Chapter 115 Mutual affection, what's wrong with that?

When Shen Wen found Xu Liangcai, he was already forty miles away from the capital. He had disguised himself as a traveling merchant and even changed his name to Xu Youcai.

He did indeed head south, but his purpose wasn't entirely to escape.

“I just felt that if they couldn’t catch me in two months, they definitely wouldn’t be able to catch me…” Xu Liangcai, with his hands and feet chained, knelt in the main hall of the Jingzhao Prefecture.

Feng Chao presided over the case, while Li Jin supervised it.

Before me stood a man with a standard square face, the appearance of a righteous person, thick eyebrows and big eyes, looking quite calm and handsome.

In addition, his family owns a porcelain workshop, so he can be considered a mature man with money and leisure.

"You're quite honest." Li Jin, dressed in court attire, sat beside Feng Chao, glancing at him. "'Yingge' Xin Huixin's husband has filed a lawsuit against you for killing his wife. You've heard it all. Do you have anything to say in your defense?"

Xu Liangcai looked up, his gaze sweeping across the plaque above the main hall that read "A Clear Mirror Hangs High," before landing on the faces of Feng Chao and Li Jin.

Looking at Feng Chao in his red court robes and Li Jin in his black robes with gold cranes, Xu Liangcai, who had been on the run for several months, was at a loss for words.

He never expected things to turn out this way.

After a long while, his withered lips moved slightly: "I'm innocent."

Those four words made Li Jin, who was in the hall, narrow his eyes slightly.

“I was focused on my family business. Although I often went to the music hall to listen to music and got to know Yingge, we were just ordinary friends who chatted occasionally to relieve boredom. You gentlemen cannot say that I killed her just because I knew her, can you?”

He raised his chained hand and showed it to Li Jin with dissatisfaction: "Besides, the yamen also needs to rely on evidence when handling cases. It's too arbitrary to conclude that I am the murderer of the actress based on just one lawsuit."

He spoke with such conviction that Feng Chao, his beard bristling and eyes wide, picked up the carved dragon gavel and was about to strike it down.

With his hand halfway suspended, Li Jin suddenly burst into laughter, his eyes like crescent moons, his gaze clear: "Xu Liangcai, you are the first person I have encountered in recent years who has performed such a flawed attempt to cover up his true intentions."

Li Jin leaned forward and said bluntly, "You often listen to music, and you only know each other by chance, yet you still book an inn for half a month and even go so far as to force your wife to give up her position as a concubine. You are just a friend, but your understanding of this person is probably far from that of ordinary people, isn't it?"

He gently placed the folding fan in his arms on the table, his gaze fixed on Xu Liangcai's face, and raised his hand to press down the gavel that Feng Chao was holding in the air.

He glanced at Feng Chao with a faint smile: "Not worth it."

Li Jin's words were like a bucket of cold water, poured over Xu Liangcai at midday in the sweltering summer heat, leaving him feeling utterly chilled.

He pursed his lips, seemingly unwilling to give up, feeling he could still argue a little more, so he stretched his neck and glared: "I have already severed ties with her! Now we are just ordinary friends with no relation whatsoever!"

"I am a human being, and humans make mistakes!" Xu Liangcai knelt and took two steps forward. "But to err is human, to forgive divine! I knew I had gone astray, so I listened to Madam's words and have already turned back. Do you gentlemen not even give me a chance?!"

"What mistake are you talking about?" Li Jin chuckled.

This question stumped Xu Liangcai.

He clenched his fists, paused, and said somewhat awkwardly, "I shouldn't have taken such a liking to a courtesan..."

He pursed his lips, and there were slight signs of sweat on his back.

"Love is inherently pure and graceful, imbued with sacredness. You two are in love with each other, one willing to give and the other willing to be cherished. What's wrong with that?"

As Li Jin spoke, she watched his face grow paler.

Xu Liangcai would not believe that he was the one in the wrong.

He paid with money, time, and even risked offending his wife to marry Yingge. He had given so much, and he never thought he was the one in the wrong.

In his eyes, he was not wrong; it was Yingge who was wrong.

Li Jin probed Xu Liangcai's mental state step by step, tapping his fingertips lightly on the table in front of him. He chuckled, "What did you do wrong? Tell me. The silver you gave her must have amounted to at least a thousand taels, and the days and nights you spent for her must have been measured in years. What wrong have you done? That you've squandered your fortune, fallen to this state, and had to change your name and identity before you finally realized your mistake?"

He raised his hand, pointed at Xu Liangcai's brow, and chuckled contemptuously: "Your mistake wasn't that you only realized 'actors are heartless' and that you'd become a joke until the day you killed her with your own hands?"

The lobby was unusually quiet.

Xu Liangcai stared blankly at Li Jin's fingertips, at his mocking smile, at the plaque above his head that read "A Clear Mirror Hangs High," and at the deep "Majestic" in his ear.

His breathing became faster and faster, and his inner collapse was on the verge of happening.

Li Jin smiled and released the last straw that broke the camel's back: "Your wife said that after you are caught, she would like to trouble you to be executed as soon as possible to comfort Miss Xin's soul."

A single, casual remark made Xu Liangcai almost lose his humanity, turning him terribly pale.

His back, which had been straight just moments before, suddenly hunched over as if all the air had been released.

Under everyone's gaze, his shoulders trembled: "Really...really?"

"Why would I need to lie to you?" Li Jin said with his smile unchanged.

Xu Liangcai was stunned. He looked at everyone in the hall, as if trying to discern a different answer from the face of one of them.

But things didn't go as planned; the more they investigated, the more certain they became of this cruel truth.

He knelt in the main hall of the Jingzhao Prefecture and finally burst into tears.

"Honestly, no one in the world has treated her better than me!" Xu Liangcai shouted. "For her, I spent so much money, and for her, I even considered divorcing her!"

"And then! And then this woman! She actually told me that she only wanted my money! She only cared about money!"

He cried out, kneeling there as a victim.

But everyone in front of me had an indifferent look on their face.

Once he had calmed down a bit, Li Jin picked up the indictment with both hands, her gaze sharply landing on Xu Liangcai's face from the edge of the paper: "Tell me the truth about how you killed her when she came to you that day."

Xu Liangcai lay there slumped, and it took him a long time to speak.

“Two months ago, I went to her brothel to see her. The manager of the brothel told me privately that Yingge would no longer be playing the zither there starting next month.” Xu Liangcai paused. “I asked her why, and she was silent for a while before telling me…”

“She told me that Yingge is a married woman with two children.” He choked up and his voice was trembling with sobs. “She said that Yingge was only with me for my money, and that I shouldn’t get too involved so that I would be hurt.”

"Heh." Xu Liangcai raised his head, a self-deprecating smile on his face: "I even mocked her back then, saying that if she couldn't earn money, she shouldn't blame others, but look for the reasons within herself, and shouldn't resort to such despicable means."

He took a deep breath: "I have never doubted Yingge. She is sunny, generous, and I dote on her in every way."

"How dare she treat me like this!"

As he said this, a hint of ferocity flashed across Xu Liangcai's face.