Voting A guarantees us more leads. Esquilax is just gunning for "anything but A" because he's gotten too annoyed after the sidequests to take more time before dealing with Chanfeng, so I would recommend A just to troll teach him the virtues of patience. Anyway, as ScubaV says, even if Chanfeng were to be moved, it would still be in our favor since she would no longer be in a fortress. Also, an A vote might solve our objectives on its own. Strictly speaking, we don't need Chanfeng if we can get our info by investigating the remnants of the Wunan Sect.
And you're overlooking all the ways that a D vote can put us in a very bad position. You're basically hoping they'll say "sure you can talk to her" and with no additional conditions other than whatever favor we might promise.
Hey, I'll be the first to admit that going on these sidequests pissed me off a good deal. However, there is
nothing that ensures that A guarantees us more leads:
Investigate Shennong Forest and the Wunan Sect – if truly an attack occurred, you might still be able to find clues in the aftermath, and perhaps survivors, to give you a clearer picture of what has happened.
A lot of mights and perhapses here. I'm not saying that going to Shennong Forest will be useless, but the best lead that we have is Chanfeng, no question about it.
As for D putting us into a bad position, what exactly did you have in mind? Certainly it's risky, but this is where our reputation will let us shine: our actions with the pirates have established Jing to the outside world as a guy who is crazy, unpredictable and definitely not to be fucked with. It's not easy to say "no" to such a man. This might be an organization of killers, but it's safe to say that Zhang Jue has forgotten more than these amateurs will ever know about killing. If they've heard anything about us, they'd know that we fought off a hundred pugilists on our own - they're going to agree to a meeting, at the very least.
I understand that the bad part here is that they will seek a favour from us (and we can expect some violent reprisal if we don't make good on the deal), but we can't just risk having our best and only lead disappear like that. You seem to assume that if she's sent somewhere else, it will be
less guarded than this place, but you can't be sure of that. What if she's sent to serve as a palace slave? This isn't unlikely given the connections that the BDS has. What if she kills herself, preferring suicide to having her dignity taken away? We all know what happened the last time somebody humiliated Chanfeng. My point is that you are making a huge risk in having our goals slip from our grasp by going with A, and that your interpretation of the consequences here is too optimistic IMO.
Also, A seems like such a pussy option given how much we've covered our tracks so far: first off, we killed the agent who recognized us (meaning that it's far less likely that Yunzi will be recognized) and secondly, we were on the level about our involvement in Chanfeng's past, so our party is on the same page goal-wise. With that in mind, why are we hiding in the forest when time's a-wasting?