The moment He Lingchuan turned around, his smile vanished.
Last night, he had released a nightmare to invade Housekeeper Wu's dreams and probe for intelligence, and it had gone very smoothly.
It seemed the one who also knew how to kill using nightmares was not Housekeeper Wu, but He Chunhua. That old man from the Dunyu Li clan had most likely met his end at his nominal father's hands.
With He Chunhua away at present, it made things all the more convenient for He Lingchuan to act.
He had already learned the following:
First, Housekeeper Wu knew nothing of Sun Hongye's whereabouts, nor had he heard of the book *Collected Annotations on Jade Blossoms*.
Did that mean He Chunhua was equally in the dark, and Sun Hongye had truly left of his own accord on an impulse?
Second, He Chunhua really had performed a deity blood sacrifice, and really had invoked Nailuotian at the cost of his eldest son!
With Housekeeper Wu's testimony, everything was clear.
An inexplicable surge of gloomy resentment welled up, and He Lingchuan pressed a hand to his chest by reflex.
The fury of betrayal, reluctance to accept it, incredulity—he could distinguish these restless emotions, but by the time they reached his mind, their effect had grown faint, as if filtered through a thick pane of frosted glass.
These were the emotions of his original self.
It was the instinctual reaction of the original self upon hearing with its own ears what the father it revered had once done to it.
He Lingchuan had not expected that even as his control over this body grew increasingly formidable, that tiny remnant of instinct from the original self had not entirely vanished, still capable of reacting to the outside world.
"You should give up hope," He Lingchuan murmured under his breath. "You were nothing more than a sacrificial offering. Even if you hadn't perished when falling off the cliff, you would have been sacrificed on some other day. Rest in peace."
A long, drawn-out sigh echoed in his mind, followed by another sensation:
Utter desolation, a heart turned to cold ashes.
He unconsciously halted his steps.
Shan Youjun looked puzzled. "Eldest Young Master?"
Qiu Hu, beside him, shushed in a low voice. "Do not disturb him!"
Qiu Hu could sense the internal energy shifting and rippling around He Lingchuan, loose rather than focused, and his gaze had suddenly gone blank—his consciousness had clearly descended into his sea of consciousness.
For men like him and He Lingchuan, whose souls were highly condensed and tempered, such blankness rarely occurred.
In layman's terms, he had zoned out.
Yet this state was completely different from an ordinary person's distraction.
Fortunately, they had not yet left He Manor, and whatever Eldest Young Master He did in his own home could hardly be considered out of line.
Shan Youjun glanced at Qiu Hu and held his tongue.
The side garden suddenly fell quiet, as though even the passing breeze had softened.
After a dozen breaths, He Lingchuan finally let out a long breath. His surrounding aura settled into order, and the light returned to his eyes.
Tempered by the trials in Panlong City, his soul had grown increasingly powerful. Probing inward with his divine sense just now, he had actually caught that lingering shred of instinct belonging to the original self.
Or rather, a lingering knot in the heart.
The original self could not accept it, failing to understand how his birth father could bear to sacrifice him.
The original self also harbored an obsession, or a contradiction: hoping He Lingchuan would spare He Chunhua and not deal him a fatal blow.
After all, there was more than a decade of debt for giving him life and raising him.
Without resolving this knot, this body could not be considered entirely under He Lingchuan's control.
If this wisp of obsession and awkward grievance remained buried in his heart and sank into his subconscious, it might even damage his reason and warp his future judgment.
What was the subconscious? It was a thought surfacing naturally, yet impossible to trace to its source.
If it reached that point, he might never know whether the decisions he made were based on his own transmigrated soul or the original self's obsession.
That was far too dangerous.
The path of cultivation was rugged and treacherous; a single error could prove fatal.
He had to find a way to resolve this issue, and the simplest, most effective method was to satisfy it and untangle it.
Having figured this out, He Lingchuan felt pleased rather than troubled.
Ever since the great battle at Mount Xu, whenever he recalled that perilous adventure, he felt that despite reaping rich rewards, something was missing, stalling his advancement.
Clearly only a single final step away, he had remained locked outside the threshold day after day.
Now he finally understood that as his cultivation reached this stage, what he lacked most was the "wholeness" of his origin.
It was an inner lack, as though the vessel of his soul was sailing across the sea of consciousness without a ballast stone—abstruse and profound.
Now that he had pinpointed the crux of the problem, his subsequent course of action had clear direction.
A good thing indeed.
"Come, come, let's head to Juxiang Pavilion!" Eldest Young Master He said in high spirits, his mood soaring. "Order whatever you want—don't bother saving me money!"
Twenty-five days passed in the blink of an eye.
He Lingchuan remained in the Yuan capital to monitor the allocation of funds and the dispatch of supplies. The provisions Mount Rong subsequently delivered and the goods acquired with the loan had to be reviewed item by item by the Mount Rong special envoy.
Hu Qin, He Lingchuan's Assistant Manager, rejected more than a dozen expense items. Some entries had been disguised as military outlays, scattered bits diverted here and misappropriated there.
Unfamiliar with such trickery and with his subordinates swamped, He Lingchuan simply dragged his second brother, He Yue, in to work.
For years, He Yue had assisted their father, handling accounts and line-item expenditures more than anything else. He knew every trick inside out. Taking one look at the ledgers, he smiled. "A piece of cake! Just watch me expose every last one of them."
He Lingchuan slapped a hand down on his shoulder, making the second brother wince and bare his teeth. "I'm counting on you."
"Don't go telling anyone I helped, though, or the higher-ups will curse me to death!"
"Relax. No matter who I screw over, I'd never do it to you."
As it turned out, the very first problematic expenditure He Yue audited was the official salaries for Shihuan City.
Once fraudulent expenses were uncovered, they were submitted directly to the King of Yuan.
The next day, Magistrate Wu of Shihuan City came calling, beaming obsequiously at He Lingchuan. "Lord Envoy, Shihuan's salary expenditures are all clearly itemized line by line! Not a single one is exaggerated or forged."
"Magistrate Wu is an honest man. As for these expenses, Assistant Manager Hu has audited them; indeed, none are exaggerated."
Sitting off to the side, Hu Qin nodded repeatedly at his words. "The problem is that the expenses are excessively bloated. In your humble county magistracy alone, there are four tiers of salaries and an authorized headcount of eighty-seven officials!"
Simply put, too many mouths were feeding at the public trough.
He Lingchuan added, "Back when Governor-General He assumed office in Xiazhou, the entire governor-general's office for the whole province had only twenty-odd people."
Magistrate Wu gave an "ah" of hesitation. "Shihuan is an auxiliary capital city, packed with officials' kin and royals, so there are many affairs to handle. Without sufficient staffing..."
Inwardly, he grumbled: *He Chunhua's Xiazhou Prefecture only had twenty-odd people, but could that possibly be normal?*
Which provincial or county office didn't see its numbers swell as the years went by? Give it seven or eight years and see if Xiazhou Prefecture's headcount stays below two hundred!
Shihuan City was an established county decades old, and an auxiliary city to boot—how could it have fewer people?
He Lingchuan picked up the register, glanced over it, and cut him off. "Why does your county office need to maintain three carriages and four coachmen? Aside from you, Magistrate Wu, who else relies on horse and carriage for every step outside? Are their legs broken, unable to walk?"
Magistrate Wu stammered, "One of the coachmen was a battlefield veteran who lost a leg and struggled to earn a living, so we arranged a post for him in the county..."
He Lingchuan held out a hand toward him. "Did you bring the county office's personnel roster?"
Chapter 796