Chapter 295: Servants

Chapter 295: Servants

Meng Wan had spent a month and a half moving into the new house, and it turned out to be a haunted house to begin with—now it had become a crime scene.

The Vice Minister of Justice's men and the Shuntian Prefecture's men had surrounded the entire residence. A Yan, who'd dragged himself out of bed early and braved the cold, was forced to ride back to Shichun Lane.

The kid was just about ready to lose it. Meng Wan had to spring for two of the top dishes from one of Shengjing's best restaurants just to calm his fragile little heart.

"Father, let's not move again. I think this little house is just fine—it's not cramped at all. Tong'er and I can share a room." A Yan pleaded with Meng Wan once he'd eaten his fill.

"Kid, you think I actually want to deal with all this hassle?" Meng Wan reasoned with A Yan earnestly. "Your dad has to get up at the crack of dawn for court every day—that's no picnic either. Just because he doesn't complain doesn't mean we shouldn't cut him some slack, right?"

"Fine, but this time you need to pick a good place. Take Snow Wolf with you when you look at houses, so you don't end up having him dig something up right before you're about to move." A Yan's dead-on jab made Meng Wan choke on his own breath.

But the kid had a point—should he really bring Snow Wolf along to look at houses? Wouldn't people think he was nuts?

"Sir, all twenty-one bodies are out of the ground. The coroner's working on them now. Xiao Ci and Snow Wolf are there too." Tao Ba reported to Song Tingzhou.

Vice Minister of Justice Zeng Shiqi was in the middle of a conversation with Song Tingzhou. Hearing that, the two of them headed over to the garden where the bodies had been found.

People from both the Ministry of Justice and Shuntian Prefecture were there, packing the courtyard.

"Sir, Lord Zeng." The two coroners had already finished cleaning out the burial pit. Honestly, there wasn't much left to clean at this point.

Song Tingzhou stared at the badly decomposed bodies in the pit—just a few scraps of cloth that hadn't rotted away and some stubborn bones and organs that refused to break down. You could barely call them corpses anymore—skeletons was more like it.

He frowned hard. "These people have been dead six or seven months, minimum."

"That's right, sir. These dead folks were likely buried here about seven months." The coroner bowed to the two officials.

Zeng Shiqi asked, "Can you still tell how they died?"

Chu Ci signed to Song Tingzhou, "Not poison."

The victims' bones were the usual pale gray, and the decomposition looked like normal rot.

The coroners from Shuntian Prefecture and the Ministry of Justice had put their heads together. Especially the Ministry of Justice coroner—a guy with serious experience in autopsies—stepped up and said, "Sir, these victims' bones all show damage to varying degrees, with the worst being the skull and neck bones. Looks like they were beaten and abused while they were still alive. If it's not poison, then it's got to be blunt force or suffocation."

Zeng Shiqi turned to Song Tingzhou after hearing this and said, "Lord Song, I'll leave it to you to figure out who these victims were."

Song Tingzhou clasped his hands and gave a bow, saying solemnly, "Since the bodies turned up in Shuntian Prefecture's territory, tracking down the killer is my job, plain and simple."

He was steady and composed in everything he did, with a quiet intensity. Upon realizing that the victims' identities couldn't be determined due to the length of time since their deaths, he immediately ordered his staff at the yamen to look into missing persons reports across Shuntian Prefecture.

Since all twenty-one victims were buried on the Bian family's property, the Bians were now prime suspects. At the same time, he also called in the servants who'd been watching over the Bian place.

That night, he got back to Shichun Lane late again. Meng Wan grumbled as he dug out clean clothes for him, "Even in summer, this wouldn't be such a pain. Shengjing's full of rich folks, and every house is already taken. If worse comes to worst, we'll just grab a small place for now, so you don't have to haul ass home every day."

Song Tingzhou took his hand. "Wan'er, don't worry about it. It's just that I haven't been in Shengjing long, and there's a lot of politics and interests I still don't fully have a handle on. You and Mother need to watch your backs these days."

Meng Wan went full conspiracy theorist. "Could someone be out to get us and planted those bodies there ahead of time? Prince Lian's people?"

A faint smile tugged at the corner of Song Tingzhou's mouth. "How would Prince Lian's people even know about our plans in Lingnan? Why would they go to all that trouble? Just to make our lives a little inconvenient?"

Unlike Lezheng Qi, with his sharp, striking features, Song Tingzhou had double eyelids, thick brows, dark, thick lashes, a straight nose, and lips that were just right—the kind of face you'd call a classic Chinese handsome man. Putting aside how serious he always looked, his face just screamed integrity and reliability. When he smiled now, his brow eased and his eyes lit up, so gentle it was almost unreal.

After all these years, Meng Wan found himself more and more drawn to him—not for his looks, but for that fierce, hidden streak in his heart, and a personality that was cold yet never short on tenderness.

Meng Wan rested his chin on his hand, watching him change, and said out of nowhere, "If something really serious ever goes down—something so bad you have to make a call about me—I trust you, and you should trust me too. Always put your own safety first."

Song Tingzhou froze mid-belt-tying, his mind flashing back to when Meng Wan went with him to the Zhu family and got humiliated. He pressed his lips into a thin line, his face slowly turning hard. "I've already climbed this high. If I still let you get wronged, I don't deserve to be your husband."

Meng Wan wrapped his arms around Song Tingzhou's slim waist and buried his face in his chest, rubbing against him a couple of times. "I was just saying. Who could possibly make me suffer?"

Song Tingzhou held him, but his face didn't soften one bit. In this world where one rank higher could crush a man flat, just being a good official wasn't enough to keep your family safe.

With Shuntian Prefecture and the Ministry of Justice working together, they quickly ID'd all twenty-one bodies.

Twenty of them were Bian family servants—men and women both.

The last one was a distant relative of the Bians—a sixteen-year-old girl, right in the prime of her youth.

This result was both surprising and within everyone's expectations.

Buried on the Bian property—whether it was the Ministry of Justice or Song Tingzhou, the first thought was always the Bian family.

The Bian family members, who had been hiding in their rural hometown, were summoned back to Shengjing. Lady Bian, whose husband had died only half a year ago, wore plain clothes and bore a haggard, sorrowful expression. She looked utterly aged—nothing like the spirited official's wife from six months ago, but rather like a weathered country woman who had toiled her whole life.

"I wonder what instructions you have for this widow in summoning me back to the capital." Lady Bian knelt beneath the hall of Shuntian Prefecture with a numb expression. The high seat before her was the position her husband had occupied for over a decade.

Song Tingzhou cut straight to the point. "Twenty-one corpses are buried in the garden of the old Bian residence. Does Lady Bian know anything about this?"

Lady Bian's eyelid twitched, then she said expressionlessly, "This woman doesn't know what you mean, sir. Our house was already sold off cheaply to the brokerage—it has nothing to do with the Bian family."

"Lady Bian, twenty-one lives don't just vanish without a trace. Since they were all members of the Bian household, I ask for your cooperation. The Shuntian Prefecture officials might let you off out of consideration for Lord Bian's old ties, but I—an official transferred in from outside—will not." Song Tingzhou's voice, wrapped in ice, was neither loud nor low, but because the hall was silent, it carried a faint echo, creating an overwhelming pressure. The Shuntian Prefecture courtroom suddenly felt like the Hall of Yama in the underworld.

Lady Bian looked around. From the deputy magistrate at the top to the runners below, no one dared meet her gaze. She couldn't help but let out a bitter laugh. "Truly, times have changed and people have moved on. Once the tea goes cold, so do the guests..."

Song Tingzhou cut her off coldly. "Lady Bian, this courtroom is not a place for you to reminisce about the past. If these deaths have nothing to do with the Bian family, then the Bians can return to the countryside with peace of mind."

Facing the relentless, unyielding new Prefect of Shuntian, Lady Bian drew in a sharp breath.

That night, Song Tingzhou returned home covered in wind and snow again. Even Chu Ci urged him to stay at the government office to rest rather than travel back and forth.

"Soon. This case is as complicated as it is simple. Once it's resolved, I'll come home earlier every day." With his family in the same city, Song Tingzhou didn't want to stay elsewhere alone.

The house on Shichun Lane was small, so everyone gathered at Chang Jinhua's place for meals. Meng Wan first handed Song Tingzhou a bowl of ginger soup, and only after watching him drink it without a flicker of hesitation did he ask, "That fast? I thought there'd be more twists and turns."

"With so many victims, the Ministry of Justice got involved too, and I heard they've already caught a suspect." Song Tingzhou pulled him down to eat. Only after Chang Jinhua picked up her chopsticks did the others follow suit.

The Ministry of Justice's fugitive was quite interesting—he turned himself in, and not to Shuntian Prefecture, but to the Ministry of Justice itself.

The Ministry of Justice was the superior authority for major criminal cases across the regions. No matter how special Shuntian Prefecture's position was, cases tried there still had to be reviewed by the Ministry of Justice.

In short, if the Ministry of Justice closed the case, it had little to do with Shuntian Prefecture anymore—the rest would be between the Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review.

That was the theory, but the next morning, Song Tingzhou found himself blocked at his doorstep.

A woman of indeterminate age knelt in Shichun Lane, holding a five-year-old child. She wore a brown cotton jacket, and the child sat on her lap with his face buried in her chest. A thin layer of snow had settled on both their shoulders—they must have arrived not long ago, because if they'd spent the night like this in Shengjing's winter, they would have frozen to death.

Even so, by the time Liu Da opened the door and discovered them, the child in her arms was already barely conscious.

"Where are you from, and who are you looking for at the Song residence?"

Liu Da had to ask three times before the woman reacted, shivering as she said, "I... I'm looking for the Prefect of Shuntian... Lord Song. My husband was... was wrongfully accused."

Seeing how out of it she was, Liu Da hurried inside to report to Song Tingzhou.

Yue Mei stepped forward urgently and said, "Give me the child first and come inside to warm up. In this cold, he'll freeze to death!"

The woman could no longer stand. Yue Mei scooped up the little boy, whose face had turned blue-purple from the cold, and carried him into the gatehouse—the room she shared with Liu Da, where a charcoal brazier burned, a thick curtain hung over the door, and the heated brick bed (kang) radiated warmth.

Once the boy was placed on the bed, his complexion eased almost immediately, though his breathing remained somewhat labored. Yue Mei pressed her hand to his forehead—it was scorching hot to the touch.

"Oh! He's burning up this bad! What are we gonna do..."

Song Tingzhou could not delay his morning audience. After he left, Meng Wan met with the woman and sent A Xun to tend to her child and prepare medicine.

As Yue Mei followed A Xun out, Meng Wan's voice came flatly from behind her, "Don't let it happen again."

She dropped to her knees, terrified.

Meng Wan waved a hand. "You may go."

Only Meng Wan, Huang Ye, and Chi Yu were left in the room. Meng Wan told Huang Ye to give the woman a bowl of hot soup, but she stared at it warily, not daring to take a sip.

Meng Wan snorted with laughter. "Your son's in our hands right now, and you're just now worrying about poison? Isn't it a little late for that?"

The woman started in alarm and prostrated herself on the ground, pleading, "He's just a little kid—please, my lord, spare his life."

Meng Wan hadn't expected her to scare that easily. He helped her up and said with a wry smile, "What would I want with his life? You're the one who came to my lord's door—shouldn't you explain yourself first?"

The woman clutched the bowl of hot soup and suddenly burst into tears. Salty tears fell one by one into the soup, sending tiny ripples across the surface. "My husband, Bian Erxing, was taken to the Ministry of Justice prison to take the fall for a crime."

It turned out the woman was named Guo Wanzhen, and she and her husband Bian Erxing were household slaves of the Bian family. What's more, Bian Erxing had been the Bian family's steward, highly regarded by Lord Bian himself.

But no matter how much the master valued him, a servant was still a servant.

After Lord Bian died, the household fell into chaos. Lady Bian and her two sons sold off most of the servants, including the concubines—only the ones who'd had children were sent off with their kids. Lady Bian then took her sons and grandchildren back to their hometown and was never seen again.

The sold servants were quickly snapped up by slave dealers. These dealers were shrewd, wary of getting tangled up with the families of court officials, so they usually shipped their purchases far away and unloaded them fast.

Bian Erxing, Guo Wanzhen, and their son had been sold to Fengtian, where their new master was a minor landlord in a small town. He was of modest means and had bought them cheaply, planning to have their young son serve as a future child bride for his grandson.

The master was stingy, sure, but at least the family stayed together, with a roof over their heads and food in their bellies. But then...

"Erxing liked his drink, and when he drank too much, he spoke without thinking and offended the landlord's eldest son. We were thrown out. He brought me back to Shengjing, and we'd been doing odd jobs in the nearest town outside the city. Then two days ago, officials came and took him away."

Guo Wanzhen's voice choked with sobs. "Our family relied on what Erxing earned just to keep from starving. I had no other choice but to come to Lord Song."

Huang Ye, moved by her story, turned his head away with reddened eyes. He and his mother, Jin Gu, had also endured countless hardships before finding their current peace. His master had always looked out for him—hiring his mother all along, and before their journey to the capital, insisting on returning his indenture papers despite his protests.

He and his mother had met a benefactor, but Guo Wanzhen before him clearly hadn't been so fortunate.

Guo Wanzhen drained the bowl of hot soup in one go, then knelt on the ground clutching the bowl and wept. "My lord, please tell Lord Song—my Erxing truly didn't kill anyone, let alone so many lives!"

Meng Wan listened to her lament until he was certain she had confessed everything, then asked, "You left the landlord's household—but your indenture papers are still with him, aren't they? Without your master's documents, how did you manage to enter the city?"

Guo Wanzhen wiped her eyes with the stiff, worn sleeve of her cotton coat. "We country folk don't know the law—we only got a bill of sale and thought that was that. In truth, our servitude is still registered under the Bian family name. Erxing had traveled widely on the old master's business and knew people in many places. Those people didn't yet know our master had passed, so they eagerly helped us return to the capital with bribes and favors."

"I see..." Meng Wan idly toyed with the jade pendant at his side. "My lord rushed off to court and won't be back for a while. Go get something to eat and rest for now—we'll decide everything once he returns."

Guo Wanzhen opened her mouth as if to speak, then realized there was no better option for the moment. She obediently followed Huang Ye out.