Xu Baocai was able to hold on yesterday, but he obviously didn't expect Shuntian Prefecture and Jinyiwei to investigate so quickly. In just one night, they had already deduced most of what happened last night.
Coupled with the screams of the previous craftsmen when they were tortured, Xu Baocai completely collapsed.
He had something to hide, so he had completely lost the will to fight.
Although Jiang Lingyao was very surprised, she did not expect Xu Baocai to confess so quickly, but the Jinyiwei remained calm. They had been interrogating people for years, and their method was different from that of prosecutors like Jiang Lingyao who solved cases through investigation and reasoning. Sometimes they just put the suspect in front of the rack and the suspect would confess.
Xu Baocai was a real man if he could hold on for the whole night.
As the second in command of the Yuyong Prison, his status in the prison goes without saying. Perhaps because of this, he managed to get through the night.
Today, I saw the Jinyiwei being executed, and I was scared.
Xu Baocai lay paralyzed on the ground. The Jinyiwei ignored him. Zheng Feng frowned and said, "You confess yourself."
Xu Baocai shuddered.
He lowered his head in panic and stammered, "What does your Excellency want to know?"
Zheng Feng was speechless for a moment, but Pei Yu spoke softly: "Of course I want to know how and why you killed people."
After hearing this, Xu Baocai fell silent.
After a long while, he sighed and said, "I hate him, so I want to kill him."
"A year ago, Lao Chen and I made a horse-walking glass lamp. In the end, we needed to make a gilded immortal figure on the lamp. Because we needed to add the eyes, we asked Rong Jingui for help."
As Xu Baocai spoke, his voice gradually stopped trembling and calmed down.
His eyes were half-closed, and his disheveled hair obscured his old face.
"That was the result of half a year of hard work by Lao Chen and I. However, just because of those few pairs of glass eyes, Rong Jingui took all the credit for himself and showed off in front of His Majesty. It was also because of this glass lamp that Rong Jingui flattered His Majesty and finally got the job of consecrating the gilded pagoda."
"He used our hard work to pave a way for himself to change his career."
No one wants to be born a pauper. Even if they are born a pauper, they would not want their children to be paupers.
"My Lord, you don't understand. Life as a craftsman is so hard."
"The craftsmen never leave the factory, and the servants are always employed," Xu Baocai said in a dry and painful voice, "We are born to guard this small factory, making rare objects for the nobles day and night, and these things that cost countless efforts to make are often just toys for them to play with for a while."①
"Take a look, play with it for two days, and if you don't like it anymore, you can just throw it away."
"And we craftsmen are not even as good as these things," Xu Baocai said, tears slowly flowing down his cheeks. Under the dim light, they looked like two lines of blood. "Who doesn't want to change their jobs? Even if we become commoners, it's better than being scumbags."
In this world, everyone has a different face.
Xu Baocai was a craftsman and felt inferior, so he wanted to change his job and become an ordinary person. Feng Shuanzi was born into a military family, but he found war terrifying, so he tried his best to become a craftsman.
After hearing this, everyone in the interrogation room was speechless.
At this point, Xu Baocai had already told everything he knew. He didn't need anyone to interrogate him, so he just spoke out everything that was in his heart.
"Rong Jingui robbed my family of their livelihood. I wanted to kill him. As the pagoda was about to be completed, I finally couldn't bear it anymore. So I asked him to go to Zhang's Roasted Meat Shop after dinner last night to discuss the final process."
The last process of making a gilded pagoda is to add the finishing touches. Because the pagoda is two stories high and the statue of Guanyin sitting on a lotus is also one story high, Guanyin’s eyes must be inlaid with large gemstones.
It is difficult to do crafts, whether big or small.
"This old man Rong Jingui loves wine and meat. He feels uncomfortable if he doesn't eat for a day. He is also very stingy. In the past, he always forced others to honor him. So when I said I wanted to treat him, he immediately agreed."
This is consistent with Feng Shuanzi's previous testimony.
At this moment, the peacekeeper suddenly asked: "How did you kill him?"
Xu Baocai was suddenly interrupted by him. He was stunned for a moment, and stammered for a long time: "I, I got him drunk with wine."
"Rong Jingui loves to drink, but his alcohol tolerance is very low. He would usually get drunk after two bottles of liquor and become unconscious."
Xu Baocai paused and lowered his head even more, as if he didn't dare to recall the murder.
"I saw that he was unconscious, so I carried him back from the roasting shop, pierced his throat with a steel needle, and then inserted a ruler into his neck, and hung him high up on the pagoda."
As he spoke, the rest of his conversation came smoothly.
If an ordinary person kills someone in the heat of the moment, he or she will have some memory confusion afterwards and will not be able to remember how or why he or she did it.
But Xu Baocai's case was a premeditated murder, which means he had thought of all the steps before taking action, so it is impossible for his memory to be inaccurate.
But what he said was not very smooth, and even a little weird.
He stopped talking here, as if waiting for the adults to ask him questions and wanted to answer them one by one.
Jiang Lingyao naturally had many doubts, but she did not rush to ask. She just sat there quietly and waited.
Instead, the figure behind the screen spoke: "Master Xiao Qiao, you know the cause of death very well, why don't you be the judge?"
The counselor's voice was still low, but this time it was a little gentle, as if he was discussing matters with his subordinates. It was completely different from the coldness just now.
But his voice still made Jiang Lingyao lose her mind.
How come...how come it feels so familiar?
However, at this moment, the case was imminent, and Jiang Lingyao had no time to think about it, so she turned her attention back to Xu Baocai.
"Xu Baocai, since you said that you killed him and pierced his throat with a steel needle, where did you get the steel needle? Where did you hide it? You were going to kill him, and even if Rong Jingui was drunk, wouldn't he avoid you?"
This series of questions completely confused Xu Baocai.
Xu Baocai paused, as if he had just sorted out his thoughts, and said, "He... when I carried him back to the prison, he was already unconscious. I threw him directly on the ground in the front yard, and then quickly stabbed the steel needle into his throat."
Xu Baocai spoke more and more smoothly: "Now that things have come to this, I will not hide it from you, sir. Rong Jingui is younger than me and stronger. I was afraid that I could not defeat him. I thought about it for a long time before I came up with this method of killing people with steel needles."
"Yesterday, the pagoda was completed ahead of schedule, and it was almost finished. Wei Zhangyin gave us all extra days off so that we could have a rest. Therefore, after work yesterday evening, there was almost no one in the Yuyong Prison, and everyone went out to buy things. When I came back from drinking with Rong Jingui, most of the people in the Yuyong Prison had gone to bed. I took this opportunity to kill him and set up the scene, and then threw the steel needle into the moat in the back alley."
"As for why I went to such great lengths to arrange this... I was trying to evade responsibility. The reason I stabbed him in the neck with a ruler was to cover up the traces of the steel needle."
Hearing this, all the clues connected, and Jiang Lingyao's eyes lit up. She said, "You made the arrangements after killing someone in order to play tricks and pretend that it was a punishment from the ancestors. If the people who found out were the craftsmen of Yu Yongjian, they would panic. After word of mouth spread, there would be omissions even if they checked the scene again."
But no one expected that the front door of the Yuyong Prison was actually opened that day. The scene was seen by the night watchman, who immediately reported it, alarming Mr. Gu and the Jinyiwei.
This time, it is difficult to close the case by divine punishment.
But Jiang Lingyao felt something was wrong, but she couldn't put her finger on it. She frowned slightly and asked, "Why did you go to the dark market to buy steel needles? You were obviously trying to get a prisoner, so wouldn't it be safer to make one yourself?"
Xu Baocai didn't know that he had already explained it so clearly, but this adult still kept asking him again and again. He was a little annoyed for a moment, and his tone gradually became stiff.
"Your Excellency may not know that if we use the kiln in the prison, there must be eunuchs guarding it. Those eunuchs have very sharp eyes. I can't do more. Otherwise..."
He suddenly stopped talking here, and after a pause, he said, "If it weren't for this, why would I go to so much trouble?"
This can also be justified.
Jiang Lingyao suppressed the slight sense of wonder in her heart and asked persistently: "How did you hang the dead body on the pagoda?"
Xu Baocai said: "It's very simple. Just make a rope with hemp rope and you can hang it up to the pagoda."
After he finished speaking, he realized that everyone was looking at him hesitantly. Then he seemed to suddenly understand and murmured, "Yes, you are not craftsmen. You don't know how to make ropes, and you don't seem to know how to use ropes to slide objects. These methods are what we are used to. In fact, they don't require much effort."
“In fact, I finished setting up the scene very quickly.”
Every profession has its own expertise. After he said this, Jiang Lingyao's strange feeling faded a lot. She just asked: "Is your rope slide supported by this lamppost? After using it, did you hide it in the warehouse to prevent outsiders from finding it?"
Xu Baocai slowly raised his head. It was not until two minutes after he entered the interrogation room that he seemed to suddenly be able to see again. He saw the familiar half-man-high light pole behind Jiang Lingyao.
Xu Baocai was stunned for a moment, but then quickly replied: "Yes, I used it, but I was afraid that if the lamppost was still in its original place, the adults would guess that Rong Jingui was hung on the pagoda after his death, so I put it away."
Jiang Lingyao let out a long sigh. In a light and gentle voice, she asked the last question as if unintentionally: "Xu Baocai, do you know that Rong Jingui did not die from acupuncture with steel needles?"
Xu Baocai replied subconsciously: "Impossible, I killed him myself."
Except for Jiang Lingyao, everyone else in the interrogation room focused on Xu Baocai. Even the meticulous Pei Yu did not see any doubt on his face.
He was very determined and persistent, and it was he who killed the person.
Jiang Lingyao then asked, "When you bought the steel needle, did you ask the other party to give you the poisoned steel needle?"
Xu Baocai didn't seem to understand what Jiang Lingyao said, but he still answered honestly: "No, I just said I wanted to buy steel needles, and I didn't say anything else."
That is to say, he secretly went to the dark market to buy steel needles. The sellers in the dark market might have known what these people were thinking, so they gave him steel needles laced with safflower poison. Perhaps because it was a secret transaction, or perhaps there were some coincidences, as Xu Baocai was not familiar with this, there were some loopholes.
At this point, the truth of the whole case has been revealed.
She turned her head and looked at the screen.
"My Lord, I have finished my questions."
Looking through the screen, the tall man inside the screen had sat up straight. He sat upright in the chair, looking sideways at Xu Baocai.
Jiang Lingyao couldn't see his face clearly, nor could she see his eyes.
I wonder what he is thinking at this moment.
But the next moment, the town councillor suddenly asked, "Where is the key to the warehouse?"
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