Chapter 54 Jin Jingting

The two members of the Meng family felt as if they had been slapped in the face. They didn't understand why the county lord, who had just been asking them about the situation, suddenly turned against them.

Their faces flushed and they dared not say a word, but Qian Deng had already called the guards outside and took them out.

Jin Baoyi was left in the hall. Qiandeng sat with him in silence for a long time and asked about Jin Baoyi's funeral arrangements.

Jin Baoyi told her that construction had begun on Jintang's tomb. Although he couldn't use the ancestral tomb because he was unmarried and childless, they had found a sunny hill nearby. Every morning, the sun would shine on the tomb. The ground was dry and warm, and it faced his and his first wife's graves from afar. A hundred years later, their family would be together and wouldn't be lonely.

Qiandeng nodded silently, then remembered something: "Jintang mentioned to me before he died that he went to visit his seventh uncle's grave a while ago and found it damaged by rain. I heard that he was also not buried in the ancestral tomb because he had no descendants. Now that the clan has arranged a ghost marriage for him and adopted a child, can the grave be moved back to the ancestral cemetery?"

But Jintang himself would never be able to rebury his seventh uncle.

Jin Baoyi agreed, "Thank you, County Lady, for taking Sanlang's affairs to heart. I will immediately return to discuss this matter with the clan and find an auspicious day to retrieve my seventh brother's bones and bring them back. Alas... Speaking of which, Shang Zhongcheng also inquired about this matter before. Although my seventh brother died young, he still has relatives and friends who care about him..."

Shang Zhongcheng is Shang Luo's father Shang Nanliu. After he was transferred back to the capital, he has now been promoted to Zhongcheng Yushi.

"So he also knows Uncle Seventh of Jintang?" Qiandeng asked casually, and suddenly a thought flashed through his mind, and he immediately let out a low "Ah".

Suddenly, the jade pendant that Meng Lanxi had hidden and the one left by Madam Meng appeared before her eyes. She also remembered the jade pendant that had caused so much trouble for Jintang.

She had felt familiar with the carving lines of the three jade pendants, but she had no idea where they came from.

Now that I think about it, the carving technique is exactly the same as the cinnabar bird pendant that Shang Nanliu personally carved for his son Shangluo.

Then, these three jade pendants must have been cut from the beautiful jade that was left behind by the Uighurs, taken away by Meng Changshan, and then appeared on the body of the Jin family who helped transport grain in Huangsha Valley.

Jin Baoyi didn't know why she suddenly looked so surprised. Just as he was about to nod "yes", Qian Deng asked again, "During the battle in Huangsha Valley, was he the one who helped transport the grain?"

"How did the county lady know?" Jin Baoyi wasn't sure. "These past few days, at the county lady's request, I've checked all the caravan routes of the Jin family back then. But caravans always seek profit and avoid harm. With the war imminent, the horse and camel caravans traveling northwest either stopped trading or changed their routes. No one approached the Yellow Sand Valley. Later, after asking all the elderly merchants, I discovered that when our seventh brother was sent off to study, he likely skipped school and traveled northwest without telling us."

"Was it eighteen years ago?"

"Yes, my seventh brother was fifteen or sixteen at the time, at the peak of his mischievous and rebellious nature. But he stayed quietly in the academy for over six months, studying diligently during the holidays. After returning, he had become much more composed and mature, and we all praised him for his academic success. But today, when I was reviewing the merchant accounts from eighteen years ago, I discovered that a strange young man named Quan Qi had inexplicably joined one of the caravans. He had even disappeared for several days with a dozen other people while on a trade trip across the desert. The caravan had wasted their time, stationed there, and waited for his return before continuing on."

Jin Baoyi was taking care of his son's funeral while investigating old events. He was obviously exhausted and his voice was hoarse and weak.

"It's just that the caravan members have been separated frequently, and the old leader has passed away. I'm currently looking for someone in the caravan who knows the situation. Please wait a few more days, and you should have definite news."

Qian Deng actually already had the answer in his heart, so he just asked, "Is your seventh brother, Jin Tang's seventh uncle, called Jin Jingting?"

"Yes, my seventh brother's name is Baojing, and his courtesy name is Jingting."

"So..." Qian Deng asked slowly, "The reason the clan didn't agree with him breaking off the engagement with Lan Xirong and marrying someone else was because the woman he loved was a widow five or six years older than him, and she had an eight-year-old son?"

"That's right. Did Sanlang mention it to the county lady? But how did he find out?" Jin Baoyi recalled the past, as if it were a lifetime ago. "I remember about ten years ago, when I had just returned from abroad, I heard that the clan had no choice but to agree to let my seventh brother marry a widow. But because the woman refused to send the child back to her husband's family, my seventh brother was punished by kneeling in the ancestral hall for two days and nights. In the end, they forced the clan to accept him and the widow, but he wanted to cut off his current property and move to the south to manage clan affairs. The clan didn't see him and didn't care, so they didn't care. Sanlang was young at the time and felt sorry for his seventh uncle. He secretly brought him cakes to eat, but he was caught and also knelt in the ancestral hall to be punished..."

Jin Baoyi hurried to the ancestral hall, but found that only his son Jin Tang was kneeling there, and the culprit Jin Jingting had disappeared long ago.

"Dad, Uncle Qi said he's taking his sweetheart to the south!" The young Jin Tang's chubby face was full of excitement. He showed him a jade pendant in his hand. "Because I'm the only one in the family who helps him, he gave this to me. He said it was the rest of his token of love, and he asked the third place winner to carve it himself!"

Upon hearing this, the whole family was furious. They confiscated the jade pendant and threw it into the deepest part of the warehouse to prevent it from corrupting the children.

However, no one expected that at dawn the next day, a group of women who had gotten up early to wash clothes saw Jin Jingting riding alone and falling off the bridge by the high bridge outside the town. His body hit the rocks below, his head was broken and bleeding, and he died on the spot.

After receiving the good news, he drank and got drunk. After waking up, he immediately rode his horse to meet the girl. Unexpectedly, at the moment of greatest joy, he fell off the bridge and died with broken bones and ligaments.

The old man of the Jin family was heartbroken after losing his young son.

After that, no one in the Jin family mentioned this matter, so as not to upset the old man. If the county lady hadn't suddenly brought it up today, he would have long forgotten this old incident from more than ten years ago.

Qiandeng let out a sigh of relief.

All the inside stories and clues of this case, the invisible reasons behind it, finally emerged one by one, weaving everything into a tightly connected silk web.

All kinds of causes and effects will have their own retribution.

"Since that's the case..." Qian Deng pondered and instructed Jin Baoyi, "There's no time to lose. Since Jin Jingting's tomb shows signs of being washed away, we should relocate it as soon as possible to prevent the remains from being damaged by the rain. Also, I actually have something I want to discuss with your family. When you return, please report this to the clan elders. Do me a favor..."

Jin Baoyi was confused and surprised when he heard her request, but since the county lady had given the order, he naturally nodded in agreement.

After he left, Qiandeng sat alone in the flower hall for a while, then stood up, walked to Jin Tuantuan, and fed it two cherries.

Jin Tuan Tuan cheered and jumped for joy. After pecking the cherries, he flapped his wings and began to speak again: "Even if the county lady is disfigured, she is still a fairy. She is not a she-devil, not a she-devil... I saw it secretly!"

Qiandeng was stunned, vaguely remembering that these were the words that Jin Tuantuan had said when Jin Tang thanked her for saving his life on the day of the selection last year.

At that time, Jintang's face flushed, and he tried to cover its mouth in a panic, in order to cover up the following sentence:

He stole a glimpse of her appearance.

It turned out that they met by chance outside the city during the Qingming Festival that year. In the heavy rain and cold spring weather, she gave him an umbrella and a hand warmer through the window while he secretly saw her appearance through the gap in the curtain.

So he tried his best to pursue her and finally squeezed into the list of candidates for her fiancé.

Even if he was targeted, framed, and assassinated, he remained heartless and remained loyal until his death.

She stood in front of the jumping birds, stood under the corridor in early summer, stood in the faint twilight, thinking about the lives of Jintang, Meng Lanxi, and Ling Tianshui, and was suddenly overwhelmed with sadness that could not be contained.

Could the person who killed Jin Tang really be the one she guessed...

She pondered in her heart, and unconsciously raised her fingertips to wipe the almost invisible layer of pine pollen on the windowsill.

Pine pollen... Someone in Beijing recently impersonated Meng Yongshun and wrote this letter.

The man knew that Meng Yongshun would never come back because he had left a blood letter accusing the Princess of Lingling in the canal and turned into a disfigured corpse.

And who that person is, who can and will do it, she thought in her heart, it should be clear now.

However, as she stared at the pollen on her fingertips, a light suddenly flashed in her mind.

Her body trembled involuntarily, and before her brain could figure out the connection, she had already rushed out of the hall, ran into the study, and locked the door.

With trembling hands, she unlocked the cabinet and grabbed the letter inside - the same one she had found on Zhuangzi.

Holding tightly the letter that was discovered by mistake only a long time later, she took a deep breath to calm herself down, took out the letter from Uncle Wang, and stacked all the letters on a single sheet of paper, leaving only the signature exposed.

The past between the Prince of Changhua and Kucha was well known. Although her grandfather and the uncle were uncle and nephew, the Prince of Changhua had fled the country and later became a prince of the Tang Dynasty. Therefore, during his lifetime, all correspondence between the two sides was official, and the uncle's signature was only the seal of the Northern King of Kucha.

But after her father and grandfather passed away three years ago, because she and her mother were women and had no official positions in the court, the people of Kucha no longer discussed public matters with them, but only private matters.

Although Uncle Wang's letters to the mother and daughter during the New Year were mostly perfunctory greetings, the signature at the end was no longer a seal, but the handwritten words "King of the North of Kucha".

Only the last letter, which she had just found in the drawer of Zhuangzi's water pavilion and discussed marriage with the mother and daughter, had similar handwriting and tone, but was signed with a seal that had never been used on the mother and daughter.

Outsiders only knew that the King of Changhua and the royal family of Kucha were not on good terms, so all the correspondence was stamped with official seals. However, no one knew that after there were no more state affairs between them, they still had family affairs, and they were no different from other families in the Tang Dynasty.

Therefore, this letter should definitely not have been written by Uncle Wang.

He knew very well that Kucha had no power to influence the Tang Dynasty princess whose husband had been chosen by the court, and that the only thing he could rely on was friendship. So why would he go against the trend and use the Northern King's seal that had not been used for a long time?