The development from the southern office was this: Shao Junyuan had a son.
Not a legitimate son — the records showed no marriage, no acknowledged heir, nothing in the official genealogies that would complicate the legal picture. But there was a young man in Guangzhou, twenty-three years old, who had been educated at considerable expense and who had, over the past several years, received irregular payments from a series of accounts that the investigation had now traced back to Shao Junyuan's personal holdings.
The young man's name was Shao Mingzhi. He was a clerk in a trading company. He did not appear to know what his father did.
