Chapter 10 Setting the Net (III)

Chapter 10 Setting the Net (III)

*Thump—*

*Thump—*

*Thump—*

The grievance drum echoed deeply, echoing down the long street.

Aunt Su, dressed in plain hemp clothes, expressionlessly gripped the drumstick and struck the cowhide drumhead fiercely.

Due to years of manual labor, she possessed considerable strength, and the drumbeat spread across half the small town, filled with a desperate hatred and fury.

It was already late, and with nothing better to do, people quickly gathered around.

After she had struck the drum seven or eight times, a night-duty constable from the guardhouse, wielding a baton in hand, rushed over in a hurry.

Seeing many people gathered outside the yamen, he cursed his luck inwardly, unwilling to work in the dead of night, and so his first words were a harsh rebuke: "Shrew, what's all this commotion?"

Before Aunt Su could speak, some idle onlookers jeered: "She's obviously filing a complaint—she has a grievance to voice!"

The constable spread his hands toward Aunt Su: "If you're filing a complaint, where's the written plaint? And where's the petition writer?"

When Aunt Su heard that her son's corpse had been dug up without any reason by a group of constables, she nearly fainted on the spot.

By the time she rushed to see, all that remained was an empty grave.

She was now sustained entirely by a surge of rage; otherwise, she would have already collapsed. How could she have the presence of mind to follow the proper procedure and find a petition writer?

Seeing Aunt Su alone, empty-handed, and now silent, the constable realized she had made no preparations. His courage swelled, and he reached out to shove her: "Women aren't allowed in the courtroom—don't you know the rules? If you want to file a complaint, find a petition writer quickly. Don't block the door here!"

After being pulled and shoved, Aunt Su's eyes blazed instantly. Disregarding everything, she raised the drumstick and swung it at the constable's face.

Seeing the danger, the constable dodged backward, narrowly avoiding the blow, but his foot slipped and nearly tumbled down the long steps.

A few snickers came from the crowd around her.

Enraged and humiliated, the constable grabbed his baton and swung it at Aunt Su.

If the blow landed, Aunt Su would at the very least sustain broken bones and torn tendons.

Just as his stick was mid-swing, a foot kicked him hard from behind in the rump.

Caught off guard and with his balance unstable, his body lunged forward, and he face-planted into the dirt.

A burst of laughter erupted from the crowd down below.

Repeatedly disgraced, the constable burst into fury, cursing as he scrambled to his feet: "Who was that?! You looking to die—"

He swallowed the rest of his words, choking until his face turned red: "M-Magistrate..."

Le Wuya, dressed in plain clothes, stood with his hands behind his back, an amused smirk on his face: "So this is how constables usually treat people, eh? Unfriendly faces and closed doors—naturally, getting things done is also hard. Thank you for tarnishing my reputation outside."

The constable was scared stiff and quickly knelt to apologize: "This shrew wanted to appeal, but she had no plaint or scribe, and insisted on barging in. Not only did she gather a crowd to make trouble, but she also tried to hit me. In a moment of anger, I..."

Le Wuya couldn't be bothered to listen to the string of big accusations the constable was piling on; it would be meaningless to debate with him.

He waved over two other constables who had been peeking nervously from the sidelines, too afraid to step forward, and pointed at Aunt Su: "Take her inside properly, find a room to settle her in, treat her well, and don't raise your voices."

He then glanced at the kneeling constable: "You said there's no petition writer?"

"I'll give you half an hour. Go fetch the best petition writer in Nanting to write the plaint and present the complaint on the spot. If you're slow and exceed half an hour, I won't cover any expenses—they'll come out of your monthly pay."

At the mention of his monthly pay, the constable's stomachful of slanderous excuses evaporated instantly. He scrambled to his feet and dashed out.

Le Wuya turned and looked at Aunt Su, saying: "Aunt Su, if Scholar Ming hadn't been imprisoned, you should have asked him to help—it would have been a lot easier."

Hearing the words "Scholar Ming," Aunt Su's eyes welled up. Seeming both ashamed and evasive, she lowered her head.

She couldn't read a word, but she wasn't stupid.

Scholar Ming had gotten into trouble because of her son's case.

She was well aware of that, yet she felt powerless.

Le Wuya withdrew his gaze and stepped over the threshold of the main gate, giving a short, forceful order: "In half an hour, when the plaint is submitted, open the court and hold the trial."

Returning to his residence, Le Wuya bound his hair before the mirror and donned his official robes and cap.

The attire of a Seventh-Rank Official was far simpler than that of a First-Rank Official.

In no time at all, he was fully dressed.

The person reflected in the bronze mirror wore a formal, meticulous official robe—everything in order, just as it had been the day before.

Since his arrival, Le Wuya hadn't rested for a moment, and now he finally had a chance to closely examine Wen Renyue's face.

Yesterday, this body had been hanging from a beam.

If it hadn't been his first try at suicide and he was bad at it, he would probably already be waiting in line to drink Mengpo's soup.

Wen Renyue was born with a delicate and proper appearance, not resembling Le Wuya's past life. Han bloodline had a deeper influence on his features, but upon closer inspection, his cat-like pupils were slightly different colors, giving him a hint of the Jing people's charm.

Le Wuya's mind wandered.

Why had he come to inhabit this person's body?

When Wen Renyue's soul had left his body, it had been on the verge of dissipating in less than a quarter of an hour; Le Wuya's own soul had been wandering for four years—how could it be so robust, arriving full of vitality and causing mischief everywhere?

As he looked, Le Wuya suddenly frowned, leaned closer to the mirror, and pressed his fingertip lightly against the corner of his mouth.

Only then did he notice a small brown mole on Wen Renyue's lower lip, but it was faint and unclear—hard to spot unless you looked closely by candlelight.

Le Wuya wondered: Had Wen Renyue always had this mole?

In his past life, more than one person had said the mole on his own lip was unlucky and a sign of misfortune.

Although it was indeed unlucky enough for Wen Renyue to have attracted Le Wuya's soul, for the mole to be in the exact same position seemed too much of a coincidence...

But he only thought about it for a moment before letting it go.

Once he had handled this case to completion and got out, he would leave the remaining matters for Wen Renyue to deal with.

Half an hour later, the yamen was brightly lit, and the news that "the Magistrate is holding a night trial" had already spread throughout small Nanting.

With nothing better to do and still some time before curfew, the townspeople flocked to watch the trial.

The County Vice Magistrate, the Registrar, and the constables were all in place, but the coroner Shang Juncheng was nowhere to be found. They sent someone to his home, but he wasn't there either.

Deputy Magistrate Sun, however, knew where the guy was.

After delivering Chang Xiaohu’s body to the mortuary, Deputy Magistrate Sun couldn’t resist pulling a little scheme. Instead of leaving someone to guard the ice room, he paid Coroner Shang a visit and told him that the magistrate had exhumed Chang Xiaohu’s corpse, warning him to be ready for an order to assist at any time.

Back then, when Chang Xiaohu’s “accident” case occurred, could anyone but Coroner Shang know what really happened?

No further prompting was needed—he knew what to do.

Although Deputy Magistrate Sun, having been thoroughly disarmed by Le Wuya’s series of arguments that left him defenseless, had already felt his stance waver, he had been on good terms with Master Chen for too long to do nothing.

At the very least, he had to blunt the edge of this cunningly reserved magistrate’s advance, didn’t he?

Yet so much time had passed—why hadn’t Coroner Shang returned?

As Deputy Magistrate Sun was getting a search party together, another incident occurred.

Two crippled men, dressed like beggars, carried an unconscious person to the yamen gate. They wore miserable expressions and insisted they had come to surrender.

In the midst of all the chaos, Deputy Magistrate Sun initially wanted to shoo them away, but when he took a closer look by lantern light, he froze.

The one with a bloodied face, still unconscious, was unmistakably Coroner Shang!

With so many eyes watching, Deputy Magistrate Sun could no longer hide him. Reluctantly, he swallowed his pride and accepted this new case.

The spectacle only grew larger, drawing an ever-thickening crowd.

Amid the jostling and eager anticipation of the onlookers, Le Wuya stepped into the courtroom.

He never got stage fright; he loved a commotion more than anything, the kind of kid who loved watching people argue with a handful of melon seeds.

If not for his rotten luck in his past life, which forced him to curb his temper and constantly maintain a dignified demeanor, he wouldn’t have died so young.

Le Wuya had once figured that, in his past life, he must have died from sheer boredom of not being able to watch a good commotion.

Sitting high in the courtroom, Le Wuya straightened his posture, took the gavel in hand, and weighed it in his palm.

The paint was chipped in spots, but it felt solid and heavy in his hand—for it bore the weight of countless people’s lives and feelings.

Le Wuya was moved. Just as he sighed inwardly, he spotted a familiar figure out of the corner of his eye.

He thought he might have been mistaken, so he turned his gaze toward a man dressed as a traveling merchant, standing at the very front of the crowd with arms folded.

... Him?

Why was he here?

...

Xiang Zhijie and Xiang Zhi were two princes, traveling as imperial envoys on an inspection tour to observe the people’s conditions—a position of no ordinary significance. Even disguised as commoners, their overly similar faces made them far too obvious.

After some discussion, they agreed to have their attendant guard, Jiang He, disguise himself as a merchant and listen to the trial from the front to size up the magistrate.

Before the case began, Jiang He, posing as a merchant, had already started chatting with a local resident nearby.

According to this man, Lord Wenren was a good man—but just a good man. Too soft, no guts.

Yet someone disagreed.

He argued that the magistrate had, that very afternoon, shot a robber in the street with an arrow, showing he was no pushover.

They started arguing and ended up fighting right beside Jiang He.

Jiang He sighed helplessly and took a step to the side, when suddenly he felt a sharp gaze on him.

As a soldier, he had a sharp eye for being watched. He immediately looked toward the source, but only glimpsed Master Wenren on the dais turning his head away slightly.

Yamen runners stood on either side, wielding red-and-black water-and-fire staffs, a fearsome sight.

In a small town’s court, the runners weren't known for their refined bearing; the fiercer they looked, the better they could intimidate the crowd.

Wenren, a frail scholarly type, looked totally fragile next to this gang of towering, grim-faced men.

While gathering information, Jiang He had learned that this magistrate, Magistrate Wenren, had mixed ancestry.

But when he looked up, he caught a glimpse of a familiar ghost—along with visions of vast desert smoke, yellow dust, and bleached bones.

In his memory, that person galloped ahead of him, both hands off the reins, gripping a bowstring, aiming at a falcon in the sky.

The bow bent like a full moon; the arrow flew like a star. The falcon’s wing broke, and it dropped straight down.

The archer didn’t let up. Arrows flew one after another, chasing the falcon down—a second arrow hit it mid-drop!

Someone hadn’t seen clearly: “Did it hit? Did it hit?!”

The archer’s eyes were like cold stars: “Jiang Jiugao, fetch it for me! If there ain’t two arrows stuck in it, I’ll treat the entire Tianlang Camp to a seven-day binge!”

Someone else jeered: “Jiugao, pull out one arrow before coming back, and you’ll be the savior of the whole Tianlang Camp!”

“Get lost. That’s why I didn’t send you!” The archer turned half his face, smiling. “Our Jiugao is the most honest, isn’t he?”

At seventeen or eighteen, the most reckless and arrogant age, Jiang He still remembered the deep admiration and longing he felt for that person.

Time shifts, years pass.

Amidst the clamorous noise around him, he silently mouthed: “...*Little General*?”

That flicker of familiarity lasted only a moment.

The man on the dais soon turned his head back.

Jiang He looked the magistrate up and down, but could no longer find the shadow of that old acquaintance that had made his heart skip a beat.

His brow and expression were utterly foreign to Jiang He.

But Le Wuya, on the dais, appeared calm while a storm churned inside.

Ever since he left the army camp, the Tianlang Camp had essentially disbanded. Jiang He, thanks to his exceptional skills, was transferred to the capital and assigned to the Jinwu Guard.

Jiang He would never appear here without reason. This meant some big shot must be visiting this small county.

... And maybe even someone he knew.

At that thought, Le Wuya suddenly felt a surge of irritation.

Was he cursed to meet these people or what?

When he died, he was confused and out of it, with no friends or family to see him off.

So why, the moment he opened his eyes, did these old acquaintances show up in a line, as if to visit his grave?

He hadn't even received a single joss paper in all these years!

If they couldn’t burn paper money, at least burn a paper money tree—he could shake it himself for good luck when bored!

But soon, Le Wuya quickly adjusted his mindset.

Since they were already here, how could he make use of them?