reasoning
Xiao Yingzhu's gaze paused for a moment at Jiang Nian's smiling lips, and the pale white mist in front of him obscured his meaningful eyes.
“Yes, I have heard of it.”
"I wonder when Miss Jiang found out?"
Jiang Nian pushed the time.
"It started that night after I came back from the smithy."
After briefly explaining to Xiao Yingzhu what had happened a few days ago and the confusion plan, Jiang Nian began to continue reasoning based on what had happened tonight.
"But tonight is a little different from before."
She turned her gaze to Xu Bo and recounted the doubts she had about the incident.
"First, what Uncle Xu said, that man's shadow is different from what I saw in the warehouse."
"The second is that he gave up starting from the warehouse and instead checked the pharmacy."
"—Why did he suddenly change the place he wanted to investigate?"
Jiang Nian was a little confused about this.
"Initially, I chose to check the warehouse instead of the pharmacy because I had some understanding of the pharmacy."
"But now he suddenly turns back..."
"Did he think that there was a place in the pharmacy where he could get the prescription? Or did he change his mind?"
But it doesn't look like that.
Xiao Yingzhu beside him had her eyelashes drooped, and her face looked a little thoughtful.
Everyone was lost in thought. There was a moment of silence at the table, and no one answered.
Considering the doubts just now and the existing information, Xu Bo, who had been silent all this time, felt that it would not be a good idea to just sit there and wait for them to come to a conclusion, so he dared to interject a word during the silence of their reasoning.
"Could it be that you want to take a bottle of insect repellent from the pharmacy back to study?"
The teacup, after taking a sip, was gently placed back on the table. Jiang Nian raised an objection to this question.
"If I could come up with a recipe for insect repellent, then you wouldn't have to buy it from me anymore."
"but."
She paused and smiled faintly.
"Uncle Xu has given me a new idea."
"I think he's planning to explore the store."
Meeting Xiao Yingzhu's gaze, Jiang Nian gestured towards the storage room with its door open at the back.
"He wanted to know how much of our inventory we had left in the storeroom as a result of the sales in the past week."
"so…"
Xiao Yingzhu smiled, took over the topic slowly and gently, and concluded the issue.
"The person Miss Jiang saw is not the same person who came this time."
"And the people who came this time were not familiar with the inside of the pharmacy."
"therefore…"
Their minds were connected instantly. Jiang Nian met his dark gaze and gently narrowed her eyes.
"I can't find a prescription, so I have to come up with another conclusion and explain it to Manager Xu first."
—
The waiter ran all the way back to Xu's pharmacy and walked in breathlessly, almost bumping into a buyer who was carrying medicine out of the store.
The waiter bent down and apologized repeatedly until he calmed down, then walked over to the shopkeeper Xu who was fanning himself.
"Shopkeeper, I just went to investigate again. The place I went to is different from the last time. This time I chose to guard outside the medicine store."
"Although I didn't see the true appearance of the recipe this time, I did find another item."
He took a deep breath, thinking back on what he had just seen.
"—They bought that floor-standing cover. Judging by its height, it's probably used in the storage room to sort goods."
Shopkeeper Xu, who was sitting steadily on the chair, glanced at him. The beads of sweat on the waiter's forehead shone in the candlelight. Shopkeeper Xu paused his fanning hand and sneered.
"Why are you in such a hurry? Is there a ghost trying to catch you?"
"I dare not, I dare not."
The waiter stood up straight, his voice weak and guilty.
The subordinate standing in front of him hesitated and didn't say anything. Manager Xu patted the armrest impatiently and frowned.
"Anything else? Just say it."
After receiving the order, the fear and anxiety caused by the roar of the owner of Liangdu Pharmacy finally had a way to vent.
The waiter felt relieved and immediately recounted what had just happened according to the blurred details.
"Just now I wanted to use the dim light to check inside, but unexpectedly there was someone behind the counter and I was discovered."
"Fortunately, the little one ran fast and wasn't watched."
Shopkeeper Xu looked at the clothes he was wearing.
When he went to the warehouse to investigate, he never thought that there would be someone patrolling there. He ran to check without even changing his clothes. Fortunately, nothing went wrong.
But this time he was more careful and changed into casual clothes. It was late at night and he ran fast, so only his back was left to the shopkeeper Liang Du, and he should not be noticed.
"Not seen?"
Shopkeeper Xu thought about the waiter's reply. There was no problem last time, and this time he only saw a human figure, so he shouldn't go to his house with suspicion without any basis.
The most important thing right now is to wait for Sun Dun to return to the city and then decide on the next plan.
He thought it over again and again, and finally agreed.
"OK."
Glancing at the waiter still standing there stupidly waiting for his next order, he felt a little annoyed and waved the fan in his hand to tell him to leave quickly.
—
The people who came to inquire about the prescription were inconsistent. Apart from the fact that the shopkeeper of Xu's company changed his mind temporarily and replaced the personnel, the most likely situation was that the original person sent to inquire had something happen, so he was temporarily replaced by someone who was not fully prepared.
But there are still some things that don't make sense.
The original person who was investigating here had a clear understanding of the place and must have been lurking there for a long time. How come he was suddenly replaced by someone who was unprepared?
Seeing that this train of thought was not making sense, Jiang Nian simply moved up the time he was supposed to go up the mountain to pick Morinda officinalis.
He has been staring at the insect repellent for so long. If he sees that I am alone and away from the crowd, maybe the thief will be attracted out.
Although it may be dangerous, it is better than waiting here for the next opportunity to appear.
She glanced at Xiao Yingzhu who was sitting next to her. The other party felt her gaze, shifted his eyes slightly, and their gazes met.
Jiang Nian suppressed the thought that popped up in his heart for the time being and lowered his eyes. It would be better to talk about this idea after a while.
—
Uncle Xu, who had gone to the accounting office to get the list, returned to the table. Following the previous topic, they began to screen those who had recently resigned.
Excluding some who took sick leave or wanted to work, there were only two people who took leave because they were returning home.
One of them just went back in the past two days, but will be back later.
There was another person, who was the sweeper who had previously cleaned the storage room.
According to the date written on the booklet, he needed to return home at noon the day after Xiao Yingzhu reached the cooperation agreement.
Jiang Nian lightly touched the bottom of the date with his fingertips, and his thoughts paused.
"The timing is just too coincidental..."
Her gaze lingered on the name for a moment, then she raised her head to look at Xiao Yingzhu, who was leaning on her head and looking at the booklet nonchalantly.
"Is it because of the collaboration from the day before?"
Xiao Yingzhu raised her eyelids and glanced at her casually.
"What do you think?"
When the question was asked in return, Jiang Nian just followed his words. While thinking, his eyes avoided his gaze and slightly turned to other places.
The collaboration with the Censor a while ago resurfaced in her memories. The spy's actions corresponded to the timeline, and the ideas in her mind instantly connected. She turned her eyes away from the dark corner of the warehouse and smiled faintly.
"I don't think so, and..." Jiang Nian's eyes were clear, "No other officials went either."
"Um."
The slender fingertips touched the paper page, and Xiao Yingzhu's gaze fell back on the booklet. He faintly affirmed her words and continued speaking.
"Because of what happened that afternoon, they didn't go to the pharmacy to discuss the contract."
"So the pharmacy will have doubts and ask the spies lurking in your house."
After hearing this, Xu Bo, who had just been confused by the two people reasoning back and forth, finally understood.
"I was a little confused just now. It turns out it's because of a cooperation issue. Seeing that the good contract was lost, the shopkeeper next door got anxious, so the spy who had been here with us started to move out?"
Jiang Nian responded with a smile, then thought of something and turned to ask Xu Bo.
"Did this person do anything unusual in the pharmacy before?"
Xu Bo had a very shallow impression of this person. Apart from occasionally seeing him in the storage room, he rarely saw him otherwise.
"No."
"He has always kept to himself and rarely interacted with others except for his ministry."
After calculating, he found that Xiao Shitou's shift time and the spy's leave time did not match each other. Jiang Nian lowered his head and took the booklet out from the hand of the person next to him.
The soft paper brushed against Xiao Yingzhu's fingertips. Feeling his lingering gaze on her face, she paused in turning the pages. She was about to explain, but suddenly stopped herself, leaving him in suspense.
We are just one step away from finding out who the thief is, so let's wait until she has figured it out.
Jiang Nian naturally lowered his eyes and compared the spy's leave time with Xiao Shitou's employment time, and recalled the number of days since he returned from the blacksmith shop that day.
"It took one day from the time the spy deliberately took leave to the time I discovered him."
"And the time between the patrol discovering the spy and me discovering the spy was also one day."
"It was a while later, and I just came here today."
She blinked slightly, her eyes flickering.
"But Xiao Shitou came to the pharmacy on the same day I discovered the clothing fibers."
"If there were two people who came to the pharmacy to investigate, then did the second spy have to be replaced by the second person?"
—
Xu Bo recalled the spy's usual appearance and thought about what had happened during that period.
"It seems so. After the spy's leave, he went back early one afternoon and hasn't been seen since."
"I thought he was on his way."
Xiao Yingzhu on the side looked thoughtful, and Jiang Nian now had a complete understanding of the matter in his mind.
Seeing that the two people at the table had different degrees of understanding of the blind spots of this matter, he couldn't help but curl his eyes and told them the general course of events he had just deduced.
"On the first day, Shopkeeper Xu discovered that there were only a few people who wanted to discuss cooperation. He became anxious and sent spies to ambush us."
"After receiving the shopkeeper's order, in order to avoid suspicion, yet also hampered by the sudden lack of cooperation, the spy became extremely curious about our insect repellent formula. Naturally, the sooner the better, the better. So the next day, the spy submitted a false report to Uncle Xu."
"A day later, the spy, based on his usual knowledge of the store, deliberately chose a time when I wouldn't be in the warehouse to see what was in it. Unexpectedly, I happened to be in the warehouse at that time that day."
"Then, the spy or the shopkeeper talked about some other strategy, and this strategy could not be completed by one person alone, so he went somewhere else and sent the second spy."
"The second spy is unfamiliar with this area and seems to have been brought in temporarily. This suggests the first spy left in a hurry, eager to get this matter over with."
"That's why the second spy was so exposed everywhere. He lost a fiber at the scene and was just caught."
Although I don’t know the true situation of this matter, it should be pretty close.
The problem that had puzzled Jiang Nian for a long time was solved because of the appearance of "a second person". The thick fog in his mind dissipated in an instant, and his nerves that were vaguely worried also relaxed.
His eyes once again fell on the two people who had been sitting at the table with him thinking about this matter, and Jiang Nian expressed his gratitude.
Xu Bo was a little shocked by the thanks, and waved his hands and replied repeatedly.
Xiao Yingzhu's mood was very stable tonight, not as unpredictable as before.
Now that today's work is done, it's natural to call it a day.
The moon outside was already bright, and the sound of footsteps passing by the door had become silent. It was the hour of Hai.
The oil lamps in the pharmacy went out one by one. Xu Bo lived in a different direction from Jiang Mansion, so they said goodbye on the street.
There was only the Jiang family's carriage on the street, and there was no car from Xiao Yingzhu's residence. Jiang Nian came to his senses at this time and remembered what he wanted to ask Xiao Yingzhu when he first saw her.
"When did you come back, sir?"
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