Lu Chang'an's headache lasted until the oil lamp in the cell had burned through half its wick.
He sat with his back against the stone wall, clutching his head in both hands as he listened to water drip, drip, drip beyond the iron bars. Each drop fell at a steady rhythm, like a countdown clock. The only difference was that his clock wasn't counting down to the end of his shift.
It was counting down to his beheading.
Three days.
Lu Chang'an had confirmed it from the pockmarked jailer who had just brought him food. The man had said it in the same casual tone someone might use to announce that it was going to rain today:
“Three days from now, you'll be escorted to the execution grounds.”
“Can the date be moved?”
“Moved to today? Sure.”
“Does that count as public service?”
The jailer looked at him the way one looked at a dying man who still had the energy to spout nonsense, then shut the door and left.
Lu Chang'an wasn't angry. Anyone accustomed to watching criminals lie straight to his face wouldn't lose his temper over an undereducated jailer.
He only felt cold.
Not the damp, moldy chill of death row, but the chill of a truth that had just been laid out before him: he had no identity, no connections, no money, and no time.
Strange fragments of memory surfaced in his mind again.
Great Qian. The capital. The Lu family. The Ministry of War had lost a shipment of military bullion. The Lu family had been responsible for transporting it. The entire household had been arrested, with the evidence consisting of ledgers, an official seal, and a pile of silver scraps found in the warehouse.
And he, this world's Lu Chang'an, was the second son of the Lu family.
He was also the only person among those locked in death row who was still alive and conscious.
That is, if the man who had died of a fever in the next cell didn't count.
Lu Chang'an opened his eyes.
“Wait.”
He looked at the bowl of cold porridge in front of him.
A case had been fabricated to wipe out an entire family. Why leave one person alive?
If the court truly only needed a confession, the Lu family could have been wiped out in a single night. If they needed someone to take the blame, his father, the warehouse manager, or the steward would all have been better choices than a young man without any authority.
Unless the person who had set up the case didn't know he had regained consciousness.
Or knew, but didn't care.
Lu Chang'an gave a soft laugh.
“Now that's a very professional workflow. Too bad they skipped the after-sales inspection.”
He stood and walked to the cell door.
Across from him was the evidence vault. Its wooden door was shut tight, and the air inside smelled of metal, tung oil, and mildew. Yesterday, while being escorted past it, he had seen the sealed silver ingots.
The silver wasn't quite silver.
At the time, his mind had been in chaos, and he had only caught a glimpse of the differences in color between the ingots. Now that he thought about it calmly, the impression became much clearer.
Pure silver had a cold brightness and a white sheen. The ingots in the evidence vault were duller, with a slight yellow tinge along the edges. In some places, they were coated in black powder, as if they had been smoked.
It could be impurities.
It could also be deliberate counterfeiting.
Lu Chang'an turned to look at the next cell.
“Brother.”
No one answered.
He tapped lightly on the iron bars.
“Brother, you still breathing?”
After a moment, a hoarse voice answered:
“Not dead yet.”
“What did you do for a living?”
“Blacksmith.”
“Know anything about silver?”
“I know silver can be traded for liquor.”
“Practical knowledge. Valuable stuff.”
Lu Chang'an crouched before the cell door and lowered his voice as he asked about silver mines, furnaces, and how the people of Great Qian tested silver. The blacksmith said the court usually weighed silver, examined its color, and tested its softness. Sometimes they would shave off a corner and put it in the furnace.
Put it in the furnace.
Of course.
Counterfeit silver didn't have to be perfectly identical to real silver. It only had to fool the eye, pass the scales, and contain a metal of roughly equivalent weight.
But chemistry didn't know how to lie.
Lu Chang'an needed a sample of silver.
The problem was that he was in death row.
The only silver available was on the jailers or in the evidence vault. Neither was something he could casually borrow.
He thought for a long while, then smashed the bowl of porridge onto the floor.
Crash!
The sound rang through the corridor.
The pockmarked jailer ran over, one hand on the hilt of his saber.
“What are you doing?”
“The porridge is poisoned.”
The man's expression changed.
Lu Chang'an picked up a shard of the bowl and used it to scoop a little porridge onto the stone floor. He spoke with complete seriousness:
“I don't want to die from poison. Getting beheaded is already the premium package. I don't need to add the side dish.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Get someone to test it.”
The jailer didn't dare take it lightly. Whenever someone in death row died under suspicious circumstances, he was always the first person held responsible. After a while, he brought over a small silver tray and set it beside the bowl of porridge.
Lu Chang'an glanced at it.
The silver tray was old, with a scratch along its edge. A very faint reddish-brown color showed through on the surface of the scratch.
Copper.
Silver alloyed with copper.
He said nothing. He merely dipped the bowl shard into the porridge, then touched it to the scratch. After that, he asked for some kitchen ash and salt. The jailer was suspicious but brought them anyway, mostly because he wanted to prove his innocence.
Lu Chang'an mixed the ash, salt, and porridge in a wooden lid, then scraped a few metal shavings from the scratch on the tray. He had no nitric acid, but he did have crude substitutes: aged urine, strong vinegar, and alkaline ash.
It wasn't perfect.
But it was enough to observe the reaction between silver and copper in an environment containing salt, weak acid, and oxygen.
After a while, the metal shavings turned pale green around the edges. Silver didn't produce a color like that. Copper did.
The jailer stared wide-eyed.
“What is that?”
“Proof that you used counterfeit goods.”
“This tray belongs to the jail!”
“Then the evidence in the vault belongs to the jail too.”
The man was speechless.
Lu Chang'an watched his reaction and immediately knew he had guessed half right. The man didn't know the inside story, but he had seen others test silver before.
“How many ingots are in the evidence vault?”
“I don't know.”
“Are any of them a different color?”
“Why are you asking?”
“I’m writing my will. I want to make it clear whether I died from counterfeit silver or from lax management procedures.”
The jailer gritted his teeth, but in the end he let something slip:
“Someone came to replace the seals yesterday.”
“Who?”
“People from the Ministry of War.”
“How many times?”
The man abruptly fell silent.
Lu Chang'an smiled. He had found his first breakthrough.
Evidence seals were not supposed to be replaced after the evidence entered the vault. If one had to be replaced, there needed to be a record, a signature, and a reason. A major case like the missing silver could not possibly be altered on a whim.
Someone had tampered with the evidence.
He returned to the corner of the cell, closed his eyes, and arranged every detail in a neat row.
Had the silver been switched before it entered the vault, or afterward?
If it had happened before, the people transporting it could have substituted the counterfeit silver. But the Ministry of War had inspected and accepted the shipment, while the Lu family had only been responsible for escorting it. The person with final inspection authority would have been the most convenient one to alter the evidence.
If it had happened after the silver entered the vault, the answer was even clearer: there weren't many people with keys, the authority to replace seals, and sufficient credentials to enter death row.
To frame the Lu family, the case needed three things.
Counterfeit silver in the vault.
Fake ledgers.
And someone to stamp the confirmation.
Lu Chang'an opened his eyes.
“It wasn't about stealing silver.”
The blacksmith in the next cell asked:
“What?”
“It was about stealing the way out.”
He looked at the weak blue flames flickering in the corridor, his voice gradually settling into calm.
“They don't need to take the real silver. They only need to replace it with an alloy, then pin the crime on the Lu family. Where the real silver went—that's the case. As for us…”
He looked at the wall of death row.
“We're just the part that wraps up the story.”