Weeks blur together in wet mortar, cedar pipes, and temple-ledgers. By day, Kareem’s sanitation crews push clean water deeper into the city. By night, he works beside the Guard Captain over copied route maps and seized invoices.
The ancient scroll room is quieter tonight. Blueprints lie spread across a long table, weighted by inkstones. The Captain taps one route with a gloved finger, then another, both converging on the same district office.
Kareem Bishop
The papers all point to the same hand.
Imperial Guard Captain
Not a hand, a bureau. The turncoats answer to Magistrate Heshan of the Civil Tally Office.
From the shadowed shelves, Magistrate Wei steps forward at last, the final seal resting in his palm. He presses it to the copied ledger, and the wax accepts the mark without protest.
Magistrate Wei
Then the city has its center of rot. If we move now, the record becomes a weapon, and every loyal clerk will know where to look.
The Captain folds the marked map once, carefully, like a blade being sheathed. Outside the high windows, the clerks' hive glimmers below, busy and unaware, while one sealed route waits to be exposed.
✓ Quest Accepted
Expose Magistrate Heshan of the Civil Tally Office
“"Do you take the proof to the courts? To the empress? To the celestial bureaucracy?”
SUCCESS (Legendary Reasoning, rolled +0)
Kareem Bishop
Then we take it to the courts, and to the Empress if we must. If the Celestial Bureaucracy is the roof over all of this, I want the name under the leak.
Imperial Guard Captain
You have it. The Civil Tally Office feeds the rot, and Magistrate Heshan is the mouth of it.
The Captain unrolls the marked route map wider, exposing a chain of seals and copied transfers tucked beneath the blueprints. Wei’s seal catches the lamplight, then settles as the whole table becomes a record of accusation.
Magistrate Wei
Then this goes upward at once. The courts will not ignore a sealed chain, and the Empress will not be forced to learn it secondhand.
At the mention of Xifeng, the room tightens. One clerk’s copy slips from the stack, showing gold-script hidden under the petition lines like a vein under skin.
Imperial Guard Captain
Choose, Kareem. Public hearing, private petition, or straight to the throne chamber. Heshan will move as soon as he hears the map is cracked.
Quest Complete
Expose Magistrate Heshan of the Civil Tally Office
Quest Complete
Learn who is feeding the Guard's rot
New Gift: Investigative Intuition