Chapter 544 Interrogation 3
Xiao Erlang was dragged to the lobby and the cloth was taken out of his mouth. He immediately shouted, "Brother, you are harming me. You clearly asked me to do this, and you actually put the blame on me..."
He was very scared, and still remembered what Bai Shan and the others had said about exile last night. So when he entered the class today, he insisted that he was crazy and denied all the things that happened at home. Who knew that his elder brother would put all the blame on him?
Seeing County Magistrate Tang looking at him with suspicion, he was afraid that he would be sentenced if he spoke too late, so he quickly defended himself, "Sir, sir, what my elder brother said is not true. The Yan family's vegetable garden was not opened by me alone, but by our whole family..."
County Magistrate Tang sneered, "You're both haunting people and scaring people, but you've gone to so much trouble just to plant a vegetable patch at the Yan family? Do you think I'm a fool? Come, drag Xiao Erlang away and give him ten lashes..."
"Yes!" The bailiff came up and tried to drag him away.
Xiao Erlang was terrified and quickly shouted, "No, no, it's not just for farming. We want to buy the Yu family's house..."
The Xiao couple, who were dragged into the yard, had just knelt down when they heard what their second son said in the hall. Their eyes went dark in an instant, and they were about to struggle to speak, but were pressed to the ground by the yamen runners with a big board, and could only make a humming sound.
But apart from some spectators outside the yard who noticed them, the nervous Xiao Dalang brothers in the lobby did not hear their voices.
Xiao Erlang confessed that it was all the idea of his parents and elder brother. After all, he was still young and a teenager more than two years ago. He didn't know how to make money, let alone open a piece of land to grow vegetables in Yan's house.
Seeing that the second brother was completely denying all responsibility, Xiao Dalang also became angry. The two brothers began to argue with each other, and County Magistrate Tang added fuel to the fire. The two brothers talked more and more, and in less than three quarters of an hour, they knew everything they needed to know.
The onlookers outside the courtyard were stunned and amazed when they heard this.
In fact, the Xiao family didn’t think so much about it at the beginning. The whole thing started with the flood three years ago.
To be exact, it was two years and ten months ago. The Xiao family's utility room was a mud house. After being bathed in heavy rain for half a month, it collapsed.
What the Xiao family didn't expect was that a big hole had collapsed in the Yan family's wall behind the utility room.
That was the Yan family's back garden, a bit remote, and few people came here usually. During that period, Yizhou suffered severe floods, and except for Yan the governor, all the other members of the Yan family fled Yizhou, so no one repaired the hole, and maybe no one even discovered it.
After the flood, there were countless victims. After the victims, angels came to provide disaster relief. Then, Governor Yan was captured. After half a year of interrogation, the entire Yan family was raided. After a series of events, no one from the Yan family noticed the huge collapsed hole.
The Xiao family had already rebuilt a storage room with mud and grass, and picked up a lot of bricks and stones that had collapsed from the Yan family.
Brick and stone are not cheap either.
In order to prevent the Yan family from finding out, they used mud mixed with grass to make bricks and roughly repaired the collapsed corner.
As long as it doesn't look like a hole from a distance, it's fine.
But when they built the utility room, whether it was to occupy a little more land or they had other ideas, they did not build the back wall of the utility room, but used the built wall as the wall of their own house.
Later, when the Yan family was raided, Xiao Erlang secretly pushed a few large bricks and sneaked over to take a look. He stole some porcelain, a few basins, and a few mosquito nets from the Yan family.
These things were not valuable to the government, so they were not completely confiscated during the house search. People from the Xiao family would occasionally go over to look for them, flip through them, and take some things.
Once, Xiao Erlang even picked up a piece of gold from under a table. Well, that's what Xiao Dalang said.
In addition to these things, there are lotus pods in the Yan family's lotus pond and other fruits in the garden. Xiao Erlang is still a young man, and he always goes there to look for treasures from time to time, picking some lotus pods and fruits to eat.
There was too much food to eat at home, so the Xiao family took it to the market to sell, and found that they could make a lot of money.
The Xiao family was tempted and couldn't help but treat the Yan family as their own backyard.
Not long after, the government wanted to sell the Yan family's house. The Xiao family had just tasted the sweetness and naturally did not want to give up. It happened that when a broker led people to see the house, Xiao Dalang happened to be picking lotus pods there. When he hid, he made some noise, which scared those people.
Then the Xiao family learned it on their own. They went to the Yan family and cried at night. The news spread and scared away those who wanted to buy the house.
Then they became bolder and bolder. Xiao's parents took a fancy to the land in Yan's back garden and thought the land was fertile with flowers, so they pulled out all the flowers and planted vegetables.
And that piece of land was closer to the wall of the Yu family. If they made a little noise, the Yu family would be able to hear it.
The tenants living in the Yu family's house were mostly young scholars. These scholars were also bold and could not help but go to investigate when they heard any noise.
The Xiao family was afraid of being discovered, so they simply continued to pretend to be ghosts. They asked the thin Xiao Erlang to wear hemp clothes and pretend to be a female ghost, which scared away the tenants of the Yu family.
Later, the Xiao family took a fancy to the Yu family's house and wanted to buy it. After all, they had two sons, and if they could buy it, one of them would be given to Xiao Erlang.
Moreover, the two houses are next to each other, so it would be perfect if they could be considered as one family.
The plan was a good one, but the price the Yu family asked was too high. Even if the area was haunted and the Yu family lowered the price a little, the money would still make them feel very sorry.
So the Xiao family did not buy the house. Instead, they kept scaring away the Yu family's tenants. Each tenant could not live there for long, at most three months, at most more than a month, before they were scared away.
The rent and house prices of the Yu family were reduced again and again, but they were never up to the Xiao family's psychological level, so the Xiao family never bought a house.
Although they did not buy a house, the Yu family's house had been empty for half a year. Apart from not being able to live in it, the impact on the Xiao family was small, so the Xiao family no longer pretended to be haunted, but just told the neighbors from time to time that they seemed to have heard the sound of ghosts crying again last night.
Because the Xiao family is currently the closest family to the Yan family, no one doubts their words, so the rumors of ghosts have always been there.
They thought that if the Yu family's house could not be rented out for another two years and they themselves did not live in it, he would definitely lower the price to sell it to them. Who knew that after half a year, someone would move into the Yu family again?
After observing for a few days and confirming that the new tenant was also a scholar, Xiao Erlang took action the night before yesterday.
Every time he pretended to be a ghost, he would first enter the Yan family from his own utility room, and then crawl into the alley from a hole in the Yan family. In this way, even if someone was watching him secretly, they would think he came from the Yan family and would not suspect that he was a member of the Xiao family.
The next chapter will be around 1:00 PM
(End of this chapter)
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