‘It’s a Buddhist temple here, and the nunnery is a Daoist one. I’ve never been to the nunnery, not a single time, even though it’s not too far away. Now you mention it, I think I may have heard of something. According to a monk here, there were a couple of mysterious men seen moving around in the vicinity of the nunnery, and they prevented neighbors from coming close to it.’

‘Was that before the murder case or after?’

‘Before, but for any details, you may need to talk to Mayor Pei. Sorry, I cannot help you any more than that.’

‘The discussion with you has already helped such a lot, Han Shan.’

‘Last night, I was rereading Diamond Sutra. What an enlightening book indeed! Everything under the sun cannot but be appearance. We cannot see through the appearance because we put too much of ourselves into it. The same can probably be said about your investigation. About the black fox spirit, too. I’ll get a copy for you if you have not read it.’

‘That will be fantastic. I appreciate it from the bottom of my heart, Han Shan.’

Stepping out of the village, Yang found himself being an investigation assistant who would not rest content with the black fox spirit scenario. Nor was it likely, he knew, for his master to swallow such an explanation. As a long-time servant to Judge Dee, he believed he had to do something more.

So he turned back and managed to locate the ‘neighborhood coordinator office’ at the roadside near the entrance of the village. A middle-aged man surnamed Bao with a receding hairline and a large beard was in charge of the small office. A neighborhood coordinator was a nobody in the Tang official system, though not without some real controlling and surveilling power over people in the neighborhood, and a small stipend from the mayor’s office as well.

Yang approached Bao with a modified pretext that he was a servant to a wealthy businessman dabbling in the collection of calligraphy and paintings, and that he was running around in search of anything Xuanji might have left behind that could be potentially valuable. It took him little time to succeed in inviting Bao out for a cup at a shabby eatery by the roadside.

They turned out to be the only customers there at that time of the day. Sitting at a rough wooden table with the village in view, Yang poured out a cup of yellow rice wine for Bao and handed him a tiny piece of silver.

‘In our line of business, background information can turn out to be extremely helpful. A piece of junk Xuanji left behind somewhere may prove to be worth a huge fortune, considering those wealthy patrons of hers. That’s why what you can tell me matters such a lot. Things like what she did the day the body of the maid was discovered in the backyard, or the day before …’