“An undercover royal inspector you say?” The middle–aged looking man dressed in luxury of green robes eyed Joohyun. “A bit young to be an inspector.”

Joohyun flashed him a token of the Taiyang Palace that Lisa had given to her earlier. As a lowly ranked magistrate, Jinyoung couldn’t exactly identify which reign of authority the token belonged to, but as a former department chief, he was able to recognize the symbol of the Royal Palace.

“A–ah, Miss Royal Inspector!” He fell to his knees. “F–forgive the ignorance of this lowly one, please have mercy!” He bowed his head to the floor. 

“Very well, I’ll take this as your first offense. Two more and I’ll see the end of you.” Joohyun abused her authority with no actual ill–intentions.

“O–of course.” Xianhua got back up. “To what can I help with your inspections?”

Joohyun moved to the center chair, usually reserved for the one with the highest rank in the room. “My people have come across some rumors regarding the business of the Song family. I’ll just observe them. My supervisor won’t penalize me as long as I have something to report on.”

In addition to learning about the magistrate’s love for wealth, she also found out that he is no stranger to bootlicking other higher officials. She planned to pass off as a lazy official that could be easily bought. And she succeeded. Not soon after she exposed her tainted face, he brought her into his study and revealed a pile of files related to the Song family.

Then he excused himself to prepare her accommodation at the best inn in the city, not forgetting to stealthily hand her a heavily filled money pouch as he bid his leave.

By the time Lisa and Jisoo returned from their task, the sunset blossomed upon the horizon as if a million scarlet blooms ignited. Joohyun had unexpectedly spent the whole day reviewing cases of missing people in the past three years. Her discovery left her outraged.

There weren’t many major incidents regarding the Song family. But once she expanded her search to review files labeled as trivial or undefined cases, it made up the majority of papers spread out across the desk.

Only the poor and working classes had filed for investigations against the Song family. But they were all overlooked and, in most cases, left unresolved due to lack of evidence. She compared them to similar cases that had been solved and came across a similar pattern: the use of a scapegoat.

Her final discovery: it all alluded to the Okeydokey Brothel.

“Get the magistrate here, I need a favor from him.”

…

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