Chapter 040 Traitor 40
"What's going on?"
There were too many people gathered, so Xiao Yan could only ask the escorts he was familiar with.
The escort lowered his voice, "This Young Master Fang must have eaten too much last night, which caused him to have diarrhea and he had to get up several times to sleep, and then he was bitten by a snake."
He exclaimed in astonishment, "That snake was extremely venomous. Young Master Fang was bitten and died within moments."
When Young Master Fang was bitten by a snake, his groom and servant were waiting nearby. It was too dark, and the groom had no experience handling snakes, so he didn't know if the snake was venomous. He could only seek out Master Fang, Madam Fang, and the escorts to see if it was venomous and if there was an antidote.
Unexpectedly, they had just arrived and had not yet determined whether it was a poisonous snake, but Young Master Fang was already having difficulty breathing, his lips turned dark purple, and he soon died.
Now everyone knew that the snake was poisonous.
only……
Normally, snakes in the north are still hibernating at this time, and won't wake up until March or April. How did Master Fang happen to encounter a snake that wasn't hibernating? And an extremely venomous one at that?
There are only two possibilities. One is that Young Master Fang disturbed the hibernating snake and was then bitten by the snake that was awakened by the fright. The other is that someone wanted to harm Young Master Fang!
The former was Young Master Fang's own fault, the latter...
The escort looked at Mrs. Fang, and his meaning was self-evident.
Of all those present, the most likely person to have attacked was undoubtedly Madam Fang. Of course, one could also argue that a servant harbored resentment after being beaten by Young Master Fang. The former was the most likely, because if Young Master Fang died, her child would undoubtedly be the sole "root" of the Fang family, enjoying a life of "promotion, wealth, and the death of her husband."
Although there was no official position to be promoted, she would no longer be tortured and scolded by Young Master Fang. After all, even Master Fang and Old Madam Fang would at most scold her and punish her by making her kneel or copy scriptures. No matter how sarcastic and mean they were, they would not beat her personally. This was influenced by secular concepts.
If a husband beats his wife, others will say that it is a family matter. If a wife beats her husband, then it must be that the wife is unvirtuous. But no matter which one it is, there is no such thing as parents-in-law beating their daughter-in-law. What would people say if it got out?
Of course, this does not mean that there are no other ways to secretly torture the daughter-in-law, but she is not as "reasonable" as Master Fang as a husband, and can not express it openly, or even as outrageous as Master Fang.
The motive, reason and purpose are there, so Mrs. Fang has a strong motive for murder.
Although they didn't want to think so in their hearts, it was obvious that they suspected that Mrs. Fang had evil intentions rather than the so-called Young Master Fang just happened to have a stomachache and was bitten by a snake when he got up at night.
In addition to the above reasons, they also recalled the attitude and words Mrs. Fang expressed when they questioned her before. Thinking about it now, they felt that she was suspicious.
When people are bullied, they either feel resentful or resist, or they become numb because they cannot resist for various reasons.
Mrs. Fang appeared to be numb, but she also mentioned that "her son is the root of the Fang family", which makes it hard not to think too much.
Even though they didn't tell anyone about this, Mr. Fang and Mrs. Fang had already developed suspicions about Mrs. Fang, so at this moment they were cursing Mrs. Fang, calling her a vicious woman, and expressed their intention to report her to the police and make her pay with blood.
Xiao Yan could see clearly that although Mr. Fang and Mrs. Fang had no evidence to prove that it was the young lady's doing, this did not prevent them from venting their grief and pain on Mrs. Fang, so that they would feel better. What's more, if this was the case, the only person who would benefit would be Mrs. Fang.
What surprised Xiao Yan was that, generally speaking, Mrs. Fang should have protested her injustice, but apart from sobbing quietly, she didn't say a word and didn't defend herself. This made her situation even worse and made others frown.
Could it be that Madam Fang was feeling guilty? Or was she already prepared to trade her life for another's?
After someone died, everyone could only rush to the nearby government office. Originally, the escort wanted to let Xiao Yan and Xiao Chen leave, after all, the imperial examination was imminent and could not be delayed. However, Master Fang and Madam Fang were the kind of people who could not bear to see others doing well. Now that their son was dead, they naturally would not let others have an easy time.
So no matter how the escorts explained, they insisted that they were also suspects. Perhaps they were jealous of their son's future as an official, and since they had always had conflicts with him, they harbored resentment and conspired with Madam Fang to kill their son.
In his words, he described them and Madam Fang as prostitutes and thieves, adulterers with evil intentions. His language was extremely vulgar and disgusting.
In this way, Xiao Yan and Xiao Chen had no choice but to go with them, but Xiao Yan was not the kind of person who could bully anyone and have to swallow his anger.
"Please understand that according to our dynasty's laws, false accusers will be punished! I'm a fellow scholar with great achievements, and anyone who makes a false accusation is even more guilty! Although I sympathize with your plight, there are some things you can't say just because you're weak. You can't justify wantonly slandering others. I hope you two will think carefully before speaking, and refrain from making such unwarranted accusations."
Xiao Yan also knew that as long as they went to the government office, their identities would be exposed. In this case, it would be better to use it to warn Mr. Fang and Mrs. Fang directly, so that they would be afraid and he could keep his ears clean.
As for whether this would delay the investigation, it would depend on how quickly the government could handle the case.
Furthermore, if this is the case, they are not completely helpless. After all, the person above has already taken a liking to him. Asking Brother Ling to help with the operation will not delay it.
I have to say, power is really a good thing. No wonder so many people are flocking to it.
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The nearby government office was a county office under the jurisdiction of a certain provincial capital. It looked smaller than their county town, and even the county office was quite dilapidated. Fortunately, the yamen runners were very responsible.
The process of reporting a case is nothing more than beating the drum to complain, and then the yamen runners and the county magistrate will go to the court to interrogate after hearing it. Of course, these are just people's imaginations of the process of reporting a case. In fact, no county magistrate sits in the county court every day and waits for others to report a case. Sometimes they have to go out to visit and understand the people's sentiments.
Unfortunately, when they arrived, the county magistrate had just gone out, but the deceased had been carried to the front of the yamen, and the yamen runners could not ask these outsiders to come later, so they could only ask someone to transport the body to the yamen for an autopsy by the coroner.
They were invited to the county government office for some tea. During this time, the yamen runners were extremely busy. They were arguing about someone's family occupying more land. The other party said that this was not the case at all, and that the person was just trying to take advantage of the situation and cause trouble. The two sides argued endlessly, and the dispute between the two families evolved into a dispute between two villages.
The donkey of the east family was lost, and the owner suspected that the person of the west family had stolen it and sold it because he had a criminal record of stealing the old hens that laid eggs in his family. The owner then handed the person over to the authorities. It turned out that the owner had forgotten to feed the donkey, so the donkey ran out to look for food.
Another example is a family at the entrance of a village who frequently lost property. They had a bad reputation and were at odds with the villagers. They believed the villagers were jealous of their wealth and harbored malicious intentions. An investigation revealed that their grandson had become addicted to gambling and had racked up debts, yet he dared not disclose them to his family. With creditors coming to collect, the grandson resorted to stealing property to pay off the debts.
For example, a witch always bleeds from the mouth and nose when she performs rituals. She thinks this is a divine warning from the gods in case of some disaster, so she spreads the word. Many people become panicked after believing it and leave the area with their families, which leads to rising food prices and people are in a panic for a while.
After investigation by the yamen runners, it was discovered that there was no so-called divine intervention when disaster struck. Instead, the witch suffered from excessive liver fire, and the imbalance of yin and yang in her body caused the bleeding gums and nosebleeds. In simple terms, the witch was angry...
Xiao Yan & Xiao Chen: "..."
How should I put it? It felt like they saw a lot of ridiculous things in a short period of time.
There are relatively few serious incidents. After all, they are all local people. The most serious ones are things like a fight between people from two villages, or a villager fell into the river and drowned while walking at night due to drunkenness. It is being investigated whether it was caused by the deceased's own fault or homicide.
Cases like theirs, where outsiders died from snake venom and the circumstances remained unsolved, were rare. After the yamen runners finished their work, they would come over to see what the case was.
"It must be this vicious woman's doing!"
After hearing Xiao Yan's warning, Mr. Fang finally understood that there was a crime called false accusation. He also understood that these two people whom he looked down upon might become officials in the future and were not people to be trifled with. He no longer dared to fabricate stories about adultery.
After all, the dead are dead, but the living must continue to live. If their son were still alive, they would certainly not be afraid, but their son is dead. Before their grandson grows up, the Fang family naturally cannot afford to offend a scholar who may enter the officialdom. Therefore, they can only insist that it was Madam Fang who had evil intentions and wanted her to pay for her blood debt and go down to apologize to their son.
In other words, at this point, they no longer care whether it was Mrs. Fang who did it or not; they want her to go down and accompany their son.
The first reason was due to feudal beliefs: when people die, they enter the underworld, where they need care, just like they are still alive, except they no longer live in the mortal realm. They were worried that their son would be bullied by other "ghosts" in the underworld, or that there would be no one to serve him, so they wanted to send Madam Fang to serve their son.
This concept has spawned many industries, such as ghost marriages. There are cases of the dead marrying the dead, or the dead marrying the living. Some people, for financial gain, kill the living and use them as marriage partners, or even steal corpses.
The second reason was that the grandson was close to Madam Fang. After their son's death, the grandson would be the "root" of the Fang family, the one who would take care of them in their old age and see them to their grave. They were worried that the grandson would be influenced by Madam Fang, their biological mother, and would lose their closeness to them, so they planned to get rid of Madam Fang.
Regardless of the former or the latter, both are violations of the current law. They are also afraid of being exposed, so they plan to find a "legitimate" reason to get rid of Mrs. Fang.
The final reason was that, despite a lack of evidence, they suspected Mrs. Fang of being the murderer. Regardless of whether she was the murderer or not, it didn't change the fact that she was the beneficiary. This filled the two men with deep resentment. Why was their son dead, while she was still alive? Why wasn't she the one who died? Furthermore, Mrs. Fang had also touched the food their son ate, making it hard not to suspect her of being the murderer.
So no matter what the reason, they all wanted to get rid of Mrs. Fang!
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