After it was determined that the jade Ma Qianle had taken from the plague demon was genuine, a great many things seemed to happen all at once.  A court attendant was sent to the department in charge of sealing away artifacts to find out whether the other Zudang jades had disappeared or if only this one had gotten out.  Ma Qianle and Wei Yaling were questioned closely, and the officials from the Hall of Impermanents who had detected the problem and sent out the dispatch that morning were summoned and likewise questioned.  Before long an argument broke out between the kings themselves that took over all discussion and Ma Qianle, Ruan Ye, and Wei Yaling were all but forgotten.  Finally, the king who had been presiding over the audience from the beginning had enough.

"Be silent!" the king shouted over the clamor.  "Arguing now will only delay us in finding the root of this matter.  Right now, we do not have enough information."  He turned his attention back to the trio.  "What became of the plague demon who had the Jade?"

Wei Yaling pulled out one of her soul jars. "This official sealed her in here."

The king nodded.  "It is good that you still have her.  Right now she is our only source of information.  Keeper Ruan, you do not fall under our command but we will ask you to delay punishment so that she may be questioned."

Ruan Ye bowed.  "This official abides."

Satisfied, the king turned to another of his compatriots, a stern looking man with salt and pepper hair pulled severely back into an austere

guan.  "King Zhuanlun, I will place this matter under your care."  King Zhuanlun nodded and signaled to another attendant, who ran off on some errand.  "If the three of you have no further business, you are dismissed."

Ma Qianle, Ruan Ye, and Wei Yaling bowed to a chorus of "Yes Your Majesties" and retreated from the hall.  Outside, they were met by an official who bowed to them.

"Respected officials, King Zhuanlun has bid me to lead you to his offices to wait for him to join you and begin questioning the plague demon."

They followed the official through the maze of the palace city to a large courtyard complex, where they were escorted to a sitting room.  Unlike the Mortal Realm Liaison Office, where Ma Qianle had been when he was first appointed as mortal agent, this room was furnished entirely in the ancient style.  The Liaison Office was by far the most eclectic of the spaces he had seen here in hell, but the various offices of the Hall of Impermanents he had been to had all had varying degrees of modern and ancient decor.  It seemed that the more direct contact the officers of the court had with the mortal realm, the more modern their environment.

Once they had been seated and offered tea by an attendant, they were finally left alone in the room.  Ma Qianle, whose head was still spinning from the audience with the court, turned to Wei Yaling.

"So you've confirmed your suspicions about that pendant, right?  What exactly is a Zudang Jade?"

Wei Yaling frowned, her thoughts full of the emergency that had brought them to this point.  "Thousands of years ago, even before I was born, a mortal general found a large piece of unfinished jade.  Back in those days, the boundaries between the realms were much thinner than they are now, and the native people of the heavens and the hells traveled the world freely alongside mortals, spirits, and demons.  Somehow, the general came to know that the jade he'd found had a mystical power that inhibited the powers of us hellish folk.  Everyone was obsessed with finding immortality back then, and he thought that if the jade could affect our powers, maybe it would keep away death entirely. He also craved more power and promised a bunch of his allies that if they supported him in a coup, he'd share the secret of immortality with them.  He won, of course, and had the lump of jade turned into 12 pendants."

"The jades don't actually convey immortality, do they?"  Ma Qianle asked, with more than a little scepticism.  "I've never heard any legends about an immortal emperor, even from millennia ago."

Wei Yaling waved his question off dismissively.  "Of course not.  But there's plenty of mischief a ghost practitioner can get up to with one of these things even without being immortal.  They've gone through a lot of hands and been used to do a lot of bad things.  It took us eight lifetimes to get them all and seal them away here."

"I myself delivered the twelfth one into the hands of King Qinguang.  It was not long after I became the Keeper for Dongqiu City."  Ruan Ye said.  "I did not anticipate seeing one again so soon."

Ma Qianle made a face.  "King Qinguang is…" He knew the names and titles of the ten Yama Kings from his training, but that didn't include their appearances.  He had no idea which was which in the audience, and even now could only identify King Zhuanlun because he had been singled out.

"He's the one who took charge today,"  Yaling said, answering his unfinished question.  "As much as there is a hierarchy among the Yama Kings, he's at the top. He rules over the First Court."

"That reminds me,"  Ma Qianle said.  He looked a bit awkward.  "I thought the Yama Kings were all, um, kings?"

"They are,"  Wei Yaling said.  She had a puzzled look on her face. She didn't understand Ma Qianle's question.

Ma Qianle struggled to find a tactful way to explain himself before finally settling on being blunt.  "But...some of them are women."

Wei Yaling laughed.  "Oh, that!  That's just a thing you silly mortals came up with.  We don't care about those things as much here."

"I found it strange as well when I first came here." Ruan Ye tried to ease the mood. "It is the same in the heavens."

"Ah,"  was the only thing Ma Qianle said.  He pointedly ignored Ruan Ye, and the room fell into an awkward silence.

After about half an hour, an attendant announced King Zhuanlun's arrival.  The three, grateful for something else to focus their attention on, all rose and bowed.  

King Zhuanlun didn't waste any time.  "Take your ease.  This matter is taking me away from other important duties so let us deal with it quickly."  

He led them to a stark, windowless room.  Even Ma Qianle with his meager training could tell that every inch of the wall, floor, and ceiling were covered with formations to restrict and suppress the souls of the dead.

"Release the plague demon from the jar,"  King Zhuanlun said.

Wei Yaling undid the seal, and a mist flowed out of the jar before coalescing into the shape of the beautiful, blood spattered woman.  She looked much the same as she had before, except now there was a bloody rent in her chest where Ruan Ye had run her through with his spear.  Upon seeing where she was and who was with her, she immediately collapsed to the floor in a kowtow.

"Please Lord Keeper, I just needed my husband gone!  I didn't want to hurt anyone else, I swear!  When that man tried to take the pendant I couldn't help it, it was as if someone else was controlling my body!"  She was weeping as she spoke, her words coming out in choking sobs.

"You know the laws regarding interactions between demons and mortals," Ruan Ye said.  His voice was stern, colder than Ma Qianle had yet heard it.

Ma Qianle cast a glare at Ruan Ye.  "Leave her alone!  She's clearly terrified of you.  How are we supposed to learn anything from her like this?"  He turned to the woman sobbing on the ground. "You were defending yourself.  I'm not angry with you."

Ruan Ye looked at Ma Qianle and sighed before turning back to the woman.  "Your fate is out of my hands.  It is up to the ten kings to decide what to do with you now."

"Quite," King Zhuanlun said, displeased by the outburst.  "I am the King of the Tenth Court of Hell.  Answer my questions truthfully and perhaps your punishment will be lighter."

"Y-yes, your majesty," the woman stammered.  She rose up out of her kowtow, but remained kneeling on the floor.

"Name."

"This subject is Fang Zhelan, your majesty," she said.

"Why did you summon a ghost to kill your husband?"

"He beat me and raped me."  Fang Zhelan's voice was very small and quiet, as if the very act of speaking above a whisper would break her completely,  "This subject tried to get rid of him in the allowed ways, just manipulating the situation to make it more likely that he would die, but it didn't work.  I didn't know what else to do."

"Why didn't you just divorce him if things were like that?" Ma Qianle interrupted.  

Fang Zhelan looked at Ma Qianle with the closest thing to contempt she could muster.  "You mortals don't understand.  I took an oath to him when I married him.  My clan takes oaths seriously.  Better to kill someone than to break an oath."

She was right.  Ma Qianle didn't understand.  He was about to open his mouth to ask more questions but King Zhuanlun cut him off with a fierce look.

"You are wasting time on unimportant details, Ma Qianle," he said, then turned back to Fang Zhelan.  "And how did you get the jade pendant?"

"A man gave it to me.  He called himself Lao Jiang, and told me that it could hide what I was doing from the authorities."  Gaining a little bit of confidence as she saw that nobody was moving to harm her, she continued.  "He was the one who suggested I summon the ghost as well, and taught me the ritual to do it.  I didn't want to at first, but I was desperate."

King Zhuanlun frowned and looked questioningly at the other three people in the room, but they all shook their heads.  "This Lao Jiang, tell me-"  He started to ask another question but was cut off by a knocking at the door.

"Your Majesty, there are urgent messengers, one from the Department of Artifacts and another from the Hall of Impermanents," an attendant said from the hall.

"We will continue this later," King Zhuanlun said.  He left the room, gesturing for Ma Qianle, Ruan Ye, and Wei Yaling to follow him.  After shutting the door behind them, he turned to the messenger from the Department of Artifacts.  "You first."

The messenger quickly relayed what he had been sent to say.  "We have checked the place where the Zudang Jades are stored.  All twelve are missing, and there is no sign of where they have gone."

King Zhuanlun swore.  "Incompetent...And you?" he asked the second messenger.  "What bad news do you have to pile onto me?" 

The messenger trembled.  "Your Majesty, there was another incident.  This time an Impermanent is dead and the Mortal Agent for the western side of Lake Dongqiu is badly injured.  We...we think it may be related."

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Thanks to valiantxvillainous and ML Peregrine for editing and beta reading assistance