The Double

Her words sounded as if she herself often wandered in the East Mountain, intimately familiar with conditions inside. However, at the moment Ye Mingyu did not notice the strangeness in Jiang Li’s statement, but said, "Although we haven’t entered, we can be sure that there are definitely people mining for gold in the tunnels. As for whether they are the government officers, because I don’t recognize the previous officers, I don’t know."

Jiang Li asked, "Uncle Mingyu, how can you be sure?"

"Feng Yutang’s men are too heartless. We went to the mines at night, and it was so late, yet the miners were still working!" Ye Mingyu was filled with righteous indignation as he spoke, "They are not treating people as humans; it’s truly despicable!"

Jiang Li looked down, knowing that since Feng Yutang intended to torment those people, he naturally wouldn’t make it easy for them. But with such round-the-clock labor, how many of the government officers could survive?

"Uncle, do you have any idea about how many miners are working in the tunnels?" Jiang Li asked.

Ye Mingyu replied, "I’m not sure of the exact number, but I guess it’s definitely not many."

Jiang Li’s heart sank and she asked, "Why do you say that?"

"Because there are too few guards," Ye Mingyu replied. "There are only two of them. If not for the unfamiliar terrain, honestly, I alone could take down these guards and directly rescue the miners inside. But think about it, if there were really many people, why would Feng Yutang only assign two people to guard? Isn’t he afraid of any trouble? Unless there are indeed few people, and he thinks that two guards are enough, naturally there is no issue."

Jiang Li fell silent for a long while before saying, "Uncle Mingyu is right." There was another possibility: in Feng Yutang’s eyes, with a change of the emperor comes a change of officials. Xue Huaiyuan was already a dying man, and with no one to follow up in the Xue Family, his former subordinates naturally became expendables. Who would bother to save an expendable? After all, no one would come to their rescue, so there was really no need to assign too many guards.

But Jiang Li knew that this possibility was just something she came up with to comfort herself, what Ye Mingyu said was much more likely. At least there were still people alive, which was good. It meant that the witnesses she hoped for might still be found.