Chapter 4: Braised Pork Belly

When Fan Tong returned to the kitchen carrying the lunch box, the several overseers who had been tightly bound were being guarded by Bao Nianfeng and his men.

Seeing Fan Tong come back with a relaxed expression, the overseer surnamed Qian, who led the group, sneered with contempt in his eyes and defiantly said, “Commander Fan, have you thought this through? We all know who’s backing us. If you release us now, we can still meet face to face before Commander Xu in the future. Otherwise…”

“Otherwise what?” Fan Tong asked calmly, taking out the empty bowls from the lunch box in a leisurely manner.

Qian thought he was scared and grew even more arrogant. “Otherwise, once the heat dies down, you’ll regret it! The logistics in the army run deep; you’re just a cook—you can’t handle it!”

“Oh? Is that so?” Fan Tong placed the empty bowl on the table with a crisp clatter.

He pulled out a rolled-up order from his pocket and slowly unfurled it before them.

On it, Commander Xu’s seal was bright red, and beside it, a line of calligraphy flowed like dragons and phoenixes, brimming with murderous intent: “Anyone who obstructs will be executed before reporting!”

“The Commander’s order is right here,” Fan Tong said evenly, but the air in the kitchen instantly chilled. “I’ll ask one more time: where did the embezzled military grain go?”

Qian’s face drained of color, his lips trembling, unable to utter a single word.

“Not going to speak?” Fan Tong walked over to a massive bone-cutting cleaver nearby, gripped its handle with his right hand, and lightly lifted it. The hundred-pound blade rested effortlessly on his shoulder.

He approached the youngest, most mentally fragile overseer and lightly tapped his face with the back of the blade. The cold touch made the man shudder violently.

“This blade doesn’t even dull when it cleaves ox bones. Guess if it warms up on your neck bones, will it be enough?”

Tears and snot flowed instantly from the young overseer’s face, and a foul stench came from his pants—he had soiled himself out of sheer terror.

“I’ll talk! I’ll talk! Qian… Qian told us to swap good grain for sand. The grain we got in return was partly sold to passing caravans, and the rest… given as tribute to Wu Baihu of the Sharp Character Battalion, and also…”

“And who else?” Fan Tong pressed the blade down further.

“There’s also Wang Qianhu, responsible for military supplies dispatch in the garrison!”

Once a name was uttered, it was like the first domino falling.

Qian’s face turned ashen, realizing the situation was hopeless. To seek leniency, he spilled everything like beans from a bamboo tube.

From inflating prices during procurement, to switching goods during transport, to skimming rations during distribution—item by item, it formed a vast corruption network, tangled and extensive, involving nearly every aspect of logistics.

Fan Tong’s scalp tingled listening to the complex web. He was just a cook; he couldn’t have fathomed such intricacies.

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