On Xie Lingyi's first day in office, the books showed three thousand shi of grain, but the granary held only half a sack of moldy rice. In three hours, the northern line would run out of food. Her predecessor was pressuring her to stamp the old accounts, while the prefecture waited for her to take the blame for the shortfall.
She tore up the words "inspected and accepted" in front of everyone, sealed the granary and courier stations, and saved the most urgent military garrison first. Then she dismantled the fraudulent books, cart by cart and sack by sack. When the old powers tried to use their status to block her, she rendered that status useless. When the main ledger tried to swallow the cart owners' money, she made sure every last purse went back to its owner.
Inspector Pei Yan stood beyond the white stakes, witnessing every step she took herself. What she wanted to reclaim was not one courier station, but the right to control passage along the entire northern line.
