There are things Wei Zhengnan does not say directly.
I had noticed this early on, in the first months of the investigation, before I understood him well enough to understand what the not-saying meant. In those early months I had catalogued it as reticence — the caution of a person who had learned, through professional necessity, to be careful about what left his mouth. I had met many such people over many centuries, and the caution was recognizable even when its specific form varied.
But as the months passed and I learned the specific texture of his reticence, I understood that it was not quite the same thing I had encountered before. His caution was not about protection or strategy, though those were present. His caution was about precision. He did not say things until he was certain of them. Until the words he intended to use accurately represented what he meant.
