Chapter 227: Fei Jing

Chapter 227 Fei Jing

Song Tingzhou made the rounds in Gaoshan Village with his men. Although he had been an official for only four years, he was a pragmatic man who had accomplished more in that short time than many officials did in a lifetime.

He knew how to identify and employ talent, and he led by example. He had handled solid cases with airtight evidence and punished corrupt officials. He naturally exuded a commanding presence that ordinary people lacked; anyone with half a brain could tell he wasn't an ordinary guy.

"Hey, which young master are you? Never seen you around here," a villager asked tentatively in front of Song Tingzhou.

Tao Shi shot back flippantly, "Our lord..."

"Shiyi!" Tao Ba shouted sternly to stop him.

Tao Shiyi shuddered and turned to see Song Tingzhou staring at them with a dark look.

The weather had been humid lately; although cotton was breathable, it was not as smooth and cool as brocade. Meng Wan had prepared mostly silk brocade robes for him. Today he wore a black brocade robe with subtle dark blue patterns embroidered on the cuffs. On his head was a plain jade hairpiece, and on his feet were black satin boots. If not for his stern, icy expression, his clothes alone would've marked him as some rich kid from a noble family.

"So you're a big official from somewhere else! We humble folks'll just bow and kowtow to you, sir." The villagers suddenly understood when they heard Tao Shi. They weren't big on formalities; they only knew that when they saw an official, they had to kneel and kowtow.

Some were skeptical. "Where'd a young official like him come from?"

"Is he our Deqing County magistrate?"

"Haven't you heard about our county magistrate? His son is nearly twenty; how could he be this young?"

Since his identity had been revealed, Song Tingzhou simply admitted directly, "I am indeed from the prefectural capital, specifically to investigate the case of Yang Tai."

As he spoke, his eyes were fixed on the villagers in the crowd. Suddenly he noticed a man in coarse brown clothing who seemed to avoid his gaze.

"Shiyi, bring that guy over here." Song Tingzhou pointed at the man. The man's face went pale with shock, and without thinking, he turned and ran. But after just a dozen steps, the lightning-fast Snow Wolf grabbed his pants leg in its jaws.

Then Tao Shiyi, the most agile in build, followed and pinned the man to the ground.

"Why are you running? Did you use a snake to kill Yang Tai?" Tao Shiyi asked harshly. It was instinct for them as constables, but the man started screaming in terror: "No, I didn't kill anyone! Your Honor, have mercy! I really never killed anyone!"

The man was a big, sturdy guy but a total coward, snot and tears streaming down his face, disgusting Tao Shiyi. He grabbed the man by the scruff of his neck and dragged him to Song Tingzhou.

"What is your relationship with Yang Tai?" Song Tingzhou began interrogating him.

The man, having imagined who knows what, was so scared he could barely speak. "I-I don't really know him... just... my wife bought sugar from him twice."

A villager muttered, "That's not right, is it? I remember, on the day Yang Tai left, didn't you curse a couple of times?"

Since it was a backhanded insult, no one at the time thought that his words were directed at Yang Tai. Hearing this, others also remembered that.

"Seems like it indeed."

"Was it because his wife talked a bit more with Yang Tai when buying sugar?"

"He's petty as hell, always holding a grudge."

"Such a trivial matter wouldn't lead to murder, would it?"

Song Tingzhou's eyes were piercing. He looked down at the man, using his height and commanding presence to intimidate the man. "If you're not connected to him, why'd you get nervous the second you heard I'm investigating his case, and then bolt? What exactly is your connection with Yang Tai?"

"I... I..." the man stammered, unable to answer.

"Since he refuses to cooperate, take him back to the prefectural office and put him on trial," Song Tingzhou ordered coldly.

Upon hearing this, Tao Shiyi heaved and yanked the kneeling man to his feet. Tao Ba and Tao Shi, afraid he might not be able to control the man, came over with ropes to tie him up first.

The man was terrified and quickly cried out, "Spare my life, my lord! I did have some minor grudges with Yang Tai, but I really didn't kill him!"

Tao Shiyi didn't give a damn whether the guy had killed anyone; since Song Tingzhou told him to drag the man away, he first tied him up securely.

How could the villagers have expected that the high official from the prefectural city would just tie someone up like that? They scattered in fear, terrified they'd be next.

"My lord, don't arrest me! I'll talk, I'll talk, but I really didn't kill anyone!" The man kept insisting, looking scared and put out.

It turned out he was originally a woodcutter from Gaoshan Village, with a mountain handed down in his family, so he made a living by cutting firewood. But during spring and summer when not cutting wood, he primarily worked the fields. Last year, when Song Tingzhou took the post of Assistant Prefect, he had implemented terraced fields throughout the prefecture, and Gaoshan Village was no exception.

Since the woodcutter's family already had a mountain, he didn't even need to buy wasteland; he could just work his own mountain.

That day he was clearing the mountain, pushing a single-wheeled wooden cart up the mountain to transport rocks and soil, when, out of nowhere, he spotted Yang Tai sprawled on the ground in the woods!

"When I saw the corpse, I was terrified. Everyone knew Yang Tai had been hitting on my wife, and I had cursed him a couple of times behind his back. If the man died on my mountain and I carried the body down, others would surely say I killed him!" The woodcutter's face was pale and he was trembling all over. Yang Tai used to be dirt poor, but now he was loaded and had made friends with many merchants from the Heshan Sugar Mill. If his son thought I killed his father, without even waiting for the county magistrate's trial, he'd beat me half to death first.

Not to mention that our Deqing County magistrate is a bumbling fool; he never spends more than half a day on any case, and once you're hauled into his office, he wraps the case up.

"I was afraid the county magistrate would sentence me for murder, so I wanted to secretly bury the corpse. Who would have thought that as soon as I moved Yang Tai's body onto the cart, I saw four more corpses!" The woodcutter moaned with a miserable face.

Since he had already moved one corpse, he couldn't leave the other four to die on his mountain, could he? He couldn't explain where he got such a lousy idea, but since nobody was watching, he transported all five corpses to the firewood pile at his doorstep.

The woodcutter made a living selling firewood, with four or five stacks of dry wood at his doorstep. Once the corpses were placed inside, others could hardly see them.

But it had been raining every day recently; if the corpses were left there, they would eventually be discovered. By then, even with ten mouths, he couldn't talk his way out of it.

He didn't dare bury the bodies on his own mountain. Instead, under the pretext of going out to sell firewood, he loaded all the corpses onto his ox cart and traveled straight for three days and nights, finally finding an unfamiliar mountain where he buried them.

Tao Shiyi, who'd just been chewed out, still couldn't help butting in, "Do you know that you went to a mountain on the outskirts of the prefectural city to bury the corpses, and they happened to be dug up by my lord's dog... wolf?"

The woodcutter was dumbfounded. "I never went near the prefectural city. I just wanted to get as far away as possible. It was dark and I was scared... But my lord, I really didn't kill anyone! When I saw Yang Tai, he was still breathing. At that time, I hadn't even gone up the mountain yet!" He had only returned to Deqing County one day before Song Tingzhou and his group.

Song Tingzhou listened to his blubbering and finally picked out something useful. "You said that when you saw Yang Tai, he hadn't died yet? Did he say anything? Or did he see any suspicious person?" He asked several questions in a row.

The woodcutter shook his head. "There was no one. But I saw a small snake crawl out from his body. It was very small, slithering fast. It gave me a big scare. I wanted to hit it with my pickaxe, but it had already crawled far away and disappeared."

Tao Ba, Tao Shi, and the others all looked at Song Tingzhou. The woodcutter's story seemed to be true; the facts indeed matched.

Song Tingzhou's gaze was deep. He straightened his clothes and walked toward his horse. "To the county yamen, to see the local county magistrate." The investigation was almost complete; it was time to call on the magistrate of Deqing County at the yamen.

Tao Shiyi tossed the woodcutter onto the horse and nimbly mounted. Even the youngest, Chu Ci, followed suit with proper form.

The Snow Wolf ran ahead to lead the way, keeping far from the horses to avoid startling them.

The group had come to the village discreetly for investigation but left gallantly on horseback. That evening, they returned to Deqing County and headed straight for the county yamen.

Fei Jing, the county magistrate of Deqing, had just finished washing and was about to rest when he was suddenly knocked on by a maidservant. He said in a bad temper, "What hour is this, and you still dare to disturb me? No matter how big the matter, wait until tomorrow!"

The maidservant said timidly, "My lord, the visitor is from the prefectural capital, claiming his surname is Song."

"Who cares who it is... who?" Fei Jing scrambled down from the bed.

The maidservant repeated outside the door, "From the prefectural capital, says his surname is Song. He is waiting outside..."

Before she finished speaking, Fei Jing had rushed to the door, hurriedly tying the belt of his official robe with his clothes in disarray. "Quick, quick, invite him in!"

In Fei's main hall, Song Tingzhou sat upright at the head. "Bring all the case files from this year for me to review."

Fei Jing hesitated as if wanting to refuse, but when he met Song Tingzhou's sharp eyes, he instantly sobered up. This new prefect's reputation had already spread throughout Lingnan. He had even removed county magistrates before. Who could possibly get a good outcome from crossing him?

"I'll send someone right away—no, I'll go myself. Please wait a moment, Your Honor." Fei Jing didn't hesitate at all and hurried off to the county government office to find the document archives.

After he left, Chu Ci, who had come with Song Tingzhou, began to look around the room. Over the years, following Meng Wan, he had seen quite a bit.

The screen placed in the central hall of Fei's residence was embroidered with Suzhou embroidery so realistic it looked just like the real thing. On the walls hung two landscape paintings with delicate brushstrokes. The Eight Immortals table and cabinets were made of yellowish-brown chicken-wing wood. It wasn't extravagantly opulent, but they were pretty well-off.

Couldn't sit still, Tao Eleven followed Chu Ci's gaze and also sensed something. "Your Honor, isn't it said that this Fei Jing has mediocre qualifications and only passed the Associate Jinshi exam with his whole family backing him? How come he doesn't seem as poor as the rumors claim?"

"They say, three years as an honest prefect, and you'll have a fortune of ten thousand silver taels. If he wanted, he wouldn't need to go through the trouble of embezzling. Just the money sent by the local country gentry would be enough to fatten him up." This was the norm in officialdom at the time, and even poverty-stricken Lingnan couldn't escape it.

If an official was muddleheaded but didn't dare to be too corrupt, as long as he listened to his bosses and didn't bully the folks, he would generally not be severely punished.

Fei Jing soon returned, dragging along the county's Deputy Magistrate. He carefully studied Song Tingzhou's expression, then placed all the official documents from the past year in front of him.

Song Tingzhou skipped over the rest and first looked at the progress of local water conservancy repairs. Seeing that it said the key dams had all been cemented, he then turned to the other documents.

"Why is the case of Yang Tai's disappearance from Mapo Village not recorded in the books?" Song Tingzhou asked in a deep voice.

Fei Jing looked blankly at the Deputy Magistrate, who quickly said, "Forgive me, Your Honor. I did receive a report from the Yang family, but since Yang Tai was always traveling to villages as a peddler, it wasn't unusual for him to be away for two or three days... so the case wasn't formally opened."

"Not unusual?" Song Tingzhou shot him a glance. "Now that Yang Tai is dead, has the county government opened a case?"

Fei Jing and the Deputy Magistrate lowered their heads, not daring to speak.

Song Tingzhou then asked, "And why were the cases reported by the Liu and Li families not accepted either?"

The Deputy Magistrate stammered nervously, "Well... I..."

Song Tingzhou's voice was stern. "Fei Jing!"

Fei Jing dropped to his knees with a loud thud. "Y-your Honor."

"As the County Magistrate, do you handle nothing yourself and leave all official duties to your subordinate, not even bothering to inquire about them?" Song Tingzhou looked annoyed, clearly dissatisfied with him as a magistrate.

"Your Honor, please calm down. It is all my fault. You've come a long way to reach Deqing, and you should have been properly settled. Yet, because of my mistakes, I have troubled you. I ought to be dead." Fei Jing admitted his fault readily, his words full of flattery.

Song Tingzhou watched his act with a dark, heavy gaze. Solving the case was the priority now, and he still had use for Fei Jing. There was no immediate need to take care of him.

"Tomorrow morning, tell your constables and bailiffs to start from Mapo Village and visit every village one by one, investigating whether there are any other missing persons in Deqing."

"Yes, Your Honor!"

He refused Fei Jing's eager attempts to suck up to him and keep him around, locked the woodcutter in the county jail for now, and Song Tingzhou's group returned to the inn where they had previously stayed.

The two remaining claimed bodies were also in Deqing County. One family's situation was similar to the Yang family's—they had moved from a village to the county town—while the other still lived in the countryside.

The next morning, Song Tingzhou first took his men to visit the Liu family in the city, receiving a story similar to that of the Yang family.

The head of the Liu family had originally worked as a coolie at the docks. They owned no land and had built a thatched hut by the docks to live in. Later, their son married into Red Mountain Village in Heshan. The in-laws had contracted hundreds of acres of land but couldn't cultivate it all, hiring people every year out of pocket. To help his wife's family and keep the business in the family, they called the Liu family over to plant sugarcane.

After two years, the Liu family saw the benefits. They borrowed money from their in-laws and also contracted dozens of acres to grow sugarcane for sale to the sugar mills. Although the commute was a bit of a hassle, the effort was nothing compared to the income.

After a few years of saving up, the Liu family bought a small house in the county town and also acquired some land.

Hearing this, Song Tingzhou already had a hunch. He made a trip to the Li family in the countryside, and sure enough—although the Li family hadn't moved to the county, they were also some of the richest people in the village.

Both families had been poor before but had suddenly become wealthy.

It wasn't exactly a sudden fortune, though. Judging by how Meng Wan had fed the local people in Heshan that day, the people of Heshan could truly be said to have come into sudden wealth.

Now, the villages of Red Mountain and Red Mud were highly sought after for marriage alliances. To avoid overcrowding, it was difficult to move one's household registration there easily. Otherwise, in another two years, they'd be calling them Red Mud Town and Red Mountain Town.