Qingyu Case: Female Minister of Dali Temple

The accompanying yamen runner had already gone to Moxiangzhai to pass on the message.

Shopkeeper Xu mistakenly thought that Xu Changshou had committed a crime in the county government office, so he waited outside the door early.

Chen Shao got off the carriage, glanced at the front of Moxiangzhai, and then at the people watching the excitement around him. After nodding slightly at them, he turned around and said, "Let's go inside and talk."

Shopkeeper Xu followed him back to Moxiangzhai in fear.

Standing in the lobby of Moxiangzhai, Chen Shao looked at the neatly displayed four treasures of the study and the scattered calligraphy and paintings, and ordered: "Let's find a place where we can talk."

Shopkeeper Xu was getting more and more nervous, but he didn't dare to ask more questions. He hurried forward and welcomed the people to the accounting office in the backyard. He carefully took out his treasured tea and added more tea to everyone. Then he stood aside with his hands clasped together, waiting to be questioned.

"I came here today because I want to ask Miss Xu a few questions," Chen Shao took two sips of tea and asked gently, "I wonder if Miss Xu can be at home?"

Didn’t Xu Changshou commit a crime?

After Manager Xu was stunned for a moment, he suddenly felt relieved and quickly replied, "She's at home, she's at home. I'll go call her over right away."

Xu Caijin went out to select goods and came back just an hour ago. After a simple bath, she leaned on the bed to rest for a while to relax. When she heard the voice of shopkeeper Xu calling her, she barely stood up and went out, saying, "Can't you wait until I get up to talk to you about anything?"

"It's not me who's looking for you," Shopkeeper Xu quickly explained, "It's Master Chen who came to our house and said he wanted to ask you something."

Xu Caijin had been away for nearly half a month. He knew that several families in the county who had encountered trouble had gone to Hongyuan County to invite Chen Shao, but he didn't know that he had already arrived. He asked a few simple questions, went back to the house to change into presentable clothes, and then followed him into the accounting office.

With a quick glance at Chen Shao and Gu Feiyan, Xu Caijin bowed to each of them according to the rules: "Caijin greets Lord Chen and Young General Gu."

"Miss Xu, there's no need to be so polite." Seeing her neither humble nor arrogant appearance and neat dress, Chen Shao's eyes flashed with admiration. "I came here today to ask you a few questions about Liu Pingkang. Please be sure to answer truthfully."

Hearing Liu Pingkang's name, Xu Caijin frowned subconsciously, and a hint of disgust flashed across his eyes.

Chen Shao saw this and suppressed the question he was about to ask, and instead asked, "I wonder how many years have Miss Xu and Liu Pingkang been married?"

Xu Caijin answered frankly: "After the new year, it will be seven years."

Chen Shao nodded and asked again: "I wonder how old Miss Xu was when she married him?"

Xu Caijin still answered frankly: "I am over twenty years old, but not yet twenty-one."

Gu Feiyan couldn't help but look at her a few more times.

Xu Caijin was also a very perceptive person. Noticing her gaze, he explained generously, "I have been with my father since I was a child. I have learned a little bit about business from him. When I was helping my father run the business, I was a bit more efficient, so I got a reputation for being fierce and intolerant. When I reached the age of 15, the people who came to propose marriage were either lazy playboys or widowers whose original wives had died. Some of them were so self-righteous that they wanted to make me a concubine. I looked down on them, so I wasted my time until I was 20 years old."

Gu Feiyan glanced at Shopkeeper Xu and said, "Then your father is quite open-minded."

In this dynasty, if a woman was still unmarried at the age of seventeen, eighteen or nineteen, she would be subject to gossip. Even if she came from a military family and led troops to fight and made countless military achievements, the old man in the family would sigh and lament that she was not a man, or that if she did not marry, no one would dare to marry her.

Xu Caijin glanced at Shopkeeper Xu and spoke calmly but confidently, "He is not open-minded, he just can't do without me. In his hands, the business of Moxiangzhai is getting worse day by day. If I hadn't taken over, it would have closed down long ago. When I took over, Moxiangzhai only had one store, and it has only been in business for twelve years, but it has grown to its current size. I want to marry into the families who came to propose marriage, and he, my mother, and those two useless brothers, I don't know where to starve to death."

Shopkeeper Xu laughed awkwardly a few times, then muttered in a weak voice, "I'm not that bad."

Xu Caijin snorted lightly and said nothing.

Shopkeeper Xu didn't dare to say anything more, for fear that if he said too much, she would really quit.

Chen Shao raised his lips slightly, and waited until the "war" between father and daughter subsided before asking, "Is this why you are looking for Liu Pingkang?"

Xu Caijin didn't say anything, which was considered as his agreement.

Chen Shao asked: "Can you tell me how you first met him, or how you decided to marry him?"

"Sun Laizi, a coffin seller on East Street, came with the matchmaker to propose marriage. After I mocked him, he took advantage of me going out to pick up goods and ambushed me on the roadside, trying to force me. Liu Pingkang happened to pass by there, and when he heard the cry for help, he beat Sun Laizi up." Xu Caijin narrated straightforwardly, "Afterwards, I gave him some silver as a thank you, but he refused to accept it, so I invited him to drink. While we were drinking, I saw that he was honest and decent, in his twenties, and had not yet married, so I asked him if he was willing to marry into my Xu family, and he agreed."

"So," Chen Shao asked tentatively, hearing her emotionless tone, "after he got married, he became dishonest and unfaithful?"

Shopkeeper Xu was unsure of what Chen Shao was thinking and wanted to help Xu Caijin. Xu Caijin calmly stopped him and said, "My Lord has already said that I must answer truthfully. I don't care what kind of person he is in the eyes of outsiders, and I will naturally not hide what kind of person he is in the Xu family."

Shopkeeper Xu glanced at Chen Shao secretly, and seeing that she showed no signs of being angry, he kindly advised her not to be too harsh, and then retreated.

Xu Caijin didn't listen to him and answered truthfully, "In the first one or two years after we got married, he was indeed very honest and dutiful. He rushed to do all the dirty and tiring work. After one or two years, I didn't pay him more no matter how hard he worked. When I needed to do hard work, he found all kinds of excuses to shirk. Later, I didn't blame him even if he didn't work hard, and even paid him. He started to stay away from home. He didn't know that people in business know all kinds of people. He thought he was hiding it well, but he didn't know that most of his romantic affairs could not be hidden from my eyes and ears. However, although I knew it, I didn't stop it. There were too many people watching me, or rather, watching Mo Xiang Zhai and my business skills. I needed a fool like him who had some tricks to block these people for me."

Chen Shao asked curiously, "How much do you give him every month?"

Xu Caijin said, "One ounce of silver."

After a pause, he added, "This little bit of silver plus his monthly salary as a teacher at Lantai Academy is all for his own pocket money. He eats at home and doesn't have to spend any money on it. As for clothes and accessories, the housekeeper at home also buys them for him every season."

Gu Feiyan looked at Chen Shao: "So, he is not short of money."

That may not be the case. Chen Shao asked: "Besides finding other women outside, does he have any other bad habits, such as gambling?"

"I think so. I didn't ask much about it." Xu Caijin said indifferently.

"I want to ask Miss Xu a few questions alone," Chen Shao said to Shopkeeper Xu, seeing that she really didn't care about Liu Pingkang, "Could Shopkeeper Xu please step aside for a moment?"

After looking at Xu Caijin, Shopkeeper Xu retreated to the door worriedly and closed it tactfully.

The light in the room dimmed instantly.

Xu Caijin calmly took a half step back, avoiding the cold light coming through the half-open window. Without waiting for Chen Shao to speak, he asked, "Did he commit a crime?"

As soon as he finished speaking, his pupils shrank again and he asked, "Is he the murderer of those cases?"

Chen Shao did not answer. He motioned for Gu Feiyan to take out Zhang Qiaoniang's two bellybands and give them to her. Then he asked, "Take a good look at these two pieces of clothing. Are they yours?"

Xu Caijin was indeed not an ordinary person. When she saw the bellyband, she did not blush or feel shy. She walked to the light openly, looked at it carefully over and over again, and said, "Yes. I ordered it at the Color Silk Shop at the beginning of the year. The Color Silk Shop should still have the record of my order at that time."

"I have sent people to Caisifang to look for those records." Chen Shao said frankly, and then asked, "Since you know most of his romantic affairs, do you know about his affair with Zhang Qiaoniang, the embroiderer of Jinsefang?"

"The embroiderer who died in Jinsefang?" He is really the murderer! Xu Caijin sneered, took another look at the bellyband in his hand, and denied it, "I haven't heard of this."

"Then please write down for me the names and addresses of the women involved in other romantic affairs that you know of," Chen Shao ordered.

After she finished writing, Chen Shao took it, looked at it for a few seconds, and then handed it to Gu Feiyan. After Gu Feiyan arranged for someone to follow the list to investigate, she continued to ask: "Which room does Liu Pingkang live in? Can you take us to see it?"

"Okay." Thinking that they might still need the bellyband as evidence, Xu Caijin returned the bellyband to Gu Feiyan, then turned around and took them to Liu Pingkang's room.

Liu Pingkang and Xu Caijin lived in the same yard.

Xu Caijin lived in the main house.

Liu Pingkang lived in the east wing.

The east wing is a three-bedroom layout, with a small hall, a side hall, and a bedroom. The small hall is empty, with only a row of long spears, axes, bows and arrows, iron locks and other weapons on the north wall. The side hall was converted into a study. There are not many books, and most of them are physical exercises and military books. The bedroom is also simple, with a bed, a wardrobe, a table, and a chair.

Whether it is the small hall, the side hall, or the bedroom, everything is kept clean and tidy.

After Chen Shao walked around inside and outside, he asked Xu Caijin: "Was this room cleaned by the servants or did he clean it himself?"

Xu Caijin said, "He packed it up himself. He said that his things were placed in fixed positions and no one was allowed to come in and mess around."

Chen Shao returned to the side hall.

The desk was clean and empty.

Chen Shao walked straight to the bookshelf, picked up a book at random, flipped through a few pages, and then changed to another book.

I read through all the books but found nothing. However, judging from the notes in the books, Liu Pingkang's handwriting was obviously different from Jin Zhiyuan's.

Chen Shao was not discouraged.

He took a few steps back and glanced around. He accidentally saw a wooden box next to the chair behind the desk, in the backlit corner. After walking around the desk and confirming that it was a wooden box, Chen Shao opened it casually.

found it.

The wooden box contains the notes that Jin Zhiyuan left behind while he was practicing martial arts and studying the Four Books and Five Classics.

Besides.

There is also all the evidence that Liu Pingkang imitated his handwriting: the whole process from not similar at all to being 70% or 80% similar.

Gu Feiyan looked at the pages of calligraphy practice papers laid out and said in amazement, "Sure enough, they are so arrogant. They put such glaring evidence here so openly without hiding it at all."

Chen Shao said with great understanding: "First, the most dangerous place is also the safest place. Second, his handwriting is very different from Jin Zhiyuan's. If he wants to imitate him so that people can't see the difference, he needs a long time and a lot of practice. He has to carry a lot of paper with him every day. Not to mention us, Miss Xu will be the first to suspect him."

Gu Feiyan nodded: "That's right."

After asking her to help organize the calligraphy papers, Chen Shao stepped out, searched every corner of the side hall, and then went to the small hall.

Standing in front of the racks in the small hall where various weapons were placed, Chen Shao asked Xu Caijin who followed him out, "Liu Pingkang practices close combat, and he's left-handed?"

Xu Caijin nodded: "His left hand is more flexible than his right hand, but in front of outsiders, he usually uses his right hand."

Chen Shao's eyes swept across the weapons on the shelf and slowly settled on a stick made of white wax rod that was as high as his eyebrows.

Taking out the stick, looking at the dark red old bloodstains on the stick, Chen Shao tried to ask: "When did this stick get these bloodstains? Do you know?"

Xu Caijin shook his head.

Ever since she heard that he was looking for a woman outside and angrily sent him to live in the east wing, she has not paid any attention to anything about him.

Chen Shao didn't hold much hope, so he took the stick, searched around again, and then went back into the bedroom.

The stick, one of the murder weapons, was found.

Where is the dagger?

There is no wardrobe.

There was none on the bed either.

Under the bed...

"General," the elite soldier sent by Gu Feiyan to test Liu Pingkang walked into the house quickly and reported respectfully at the door of the side hall, "It turns out that Liu Pingkang is indeed left-handed."

Gu Feiyan asked without any surprise: "Where is the person? Has he been caught?"

The elite soldiers said, "They have been taken back to the county government office."

Chen Shao came out of the bedroom: "Was the weapon he used a dagger?"

The elite soldiers said yes again.

Chen Shao glanced around again and said, "No need to search anymore. Take the evidence back."

Turning back, he said to Xu Caijin, "We'd also like to trouble Miss Xu to go to the county government office with us."

Xu Caijin should be good.

Liu Pingkang was forced to kneel in the lobby.

Gu Feiyan's elite soldiers attacked Liu Pingkang too hard. There was blood at the corner of his mouth and his clothes were torn in several places. He looked quite embarrassed.

Hearing footsteps, Liu Pingkang turned around and saw Xu Caijin following closely behind Chen Shao and Gu Feiyan. The words he was about to say to protest his injustice were instantly choked in his throat.

When he saw the wooden box carried by the elite soldiers, his face instantly turned pale.