Chapter 705 - Meticulous
"Go ah!" Although Zhu Junyang didn't have much hope for the local authorities in making much headway on the case, it was still important for them to do what they needed to do.
"Master, out of these three groups of people, which one of them is the most suspicious ah?" Hou Xiaoliang was very confident in his master's abilities. He had wracked his own brains and couldn't come up with anything, so he could only look pleadingly at the imperial prince.
Zhu Junyang frowned. He seemed to be half replying to his question while also muttering to himself, "The armed goods courier group can be eliminated from the list..."
"Why? That group of criminals are very skilled. If they disguise themselves as competent armed goods couriers, wouldn't that be a good cover?" Hou Xiaoliang was actually more suspicious of that group of people.
Su Ran glanced at him and scornfully said, "You're an idiot ah!! Didn't you hear that 'Formidable Goods Courier' had just come back from a job ah? Since their wagons and carts were empty, where would they possibly hide that lass Xiaocao and her two maidservants? Furthermore, if three weak women suddenly appeared within the ranks of the armed goods couriers, wouldn't that tell everyone that there was something fishy going on? That being said, when the governor asked the gate guards earlier, they said that the armed goods couriers only had large and brawny men within their ranks. What do you think the princess consort would like if she was dressed in men's attire?"
Hou Xiaoliang thought his mistress's slender and delicate figure, uh...if she was clothed in men's clothing, as long as one wasn't blind, one would be able to spot her in a moment. As expected, his brains, compared to his master's and Chief Steward Su's, were no match for theirs.
It looked like the other two groups were more suspicious. Although no one had seen any sign of the women in the other two groups, they had come back with carts filled with goods. It wasn't entirely impossible to hide three people in the mountain of stuff they brought back...
Just as the three of them were discussing which family to investigate first, Xiaocao and her two servants had been dug out of a pile of silk bolts and had been carried into the hidden room like a bunch of baggage. Following that, they had been thrown to the ground like garbage and they were now lying next to the feet of an old and weakly handsome looking man.
"Ouch!" Yu Xiaocao secretly rejoiced that her shoulder had hit the ground first and not her head. Otherwise, it was likely that her nose would be broken now.
"Mistress, are you okay ah?" Wutong heavily resisted the pain coming off her hands. After getting used to the dimness in the room, she wriggled mightily towards Xiaocao.
Why was she wriggling? That was because her arms and legs had been tied up, making her resemble a bundled up rice dumpling.
"Oh my goodness! How could you treat Her Highness, the Great Imperial Envoy, in such a crude manner? Go receive your punishments now!" The owner of the shrill yet gentle voice was a man of an indeterminate age with white hair. Although his white hair made him seem old, it didn't match with the rest of his appearance. His face only looked to be around forty years old as he only had some fine wrinkles around the corners of his eyes.
A somewhat sickly handsome young man commanded the black-clothed experts within the room, "Why aren't you guys releasing the Clerk of the Capital of the Grain?"
The black-clothed men didn't move and they turned their heads to the white-haired eunuch. A bit of helplessness flashed through the sickly man's eyes and he smiled faintly at the white-haired eunuch, "Eunuch Yuan, this official is talented and once the throne is retaken, we need people with talent serving us."
