Manager¹ Huang smiled coquettishly and muttered: “I… didn’t expect this!”

Liu Yuan rolled his eyes at him and looked at Lin Fei.

At this time, Lin Fei was looking up at the corpse hanging in mid-air and the dummy hanging on the mechanism.

After watching for a moment, Lin Fei said: “The wire has been tampered with?”

How did people die? You can tell something about it from the few iron wires that stretched behind the scenes and were still stained with blood.

After taking down the machine dummy and the iron wire and placing them on the table, Bai Zhu said: “I heard that there are people in the world who are good at using iron wire to kill people. The extremely finely ground iron wire is no worse than those sharpened daggers or swords. Cutting a person’s head is like cutting a watermelon. I didn’t believe it at first, but now I really believe it.”

The wire was much faster than the blade when cutting limbs and heads.

“That’s natural! Even paper can cut people’s hands, let alone iron wire.” Liu Yuan interjected from the side, “The script also said that those martial arts masters can fly flowers and pick leaves to kill people!”

Lin Fei paid no attention to the bickering among his subordinates behind him, lowered his head, and locked eyes with the ghost-face dead actor in front of him who was peering from the table at the people.

The thick evil ghost makeup concealed the man’s true face, with only one pair of eyes open, looking calmly forward, showing no sadness or joy.

After Liu Yuan and Bai Zhu finished their bickering, they walked behind Lin Fei and looked at the evil ghost’s head.

This situation was inexplicably weird. Everyone looked down at him, and he looked up at everyone.

After looking at it for a while, Liu Yuan suddenly said, amidst the muttering of Manager Huang, “It’s scary to death.”

“I don’t know why, but his head really shocked me when I first saw it. After looking at it for a long time, it turned out that it makes me feel a little inexplicably sad.”

They didn’t know where this sadness came from. They always felt that looking at those eyes under the evil makeup, the person looking at them was inexplicably sad.

“The wires have been tampered with,” Lin Fei said, looking at Leader Huang, “After the wire mechanism is ready, when was the last time you checked it?”

Manager Huang shook his head: “No… I haven’t checked it.”

Listening to this one sentence Liu Yuan couldn’t help but gasp and say: “The thing that hangs the person up has not been checked? Not to mention what happened today, on normal days, if there is any emergency, people will jump out of the air and if they fall, wouldn’t they die or be injured?”

Manager Huang glanced at everyone with a guilty look and whispered: “This isn’t a big theater troupe of any sort. Why bother with all that?”

Liu Yuan sneered, but before he could speak, Lin Fei said, “So, this mechanism can be touched and tampered with by anyone, right?”

Manager Huang nodded.

Lin Fei looked at him, paused, and then asked: “What did he sing before the accident, and where did he sing?”

Manager Huang said: “It’s not much different from the ordinary “The Orphan of Zhao”. He sang until that moment when the orphan was about to raise his sword to kill someone to avenge him, something suddenly happened.”

“Since there’s not much of a difference, why make him perform on stage?” Liu Yuan said, “Sending someone who has never sung in a play to perform, are you trying to make your theater troupe too popular?” He then glanced at the gold ring on Manager Huang’s finger.

The case of the water ghost was fresh in his mind, and the hand with the gold ring reminded him inexplicably of Zhang Zeduan from that case, and he felt a little annoyed for no reason.

Manager Huang laughed and said, “How could I know? He didn’t give me a script, he just spoke with his mouth. How could I know if there was anything special about the song he sang before he went on stage… um, wait, that last scene was overly special!”

Liu Yuan rolled his eyes at him and looked at Lin Fei.

Lin Fei turned around and looked around the lobby. After looking for a while, he said: “Take the body back to Dali Temple, and we will record the confessions of the onlookers to see if there is anything special.” After that, he strode out

. .

This was really one of the rare cases where Lin Shaoqing left the scene without lingering for long, Liu Yuan and Bai Zhu looked at each other and thought to themselves.

…

…

The bailiffs and officials of Dali Temple went out to handle cases. There were even fewer people coming to have lunch in the Yamen canteen, and only a few bailiffs were eating lunch.

Master Sun was behind the counter, crossing his legs and humming a tune in a good mood, when Ji Caimai walked into the public kitchen.

When he saw Ji Caimai, Master Sun was instinctively startled. He jumped up from his chair in a hurry. Just as he was about to speak, he saw Ji Caimai walking up to the table with his hands behind his back. Ji Caimai looked at the table full of food. The purchaser sneered and cursed in front of the bailiffs who were still eating: “Frugality is advocated today, what are you doing by wasting so much food? Do you think that the purchaser of Dali Temple has too much money to burn?”

Master Sun’s face turned pale and he hurriedly explained: “Ji Caimai, those adults went out with the guards today…”

“Even if they don’t go out, how much food do you waste every time?” Ji Caimai pointed at his nose and cursed, “Next time if you do this again, be careful I will report this to Zhao Dàrén²!”

After hearing this, Master Sun quickly admitted his mistake and waited for the scolding. After Ji Caimai left, Master Sun couldn’t help but murmur: “Then what can I do? The lunches are made according to the head. Those bailiffs and adults eat less, can I open their mouths and pour food in them?”

Ji Cai bought a bowl of water and poured it out. When it was dinner time, the group of Dali Temple officials and guards came back. When the evening meal was about to end, he came in with his hands behind his back, looked at the half of the evening meal that was left, pointed at Master Wang, and scolded him in the same way, asking him not to waste food.

Master Sun and Master Wang were both a little worried about this. After all, the meals were cooked per head, and the people in Dali Temple didn’t have much appetite. What could be done?

After thinking about a solution all night, Ji Caimai helped them think of a solution the next day.

After sharing half of the ingredients between the two of them, Ji Caimai pointed at their noses and scolded them: “You two, don’t waste it. If you don’t have enough, come back to me again!”

After that, he left.

Master Sun: “…”

Master Wang: “…”

Wasn’t this an obvious robbery?

…

The confiscated ingredients were sent directly to Wen Mingtang. Wen Mingtang, who was making breakfast, looked at Ji Caimai who was bringing in the ingredients, and was stunned.

Ji Caimai said: “I really have to ask those two bastards to not waste an unknown amount of food every day, so why not just make full use of it.” He said, “These two people throw away nearly half of the ingredients every day after their meal time. I just did the math and brought the extra, you can use it as you see fit!”

If the Household Department was allowed to intervene for no reason, was it not allowed for him, who was responsible for purchasing, to redistribute the ingredients?

After saying this, Ji Caimai looked at the breakfast that Wen Mingtang was making and asked, “What’s the breakfast today?”

Wen Mingtang said, “I’m going to make jīdàn guàn bǐng.” Ah Bing and Tangyuan said that they ate both the sauce and pancakes yesterday. I still want to eat it, so I made this.”

When Ji Caimai heard this, he immediately became interested. He looked at the divided dough and said, “Then let me see how you fill this cake!”

---

Footnote

1. After thinking about it, I think Manager is the best title for this character.
2. Officer/ Someone who is in a higher position