Episode 104

Wen Yuansi had brought very important information.

Zhao Zhi had found all the servants that had disappeared with Lu Guangzong. Such servants weren’t very strong willed in the first place, so Zhao Zhi just needed a few simple tactics to scare them and they quickly told him that the one behind everything was Lu Shen.

This was big news! Nobody could sit still anymore.

Qi Yan was the first to react. He waved his arms and jumped up and down before running after the guards escorting Lu Shen, “Let’s go! Let’s go! We’re about to crack the case!”

Wen Yuansi and Song Caitang followed behind, since they too, were anxious to crack this case. Lu Shen had been named, so he didn’t dare to protest and let the guards lead him away.

Besides, there were so many people here. If anyone accidentally said something they shouldn’t…

Then that would be terrible.

Lu Shen bowed his head and looked dejected as he was led away. His servants did not dare to do anything and followed behind their employer, since the guards were watching them closely.

The large group of people walked away, disappearing without a word around the corner.

While everyone else was fine with them leaving, Ling Qianqian was furious.

They were still arguing!

They weren’t done yet!

But Song Caitang just walked away? Just like that?!

And that Qi Yan! Was he her cousin or not?! He didn’t even ask after her, and didn’t even give her a smile!

They were the ones who started this drama and they all walked away just like that! Leaving her behind! She didn’t know what to do with herself at all. This was so embarrassing. How was she going to face anybody in the future?!

The crowd was already in deep discussion while Ling Qianqian was still fuming.

The authorities had come to arrest someone and hadn’t said anything, but the crowd could think for themselves. The less the authorities let on, the more scandalous this whole thing had to be!

And as the saying goes, a good deed goes unnoticed, but a bad deed travels a thousand miles. Rumors were something that spread like wild fire.

Lu Guangzong had been murdered and everyone was sympathetic at first, because they thought he had been a good official. Many people had gone to offer incense at his family’s residence. But over the last few days, the rumors had gotten nasty. More and more scandalous stories had been going round.

The rumors claimed that Lu Guangzong was a hypocrite who bribed officials and took bribes; a corrupt man who circumvented the law; secretly killed people and destroyed families; robbed others, dabbled in dark arts…he was capable of doing every evil thing under the sun, and he also had contact with a network of assassins…

Initially, nobody believed these rumors and felt that someone was just sullying Lu Guangzong’s reputation on purpose. But a pile of evidence turned up from nowhere one day and these things had been going round the city for a few days now, making all these people swallow their words.

Everything turned out to be true. They could conduct an investigation if they wanted to…

So…

“Hoho! They’re all wolves in sheep’s clothing! The old man was not a good man, and his son is equally heartless! He killed his own father! There’s no good person in the family! He’s been found out, hasn’t he? The filthy riches he’s been hiding has been discovered, I’m sure!”

Niu Baoshan had always been a bold person who dared to speak ill of the Lu family regardless of time and place. He was even bolder now. His face was red and his voice was loud, so everyone could hear him clearly.

The truth of the matter made it hard for anyone to speak up for Lu Guangzong, but a few who had received help from him commented quietly, “But Commissioner Lu did help me before…”

“Help, my ass!”

Niu Baoshan had been drinking and reeked of alcohol. He dared to say absolutely anything.

“He helped you with something small, then took something big from you. You call then helping?”

“Think about it! Before and after he helped you, did he get you to help him with something else?”

“The most shameless person in the world!”

He swayed unsteadily as he covered his face with one hand and sobbed. He sobbed so hard, he started hiccupping, “That pitiful son of mine! If he hadn’t trusted that old man, he wouldn’t have died! The old man didn’t even need a weapon to make all of you fall for his ploy! He was a little nice to you, smiled at you, helped you a little when it was convenient, and all of you would bend over backwards to give him the best you had!”

“How stupid!”

“All of you are stupid! Stupid, stupid people!”

After he uttered those words, his body slid down the wall he was leaning on. His head tilted to one side. He had fallen asleep from being too drunk.

He had fallen asleep and could not yell anymore, but the crowd was still buzzing.

It took a while, but as they all recalled what happened at that time, they noticed something amiss.

One of them said, “Commissioner Lu helped me to chase away my lousy relatives who tried to snatch my shop away from me, then came back to me two months later, saying he needed some land to build a factory but couldn’t find a good place and was very frustrated. I had no way to return the favor, so since I had some land nearby that wasn’t worth much, I gave it to him. Then…half a year later, the authorities took the land back for development, so they close the factory and compensated him quite well for the land. I thought it was just a coincidence back then, and that I had just been unlucky…”

“A daughter of my relative had been kidnapped and it was Commissioner Lu who had helped to get her back. The family was so grateful then. A month later, a rich man’s son came to ask for her hand in marriage and he seemed like a good guy, so the family agreed to the marriage. Later on, the girl died and after an autopsy was done, the conclusion was that she had been tortured to death…my relative never thought of holding Commissioner Lu accountable for any of this, and just thought that they had been unlucky and misjudged the young man.”

More and more of such stories were shared, and they also shared the same conclusion about Lu Guangzong.

“Fuck! Commissioner Lu had indeed fooled us all!”

“He wasn’t a good man!”

“Maybe his son really DID kill him! That’s why the authorities arrested him!”

“I’ve offered him incense for nothing!”

“This will not do! I’m going to get back what I’m owed!”

“Me too!”

It was hard to say how the tension and conversations reached this point, but the final decision was for everyone to march to the Lu family residence, bang their door down and demand compensation for everything they had suffered.

“And this murder case – in the end, the killer turns out to be Lu Shen?! If it was someone else, we’d have to thank him! Thank him for pulling the sheepskin off this wolf!”

“I heard the murder happened at the Wang family’s pub. That’s our territory! Others might not cooperate with the authorities, but not us…”

“Come on! Let’s go find out more!”

Everything happened really quickly. Before Ling Qianqian could get herself out of the way, she found herself stuck in a huge and angry crowd.

And because she was headed in the opposite direction, she ended up moving backward with the crowd for quite a distance.

By the time she finally managed to squeeze her way out, she realized that her carefully combed hair was a mess, her clothes were dirty, and there was even a child’s black, oily handprint on the edge of her skirt. Her shoes were in an even worser state – the pearls on it were missing, and the embroidery was all black…

She was so angry, she burst into tears.

These barbaric commoners!

That irritating Song Caitang!

If not for her, she wouldn’t have had to suffer like this!

After she finished crying, she glared fiercely at her servants, blamed them for not coming to her rescue, then covered her face with her hands and ran off.

The servants sighed sadly to themselves. Ling Qianqian was the one who instructed them to hide themselves. Now that things had gone awry, she turned around to blame them…they were definitely getting punished tonight.

The people left the street like a river flowing to the sea, leaving behind empty teahouses, Niu Baoshan sleeping at the foot of a wall, as well as…one Gan Zhixuan quietly emerging from a hidden corner.

His face was a little pale. He wiped away his perspiration with his sleeve, made sure to avoid the crowd by going in a different direction and took a longer route home.

On the way home, his brows were tightly knit, as though he was thinking about an urgent matter. He seemed a little unsettled.

When he got home, he pushed the door open to find his mother at home.

Fourth Missy Gan trembled when she heard the door open, turned around and quickly hid something in her sleeve before rubbing her eyes and saying gently, “Xuan’er, you’re home.”

Gan Zhixuan was already in a bad mood, so seeing her like this made him even more annoyed, “Cry, cry, cry! That’s all you know how to do! Don’t you know how to do anything else? Argh!”

He didn’t wait for his mother to react and headed straight for his room after that outburst.

She cried even harder as she watched her son march off.

After a long time, she looked out at the springtime scenery with red and swollen eyes, and sighed quietly.

“I know you want a good life, but you don’t know…what it really means to have a good life.”

“Your mother will not let you suffer…”

She seemed to be addressing Gan Zhixuan with these words, but also seemed to be saying these things to herself.

Lu Shen was escorted all the way to the bungalow in the mountains. Along the way, he kept his head bowed and did not say a word. From the hopeful look in his eyes whenever he looked up occasionally, he seemed to be hoping that he might get lucky. That everything was a misunderstanding and that the authorities did not have actual evidence on him.

But once he got to the house and saw the people kneeling before Zhao Zhi…

His knees buckled and he fell to the ground as well.

Zhao Zhi snapped his fingers. The servants in the house brought three chairs out, giving one to Wen Yuansi, Qi Yan and Song Caitang. He held his teacup and waved it lazily with his fingers as he glanced down at Lu Shen and said slowly, “So, tell me. What’s going on?”

Perhaps it was because he was a member of the royal family and had grown up different. Zhao Zhi exuded an air of aristocracy all the time, so nothing he did looked really ugly or vulgar. Even the way he leaned back lazily in his chair exuded elegance, and actually looked rather charming.

But because he had been part of the army, was sent to the border and gained a lot of experience in fighting wars, he also exuded a tough and resilient aura. His tall and muscular stature also gave him a special sense of authoritativeness, so there was power even in the way he raised his arms or walked. Anyone with a guilty conscience was definitely going to feel fearful in front of this man.

Lu Shen was a good example.

He already figured everything out when he saw the group of servants kneeling on the ground. Zhao Zhi’s calm and unhurried question weighed a lot more heavily on him. It was a real threat to him!

He dared not be untruthful.

“I…I was the one who brought my father here.” He pressed his fingers nervously into the soil and swallowed hard, “He has money…I know he has money. I happened to have seen a large pile of notes in his study before…I’m not unfilial, that’s his money, so he can keep it. If I wanted something, I was willing to work for it and I didn’t covet his money, I really didn’t…”

“But at this year’s civil servant exams, I had a chance to make up for what I didn’t have, except that I didn’t have enough money for it. All my savings put together still wasn’t enough, so I just wanted to ask him for the balance…I was only going to borrow the money from him! I would return the money to him! Once I’d made it, I would be able to get anything I wanted! I would have been able to earn back this bit of money I borrowed! But he refused to give it to me…”

“He said he didn’t have money…”

“How could that be? He just didn’t want to give it to me!”

“I begged my grandparents for money, I borrowed money from my friends and other relatives. I came up with so many ideas, yet I was still short of just a little bit. I wanted to borrow such a small sum of money, yet he said he didn’t have the money to lend me!”

“Since he insisted he didn’t have any…I had to find it myself…”

Once that wicked thought had taken root, he couldn’t ignore it. Lu Shen thought of a detailed plan, made sure it was going to work, then executed it.

“I pretended to get into a really heated argument with him so that he would be so angry, he would leave the house…such incidents have happened frequently before, so nobody would suspect anything. This house is supposed to be part of the dowry of the wife of my brother-in-law, but it actually belongs to our family. Very few people know about this house besides a few close subordinates. I secretly hired some martial artists to capture him quietly and bring him here, then erase all traces…once that was done, I started searching every inch of the house, including his study. I checked really carefully and very thoroughly, but came up with nothing.”

“I had no choice. I didn’t get the money, but I had to settle this matter. Some time had already passed and I couldn’t hide his disappearance anymore, so I went according to plan and reported him missing to the authorities, then played the rest by ear…”

Lu Shen described how Lu Guangzong had been taken away and held captive, including every single detail.

As Zhao Zhi interrogated him, he also admitted having abused Lu Guangzong.

“Yes…I got people to beat him up, but he’s still my dad, so I couldn’t possibly beat him too hard or injure him. He still refused to talk, so I starved him, thinking he would definitely spill the beans if he was hungry enough…”

“But money was just so important to him! Even more important than this son of his! No matter how I asked, he refused to say where the money was! He insisted that he was going to carry his money to the grave!”

As Lu Shen spoke, his expression grew nasty and his words sounded hateful, “I’m his son! Not his enemy! He was earning so much money just to leave it for me after he died, anyway! I just wanted some a little earlier and I even said I’d return the money, but he still refused!”

Song Caitang furrowed her brows tightly as she listened to Lu Shen explain his actions.

The way Lu Shen spoke…

Her thoughts were hard to put across in one sentence.

This man was finding all sorts of reasons to justify his actions, and his father was the only one at fault. But didn’t he realize that the things he did ran contrary to what he was saying?

While it was true that he had some regrets after doing this to his father, Lu Shen had been very decisive in carrying out his plan and he had made quite a bit of preparations beforehand too. If he was given a chance to choose again, he would have chosen to do the same thing.

Human nature could be so frightening sometimes.

The heaving emotions in Lu Shen’s heart made him confess to everything he had done to capture and imprison his own father.

Perhaps he had finally noticed something strange about the atmosphere. Lu Shen wiped his sweat away, then looked very earnestly at Zhao Zhi as he threw in one last bit of effort, “Surveillance Commissioner Zhao, I’m speaking the truth! I just wanted to scare him so that he would lend me some money, but I never intended to kill my own father! I’m a filial man!”

“I’ve been working so hard to become an official and put in so much effort into ensuring I get there. Why would I do anything that would cause me to lose this job? If my father were to die, I would have to resign and never become an official! I’m not that silly! I really wouldn’t kill my father!”

Nobody - not just Song Caitang - nobody could stand what he was saying now.

Lu Shen had been referring to Lu Guangzong as just “him” all this time, and now, for the sake of proving his innocence, he was finally calling the old man “his father”.

That was proof of how much he loved his father.

“I also have an alibi!” Lu Shen continued to defend himself with all his might, “On the day I died, I was at home, in the room with a concubine I had just married from that afternoon all the way until the next day…my wife got angry over this matter and kicked up a big fuss! You can check with them!”

Qi Yan unfolded his fan with great flourish, covering half his face so you couldn’t see his expression. But the look in his eyes was frosty, “Your wife would side with you, so she would agree to the story even if it didn’t happen. That can’t be used as evidence.”

“Why not? My wife and concubine are human too!” Lu Shen was very nervous, as though he was really afraid that these officials were going to name him as the murderer, “If I hadn’t been frolicking with my concubine all day, then I wouldn’t have ignored any news about what had happened at the house and not done anything about the fact that my father had escaped! Surveillance Commissioner Zhao, you have to believe me!”

Zhao Zhi eyed him, “You did all this to become an official?”

Lu Shen nodded vigorously, “That’s right! I just wanted to become an official! I just wanted an official like my father! I did not intend to kill anyone!”

“It’s too bad.”

It seemed like Zhao Zhi’s comment was too difficult to understand. Lu Shen stared blankly at the man in front of him.

Song Caitang sighed and explained it to him, “As a court official, one’s character is extremely important. The monarchy will not want an unfilial man.”

In short, regardless of whether Lu Shen killed anybody or not, or whether he accepted bribes or took any shortcuts, or whether he did anything else worse than that, filial piety was of utmost importance in this era, because the father was seen as someone with absolute authority in the house. The fact that he dared to kidnap, imprison and torture his own father was the greater sin than anything else. That alone was enough to make sure he could never become an official.

“Even a woman like myself can understand that logic. Do you still not understand?”

This time, Lu Shen really collapsed. He slumped to the floor like a pile of mud.

“I can’t…become an official anymore?” His Adam’s Apple quivered slightly. It was so hard for him to even utter a word.

Zhao Zhi nodded and said resolutely, “That’s right. You cannot become one anymore.”

“AHHHHHHHHH!”

Lu Shen screamed in agony, like a wild beast that had been trapped and cornered with no way out. His lips even began to bleed slightly.