The Salt Smuggling Trap

Whether there was still anything left in the demon tomb, he could not be sure.

He lay awake on his mat long after the lamp had burned out, staring into the dark, and turned it over and over.

In the original story, the tomb on Spirit Snake Mountain had only ever come up once, in passing. After Ye Qiong had destroyed Nalan City—blessed by the protagonist's halo at every step—Nalan Meng had fought him to the last of her strength. Wounded, half blind with blood, she had fled into the wilds of Spirit Snake Mountain and lost her way among the ravines. That was where the tomb had been glimpsed: a cracked stone gate, half swallowed by a landslide. Apart from a few small treasures that the bandits had dug out and squandered over the years, most of what lay inside was still buried.

So whether the bloodline of an ancient great demon was still lying down there, waiting, he did not know.

But it was hope. And hope was more than he'd had an hour ago.

He tugged at the collar of his thin robe to make it easier to breathe. Looking at his life now—money in his bracelet, Qi in his meridians, a thief king and a maid at his side—anyone would think the King of Soft Rice was doing well for himself. But the truth was that half a year from now, the guillotine was already hanging over his neck. The blade had been sharpened. The rope was fraying.

One wrong step, and his head would end up somewhere his body wasn't.

I have to take the risk.

---

He knew the history of this world. He had written it.

Long ago, there had been a great war. Before human civilization ever rose on this continent, there had been another—a civilization of countless mighty beings, natural and terrible, demons and beasts of such power that they could split mountains and drink rivers dry. They were called the Ancient Demons.

They had fallen. Their age had ended. But they had left things behind: tombs, bones, relics, the dregs of their blood. In this age, now and then, a lucky man stumbled across the legacy of some ancient sage or the remains of some ancient great demon—and rose straight into the sky.

It was the most common routine in all of webnovels. Without some powerful treasure passed down from the ancients, how else could a protagonist grow so fast in the later chapters?

"So my lazy writing and my clichéd story structure have saved my life again," Li Yuguo muttered into the dark.

He laughed. It sounded worse than crying.

---

He must have fallen asleep at some point, because the next thing he knew there was light at the window and the sound of footsteps in the corridor outside.

A lot of footsteps. Heavy ones. Coming fast.

Li Yuguo sat up on his mat just as the door was smashed open.

It slammed back against the wall hard enough to crack the plaster. Half a dozen men in the dun livery of the mansion's household servants poured into the little room. One of them kicked over the basin by the door—the only water he'd fetched for himself the night before—and it splashed across the floor in a dirty spreading puddle and soaked the hem of his mat.

Li Yuguo looked at the water. Then he looked up.

"Brothers," he said mildly, "what are you doing?"

Nobody answered him. The servants parted, and two people stepped through the gap between them.

Li Yutang.

And Nalan Meng.

---

She looked as if she had not slept. Her face was pale, her lips pressed tight, her eyes dark with something that was worse than anger. It was disappointment. She looked at him the way a person looks at a cup she has just watched someone drop.

She shook her head slowly.

"No wonder," she said. "No wonder you could make so much money in so short a time." Her voice was very quiet. "So you've been selling smuggled salt."

"I haven't sold any smuggled salt," said Li Yuguo. "Where did you hear that?"

Li Yutang stepped forward.

His handsome face was twisted with sorrow. His eyes were wet. He looked like a man attending the funeral of a dear friend—which, Li Yuguo thought, was more or less exactly what he was hoping to attend.

"My good brother," said Li Yutang, his voice thick, "I never expected it. I never expected you'd go so far as to start trading in illicit salt." He shook his head. "By the laws of the Haotian Kingdom, smuggling salt is a crime for the headsman. Even if you don't value your own life, you have to think of the County Lord standing beside you. You'll drag her name into the mud with yours!" He sighed heavily and wiped his eye. "It's all right to want to make money, brother. But you mustn't walk down these crooked roads…"

Crocodile tears, thought Li Yuguo. He's even brought his own onion.

But inside, his mind was racing.

He had nearly sold salt. In the market, a few days ago, standing at Shi Dacheng's stall with little jars of Alimama's salt laid out on the table and dollar signs in his eyes. Someone must have been nearby. Someone must have seen him with the salt, or overheard him talking about it, and carried the story back. In this age without cameras, without receipts, without any way to prove what he had and hadn't done, an accusation like that was very nearly impossible to answer.

Was it Shi Dacheng?

He dismissed the thought almost as soon as it formed. Shi Dacheng was a merchant. Merchants wanted money. If Li Yuguo lost his head over salt, Shi Dacheng lost his best trading partner, and all those lovely outfits along with him. It would be the worst deal of his life. And Shi Dacheng did not make bad deals.

So it was someone else. Someone near me. Someone who's been watching.

"You say I've been selling illicit salt," he said evenly. "What evidence do you have?"

Li Yutang smiled.

It was a very small smile, and it was gone almost before it had appeared. But Li Yuguo saw it.

"It's precisely because I have evidence that I've come to arrest you," said Li Yutang. He raised his voice. "Bring them in!"

---

They came in one after another, shuffling, heads down.

Ten men. Ten men in patched, faded clothes, each one carrying a lumpy cloth sack hugged against his chest. They had the look that every city has, at the bottom, in the lanes behind the gambling dens—the liuzi, the drifters and petty swindlers, sly-eyed and twitchy, with too-quick glances and a smell of cheap wine. They did not look like good people. They looked like men who would swear to anything for a hot meal and a few coppers.

They lined up against the wall of the guest room, and every one of them set down his sack, and every one of them untied the neck to show what was inside.

Salt. Coarse gray salt, glittering in the morning light.

Li Yutang was very pleased with himself.

He had designed it all himself. It had taken him a day and a night and a fair amount of silver. These ten were men he had recruited off the street, given the salt, and drilled in what to say. A chance like this came once in a lifetime. If Li Yuguo were convicted of smuggling salt—even if his status as the County Lord's husband spared him from the headsman's axe—he would never be able to stay in Nalan City. He would be stripped, exiled, disgraced.

And with witnesses standing right here in front of the County Lord, holding the salt in their hands? Li Yutang did not believe Li Yuguo could talk his way out of this.

One of the ten shuffled forward. He was a thin, stooped man with darting eyes, and he could not quite look at anyone.

"That… Boss Li," he mumbled. "After you sold us the illicit salt, we… we got caught. We thought you'd been trying to trick us, so… so we told the truth."

---

Li Yuguo looked at the man. Then at the other nine. Then at the salt.

He was genuinely surprised. He hadn't expected Li Yutang to put this much thought into designing a trap for him.

It was true that he had planned to sell salt. But after Shi Dacheng warned him, he had stopped. He had not sold a single grain. Let alone ten sacks.

Across the room, Nalan Meng's face had gone completely black.

She did not want to believe it. Li Yuguo could see that she did not want to. But there were ten witnesses standing in front of her with the salt in their hands, and the scene in front of her eyes was forcing her to believe it.

"What a good calculation," said Li Yuguo, and smiled.

He was not smiling inside.

He had made a mistake. A big one. He had come to Nalan City and started changing everything—the business, the money, the cultivation, the girl in the cage—and all the while he had been reading his own book, and only his book, over and over, like a student cramming for an exam. He had been so busy thinking about the plot that he had forgotten the most important thing of all.

When you change yourself, the people around you change too. That was the butterfly effect.

In the original story, Li Yutang had never needed to kill him. The original Li Yuguo was harmless. A joke. He had no money, no strength, no future; his cousin could simply wait for him to drink himself into the ground.

But this Li Yuguo had money. And strength. And a County Lord who had begun, just slightly, to look at him differently.

To Li Yutang, he was no longer a joke. He was a thorn in the flesh.

And Li Yuguo had been so busy watching the horizon for Ye Qiong that he had completely ignored the "big brother" standing right beside him, smiling, with a knife behind his back.

Everything was changing. If he stayed the same—if he kept clinging to the book like a drowning man to a plank—then it was certain. He would never escape his fate.

Never mind the catastrophe in half a year. Think about now. If he was convicted of smuggling salt, could he even survive the week?

His teeth set. Under the sadness, under the anger, he felt something cold and hard settle into place.

He had thought Li Yutang only coveted his position. His wife. His seat at the table.

He had not understood, until this moment, that Li Yutang wanted him dead.

A trap like this would cut off every road out. Every single one.