Chapter 335: This Is Me

The government office runner was about to shut the door when Pan Yun braced it open with one hand.

With a solemn face she said, "A case of an entire household wiped out — such an important case, the criminal is in custody — shouldn't you be volunteering for overtime, rushing over to take him off our hands? And you want to wait until tomorrow?"

She said directly, "Go now and call the judge and Constable Zhou and the rest back for overtime!"

The government office runner: "…Little Daoist, I'm on night watch, I can't leave the government office. How about this — I'll give you the address and you go fetch the judge and Constable Zhou back?"

Pan Yun pointed at the big drum standing to one side of the main gate and said, "Are you going or not? If you won't, I'll beat the drum."

The government office runner jumped — once that drum sounded, it wouldn't just rouse the judge and Constable Zhou, even the Prefect would be summoned out.

The runner was afraid of her now, had no choice but to throw the gates wide open, step aside helplessly and say, "Bring him in. I'll send someone right now to ask Constable Zhou and the judge to come back."

Pan Yun dragged Chang Mingwei in through the prefectural government office with great swagger, then dumped him in the courtyard in front of the main hall.

The first to arrive was still the coroner.

The moment he saw Pan Yun he let out a "hm!" and cupped his fist, saying, "Congratulations, congratulations! The little Daoist really is formidable — two major criminals caught in two days, enough to live on for two or three years."

Pan Yun heard this and immediately looked up. "Those bounty hunters can live two or three years off catching one major criminal?"

The coroner stepped forward to examine Chang Mingwei as he spoke. "They couldn't, of course. Catch one major criminal and they can live on it for at most two years. Generally speaking, if they want a comfortable life, they have to catch at least one a year to collect the bounty."

He said with a beaming smile, "Those rough fellows — they drink, they carouse, some even have families to support. Not like you, little Daoist — a person of the cloth, and so young. You hardly have anywhere to spend money in a year. Forget two or three years — if you can rein it in a bit, a hundred and eighty taels is enough to last you a lifetime."

Pan Yun fell silent.

Seeing Miao Zhen said, "A hundred and eighty taels isn't enough for my little martial uncle to spend in a single day."

The coroner: "…Has the little Daoist been buying dragon liver and phoenix marrow?"

Seeing Miao Zhen said, "My little martial uncle has to do merit work — just the grain and medicinal herbs he gives away already costs that much money."

The coroner heard this, sobered his joking expression, and nodded. "That is heavier than dragon liver and phoenix marrow."

He pricked Chang Mingwei with a few needles and said to Pan Yun, "The little Daoist's pills were very useful — they protected his heart vessels. He'll definitely live. That hundred-tael reward is yours for the taking."

Pan Yun cupped her fist at him. "Thank you, Master Coroner."

The coroner smiled so hard his face creased into folds.

The two were chatting happily when the judge, the constable, the clerk and the rest returned for overtime with stony faces.

Only after Chang Mingwei's beard was scraped clean and his face washed did they look him over, confirm it was really him, and their expressions eased a little. "It really is Chang Mingwei. Someone, take him into custody."

The judge paused. "Wait — get a physician to look at him. Is he about to die?"

Pan Yun turned to look at him.

The judge said irritably, "Consider yourself a living witness. Verifying his injuries is none of your business — it's just that our government office has already lost one Hua Buliu. If another prisoner under heavy sentence dies on us, we won't be able to explain it to our superiors."

Besides, executing by beheading after a sentence of immediate execution, and a major criminal dying before execution — those are very different things.

Pan Yun asked, quite curious, "So will you, for the sake of your record, summon a physician and use good medicine to cure him?"

The judge shot her a sideways glare. "Are we made of money? Wouldn't good medicine cost money? Summoning a physician is already our limit — at most we'll give him two bowls of medicine to stop bleeding and replenish blood and qi."

Pan Yun let out a breath of relief. "That's good, then."

What if, in the future, every criminal she brought in had been beaten half to death — wouldn't that waste the common folk's tax money on healing them?

If these officials were so clueless, she'd have no choice but to swallow her pride and hold back a little when capturing wanted criminals.

But looking at it now, these officials were still quite sensible.

Pan Yun stood waiting to one side, waiting for the sensible officials to hand over her bounty.

The judge had already seen her temper and didn't dare provoke her again. Once the clerk had written up the slip, he signed it, handed it to Constable Zhou, and waved them off.

Constable Zhou took the slip and said to Pan Yun, "The Registrar of the Accounts Office isn't here. I really have no way to call him back for overtime, so you'll have to come collect the money tomorrow."

Pan Yun took the slip, read it over twice, confirmed it was correct, and tucked it away. "Tomorrow is tomorrow. I'm not in a rush."

"Not in a rush, yet you rushed us back for overtime…"

"That's because Chang Mingwei is in my hands, and I don't want to sit and watch him all night with my eyes open. Besides," Pan Yun said, "catching a criminal wanted for wiping out an entire household — what a great deed that is! Why aren't any of you the least bit eager, the least bit pleased?"

In her past life, her uncles would have been thrilled out of their minds — forget overtime, they'd have been happy to pull an all-nighter.

Constable Zhou raised an eyebrow. "Nonsense. I'm personally very pleased. I'm a bachelor, and I'm perfectly happy to come back for overtime."

Pan Yun sidled up and asked in a low voice, "Then what about the judge and the rest? I get the feeling the rest of the government office aren't very happy."

Constable Zhou's mouth twitched coldly. He said in a measured tone, "You caught Hua Buliu, so this year the Criminal Office's quota is already met. This Chang Mingwei — if you'd caught him after the New Year, they'd have been over the moon."

Pan Yun: …

She straightened up and said to Constable Zhou, "Wait till he wakes and interrogate him. If I had arrived even a single breath later today, there would be one more life lost under your jurisdiction. If I had been a quarter-hour later, there would be one more wiped-out household under your jurisdiction. With that, do you still think it a pity I caught Chang Mingwei now?"

Constable Zhou's face darkened. "Where did you catch him?"

"Wu Family Village."

Constable Zhou: "Not far from White Village."

He looked thoughtful. "Looks like it's time for the government office to do a sweep of how many people are being hidden in the villages."

Pan Yun looked at him in surprise. "Heavens! You actually want to sweep the villages for hidden population? You've got more nerve than me — are you trying to punch a hole in the sky and then smash it wider with a rock?"

Constable Zhou: … The more he looked at Pan Yun the more she grated on him. He waved her off. "Go on, go on — it's already dark, what are you still hanging around here for?"

"Don't think I don't know — you snatched this Chang Mingwei bounty off someone else. Bounty hunters have their own rules too. If you're going to mix it in this trade, you have to follow the trade's rules. Don't you go sneaking into the government office at night again to rifle through the case files and grab wanted notices. Just pick from the slips I've given you. The people on those — either nobody's claimed the slip, or they're open to multiple parties competing or cooperating."

Pan Yun gave an "oh" and turned to leave.

Pan Yun and Seeing Miao Zhen felt their way back to the inn in the dark and ordered a table full of good food.

Once they had eaten, the two of them watched the stars and the moon, talked astronomy and life — in short, anything but poetry and lyrics, they talked about everything.

Seeing Miao Zhen asked Pan Yun, "Little martial uncle, what slips did Constable Zhou give you? Let me have them — I'll do a divination and see which one we'd have the better chance of catching."

This was indeed another application of divination.

A diviner cannot divine for themselves, but they can divine for matters — for instance, divining whether one can catch a certain person.

Pan Yun immediately pulled a roll of wanted portraits out of her spirit-realm space. "Divine away."

Seeing Miao Zhen, as expected, began to divine in earnest.

For many of them, she had only just cast the hex before setting it aside, saying outright: "The odds are too low."

!. Read

Or: "At present, the odds are none."

The Si Renfa father and son pair were among them.

Pan Yun propped her head up and watched from the side, waiting for her to calculate a higher success rate.

Waiting and waiting, her eyes grew heavy, and the scene before her slowly blurred.

Pan Xiaohei noticed that the hand stroking it had gone still, and at the same time had grown utterly limp.

It lifted its head from her lap and saw that she had fallen asleep, one hand propping up her head, the other pressing down on its neck.

Pan Xiaohei: …

Able to fall asleep even while sitting on the rooftop — it was thoroughly impressed.

Pan Xiaohei grumbled away in its heart, but its body stayed perfectly still, continuing to lie there.

Seeing Miao Zhen glanced at Pan Yun and also eased her movements.

She drew out the next wanted portrait, and to her surprise, the person in the portrait had no distinct features, but looked very small.

Seeing Miao Zhen carefully read the listed reason for the warrant and the main physical description written on the paper, and could not help frowning — the person looked so young, how could they possibly be connected to the disappearance of a Embroidered Uniform Guard guard?

Those my lord in Jingcheng really don't put their hearts into solving cases.

Pan Xiaohei saw it too and lifted up its head to look.

Strange — when they had fled Jingcheng back then, the wanted portraits had included a rough sketch of Pan Yun, so why was it gone now, with only a written description remaining?

Before Pan Xiaohei could finish being curious, Seeing Miao Zhen had already cast a hex; the hex landed, and Seeing Miao Zhen cried out in surprise after only a single glance.

Pan Yun gently opened her eyes, certain she hadn't fallen asleep — only a second had passed — so she shifted her head and asked in a slightly hoarse voice: "What is it?"

Seeing Miao Zhen said excitedly: "Little Xiao Shishu, the hex shows our odds of catching this person are extremely high!"

Pan Yun glanced at the wanted portrait she held out, took it and tore it on the spot, then a pop sounded as fire flared in her hand, the flames burning the paper to nothing. "We won't be catching this person."

Seeing Miao Zhen was stunned. "Why?"

Pan Yun glanced at her. Her background was no secret at Mount Sanqing either; the younger ones like Seeing Miao Zhen also knew her family had fallen on hard times, her father and elder brother exiled to Datong, and that she had slipped away on her own, sending money and goods to her father and brother at regular intervals. So Pan Yun didn't hide it from her and said directly: "That's me up there."

Seeing Miao Zhen: …

She began trying hard to recall what Pan Yun had looked like when she first arrived at Mount Sanqing. Though a year and a half had already passed, she still remembered it clearly.

Little Xiao Shishu had looked rather frail back then, shorter and smaller than they were, but she was still very different from the portrait's description of yellow hair, sparse hair, and a thin, small frame.

Seeing Miao Zhen: "…Were their eyes bad, or did someone throw Little Xiao Shishu a lifeline?"

"Neither," Pan Yun glanced at Pan Xiaohei and said: "I used to be sickly. No matter how I cultivated, I could never produce elemental energy, so the deficiency lingered, and I looked far frailer than my peers."

Seeing Miao Zhen: "What about internal force?"

Pan Yun shook her head. "Couldn't produce that either."

Or rather, she had never considered practicing it. She only knew how to cultivate elemental energy, and without an internal cultivation method, she naturally hadn't thought of switching tracks.

Seeing Miao Zhen understood at a single thought. "Later, when Little Xiao Shishu was finally able to cultivate, elemental energy nourished the body, and with advancing cultivation, naturally she became very different. Doesn't this mean you could enter Jingcheng without fear of being recognized?"

Pan Yun: "It's only been a year or two. Though there are some differences, anyone who has seen me before would still recognize me on sight, so we still have to be careful."

But facing someone like Constable Zhou, who had never seen her and could only catch people based on a blurry portrait, Pan Yun was still unafraid.

Seeing Miao Zhen lowered her voice and said: "Then when the time comes, we'll avoid anyone who knows you on our way into Jingcheng."

Pan Yun: "You miss Second Martial Brother?"

Seeing Miao Zhen's face reddened slightly, and she said softly: "Master isn't returning to the mountain for New Year this year either. I don't know when we'll be able to meet again."

Pan Yun thumped her chest and said: "Don't worry. I can fly now, and I'm quite a bit faster than before. When there's time, I'll take you to Jingcheng."

And fly on to Datong while I'm at it.

Good night

(End of chapter)