In the twelfth year of Chengping, the Wen family, the leading salt merchants of Lianghuai, were accused of illegally selling government salt and causing a shortfall of three hundred thousand taels in salt tax. The head of the family died in prison, their property was seized to cover the deficit, and the Wen family vanished from the world.
Six years later, a girl named Zhou Man began weighing salt at the Baisha Saltworks.
One night, the old bookkeeper from the Wen family came to see her and handed her seven obsolete salt permits. On the back of each was a name. He said only, "Your father never sold salt illegally."
The next day, the old bookkeeper was pulled from the river.
One of the seven names belonged to the superintendent of the saltworks, the man to whom she handed her accounts every day.
She had no blade, only an abacus and a secret ledger that only the Wen family could read.
Ledgers can lie, but the places where two sets of accounts don't match cannot.
She would cross off the seven names, one by one.
