Chapter 473: The Transfer Hub

After finishing their inspection of Wan Song’s residence, the group withdrew.

They had not rummaged through chests or overturned cabinets. If Wan Song happened to return home, they did not want him to realize that something was off immediately.

Their next stop was Wan Song’s warehouse.

The Baishi County magistrate also dispatched two constables to accompany them, ordering them to obey the special envoy’s commands throughout. These two had worked cases locally for nearly twenty years. They knew every thug and troublemaker within five kilometers, and they had seen plenty of strange things besides. They were genuine local snakes—seasoned, streetwise, and deeply rooted.

It was a clear sign of how cooperative the magistrate was being.

He Lingchuan asked the two constables directly, “Do you know Wan Song?”

“Know him?” One of the constables, named Xu Dayou, snorted. “I know him too well. When he got selected into the Baiqi Sect, Wan Xianneng threw a celebratory banquet for his nephew. I even went and drank at it. What a pity, he showed no promise in the end and got kicked out like trash. If I’d known that bastard was secretly killing monsters, I would’ve split him in half with one swing!”

“You couldn’t beat him,” the other constable, named Wu Huang, said bluntly. “He’s the kind of rotten, slippery scum you can’t get a clean grip on. We should’ve known something was wrong with him early on. He never followed village rules as a kid, and as an adult, he turned into a full-on criminal.”

Youtian Town was not large. You could run from east to west in under half an hour.

Wan Song’s warehouse sat right beside his medicinal fields, close to the small road, making it perfect for transport. It was convenient, efficient, and discreet.

His herb fields grew plenty of profitable crops, such as yellow ephedra[1] and elderberry[2]. He had even hired a whole little family of yellow weasels[3] as guards. Their eyes were small and round, darting everywhere with twitchy alertness.

But for all the herbs in his fields, there was one thing missing. There were no self-heal herbs. General Ling bared its teeth in a grin at He Lingchuan. “See? Even he doesn’t plant it. So you can misread things sometimes.”

“Is that so?” He Lingchuan said lightly. “We’ll see.”

The two constables stepped forward, said a few words, and the weasels immediately stopped trying to block them. They yielded without a fight.

A sitting magistrate was not as frightening as the local constables who actually handled your throat every day.

The warehouse was already half full. Piled inside were sacks of dried herbs of every kind you could imagine.

This sort of warehouse was everywhere in Zhitian Township. Nothing about it looked unusual at first glance.

He Lingchuan drew his blade and slit open sacks at random.

Tuber fleeceflower[4].

Self-heal herbs.

Notoginseng[5].

Self-heal herbs.

Self-heal herbs.

Self-heal herbs.

He cut open more than ten sacks, and only two held other herbs.

All the rest held self-heal herbs.

Jiao Yu shot a look at General Ling. “Well?”

General Ling, utterly unembarrassed, simply clamped its mouth around a few stalks to snack on. It chewed thoughtfully, then said, “It tastes good. Pretty fresh, too. Hm, what does this guy want self-heal herbs for, anyway?”

He Lingchuan had already untangled the earlier puzzle while traveling here. Now he grabbed a handful of the herb and said, matter-of-factly,

“This is feed, specifically for that aberrant creature. And it’s probably the reason Wan Song stationed himself in Zhitian Township in the first place.”

The others stared at him.

Someone blurted, “But isn’t that aberrant creature a monster-eater?”

“I doubt its diet is that narrow.” He Lingchuan stared down at the leaves in his hand. “That thing isn’t ordinary. I think I may have met its maker.”

Yes, he remembered now.

The last person to mention self-heal herbs to him was Dong Rui.

Back in the Demon Nest Swamp, when Dong Rui was developing medicine for Zhu Erniang, he had casually mentioned that he once made a monster puppet for someone in Beijia, specifically number Thirty-One.

Because he had built it too hastily, the puppet had a defect, which was that it had to eat self-heal herbs regularly.

“Otherwise, it can’t sustain itself,” Dong Rui had said, in those exact words.[6]

“Who?”

“Have you ever heard the name Dong Rui?”

General Ling shook its head, but Jiao Yu’s expression sharpened. “I’ve heard of him. He’s a notorious monster puppet master who’s wanted across all of Beijia.”

It looked surprised. “What does he have to do with this? Wait, are you saying that aberrant creature is actually his monster puppet?”

“Yes, there’s a high likelihood that it’s his,” He Lingchuan said.

Dong Rui’s creations are bizarre, unnatural, and often grotesque, but they share one defining trait. They’re useful.

If they were deployed properly, they could easily prove deadly.

General Ling snorted. “A mere puppet master can create a puppet that can swallow over a hundred porcupine monsters in one go? If he had that kind of skill, he wouldn’t be running around like a stray dog, fleeing everywhere.”

“You’re right,” He Lingchuan said, not in the least offended. “Dong Rui’s monster puppets aren’t that absurd.”

He had fought Dong Rui’s ghost ape, his strange bird, and his werewolf. They were strong, yes, but to the point of being able to silently wipe out a hundred monsters without a trace? Not even close.

Besides, Dong Rui himself had admitted that he had made Thirty-One in a rush. A rushed piece would never be as finely made as the ghost ape or the werewolf, which were the models he kept close at hand.

So where was the gap?

Jiao Yu was sniffing the warehouse floor again and again. “The aberrant creature’s stench is everywhere.”

He Lingchuan ran a finger along the warehouse wall. “And there are dried traces of slime.”

He stepped outside and beckoned the yellow weasel over, questioning them directly, “How often does the owner come to this warehouse?”

The weasels’ glossy black eyes flickered as they looked from face to face. They chattered, “We can’t remember.”

Jiao Yu’s voice turned icy. “The Crown Prince’s special envoy is investigating a murder case. If you conceal information or lie, you’ll be treated as accomplices!”

Under the tiger’s murderous stare, the weasels lowered themselves and tried to burrow into the earth.

He Lingchuan cut in at once, “The owner of this warehouse specializes in hunting and killing mountain monsters and wild creatures, skinning them and refining their bones. His crimes are monstrous. If you have any clues, you should help us catch him!”

Beijia was a monster state. Anyone who dared make a living by hunting monsters here truly deserved the label heinously guilty.

The weasels exchanged looks. Their resolve wavered. They were not wild monsters and creatures themselves, but they were still small, weak beings, so fear came naturally.

Most importantly, He Lingchuan pulled out a packet of dried meat strips and offered it to them. “Want something to chew on?”

A weasel immediately reached out with its paws, took the packet, and weighed it happily. “He sometimes comes every seven or eight days, but sometimes every half a month.”

“When was the last time he was here?”

“Six days ago.”

“No, five!” another weasel corrected quickly. “The moon was full that night.”

General Ling could not help but blurt, “Then the next visit should be soon.”

The stock of self-heal herbs was about half a warehouse, which was consistent with the timing the weasels described.

“Who delivers herbs to this warehouse?”

“Some nearby herb farmers,” the weasel said. “They live within five kilometers.” Then it rattled off a few names.

Constable Xu Dayou immediately said, “I know where those men live.”

He Lingchuan nodded, then asked the weasels, “You guard the fields, have you ever felt anything off about this warehouse?”

“Yes,” another weasel answered at once. “Every time Wan Song comes, we feel the warehouse turn cold and eerie, like something strange and terrifying appears. Nobody wants to go near it.”

Their monster energy was not strong, but their instinctive perception was sharp, call it the innate wariness that small animals were born with, if you will.

He Lingchuan got what he needed. He thanked them and straightened up.

Back inside the warehouse, Jiao Yu lowered its voice and said, “So what does that mean? Wan Song can carry the aberrant creature around and release it whenever he wants?”

“Probably,” He Lingchuan said. “I’ve seen several of Dong Rui’s monster puppets. Their size can shift. Some even have their own awareness.”

“If it has its own awareness, is it still a puppet?” General Ling objected. “A puppet is supposed to move only because someone pulls the strings, isn’t it?”

General Ling stared at the self-heal herbs piled high, taking up more than half the space in the warehouse. “If we don’t alarm him, Wan Song might still bring the puppet back to eat.”

“No.” He Lingchuan shook his head. “Wan Xianneng doesn’t understand how Wan Song and the puppet operate. That suggests they’re under Mr. Mai’s direct control. Mr. Mai fled early, which means he knew Wan Xianneng had been caught. Wan Song likely knows too.”

“If Wan Xianneng is arrested, the assets Wan Song left in his care become unsafe, including this warehouse. If Wan Song is smart, he won’t take the risk of coming here for self-heal herbs.” He Lingchuan paused, then added with a thin smile, “But we should still gamble. What if he really is that stupid? Constable Wu, I’ll have to trouble you to send people to move these self-heal herbs away, as well as set a trap.”

After everything he had seen, He Lingchuan had learned one old truth, and that was that one kind of rice can feed a hundred kinds of people.

You should never underestimate someone else’s stupidity.

Wu Huang agreed and left at once.

He Lingchuan then asked Xu Dayou, “In Zhitian Township, where else are self-heal herbs stored in large quantities?”

“Stored in bulk?” Xu Dayou thought for a moment. “Maybe Luo Depot.” He then elaborated immediately, “Luo Depot is the transfer hub for five towns. It has lots of big warehouses, and all kinds of herbs pass through it. Self-heal herbs aren’t expensive or rare here, so if anyone stores large amounts somewhere, it would be there.”

General Ling looked at He Lingchuan. “Are we heading to Luo Depot right away?”

“No, first, we set things up.”

Next, He Lingchuan had Xu Dayou collect all the self-heal herbs from the nearby herb farmers, which amounted to close to five hundred kilograms in total. Then they gathered every herb from Wan Song’s warehouse as well, dragged it all out to an open patch of wild land, and burned it to ash in one clean blaze.

The good news was that none of those farmers had seen Wan Song recently.

He Lingchuan also went to the Baishi County magistrate to discuss one more matter. The magistrate agreed readily.

Meanwhile, the authorities located Wan Song’s lover, Qing Gu, in the pleasure district and interrogated her thoroughly.

Qing Gu said Wan Song spent money lavishly and always had a few friends around him, but only ever those ones.

A few days ago, Wan Song had come to drink, and he had been gloomy from start to finish. When Qing Gu pressed him, he admitted that two of his friends had died outside.

She also revealed that Wan Song only had two companions left now.

Once, when the three of them got drunk, a dark-skinned fatty surnamed Lai boasted that he had already established property on Mount Baiying and was preparing to take over a coach-and-horse business, price negotiated and everything. Wan Song, for his part, complained that he already had three lovers in Zhitian Township, but not one of them had “laid him a single egg.”

The fat man laughed and said it was probably because the women were too old and no longer any good.

Wan Song said he planned to go to Wan’an Town in autumn to buy a few pretty young maids, so that by next year he could “see blossoms and fruit.”

Only after hearing all this did He Lingchuan gather his monsters and two to three dozen constables in plain clothes and set off for Luo Depot.

* * *

Zhitian Township carried roughly a third of Chiyan’s medicinal-herb revenue. The larger the industry, the more complete the facilities and procedures, the more refined the workflow, and the more specialized the labor.

Here, even dedicated transfer warehouses existed, so much so that one entire town specialized in storage and warehousing.

This town was literally called Luo Depot.

When He Lingchuan arrived, he saw wide, straight roads lined with warehouses. Goods moved constantly, and turnover was fast and relentless.

Carts and wagons packed the streets, and people streamed by in both directions.

Everyone walked as if they were being chased; they all moved urgently and busily, as though there were endless tasks waiting.

If only Yuan looked like this,

thought He Lingchuan, letting out a soft sigh. He recalled the guards and drivers outside Dunyu’s few great grain depots who were so idle that they were practically catching fleas.

1. Ephedra is a traditional Chinese medicine used for thousands of years to treat respiratory ailments like asthma, bronchitis, congestion, and colds due to its active compounds, ephedrine and pseudoephedrine, so it’s pretty cool. ☜

2. The plant mentioned here was specifically Sambucus chinensis or Chinese elderberry. However, do note that the characters used in its name can literally translate to bone-setting herb. ☜

3. As noted in Chapter 450, the author may be referring to the Siberian weasel here, but I don’t think Siberia exists in this world, hence a more literal translation of the characters. ☜

4. This is also commonly known as Chinese knotweed, and less known as Reynoutria multiflora. ☜

5. This is also commonly known as sanchi ginseng, tienchi ginseng, and Chinese ginseng. ☜

6. These words were in Chapter 344, but I’ve slightly changed them in this chapter, specifically just one word. ☜