Chapter 842: Suicide
As soon as the meeting presided over by Sage Qingwei had concluded, the Deputy Hall Masters ended their idle chatter, going in one by one to see him.
By the time Qi Xuansu met Sage Qingwei, the morning hour had already passed.
Sage Qingwei sat behind his desk, looking the same as ever. Perhaps it was due to his fox demon bloodline, but he always seemed to carry a faint smile.
When Qi Xuansu entered, Sage Qingwei was reviewing official documents.
There was a subtle meaning in such a situation. If a superior said, “Please wait a moment,” it meant there was genuinely something urgent, which was no cause for concern. But if the superior said nothing and did not even lift his head, that was a clear display of dissatisfaction, enough to make any subordinate uneasy.
But Sage Qingwei did not keep his head down. He quickly finished browsing the documents, wrote a brief comment, and then looked up at Qi Xuansu.
Qi Xuansu handed over the summary compiled by Lu Yuting and reported, “Sage Commander, this is the result of last night’s surprise interrogations.”
Sage Qingwei flipped through it and skimmed the contents. “What’s your take on it?”
Qi Xuansu had already prepared his response and replied, “The smuggling is undeniably confirmed, but whether it involved reselling military supplies remains uncertain. These individuals were just following orders. They’re only one part of the smuggling chain and are unaware of the whole picture. The key lies with the Jiangnan Daoist Mansion.”
Sage Qingwei nodded, set the summary aside, and said, “Then detain these people for now and wait for the outcome from the Jiangnan Daoist Mansion.”
Qi Xuansu finally noticed a few clues. Sage Qingwei did not seem particularly invested in the case. If he had been the one orchestrating and directing it, he would have ordered Qi Xuansu to press harder in the interrogations and dig deeper. But instead, he simply said to detain them and said nothing of any follow-up, as if he were deliberately trying to make light of the situation. Anyone unaware might even think he intended to let Zhang Juquan off the hook.
In other words, this case had not been brought to the army camp by Sage Qingwei’s initiative. It had been arranged by someone else. Once Sage Qingwei took over the case, others would naturally assume he had been the mastermind. No matter what he did next, the blowback would land on Sage Qingwei.