Horse Bandit Officer (II)
Mu You was very angry after being hit, but when he turned around to look at the eaves, there was no trace of anyone.
"Young Master, calm down."
At this time, a strange voice came from behind them. This person's voice was heavier than Chu Mo's.
A few people turned their heads and looked carefully. The person walking towards them was a man in cloth.
Looking a little closer, one could see that the end of the man's eyebrow was cut off by a scar. Even though he came with a graceful smile, the upturned corners of his eyes could not suppress the depression contained in his thick eyebrows.
"They are just a few naughty kids. If they didn't hurt the young master, please be magnanimous and forgive them." He walked closer with a bright smile.
"Brother Chu, long time no see." Then, the man bowed to Chu Mo.
Chu Mo naturally returned the greeting appropriately.
Judging from the situation, the person in front of him should be Tong Huanwuta.
But no matter what, taking a look at his current appearance - dressed in coarse cloth, laughing heartily, walking briskly, he doesn't look like a noble man, and there is no sign of him being an official at all. He looks more like a country bumpkin.
"These two are..." Tong Huan stood up and turned to Xiao Lin and Mu You who were beside Chu Mo.
Mu You quickly answered, "I am his nephew, and she is his niece."
But who would have thought that Tong Huan would be surprised after hearing this, and turned to look at Chu Mo with a frown.
Then, Chu Mo spoke hesitantly: "They are my newly recruited servants."
Chu Mo's words made Mu You very unhappy, but Tong Huan brought the few people into the yard only after he said this.
There were few servants in the yard, and it really didn't look like a county magistrate's residence.
Then, he invited several people to live in several rooms, and the arrangements were quite appropriate.
In a small room on the west side, Mu You and Xiao Lin lived in the same room, but they had separate beds.
As they unpacked their bags and took out their clothes to sort them out, they began to complain: "We are not his servants. He always says this to others. It's really disrespectful to us."
Xiao Lin was more open-minded and consoled her, "Well, we're just living under someone else's roof here. It's just a status. Why are you always so entangled?"
"If you say so..."
Before Mu You finished speaking, there was a knock on the door of the wing room. The two looked at each other, and finally Mu You raised his voice and asked, "Who is it?"
"It's me." A familiar voice sounded outside the door.
But the two still couldn't identify the owner of the voice, so they could only move forward carefully and open the wooden door.
When the wooden door opened, he realized that the person in front of him was Tong Huan.
He still smiled and asked, "Can I come in and talk to you?"
Mu You grabbed the door with both hands, was stunned for a moment, then stammered in agreement and led her into the room.
Tong Huan calmly straightened his clothes, looked up at Xiao Lin and Mu You, and then spoke: "Mu You? Xiao Lin? Who are you?"
These words shocked the two men. Suddenly, their minds were in a mess, and their words were stuck in their throats, not knowing how to answer.
"What do you mean, sir? Didn't Boss Chu just say that we are his servants?"
"But you told me otherwise at the beginning." Tong Huan asked, supporting his head with his left hand and tapping the table with the tip of his right index finger. "You said you were his nephew and niece?"
"Sir, we are just Boss Chu's servants. If you don't trust us, how can you not trust Boss Chu? Do you really think that children of our age can threaten Boss Chu?" Mu You bent down and explained to Tong Huan.
"No." Tong Huan suddenly stopped tapping his fingers on the table. "Or let me ask this another way. Where are you from?"
These words made the two of them break out in cold sweats. Xiao Lin's heart couldn't help but beat violently, as if it was going to burst through his chest and jump out.
In addition, her eyes were dull for a moment, her cheeks were red, and her breathing was labored.
How could he know that they were from another world? They were discovered just by saying something wrong?
Xiao Lin and Mu You were so frightened that they couldn't breathe, their legs were shaking, and they said nothing in front of Tong Huan.
Tong Huan noticed the two men acting strangely, looked them over, and sneered, "Why are you so flustered? I just felt you two weren't from Tianling, so I was just asking."
"How do you know we are not from Tianling?"
"Hehe..." Tong Huan snorted again, "Just because you two said you were Brother Chu's relatives, I know you are not from Tianling."
Xiao Lin and Mu You were both puzzled and looked into Tong Huan's eyes with frowns.
"It seems that you are indeed not from Tianling, because no one from Tianling would claim to be Brother Chu's family."
"Why?"
Tong Huan became interested when he heard the word "why".
He raised his eyebrows and looked at Xiao Lin with interest. He asked with a smile, "I believe you must have heard of Brother Chu during your time with him. How famous is he?"
Mu You hesitated for a moment and nodded.
"That's it. He's so famous, and everyone knows that his family was slaughtered by a beast ten years ago."
Suddenly, Xiao Lin and Mu You's thoughts were drawn out, and the blows one after another made it difficult for them to recover.
"So, you two claim to be his nephews and nieces. Isn't that ridiculous?" Tong Huan said as he pulled out a gleaming silver dagger from his waist and held it behind his back. "I don't know what your intentions are for staying by his side, but since Brother Chu has you two by his side, I trust him. If I find out you two have second thoughts about him, you should know that I used to be a bandit."
With a "swish", Tong Huan swung his arm and thrust the dagger straight into the tabletop beside him, looking horrible.
Xiao Lin and Mu You naturally didn't dare to breathe.
Tong Huan's demonstration made the two men extremely frightened. Although they were doubtful about what he said, they did not dare to ask.
Suddenly, a servant shouted in the yard: "Master! Master! Something happened in the county government office!"
Tong Huan reacted quickly, leaving Xiao Lin and Mu You behind and pushing the door open to leave.
The servant had been looking around when he saw Tong Huan coming out of the side room. He quickly ran towards him, shouting, "Master! Zhao and Li have gone to the government again over a trivial matter! They've asked to see you!"
Tong Huan rushed out of the door without saying a word, jumped onto his horse and rode towards the county government office.
Seeing how anxious he was, Mu You and Xiao Lin followed him, but when they reached the door, they stopped.
"Let's go! Keep up!" Chu Mo suddenly appeared in front of the two of them on horseback, looking down at their eyes from his horse.
But at this moment, Xiao Lin and Mu You were suspicious of Chu Mo, but when they saw his face, they remembered everything Tong Huan had said to them just now.
This makes the mystery surrounding Chu Mo even more difficult to solve.
Seeing the two of them standing there motionless, Chu Mo tilted his head and ignored them, riding his horse forward.
Looking at Chu Mo's back as he walked away, Mu You and Xiao Lin looked at each other in silence, gritted their teeth and followed him.
Two pairs of legs naturally could not outrun horses. When Xiao Lin and Mu You arrived at the county government office, sweating profusely, there was already a fierce quarrel inside. The two women's cursing could be heard clearly just by standing at the door.
"Last night I heard such a loud noise in your house in the middle of the night." Li stood in front of the court with her hands on her hips and said arrogantly.
"Bah!" Zhao was not to be outdone and spat at Li. "The noise in my house in the middle of the night has nothing to do with your missing chicken! I don't believe you won't get up in the middle of the night."
"My husband went into the chicken coop and counted them before going to bed, and there were exactly fifteen. But when he woke up this morning, he not only discovered a vandalized hole in the coop, but there were only fourteen chickens left! Tell me! If you didn't break into our yard in the middle of the night to steal the chickens, could it be that our chickens just ran away on their own?"
"Stop your slander! My house just had some mosquitoes last night, so my husband and I got up to get rid of them! Who wants to steal your skinny chicken?"
“…”
Seeing that the two women were arguing more and more fiercely, Tong Huan, who was sitting above, kept banging the gavel, but the two women's roars were too loud, and the gavel and Tong Huan's shouts could not be suppressed at all.
The entire court was in chaos.
Tong Huan was furious at the back-and-forth. He gritted his teeth and shouted with all his might, "Be quiet!"
At this time, the hall finally quieted down, but the two people below were still staring at each other fiercely, unwilling to admit defeat.
"Ms. Li, you said your family lost a chicken last night and you suspected that Ms. Zhao stole it?"
"Exactly! Only someone like her could do such a filthy thing!"
"Zhao, have you ever done this?"
"I didn't do it. It's clearly this dog Li who is slandering me!"
As they spoke, the two of them clenched their fists and stared at each other.
Tong Huan said, "I have sent people to search the Li and Zhao households to see if a chicken is missing as Li claimed. If it is, and it happens to be found at the Zhao household, then you, Zhao, cannot escape responsibility. But if none of the fifteen chickens at the Li household are missing, then you, Li, have openly disrupted order in the court, and I will punish you!"
As soon as he finished speaking, a bailiff rushed into the courtroom and said, "Report! There are indeed fifteen chickens in the Li family chicken coop, not one missing!"
The yamen runner's words left Li speechless and instead emboldened Zhao.
"Ms. Li, since your family didn't lose any chickens, then you are now yelling and shouting in court, which is disrupting order and framing others! Do you know your crime?"
"She..." Li's momentum was weakening, but she held on, straightening her chest and holding her chin high, and continued to argue, "I didn't frame her! Their house was so noisy at night, and my fence was indeed damaged. Even if the chicken wasn't stolen, she must have stolen something else!"
"Then you go back first and count your belongings to see if anything is missing. If anything is lost, come and report to the police." Tong Huan supported his head with his tiger's mouth and waved his palm to signal the two to retreat.
In recent days, he has been troubled by all kinds of trivial disputes between Li and Zhao.
But the two men seemed to have no intention of giving up. Instead, Li sarcastically blurted out, "Oh, Master Tong, you're not going to follow through? Well, you're a bandit, so naturally you think this kind of petty theft is nothing. It's no big deal for us poor people to lose these little things we've saved up over time."
Obviously, Li's words were just a challenge, but he was not challenging Zhao, but Tong Huan.
But Tong Huan remained silent. Instead, Zhao's scolding rang out again: "You bitch, say another word and I'll steal your things!"
"You stole it! You stole it!" Li turned the subject back to Zhao's side, her arrogance was really rampant.
Zhao was so angry that her breathing became more and more rapid. She gradually raised her clenched fist, and as Li kept scolding her, it turned into a slap, which she swung directly at her face.
A crisp applause resounded throughout the courtroom, but everyone stood there in shock, dumbfounded.
When Zhao came to her senses, she was shocked to find that her slap had landed on another person's face - that was Mu You.
At some point, Mu You stood between the two of them and blocked Zhao's slap for Li.
"You...you kid..." Zhao was frightened by Mu You's action and stuttered.
Then, Mu You grabbed Zhao's wrist and lifted it up to her face, his eyes full of ferocity, as if he wanted to tear her apart. "This is a courtroom, and you actually hit someone? You still don't have any sense of law! Do you know that the crime of assaulting someone can also lead to imprisonment? Do you really want to eat the prison food?"
Zhao was choked and said nothing.
Mu You then turned his face away and started cursing at Li again, "And you! Convicting someone without any evidence is a false accusation; humiliating an official is a crime of subversion! Are you merely disrespecting County Magistrate Tong? In my opinion, your actions, taken to their fullest, amount to a disregard for the law and the Emperor! If I continue to report this to the court, you will be committing treason!"
Mu You's angry eyes and frown immediately intimidated Zhao and Li, especially Li. After hearing the crime of disobedience, she immediately knelt on the ground, kowtowed to Tong Huan continuously, and kept muttering "I am guilty".
After a while, Zhao also broke free from Mu You's hand, knelt on the ground with a thud, and kowtowed repeatedly with tears in her eyes.
Tong Huan sat in the middle of the hall, keeping silent.
And this farce ended temporarily with the faint red marks appearing on Mu You's face.
Indeed, Mu You would not take a slap in vain. He did not care, but Xiao Lin wanted to get to the bottom of it.
What she needs to clarify is what kind of entanglement exists between Tong Huan and Hanlu County?
How could a minister under the emperor, the head of a county, and the people's father and mother end up in such a state? And what about the human trafficking that Chu Mo mentioned earlier - why didn't he make any plans?
She needed Tong Huan to give a clear explanation.
So, after the last ray of sunlight that day was blocked by the mountains, Xiao Lin stood alone in front of Tong Huan's bedroom door.
Accompanied by a few crisp knocks on the door, his door slowly opened from the inside.
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