Detectives of the 17th Century

“Do you know anyone in the Qiwei Escort Agency?” Xiao Zishan asked immediately.

“I do.” Sun Chang said honestly. “The owner and the escorts of Qiwei are all from my hometown.” Listening to Sun Chang’s explanation, it turned out that everyone at Qiwei was from Jiangxi, and the only route they provided services for was the trip between Guangzhou and Nanchang, Jiangxi. In fact, many of the escorts in the agency were sectarians of Sun Chang in the past.

Xiao Zishan didn’t dare to make his own decision on whether or not to employ this escort agency. After all, this mission was of utmost importance. After hesitating for a moment, he decided that he would discuss it again later after hearing the thoughts of everyone else. He ordered Sun Chang to lock the front and back doors and guard the residence carefully.

---

On the other side, the Executive Committee heard the news and rushed to hold an emergency meeting–someone had actually dared to kidnap one of the time travellers! This was an intolerable crime against them. They all wanted to teach the criminals a lesson they’d remember. In addition to calling in Ran Yao, the former policeman, they also gathered a few detective-fiction enthusiasts. These people were full of the stories from Doyle and Christie. Xi Yazhou even directly brought out several shotguns that he had squirrelled away somewhere. Someone else suggested making a few grenades to ‘give the natives a taste’, while others were preparing to make acid bombs. In the midst of the tumultuous crowd, Ma Qianzhu stood up and said:

“We can’t have so many people go over!”

“Why?!” Wang Luobin was furious and immediately questioned Ma Qianzhu.

“Going there like this will only cause further trouble, and not help at all.” Ma Qianzhu said, “That’s the Guangzhou of the Ming Dynasty over there. None of us are familiar with it. What’s the point of taking such a large group of people? We don’t even have a map. Even if I tell you exactly where Chief Wen was held, will you be able to find it?”

Everyone looked at each other. It seemed that no one had thought about this issue.

“The problems in the Ming Dynasty must be solved by locals of the Ming Dynasty. Put simply, what we need is intelligence. As long as we can discover the whereabouts of Chief Wen, we have many options to save him from there, be it by force or ransom. This intelligence can only be gathered by the locals. Also, if we have so many people rushing over, it won’t be easy for Xiao Zishan and Wang Luobin to explain this situation to their partners on that side.

“Ransom? That’s such a stupid idea.” Someone was already indignant, “Such a cowardly thing, I don’t agree!” This caused a buzz of assent throughout the room. Although the time travellers always said to each other, ‘Don’t underestimate the wisdom of the ancients,’ and ‘the ancients were also very formidable,’ and so forth, in fact, the modern person’s sense of innate superiority was distilled in them. For the ‘civilised modern people’ to capitulate to the ‘ignorant and barbaric ancient people’... even the thought of this was a serious blow to their spirits.

“If we can resolve everything quickly and safely, compromising with the abductors may not be a bad idea.” Ma Qianzhu insisted, “The problems with using force are threefold. Firstly, we have no intelligence. Secondly, it may threaten Wen Desi’s personal safety. And finally,” he reminded everyone in the room, “our goal in this mission is to avoid directly butting heads with the underworld of the Ming Dynasty.”

Ma Qianzhu saw that everyone had calmed down a little, and continued: “We should prepare for both possibilities. Ran Yao must go and check the crime scene. I believe that his experience will be very useful. This is not some super mysterious murder case, so those who aren’t good at detective work need not go.”

Several detective hobbyists protested faintly in the background. Ma Qian Zhu spoke over them.

“If we have to resolve the situation by force, then we already have Bei Wei there. So I suggest that the Sports Group dispatch two more people to assist him. Too many people would only get in the way of each other.”

Lin Shenhe squeezed next to Ma Qianzhu and said, “I’ll go too. Give me that small-caliber rifle from Emei.^[1] I’ve played with sniper rifles in the US, and I can guarantee one-shot-one-hit within 500 metres.”

“Alright, then you as well.”

“But just these three people.” Seeing that there were still people jumping up to volunteer themselves, Ma Qianzhu waved his hand to stop them. He said to Wang Luobin: “You should tell Xiao Zishan to borrow the power of the Ming people as much as possible, and to not be too fixated on using brute force.”

“Okay.”

After the emergency meeting dispersed, the selected task force went to pack their equipment. Ran Yao brought his camera and criminal investigation record book. He also had fingerprint collection tools, but they were useless, as there were obviously no fingerprint records in the Ming Dynasty. So he didn’t bring it. The three Sports Group members each brought a shotgun, but there was little ammunition, and they had no time to reload new rounds. So each of them was only equipped with ten rounds. In addition, they also brought some reconnaissance equipment: although they could not get their hands on night vision goggles, wireless tags, or eavesdropping devices, they did have recorders, microphones and cameras on hand. Along with this they retrieved some walkie-talkies, smoke grenades, tear gas bombs, gas masks and other miscellaneous things. All of these things, be it useful or useless, were all shoved into two large backpacks.

The team headed through to the other side.

---

Ran Yao followed Xiao Zishan and Sun Chang and inspected Wen Desi’s bedroom and the entire neighbouring courtyard. As they went around Ran Yao was furiously drawing stuff in his book.

It had only been a few hours since Chief Wen had gone missing, and Sun Chang was very surprised when several more Australians suddenly appeared in the courtyard. Sun Chang was even more surprised about this than discovering that Master Wen was kidnapped.

Seeing that this new Australian didn't say much, but just kept his head down and walked around the house and the courtyard, sometimes climbing a ladder, sometimes lying on the ground with a small magnifying glass, and occasionally using a pen to scribble in his notebook, he thought that this was probably an Australian constable. But the one thing he wondered about was how this Australian constable arrived on scene so quickly. After all, this was so far from Australia…

After more than an hour of investigation, Ran Yao had broadly reconstructed the whole process of the crime.

"This crime involved multiple conspirators.”

The rescue team had gathered in a room, ready to hear the verdict. All of them had a murderous expression. The large square table in the middle was temporarily used as a blackboard, and the black-painted rosewood tabletop was vandalised by the marks of a lime rock.

"This is the entry route of the criminals." He sketched a rough plan of the courtyard on the table. "The wall in this spot is very high, about seven to eight metres. They should have used some sort of flying claw to climb over.^[2] There are prominent scratch marks on the wall, and a lot of tiles were torn off."

"Do flying claws really exist?"

"They do, I have read about them before. There were thefts committed using them as late as even the 1940s and 1950s."

Ran Yao continued his reconstruction. "After the criminals entered, they first used incense to knock out the servants in the outer yard, and then snuck into the inner courtyard and knocked out our four comrades one by one. Their route mostly ran from east to west. After waiting for some time for the incense to take effect, they then calmly searched every room.

"After perusing the residence, they then broke the padlock of the storehouse where the crossing point was and tried to pry open the barrier. There are at least three or four marks on the barrier evidencing these attempts. Judging from them, it is likely that they were using a crude knife or other similar long-bladed iron implement.

"Their attempts were, of course, unsuccessful. Giving up on the storehouse, they finally picked up the unconscious Wen Zong and left straight through the backdoor into the rear courtyard.

“Judging from the traces left in the mud and along the walls, there are at least three different footprint sizes, and another group of footprints outside the wall. Although these marks aren’t very noticeable, I infer that there were at least four people. The height of these criminals range between 1.55 metres to 1.60 metres. They were all carrying specialised wall-climbing tools, weapons as well as knock-out incense. From their loadouts they seem to be professional criminals, as normal small-time thieves would not have such sophisticated equipment.”

"There is one relatively peculiar fact. One of the four types of footprints belonged to someone walking barefoot. Although it was a fairly common sight for ancient people to walk around barefoot, this is the heart of Guangzhou, and not some remote country village. Not many city residents would have the habit of going around barefoot. This peculiarity could be a breakthrough for our search."

"Are you referring to those groups of people who are accustomed to going barefoot?"

"Yes, the evidence at least shows that there is at least one such person among this group of criminals. This is unlikely to be a special hobby of an individual but rather an ingrained habit shared by a certain group."

"Who could it be?" Everyone was wondering.

"Don’t ask me, I'm not a historian." Ran Yao said helplessly. If this case had happened in the modern day it would have been easily solved. The traces left by this group of people were so obvious it was like they weren’t wearing pants, and they wouldn’t stand a chance in front of modern investigation technology. Unfortunately, they were in the Ming Dynasty in the 17th century. There were no fingerprint records or criminal history files to search, and he knew next to nothing about the social conditions of this ancient city. The methods he used as a police officer were all rendered useless.

Everyone was a little disappointed with this development. They all thought that as soon as professional detectives came out, these scoundrels would immediately be exposed. It seemed that this would not be the case at all. Modern criminal investigation relied heavily on pre-collected intelligence and archives accumulated over a long period of time.

"What else did you discover? Like a motive or something." Xiao Zishan continued to ask, "was this a premeditated crime or was it spur-of-the-moment?"

"It was without a doubt premeditated. We can see this from how the crime was executed. The perpetrators knew the situation in the courtyard very well. There are more than 20 rooms of various sizes here, yet only the houses where people slept were filled with incense. All the windows of the unoccupied rooms had no traces of incense insertion.

"The fact that they used incense is also revealing. It’s obviously because they know you have strong defensive capabilities. If they didn’t have such a weapon it wouldn't have been so easy for them. As we all know, Chief Wen is a person who carries wolf-spray everywhere he goes.

"Add to this the fact that Bei Wei had discovered someone sneaking in a few days ago. This was probably the criminals scouting the residence.

"But overall, to answer your question. It's difficult to understand their motives." Ran Yao rubbed his chin, "From the list of stolen items, it's obvious that they came for property. Yet, also kidnapping Chief Wen makes it also seem like they came to kidnap. "

"Do they know Chief Wen’s identity as an Australian merchant?"

"I think they definitely know." Ran Yao pointed to the stolen items list, "This group of people are not only interested in silver, but also your so-called Australian goods. They didn't take many Ming Dynasty valuables, but instead stole your shoes, socks, pens and other modern gadgets. Obviously they came prepared."

"What do you mean?"

"What I want to say is that this matter is not just a simple theft or even a kidnapping." Ran Yao shook his head, "I think that kidnapping Chief Wen was not just for blackmail. There are higher order motives at play here, not just money."

Everyone discussed quietly for a while, and in the end agreed to use the power of the Ming locals to try and find out some more news. Xiao Zishan then asked Sun Chang to contact the owner of Qiwei Escort Agency.

---

1. Emei is a brand of sniper rifles in China. The specific rifle being referred to is probably something like this EM322 made by Norinco. ↩︎

2. A type of Chinese martial arts weapon, like a grappling hook but weaponised. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_claws ↩︎