The First Legendary Demonic Scholar

Chapter 115: Chapter 115: The Trap [2]

Shen Yuan sat cross-legged on his cot for a long while after Lin Xia’s earlier visit, letting the shape of a plan settle into place with the same patient, methodical care he gave everything else. Pieces fell into order one after another—not a complicated scheme, but an elegant one, built entirely on a single assumption he intended to test before the night was through.

’If she means to "discover" this tonight, she’ll want a witness to catch me off guard. If she means to wait, she’ll want me relaxed, unsuspecting. Either way, there’s only one variable I actually need to control.’

He reached for the small oil lamp resting on his desk, striking a spark against the wick until a thin, warm light bloomed across the room, spilling faintly beneath the door and out into the dark courtyard beyond.

He didn’t have to wait long.

A soft knock came at the door, so light it might have been mistaken for the wind if Shen Yuan hadn’t been expecting it. He rose, schooling his expression into the same tired, unremarkable calm he wore for every servant in this household, and pulled the door open.

Lin Xia stood on the other side, her expression carefully arranged into something between concern and formality, though Shen Yuan caught the faint, calculating sharpness lurking just beneath it.

"You’re still awake," she said, tone deliberately casual. "Good. Saves me the trouble of waking you."

"Is something wrong?" Shen Yuan asked, stepping back just enough to let her glimpse the room without appearing to invite her inside.

"That ledger you finished this morning," she said, watching him closely as she spoke, "the one detailing certain... financial irregularities. It’s gone missing from the filing chamber."

Shen Yuan’s brow furrowed with practiced confusion. "Missing?"

"Stolen," Lin Xia corrected, voice dropping lower, colder. "Someone took it after it was filed. Which means someone within this household currently possesses a confidential Hall of Secret Affairs document." She let the words hang in the air a moment before continuing, watching his face with unblinking focus. "You understand what that means, don’t you? The punishment for treason against the Hall is death. No trial. No appeal."

"I understand," Shen Yuan said evenly, betraying nothing.

’She’s building the record before she’s even found her proof. Every word out of her mouth right now is a witness statement she intends to repeat later.’

"If you know anything," Lin Xia pressed, stepping half a pace closer, "anything at all about where that scroll might have gone, or who might have taken it, now would be the time to speak. Loyalty is rewarded here. Silence is not."

Shen Yuan met her gaze without flinching, silver eyes calm and steady despite the very real threat wrapped inside her carefully measured words.

"I finished the ledger and returned it to you personally," he said. "What happened to it afterward isn’t something I’d have any way of knowing."

Something flickered behind Lin Xia’s eyes—irritation, perhaps, at his refusal to crack under pressure she’d clearly expected to work. "Then you won’t mind if I take a look around."

"Of course not." Shen Yuan stepped fully aside to let her pass. "I have nothing to hide."

’You made sure of that yourself, didn’t you.’

Lin Xia moved through the small shed with brisk efficiency, though Shen Yuan noted the deliberate thoroughness of her search—beneath the cot, along the shelf, behind the folded robes—theater for his benefit, he suspected, meant to sell the illusion of a genuine investigation rather than the final act of a plan she’d already set in motion hours earlier.

Finally, she crouched before the small wooden chest at the foot of his cot.

Shen Yuan watched, expression carefully neutral, as she lifted the lid with the same confident, practiced motion she’d used the first time, clearly expecting to find exactly what she’d hidden there herself.

Her hand paused halfway into the chest.

She dug through the folded robe at the bottom, fingers searching with increasing urgency, before finally pulling her hand back empty. She checked again, movements less composed now, less certain, fingers combing through fabric that plainly held nothing but cloth.

The scroll was gone.

Lin Xia’s expression froze for half a second, the careful mask of formal concern cracking just enough to reveal genuine, startled confusion underneath. She turned the chest’s contents over a second time, then a third, as though sheer repetition might conjure the missing document back into existence.

It didn’t.

Her head snapped up toward Shen Yuan, and whatever she saw on his face in that moment—the faint, barely-there curve of a smile he hadn’t quite managed to suppress in time—told her everything she needed to know.

"You—" Her voice came out sharper than she likely intended, an edge of genuine alarm bleeding through the composure she’d worn since knocking on his door. "That scroll was marked. A tracking seal, keyed to activate the instant anyone tampered with its placement."

She reached into her sleeve, fingers moving through a quick series of seals, qi flaring faintly around her hand as she attempted to trigger the technique remotely.

Nothing happened.

No flare of responding qi. No pull toward a hidden location. No confirmation of the scroll’s presence anywhere at all.

Lin Xia stared at her own hand, disbelief washing over her features in a way she clearly hadn’t prepared herself for, the confident, calculating woman from moments ago replaced by something far more rattled.

"That’s... impossible," she murmured, almost to herself, staring at the empty chest as though it might offer some explanation. "The seal doesn’t fail. It’s never failed."

’It hasn’t failed,’ Shen Yuan thought, watching her unravel with the same quiet, unreadable calm he’d maintained throughout the entire encounter. ’It’s simply no longer here to fail.’

He said nothing aloud, letting the silence stretch, letting her sit with the unraveling certainty of a plan that had, moments ago, seemed flawless.

"Perhaps," Shen Yuan offered mildly, "whoever actually stole it knew enough to account for a tracking seal. That would suggest someone with real skill was behind this. Not a servant panicking over confidential paperwork."

Lin Xia’s eyes snapped toward him, something sharp and suspicious flaring behind the residual shock. "And you’d know that how?"

"I don’t," Shen Yuan said simply. "I’m only saying it seems like the kind of theft that deserves a more thorough investigation. Perhaps one involving Senior Brother Bang Fo directly."

The color drained slightly from Lin Xia’s face at the suggestion, her earlier composure fracturing further at the mere mention of her master’s involvement.

’There it is,’ Shen Yuan thought, watching the flicker of genuine fear cross her expression before she could smooth it away. ’You’re just as afraid of him finding out as you wanted me to be.’