A Pawn's Passage

Qi Xuansu understood very well that the Nanyang United Trading Company would not sit still and wait for death. They would definitely retaliate. He simply had not expected their counterattack to come so quickly.

Marcheno and the West Shakya Company behind him were clearly one of the Nanyang United Trading Company’s cards. If Qi Xuansu had only been suspicious before, he was now almost certain.

Marcheno had come talking grandly about the Nanyang United Trade Company being too big to fail and that its fall would cause a disaster. This was nothing more than a veiled threat.

In the past, when Qi Xuansu was only the Second Deputy in charge of legal affairs, he could ignore such things. But now, as the Chief Deputy holding the financial reins of the Poluo Daoist Mansion, he could not ignore it, especially given the Daoist Order’s recent grim financial state. Nanyang’s trade relations absolutely could not be jeopardized.

This undoubtedly made Qi Xuansu cautious, forcing him to act with restraint.

However, Qi Xuansu could not possibly be intimidated by a few words from Marcheno. He merely paused progress on the Taiping Bank issue and continued pushing forward with the investigation of the slave-trafficking case at No. 23, Yuwei Street.

The case itself had little suspense. Once Zhang Yuelu traced the clues and located the site, the outcome was already sealed.

With the culprits and evidence in hand, the stewards confessed everything once the Daoist Mansion promised a lighter sentence. The light sentence meant being sent to a Daoist temple under the Kunlun Daoist Mansion, but that was far better than being executed by the Poluo Daoist Mansion. After all, crimes like large-scale slave trafficking and harvesting organs from living bodies stirred public anger and were typically punished by death.

As for the Nanyang United Trading Company, they simply could not offer any reasonable explanation under such circumstances. They could not deny the facts. Their senior manager was interrogated by Xie Jiaofeng until he was speechless.

Although Qi Xuansu lacked the authority to directly seize the Nanyang United Trading Company, he could order them to suspend operations for internal restructuring and submit to a full investigation by the Daoist Mansion.

That was exactly what Qi Xuansu did. He ordered the company to suspend operations for investigation and instructed Chen Jianchou to summon Lu Yuting, intending for her to lead a task force and formally station it at the Company’s headquarters for inspection.

Although the catalyst for the investigation was the slave-trafficking case at No. 23, Yuwei Street, the direction of the investigation was certainly not limited to that. Despite Lu Yuting being from the Huasheng Hall, the Lu family’s roots lay within the Fengxian Hall. Having grown up steeped in that environment, Lu Yuting was still familiar with the field, though she was not at Lu Yushu’s level.