My Dao to Eternity
Chapter 110: A Name in the Reception Hall's Memory
The reception hall's senior clerk was not a man Li Fan had ever spoken with directly. He'd delivered his sealed pouch, years ago, to a junior steward long since reassigned elsewhere, and had no reason since to set foot in that particular building at all. He went now on the thinnest pretext he could construct — a commissioned nameplate for the hall's outer chamber, a piece of work Old Mu had genuinely been contracted for weeks earlier and simply hadn't yet delivered.
The clerk who received it was old, sharp-eyed despite his years, and paused halfway through signing the delivery ledger when Li Fan gave his name for the record.
"Li Fan." The clerk repeated it slowly, studying him with a new and sudden attention that had nothing to do with the nameplate between them. "The mortal craftsman. You delivered a sealed pouch to this hall, some years back. A dying disciple's final request."
"I did," Li Fan said, keeping his voice level.
"I remember the entry." The clerk set the nameplate aside and reached, without further explanation, for a ledger shelved close at hand rather than buried in some distant archive — a detail Li Fan noted carefully, since a record kept close and current suggested a record still actively consulted rather than one gathering dust. He flipped through several pages with practiced speed before turning the book slightly toward Li Fan, one weathered finger resting beside a brief, formal entry recording the delivery exactly as it had happened.
Beneath it, in different ink, a later hand had added a single line: Subject inquired after twice this year. Refer any further inquiry to the Jiang liaison directly.
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Li Fan kept his expression carefully neutral, though the confirmation landed with considerably more weight than the clerk's casual tone suggested he understood it carried. "Inquired after," he repeated. "By whom?"
"Not recorded here. Only that the referral stands." The clerk closed the ledger, and studied Li Fan a moment longer with an expression Li Fan couldn't quite place — not suspicion exactly, closer to simple professional curiosity, the look of a man noting an unusual pattern without yet understanding its cause. "Unusual, for a mortal delivery this old to still carry an active referral. Most such entries go untouched for decades once the original business concludes." He shrugged, the gesture of a man for whom the sect's internal bureaucracy held no real mystery worth chasing personally. "Perhaps the Jiang liaison simply likes thorough records. I've known stranger habits in men with less reason for them."
Li Fan thanked him, accepted payment for the nameplate, and left the hall at an unhurried pace that cost him considerable effort to maintain.
He had it now, plainly, in a way no rumor or sideways question had ever managed to provide. His name sat in an active sect record, flagged for referral to the very family seat the old sweeper had named weeks before. Someone connected to the Jiang family had inquired after him, twice within the past year alone, through official channels rather than hired blades and market gossip — a formal interest running parallel to whatever informal danger had already tried once to kill him in an alley.
He told Old Mu that evening, plainly, without softening the shape of what he'd found. "It's not speculation anymore. My name is flagged, referred specifically to the Jiang liaison, inquired after twice this year through the sect's own official channels."
Old Mu's jaw tightened. "Then it's the Jiang family. Not merely a coincidence of timing."
"It's evidence the Jiang family is involved, somehow," Li Fan corrected carefully. "Not proof they're behind the assassin, or the rumor, or any of it directly. A liaison overseeing a ledger might simply be doing diligent work, flagging an unusual old entry for reasons that have nothing to do with wanting me dead." He shook his head slowly, though his own instincts argued otherwise. "But it's the first solid thread I've had. I mean to follow it properly now, rather than only around its edges."
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