Forced to be a concubine, I went to my husband's place to become a wealthy merchant

As expected, the next day, Ye Xi could hear the commotion outside the mansion. The soldiers seemed to be checking every house. In the afternoon, he heard commotion in the front yard. It seemed that the soldiers came to the door and asked everyone to gather in the front yard to cooperate with the search. It was the first time that Ye Xi encountered such a scene. He did not expect that the government would really enter the houses to search without scruples. Ye Xi really experienced what power is supreme.

But she was puzzled as to why they had to enter the homes of ordinary people to search for the assassinated Minister of War. Shouldn't they usually search in the suburbs or the place where he was assassinated? Could it be that the Minister of War had to hide in ordinary people's homes? But soon, the other party answered her question. It turned out that they were not searching for the Minister of War, but the assassin. She suddenly realized that the information she heard in the inn was wrong. The other party probably talked about searching for the assassin, and she misunderstood because she heard half of it and missed the other half.

But this gave her another piece of information, that is, the Minister of War was safe and sound, and it was even he who issued the search order. When she thought that the so-called assassin might be hiding in the homes of ordinary people, she broke out in a cold sweat. Ye Xi did not expect that the so-called search was still very careful. The leader of the soldiers took the book brought from the Ministry of Households and verified the identities of the heads of households and their families one by one. Then, he took the book of monthly wages that the servants of the Pei Mansion had to receive and counted the number of servants. It can be said that he must find out the identity of everyone before he stopped. It turns out that even in the dynasties where information was not well developed, there were outrageous and precise investigation methods.

After the soldiers searched for several rounds and found nothing unusual, the leader said to Pei's father: "Try not to go out in the near future. If you find any strange or suspicious people in or around the mansion, report it immediately. Anyone who helps to hide will be killed!" After that, he led the soldiers to withdraw from Pei's mansion.

The nervous crowd finally breathed a sigh of relief, but the sharp tone and murderous intent of the leader's word "behead" still made everyone nervous.

The atmosphere of killing lasted for a month, and it was unknown whether the assassin was found. Finally, the soldiers withdrew from Hangzhou, and Hangzhou returned to its former bustle. Every household was tortured by the torment of the month, and left their homes one after another. Pei Zhu went to Suzhou to find a house and handle household registration the day after the lockdown was lifted.

During this time, Ye Xi was also busy packing her bags, visiting her mother's house several times, and also telling her parents and brother about her upcoming move to Suzhou. Today was sunny, and when Ye Xi was tidying up the bed curtains, she found a lot of dust on them. She looked at the direction of the dust, then looked up at the floor of the small attic, and guessed that the dust on it had fallen onto the bed curtains through the cracks in the boards. She thought that no one usually went up to the small attic, so it should not be possible that the dust would fall onto the bed curtains. Could it be that Pei Lin had someone go up there recently without telling her? This made Ye Xi unhappy, but it was just her personal guess. She quickly asked Chun Tao to cover the bed with a thin sheet, and then took the candlestick to the attic. In order to avoid more dust falling, Ye Xi went up alone.

Normally, people were not allowed to go up to the attic, so the servants only cleaned up to the stairs, and the steps on the attic were not within the scope of cleaning. When Ye Xi reached the end of the stairs, she found footprints on the steps. She bent down and took the candlestick to observe it closely, and thought that it should be a man's footprint.