When Gu Chang'an woke up, his father was picking out a coffin for him.
Three hundred thousand taels of disaster relief silver had vanished without a trace. The final exchange draft bore his signature and fingerprint. In three days, the Three Judicial Offices would hold a joint trial. If the charges stuck, the capital's notorious wastrel would lose his head, and the Gu family would be finished along with him.
Everyone was convinced there was no way to turn the case around.
Gu Chang'an stared at the account books for a long time, then said just one thing:
“These books are too perfect.”
Four money houses, seven granaries, eleven grain convoys, thousands of miles, silver, grain, and losses: not a single coin was off.
Since when had money become so obedient?
Starting with one batch of disaster relief funds, he followed the trail through granaries, canal transport, salt permits, and military pay. The deeper he dug, the more he realized that the place where the Great Qian truly kept its wealth had never been the imperial treasury.
And the wastrel whom the court officials despised most was steadily reaching into the one ledger in the empire no one was supposed to touch.
