Chapter 357 Monster Hospital (Fifty-Six)
The county magistrate sat there for a long time before he recovered and realized that everything that had just happened was not his imagination. He really survived the opponent's knife. He didn't know which god saved him, whether he supported his idea or gave him a chance to choose again, but from the moment he opened his eyes again, he had already decided what he was going to do.
The scene changed, and the passage of time passed quickly before the eyes of Nan Huan and Bei Xi. After the county magistrate came back to life, he did not return to his original Dongyang County, nor did he contact the people he knew before. Instead, he changed his name and identity, left his hometown, and came to Jiangzhou.
He stayed here for a long time, using his identity as a teacher to lie dormant quietly for two years. He used some methods to smooth out the nepotism of the Minister of Revenue in the court. He knew that the prefect of Jiangzhou was also involved. He also found out that they had secretly used the channel of donating official positions to accept bribes.
It was not until the third year, when the people had long forgotten the county magistrate's murder case in earlier years, that the prefect of Jiangzhou received a letter. The letter stated the unjust case of that year, explained his nepotism with the assistant minister of the Ministry of Revenue, and demanded 10,000 taels of hush money.
When the Jiangzhou prefect received the letter, he immediately determined that the writer was Boss Sun, the innkeeper at the time, who luckily took the money away. He ordered his men to set a trap at the place where the silver was kept, ready to wait for the opportunity, but of course he came up empty-handed.
The county magistrate knew that the other party would not give up and would definitely kill him, so this letter was just a stepping stone, and he had no intention of really taking the money. After the other party came back with the money in trepidation and calmed down for a while, he sent a second letter, saying that he had seen with his own eyes that he and the assistant minister had conspired to kill the county magistrate in the woods without authorization. He asked the other party to send 20,000 taels of silver to the suburban path where the county magistrate was killed, otherwise he would send the county magistrate's body to the capital.
Of course the prefect was frightened by the letter. After they killed the man, they did not clean up the body. Firstly, there was no need to do so as they already had the confession and evidence, and the other party had committed suicide out of fear of punishment, so cleaning up the body was really unnecessary. Secondly, they felt that the body was very unlucky, so they did not want to take care of it. However, they did not expect that the body had been hidden by someone.
I thought that the bodies would be torn apart by wild beasts in the wilderness and there would be no chance of any improvement in this case. But I never expected that the bodies had been hidden by someone. The person who could hide them must be Boss Sun who escaped. If the first letter was just hearsay, then the second letter was a sure thing.
But the prefect of Jiangzhou had been in officialdom for so long, how could he hand over the silver just because of the threat of two letters? When he saw that the place where the other party asked to give the silver was the small path where the incident happened, he immediately came up with an idea. He ordered people to get the silver notes and arranged for his own people to follow, hoping to catch the other party outside as soon as he showed up.
Because they were afraid that the other party would just test the waters and not show up like they did the first time, they still took the money with them and divided the people into two groups. One group left first and waited on the path that they had taken before, while the other group followed the money slowly. All of this movement did not leave the county magistrate's eyes.
He did not wait until they reached the suburbs to take action, but waited until the second group had left Jiangzhou and headed for Dongyang County before he followed the second group, not too close behind. Of course, he was no match for those guards and yamen runners, so he could only outsmart them.
At an inn, he took advantage of the fact that the officers and soldiers were not on guard against him as a scholar, drugged them, and easily stole the silver bills, pretending to be a bandit robbing money.
He did not spend the money indiscriminately. Instead, he bought a minor official position from the prefect of Jiangzhou through the recommendation of local gentry.
The other party had just lost so much money, and now someone came to his door, and he was a local teacher who had been teaching for two years. There was no danger, so he naturally accepted it happily. Two years can make a big difference in a person's appearance. After all, the county magistrate was a man who had experienced life and death. In addition, the prefect of Jiangzhou at that time just wanted to finish the case as soon as possible and send himself to death. The two met at night, and even when he died, he did not show up. Even if the other party was suspicious, he would not have thought that a dead person would reappear in front of him.
From then on, the money went around in a circle and returned to the governor of Jiangzhou, and the county magistrate also took the first step. From then on, he rose rapidly in prominence. On the one hand, he was capable and handled things quite well. On the other hand, he was no longer ignorant of the ways of being an official as before. He thought that being incorruptible was the right way, so he took what he should take, absorbed all the strength he could, and climbed up step by step.
Twenty years passed in the blink of an eye, and the county magistrate, who was at the mercy of others, had firmly sat on the position of Minister of Justice. He had his own status in the court, and he had his own followers and supporters. He finally had the opportunity to bring up what happened in the past.
Although he had been corrupt and accepted bribes during these years, he had never done anything that he considered to be against the law of nature. He was also conscientious in his political achievements and solved many unjust, false and wrong cases. He had a very good reputation not only among the people but also among his colleagues.
In order to eradicate the current Minister of Revenue, the then Vice Minister of Revenue had to take advantage of the nepotism of his subordinates. For so many years, he had been collecting evidence and waiting for the opportunity. The sensational murder case many years ago was brought up again, and all the other bloody cases committed by the Minister of Revenue over the years were investigated clearly. There were more than one or two officials involved. It was simply a major purge of the entire court from top to bottom.
Over the years, he had met the Minister of Revenue many times. The other party had long forgotten about the county magistrate from a remote village and had no idea what he looked like. How could he remember what he looked like back then? How could he realize that he looked exactly like the county magistrate back then?
On the day of his execution, the people's disgust and support for the Minister of Revenue made him feel as if nothing had changed.
I don't know if he had some sense of it, but before the Minister of Revenue died, he looked at the face of the high and mighty Minister of Justice, and seemed to see something from this face, but it was too late.
Has everything settled? He walked on the street, enjoying the support of the people, but he felt that their voices were separated by something, and their smiles seemed fake.
It was just a moment later that he felt someone emerge from the crowd, rush in front of him, and stab his chest with a sword, the position was exactly the same as that year. It was a young man, his eyes were red and angry, his hands were shaking, "It's all you, you are the culprit. The governor of Yuezhou forced us to die in order to provide you with bribes. My whole family is gone, it's all you, it's all you..."
He had collapsed in a trance, but his heart was very calm, as if he had anticipated all this twenty years ago. He just thought that he had only taken some money, but he still caused people's families to be broken up.
Twenty years ago, he could still pat his chest and say that he was a good official, but now, he dare not guarantee it.
The first rain of autumn fell, and he closed his eyes amid the exclamations of the crowd. Fortunately, he didn't have to see the golden light again this time. He also felt a little tired.
But after he closed his eyes, the golden figure still appeared. Thunder sounded in the sky, and it seemed that the Heavenly Dao had been waiting here for a long time.
"He is not a good official," Tiandao commented, and added after a while, "but he is not a completely bad official either. Over the years, his food and lodging have been the same as when he was in Dongyang County, and all the bribes he received have been donated. However, those officials who gave him money did a lot of bad things and killed many people. It is not unfair for people to blame him for the mistakes. Moreover, he has removed so many termites for the court, and he contributed to the prosperity of the Qingming era, but no one will remember him."
The god didn't speak for a while. After a while, he seemed to have seen something and said, "That's not necessarily true. There is someone who will remember him. He will remember that he helped me clear my grievances after 20 years. He will remember that he got justice for his wife."
As soon as she finished speaking, the crowd dispersed, and the county magistrate's body lay on the cold ground. A staggering figure came from a distance. He was very old, but each step was still very steady. When those people saw the blood and heard the murderer's confession, the support on their faces disappeared, and no one dared to step forward, but the old man still wiped his face, covered his eyes, and carried his body away.
In the heavy rain, a small voice reached the ears of Nan Huan and Bei Xi, "Thank you, you are a good official, a truly good official."
The Heavenly Dao seemed a little surprised by Boss Sun's appearance and remained silent. After a long while, the Heavenly Dao finally heard the question from the God, "If I hadn't saved him, would he still be alive?"
"Won't."
The sword pierced the opponent's heart directly, and there was no possibility of survival. Tiandao didn't know why the other party asked this question, "But because of your intervention, other innocent people lost their lives."
Bei Xi frowned at the malicious accusation, but Nan Huan and the god looked indifferent. The latter even said in a nonchalant tone, "You once said that I am just one of the common people in the world. Being a god is no different. I am also part of the cycle of heaven and karma. Heaven had already anticipated my intervention. In other words, even if the people did not die because of the county magistrate, they would still leave for other reasons. The root cause is not me."
A path was made through the crowd. For some reason, everyone felt that the old man's back was not as unsteady as when he came. At this moment, lightning illuminated the way forward for them.
"Since you have already understood that the root cause is not you, whether you intervene or not, the result will be the same. Why do you still like to intervene like this? The world is so big and there are so many people in it. You can't manage one person every day. Why haven't you changed after so many years?"
"You don't understand," the god's face was still calm, and he only added one sentence before turning away, "I want to see."
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