"Walk us through the math?" Auditor Chen sneered, his thin mustache twitching upward into a contemptuous grin as he adjusted the heavy silk sash of his official robes. "A low-born servant who spent his youth scrubbing cauldrons claims he can explain complex imperial tax reconciliations? Do not make a mockery of the Treasury Council, Consort Wen!"
Behind him, Marquis Vane let out a short, mocking bark of laughter, folding his embroidered sleeves over his chest as he leaned lazily against a painted pillar. "Let him try, Auditor Chen," Vane drawled, his pale eyes glittering with malicious anticipation. "I would love to watch the general’s precious consort attempt to read a basic ledger. It should prove far more entertaining than a street theater performance."
"This humble one only wishes to be helpful," Wen Yu murmured, dropping his head in a picture-perfect display of meek, trembling submission.
[Mockery of the Treasury Council?] Wen Yu’s internal voice erupted into a violent, high-decibel war cry that struck Xie Yan’s brain like a physical thunderbolt. [You glorified middle-management bean-counter! I used to cross-reference six-figure freelance publishing contracts while managing three different book launch budgets simultaneously! You brought a flimsy, five-year-old cooked-book trap to an audit fight against a veteran manuscript editor?! I am going to tear your career down to its foundational grammar errors!]
Xie Yan bit the inside of his lip hard to suppress the sudden, chest-rumbling laugh that threatened to break his cold, intimidating composure. He gestured toward the wide double doors of the western study with a casual, sweeping motion of his hand.
"Since my consort is so eager to assist you, gentlemen," Xie Yan said, his voice dripping with smooth, icy venom, "by all means... step inside."
Ten minutes later, the massive rosewood desk in the general’s study was completely buried under dozens of thick, leather-bound accounting ledgers, dusty scroll cases, and official imperial tax stamps. The seven treasury auditors sat along the outer edge of the long table, their expressions shifting from smug arrogance to mild confusion as Wen Yu moved around the room with terrifying, quiet efficiency.
Wen Yu didn’t bother sitting down. He rolled up his long, slate-grey sleeves, pinned them at his elbows with silver clips, and grabbed a sharp piece of compressed drawing charcoal from a side tray.
"Now then," Wen Yu began, his voice dropping every single trace of its breathy, timid register, transforming into a crisp, authoritative snap that made the junior auditors instantly sit up straight. "You claim that the estate siphoned four thousand silver taels from the northern military ration reserves during the autumn campaign of year thirty-four. Is that correct, Auditor Chen?"
"I... indeed!" Auditor Chen stammered, caught off guard by the sudden shift in the younger man’s demeanor. He quickly pulled a scroll from his chest pocket and tapped his finger against a specific column. "The central treasury log records a dispatch of sixteen thousand bushels of grain to the estate’s regional granaries, but your domestic intake ledgers only reflect twelve thousand! That is a clear four-thousand-bushel deficit!"
"A four-thousand-bushel deficit," Wen Yu repeated, his tone flat and unimpressed. He stepped up to a large, smooth wooden drafting board mounted near the window and began drawing crisp, straight lines with his charcoal stick using terrifying speed.
"If you had bothered to cross-reference the regional rainfall logs with the transit timelines—which any competent first-year auditor should know how to do," Wen Yu said, tapping the charcoal sharply against the board, "you would see that the third wagon convoy was rerouted through the western pass due to flooding at the river delta. That rerouting added four days to the journey."
He began scribbling dense, incredibly organized columns of numbers using a streamlined, modern double-entry bookkeeping format, placing assets on the left, liabilities on the right, and inserting precise percentage margins along the center line.
"Because of the four-day delay," Wen Yu continued, his charcoal flying across the wood with the rhythmic, hypnotic speed of an automatic printing press, "the grain was stored temporarily at the provincial transit depot in the eastern valley. Now, let us look at the provincial transit depot’s intake records, which I just happened to re-index last night."
He slapped a heavy, red-stamped scroll onto the table directly in front of Auditor Chen.
"The missing four thousand bushels weren’t siphoned by General Xie’s household," Wen Yu declared, his dark eyes flashing with sharp, intellectual fury. "They were seized by the Provincial Tax Administration to cover an artificial emergency tariff, an emergency tariff that was personally authorized by your immediate superior, Chief Treasury Inspector Zhao, three days before the shipment even arrived!"
Auditor Chen’s face went completely pale, his rat-like eyes widening in sheer, unadulterated horror as he stared at the red-inked authorization seal on the document. "W-What... how did you get this record?!"
[You think you’re the only ones who can pull receipts?!] Wen Yu screamed internally, his mental persona violently slamming a massive red ’REJECTED’ stamp onto a floating manuscript in his mind. [I spent three hours digging through your boss’s sloppy paper trail last night! You left a paper trail so wide a blind army horse could navigate through it! Your filing system is a complete structural disaster!]
Marquis Vane stepped forward, his smug smile faltering as a cold sweat broke out across his forehead. "This... this proves nothing! A single misallocated grain shipment does not explain the three-thousand-tael disparity in the estate’s annual silver allocations!"
"Oh, I’m so glad you brought up the silver allocations, Marquis," Wen Yu purred, turning toward him with a dark, predatory smile that looked entirely out of place on a delicate omega consort.
Wen Yu grabbed three more ledgers from the stack, flicking through the pages with blistering, supernatural speed before slamming them open side-by-side on the desk.
"Let us talk about the silver allocations from the past three years," Wen Yu said, his charcoal stick tapping against a long row of altered figures. "The previous estate quartermaster—who, if I recall correctly, was hired directly on your family’s personal recommendation—recorded an annual maintenance expenditure of twelve hundred silver taels for the eastern garrison. Except... the actual garrison invoices only total six hundred taels."
He leaned over the table, pressing his hands against the smooth wood as he stared directly into Auditor Chen’s panicked eyes.
"Where did the remaining six hundred taels go every single year, Auditor Chen?" Wen Yu asked, his voice soft, low, and terrifyingly precise. "Shall I tell you? Or would you prefer I read aloud the private bank ledgers from the Silver Serpent Merchant Guild, which show an annual deposit of exactly six hundred taels into an offshore account registered under your brother-in-law’s name?"
The room fell into a dead, suffocating silence.
The six junior auditors gasped in unison, scrambling backward in their chairs as if the ledgers on the desk had suddenly caught fire. Auditor Chen collapsed backward into his seat, his mouth opening and closing like a landed fish as all the color drained entirely from his face.
"You..." Auditor Chen whimpered, his voice trembling so violently he could barely form words. "You... how could a simple servant possibly calculate a double-entry ledger matrix in two hours?!"
[BECAUSE I HAVE A DEGREE IN INFORMATION SCIENCE AND THREE YEARS OF CORPORATE EDITORIAL EXPERIENCE, YOU CORRUPT LITTLE SHROOM!] Wen Yu roared inside his head, his chaotic mental stream sending a wild wave of victory music crashing through Xie Yan’s mind. [Did you really think a background servant body meant I didn’t have a functioning brain?! I just audited your entire corrupt syndicate out of existence using basic high school algebra and a piece of charcoal!]
Behind them, standing near the doorway with his dark cloak draped over his broad shoulders, Supreme General Xie Yan slowly stepped forward.
The temperature in the vast study plummeted instantly. Xie Yan did not draw his sword, nor did he raise his voice. He simply rested his large, calloused hand on the hilt of his weapon, his dark, freezing gaze locking onto the terrified group of treasury officials with the lethal weight of an executioner’s axe.
"It appears," Xie Yan said, his deep, rumbling voice cutting through the quiet room like a blade, "that the Imperial Audit Ministry has been using my estate’s domestic accounts to hide its own treasonous embezzlement schemes."
Auditor Chen fell out of his chair, dropping onto his hands and knees and slamming his forehead frantically against the wooden floorboards. "G-General! Forgive us! We were misled! We were given false reports by the Prime Minister’s office! We knew nothing of these altered bank accounts!"
"Get out," Xie Yan whispered softly.
He didn’t need to say it twice.