The Villain's Ledger Has No Heroes Chapter 22: The Department That Knows Your Name

The Lower Registry occupied a former orphanage behind the Hall of Agricultural Rites. Its courtyard still contained a stone basin carved with laughing fish. The fish were dry. Around the basin, clerks in dark sleeves carried bundles of pale paper from one window to another without ever crossing the courtyard's center. "A building with a taboo," Shen Qiao observed. A guard barred Ye Jingshu and…