Chapter 5 Strange! Xie Jiaoyue actually has evidence! Strange! Xie Jiao...

This...this is really a mismatch. They're not even as good as traveling merchants. At least traveling merchants have some money from their business.

It's not just a difference in wealth and social status, but also a difference in talent.

Although the Xie family didn't think highly of Xie Jiaoyue's talent for cultivation due to her physical constitution, it depended on who she was compared to. Everyone in this area knew that Chu Xingjin had no affinity for spiritual energy and extremely poor talent.

For someone like that to elope, it would be a disgrace to the Xie family if word got out.

The third aunt nudged her husband: "I heard that our family has a marriage agreement with the Chu family?"

"That's ancient history, I remember that thing was already canceled." Third Uncle also has a daughter, and when he put himself in her shoes, his expression immediately turned as if he had eaten a pound of bitter melon. "The Chu family nowadays, tsk, who would want their son-in-law to be a waiter with no talent? If my daughter insists on marrying someone like that, I'll break her legs."

It's shameful to have someone marry into your family, let alone to become someone else's wife.

Countless eyes were fixed on Chu Xingjin, making him feel extremely uncomfortable.

He pieced together the whole story from the few words these people spoke. It turned out that a young lady, on a whim, didn't want to stay obediently at home, so she took the marriage contract arranged by her ancestors and planned to elope with him.

Those who came to watch the spectacle later probably thought he was just a waiter and not good enough for the young lady.

"You bunch of snobbish bastards, you don't deserve to dine at Fulai Restaurant, you're just sullying this place." After uttering these harsh words, Chu Xingjin glared angrily at the person in front of him.

Despite being rebuffed, Xie Yuehua smiled.

"The witnesses are right here, and you still say you didn't elope?" He pointed to a bag of spirit stones on the table. "You even bought this restaurant for that pretty boy! Xie Jiaoyue, the Xie family gave you life and raised you, and this is how you use the Xie family's spirit stones?"

Xie Jiaoyue was really at a loss. If she denied it, she was afraid the system would go crazy. But she didn't want to admit it either.

A woman who can argue never bothers to prove herself.

"I'm here on a business trip, and also to check on the son of an old friend." She gave Hua Yi a wronged look.

Hua Yi knew it was her turn to perform: "That's right, that's right. Miss and I came to Fucheng together. Look at this package I have, I only brought this little bit of stuff. How could we possibly have eloped?"

She patted her small bag. Since people who haven't cultivated can't use storage artifacts, she carried very little with her.

"Miss and I came to Fucheng for an inspection."

Xie Yuehua instinctively wanted to refute, Xie Jiaoyue was talking nonsense, Hua Yi did not come to Fucheng with Xie Jiaoyue at all, the one who came to Fucheng with Xie Jiaoyue was clearly...

It's Dao Yi.

The words were on the tip of my tongue, but I suddenly couldn't get them out.

He couldn't very well reveal that he had sent someone to help Xie Jiaoyue "elope," because that would be considered a serious crime against a fellow disciple, the most severe offense under the family rules.

Why did a little maid suddenly appear and ruin his plans?

Xie Yuehua stared at Hua Yi with a slightly gloomy gaze. She saw that the little maid was not afraid at all, but instead puffed out her chest.

Even if a witness was found on the spot, Xie Jiaoyue definitely wouldn't have any physical evidence.

Witness testimony alone is not conclusive evidence; he still has a chance.

Xie Yuehua's actions were clearly not driven by a single objective. Convicting Xie Jiaoyue directly would be ideal, but if that goal couldn't be achieved, a lesser offense wouldn't be unacceptable.

With Gong Shirao around, he never thought he could actually achieve his best goal: to drive Xie Jiaoyue out of the family in one fell swoop.

The next best goal is, if it is impossible to truly convict Xie Jiaoyue, then at least to make the family suspect Xie Jiaoyue and to label her as someone who has allegedly eloped.

Xie Yuehua said, "Cousin, this is a maid in your courtyard, so naturally she will say whatever you say." Even at this moment, he did not forget to play the role of a brother who cares about his sister. "You should confess your sins as soon as possible. I think that when the time comes, the elders will forgive you this time because of your past sensible and well-behaved nature."

That statement is both right and wrong.

In the original storyline, Xie Jiaoyue's "willfulness" was indeed forgiven. Unlike other people who eloped, she was not directly expelled from the family and severed ties with them.

But the price was that this incident, like a thorn, forever nailed her to the pillar of shame in her family.

That's so boring.

"What do you mean by this, cousin? I didn't say that I only have this one piece of evidence."

Xie Yuehua: "Huh?"

Hua Yi continued her enthusiastic performance: "That's right, that's right! My young lady informed the First Madam before leaving, how can it be considered an elopement? First Madam, don't you agree?"

What is reporting? Reporting means informing others of all your travel plans one by one, or simply giving them a brief notification.

Gong Shirao seemed to remember something, and her expression momentarily went out of control, so she nodded stiffly.

Xie Jiaoyue pointed her thumb at herself, looking proud: "I am true to my word, the number one obedient daughter of the Xie family."

This was the first system vulnerability she found.

The system only told her not to alert Gong Shi Rao at the time, it didn't say that Gong Shi Rao couldn't find out later.

She deliberately left a note to Gong Shirao, so that as long as Gong Shirao knew, her actions could not be considered an elopement.

This left Xie Yuehua, who had once had a heart-to-heart talk with Xie Jiaoyue under the moonlight, speechless.

Is there no justice in this world? We agreed to elope, and we agreed not to disturb the First Madam, so how come someone still reported it to us!

Xie Yuehua didn't believe it; he thought Gong Shirao and Xie Jiaoyue were conning him.

After all, Xie Jiaoyue was not only always stupid, but she also rarely dared to speak to Gong Shirao, and never told Gong Shirao when something happened.

Most importantly, wasn't it because Xie Jiaoyue complained to him that she wanted to stay away from Gong Shirao that he came up with this idea for Xie Jiaoyue?

So how could Xie Jiaoyue have told Gong Shirao in advance? She must have realized things were going badly, so she just made up an excuse to try and get through this.

"You say you reported it, but that's not enough. Do you have any proof?"

He glanced at the second wife, then walked to her side to bolster his courage: "Aunt, you are the acting patriarch of the Xie family. Even if this is your own daughter, you cannot protect her. If we don't teach her a lesson for such a serious matter as eloping, who knows what kind of trouble she will cause in the future?"

The second wife patted Xie Yuehua's hand: "Sister-in-law, we are all watching here. Even if you are the widow of the eldest brother, if you fabricate evidence in front of everyone, we will have to report to the elders and deal with it according to family law."

Xie Yuehua deliberately invited several elders over for this reason.

He smiled and said, "So, cousin, you might as well admit your mistake sooner rather than later, so you can try to get leniency."

Xie Jiaoyue blinked her innocent eyes, her raven-feather-like eyelashes fluttering: "But cousin, I do have proof."

She jogged forward a couple of steps, grabbed Gong Shirao's hand, and shook it: "Mother, did you take that note?"

Her daughter rarely acted coquettishly towards her, and as she was rocked back and forth like this, Gong Shirao's anger suddenly subsided a little.

She placed her hand on her waist and reached for the storage bag hanging there. After rummaging through it for a while, she actually found a note in full view of everyone.

It was those two lines written by Xie Jiaoyue.

Xie Yuehua looked at the note and found it laughable: "If you just throw any forged note at me and call it evidence, I won't accept it."

The writing on it looks strange, like a child's handwriting, and it's impossible that it could have been written by his good cousin.

Xie Jiaoyue wasn't entirely unconcerned, but what worried her wasn't the handwriting, but the content of the note. The two sentences were ambiguous and vague, making them less than perfect as evidence.

But if everyone focuses on whether the handwriting is genuine or not, then no one will care about the content.

Xie Jiaoyue deliberately said, "How can you be so sure that I didn't write this yesterday?"

The emphasis is placed on "I" and "yesterday".

Xie Yuehua couldn't wait to voice his doubts. Pointing at the words from two seats away, he said, "This isn't my cousin's handwriting at all! Cousin, we've grown up together since we were little. You don't think I don't even recognize your handwriting, do you?"

He continued with a cold laugh: "Even if we assume this is your handwriting, who knows if you wrote it a long time ago and are now using it as a shield?"

Xie Jiaoyue said, "Cousin, don't smear my reputation."

Xie Yuehua: "Fine, fine, you won't shed a tear until you see the coffin, huh? Then cousin, don't blame your cousin for not giving you face."

As he spoke, he pulled a palm-sized disc from his bag.

He was fully prepared for this day.

Xie Yuehua held up the plate: "Cousin, you don't not recognize this, do you?"

As if afraid that Xie Jiaoyue wouldn't recognize it, Xie Yuehua even went out of her way to explain the function of this disk.

The writing leaves a trace; this disc is called the Origin Tracing Disc, specifically used to distinguish the handwriting of different people and to roughly determine when the writing was done. However, unlike the 21st century, this is a world of cultivation, so naturally it relies on spiritual energy.

Even if one has not yet embarked on the path of immortality, every human being is born with spiritual energy, and each person's spiritual energy is different. When this energy is applied to the tip of a pen, the spiritual energy that is absorbed into the writing will naturally be different as well. As time goes by, the intensity of the spiritual energy remaining on the writing will also vary.

Upon learning that this thing relied on spiritual energy, Xie Jiaoyue almost couldn't control her expression and nearly burst out laughing.

She had guessed before that since everyone was cultivating immortality, this world probably wouldn't use physical methods to determine the ownership of handwriting, and now it turned out to be just as she thought.

The body is still the same body, so the spiritual energy is naturally the same.

So it's truly heartbreaking that even Heaven couldn't bear to see her burdened with such an unfounded accusation.

Xie Jiaoyue controlled her expression and feigned panic: "Cousin, don't you trust me at all? Even if you don't trust me, don't you trust my mother too?"

Xie Yuehua didn't dare look at Gong Shirao. He was afraid of the First Madam because she was so fierce. But today was an opportunity he had painstakingly planned for many days, and he would not back down because of a little fear in his heart.

“Cousin, it’s not that your cousin doesn’t want to believe you, but the evidence is irrefutable, and there’s no way your cousin can cover it up for you.”

Xie Jiaoyue seemed genuinely terrified: "Cousin, no..." Then, as if she had nothing to lose, she said, "What if that handwriting really is mine, cousin? What will you do then?"

Xie Yuehua hadn't actually considered this situation. He felt he was very well prepared today and had great confidence in his judgment.

So he confidently offered a very embarrassing solution: "Then the older cousin will apologize to his younger cousin in front of the whole clan."

"That's all?"

Seeing Xie Jiaoyue's panicked appearance, Xie Yuehua felt confident of victory: "I have a gift to offer."

Xie Jiaoyue nodded reluctantly: "Although my cousin's family is not wealthy, I will accept it because of his sincerity."

Xie Yuehua was both angry and furious at being called poor but unable to refute it. He could only console himself that Xie Jiaoyue was nothing more than a grasshopper in autumn, and saying anything would just be showing off.

He's about to start testing her to see how long Xie Jiaoyue can keep up her act.

The Origin Tracing Disc is a spiritual artifact, and Xie Yuehua has not yet begun cultivation, so he is naturally unable to activate it. To be fair, he did not give the Origin Tracing Disc to the Second Madam, but instead gave it to the Third Madam and her husband.

This would make him appear more neutral and eliminate the possibility of Xie Jiaoyue speaking ill of him.

My third uncle took the traceability disc, found a table and placed it in the center, and then placed the traceability disc on it.

Xie Jiaoyue stared intently at the Third Master's movements, her hands flying as she tapped left and right on the Origin Tracing Disc. The small dots on the disc lit up one by one, presumably to detect the spiritual energy in the writing.

Interesting, cultivating immortality, it's truly extremely interesting.

Xie Yuehua stared intently at the tracing disk. After the writing was placed, he said eagerly, "Cousin, place your finger on the east side of the tracing disk."

Xie Jiaoyue placed her finger on it.

In an instant, all the lights disappeared.

Did it fail?