“Are you trying to find out who the culprit is?”
So you found a clue in all this messy information. Miss Zhuge was actually a great detective, huh?
A detective who doesn’t need to commit a locked room murder or use sleeping darts just for fun, and might as well have her grandfather’s name thrown in there. Quite a rare species, indeed!
I approached Zhuge Hyang, who was sitting at the desk.
“Uh, um, that…”
Zhuge Hyang looked up at me with a puzzled expression. If she mentioned a clue, then maybe she didn’t have a suspect yet?
“Did you perhaps find a decisive piece of evidence?”
Being a girl with a lack of conversational skills, she might have organized her thoughts in a neat 15-point Human Ming-jo font.
I stood right in front of the desk and leaned towards the paper that Zhuge Hyang was looking at.
“Th-that’s not it, you’re too close!”
Zhuge Hyang covered her face with her arms.
“I’m sorry. I got a bit too ahead of myself.”
I was anxious because of the cargo. I almost pushed her over the edge.
“Ugh, it’s fine. There should be something among the materials you provided, but there’s something missing.”
“Could you explain?”
I took a step back and asked Zhuge Hyang for clarification.
Zhuge Hyang placed her hand on her prominent chest outline, took a deep breath, and then began to speak with a serious look unlike her usual self.
“If something heavy like a book was moved by a cart, there should be something left at the scene.”
What should be left after moving something heavy with a cart? I pondered for a moment before speaking up.
“Are you perhaps talking about tire tracks?”
“Yes!”
“As far as I know, tire tracks can be easily erased to destroy evidence.”
You can attach something like a rake or a broom behind the cart, or the chaser can erase it themselves.
Looking at Zhuge Hyang, who seemed curious, she turned her head to gaze out the window.
What clue could she be talking about?
Zhuge Hyang’s answer was simple.
“It can’t be done because it’s raining today.”
Outside the window she was looking at, the rain hadn’t stopped yet.
“Ah?! Since it rained, it would be hard to erase tracks. But such information wasn’t written anywhere?”
Since it rained, there’s no way the tire tracks could have been erased. Yet, they should be there but aren’t.
Did Zhuge Hyang find something that both I and Im Ha-yeon didn’t see?
“I needed the map for that!”
“I’ll spread it out.”
What clue would Zhuge Hyang reveal? I quickly unfolded the map I had hurriedly gotten at my desk.
“Yes. Just a moment. I’ll remove this one, and this one too, and this one as well.”
Fifteen locations from the suspect’s list obtained from Haowen. Zhuge Hyang first placed fifteen stones on the map.
Every time she handed me a piece of paper, she removed one stone at a time.
“Whoa…”
Only seven places remained.
The papers Zhuge Hyang handed over listed the reasons for the exclusions in detail.
“You’ve reduced it to less than half, huh?”
As I looked at her in admiration, Zhuge Hyang shyly covered her face with the paper and replied in a small voice.
“There are still more to go…”
“This isn’t the end?”
Nodding, Zhuge Hyang calmly continued.
“For tire tracks to disappear in the mud, they should have taken a paved road. Out of the materials you provided, I compared them and narrowed them down to seven credible locations. Among those, the ones connected only by paved roads to the suspicious places at the docks are…”
Hubei Province’s capital, Wuhan.
As a capital city, there were plenty of managed roads, but not all the roads in Wuhan were paved.
On a rainy day, to travel without leaving tire tracks, they had to use only paved roads. And among the seven places, those with paved road connections were.
“Ilga Sangdan, Lush Green Post Office, and Jang Seonbang. Just these three.”
“Yes! That’s right.”
Zhuge Hyang nodded shyly at my astonished face.
Even though it wasn’t even dusk, she had gathered and analyzed information from Haowen and Hyangwoo to reduce fifteen places down to seven.
Her skill in identifying blind spots in information and narrowing it down to three places was impressive.
“…….”
It was only natural that Im Ha-yeon was watching this situation in disbelief.
She really must be the youngest daughter of the Zhuge family.
“Ilga Sangdan, Lush Green Post Office, and Jang Seonbang. I’ll send someone to gather information about these three places.”
———————-
“Ilga Sangdan has reportedly moved its trading partner to the Seocheon Post Office.”
Im Ha-yeon began reciting the information she received from the Seocheon Post Office.
“Are they the victims?”
Is she excluding one place right from the start? This seems to be going smoothly.
“They have deep roots in Wuhan, but after the grandson took over recently, their management was in jeopardy. But there’s something odd about this group.”
“What do you mean?”
“One of the conditions for moving the contract was that if the cargo became a problem during this delivery, they would pay tenfold compensation.”
Im Ha-yeon informed me that Ilga Sangdan would receive an enormous compensation due to this incident.
“They could resolve their management crisis with the compensation. There’s more than enough reason to create a problem.”
Did the Seocheon Post Office’s branch manager push too hard trying to grow the Wuhan branch?
It smells exactly like an insurance scam.
Im Ha-yeon nodded and continued with the next piece of information.
“Lush Green Post Office has a postmaster from the faction, and they’ve lost most of their clients to the Wuhan branch of the Seocheon Post Office.”
Apparently, the Seocheon Post Office had aggressively expanded in Wuhan, and the biggest hit was taken by the Lush Green Post Office.
“They resorted to violence because they lost the contract. This also makes sense.”
When words fail, pulling out a sword is the martial arts way of solving things. Being from the faction, they probably had no qualms about it.
“Jang Seonbang mainly focuses on water techniques and is a pier that rents out ships and crew. They used to lend boats and crew to the Seocheon Post Office, but their relationship was cut off when the Seocheon Post Office found better trading partners.”
“It would be possible for them to eliminate postmen on the Yangtze River, and if there were issues with the boats, a change of trading partners is also likely.”
It made sense why all the crew members had vanished here. They either absorbed them or created a monopoly with force.
“All these places have a reason to oppose the Seocheon Post Office.”
“It seems that saying ‘one step outside the martial arts world leads to rivers of grievances’ really fits here.”
Si-mun Hyang-ju had indeed said that the enemies of the Seocheon Post Office are all in Wuhan.
“Should we focus on these three places?”
In just half a day, the suspect organizations have been reduced to only three places in all of Wuhan.
I wondered if I could find the culprit if I waited for more information. The tricky part would be if they quickly converted the cargo into cash.
“Given the information we have, this seems to be our limit. It’s only been half a day, so we’ll wait for any additional information…”
Suddenly, I felt something tugging at my sleeve from beside me.
“Excuse me…”
“Miss Zhuge, have you found any clues?”
Zhuge Hyang was looking up at me with a cautious expression, as if she had something to say.
“Ah, my father once said that at such times, I should think about not what I want, but what the enemy desires.”
There’s a saying in Sun Tzu’s Art of War: “If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will be defeated in every battle.”
Zhuge Hyang’s words implied that we currently didn’t have a proper understanding of the enemy.
“What the enemy wants… is not the same as what I want.”
As I briefly scanned the information and the map Zhuge Hyang had organized, I pondered what I might have missed.
Zhuge Hyang had drawn out new information from the missing pieces. So what is it that I need to find?
‘At times like this, one must seek the test giver’s intent.’
Where was the place that stole the cargo? The problem lies in having seen it all day long.
Zhuge’s youngest daughter had pulled in information beyond the missing. I shouldn’t just look at the problem and options, but rather seek the test giver’s intent.
In the end, the suspects narrowed down to three places.
Ilga Sangdan, Lush Green Post Office, and Jang Seonbang. Ought to be tough choices for a man who went through the Sudden National Exam in South Korea, facing tri-choosing.
The solution I usually relied on here would be…
Aha!
“I’ve found it.”
“Really?”
“Is it true?!”
The two women looked at me with shocked expressions.
“I had it wrong.”
“What do you mean?”
“Our stance. I mistook the desires of the culprit for our own. I was looking at the tree and not at the forest.”
“The forest?”
“We got so caught up in losing our books that we became too focused on the cargo. The world is gazing elsewhere.”
“Looking elsewhere? No way?!”
I could see a thought cross Im Ha-yeon’s face. She must have had the same thought as me.
“The most bizarre thing about this incident isn’t the cargo disappearing or the postmen dying. The strangest thing is…”
“The ghost ship docking at the harbor.”
I knew I could trust my partner. Im Ha-yeon and I nodded simultaneously.
“A mishap occurred on the ship that departed from Yichang. If that’s the case, there would have been countless places to dock. So why did they specifically dock at this destination?”
“There must have been a reason to dock in Wuhan.”
“That’s right. By docking in Wuhan, it soon became common knowledge among everyone that the Seocheon Post Office was having issues. When you put it like that, the answer is inevitable.”
“It must be a group that stands to gain by harming the Seocheon Post Office.”
“As the bad reputation of the Seocheon Post Office’s Wuhan branch grows, only one group stands to benefit from it. Only one place among the suspects.”
“Oh!”
I slowly moved a stone from the port to one of the suspects.
The nearest place to the port.
A place filled with both power and grudges.
“Exactly. The culprit is the Lush Green Post Office!”
