I did not sleep.
This was not unusual, in itself — I had spent many nights across many lives in the particular wakefulness of a mind that had too much to process and not enough stillness to manage it. But this was a different quality of sleeplessness. Not the productive kind, the kind that organized problems into workable shapes. This was the kind that ran the same track in circles: the name Shao Junyuan, the two years of preparation, the five elements of a campaign designed to dismantle the career and reputation of a man who had, three years ago, done nothing except his job.
By the time the first light came through the window of my room, I had made a decision.
I needed to know everything about Shao Junyuan before I could move. Not the information Yun Caishi would bring — that was coming and would be valuable. But the foundation. The kind of knowledge that could only be assembled from multiple sources, each one partial, each one contributing a different layer of the picture.
