Magistrate Liu's face darkened. "How dare you! A street urchin dares to slander a scholar like yourself? Confess the truth!"
When Zhang Mazi and his men saw the magistrate get angry, they all immediately knelt down.
His head hit the ground with a loud thud.
"Your Honor, spare my life! Your Honor, spare my life! This humble subject will never dare to do it again!"
"Hmph!" Magistrate Liu angrily flung his teacup away. "What about later?"
"No, no, no, we were wrong, we were wrong..." Zhang Mazi was on the verge of tears, not knowing what to say.
"Why are you slandering Scholar Zhao? Speak up!" Magistrate Liu asked coldly.
But Zhang Mazi had already received one tael of silver from the higher-ups, so he dared not easily reveal it.
He then lied and begged for forgiveness, saying, "It was...it was because we were jealous of Scholar Zhao that we had evil thoughts...Scholar Zhao, I apologize to you, I'm sorry."
Zhao Yan felt a pang of sympathy upon seeing how pitiful these people were.
However, Zhao Yanniang couldn't swallow this insult. She angrily said, "You bunch of scoundrels, if you ever dare to slander my son again, I'll beat you to death! Bah!"
However, Zhang Mazi's naive explanation could not fool the discerning Magistrate Liu, who had handled far more cases, big and small, than Zhang Mazi had ever tasted salt.
"Hmph, nonsense. It seems I'll have to give you all a good beating before you'll tell the truth." Magistrate Liu waved his hand impatiently. "Guards, take them all back to the yamen."
Zhang Mazi was so frightened that he immediately wet his pants, his blue and white clothes were stained with a large yellow stain.
He cried so hard that he wiped his tears and snot all over his face. "Sir, sir, I confess."
"He was a slightly overweight man, about this tall..." Zhang Mazi gestured, "He gave me one or two taels of silver and asked me to say those things to slander Scholar Zhao. And these clothes, he gave them to me too..."
Although he confessed to everything, Zhang Mazi didn't provide enough information.
There are so many people, and many of them are slightly overweight and not very tall.
Magistrate Liu frowned and thought for a moment, then signaled the people in the government office to quickly block all the exits from the scene so that Zhang Mazi could identify the person on the spot.
Since he's a man, let the woman and child go first, and keep the rest.
Most of the men left in a flash, leaving only about two hundred men behind.
Magistrate Liu then ordered Master Qin to investigate which students in the academy had lost their clothes.
Each student only has two sets of these clothes, so losing five sets at once will definitely be easy to spot.
Both sides began to take action, with Zhang Mazi and his men escorting people to identify them.
Master Qin then instructed all the teachers in the academy to go and see who had lost their clothes.
With noon approaching, He Tiantian wanted to go back to the shop to help, but she simply couldn't leave right now.
I wonder if there are any customers in the shop, and whether Lantern Dumplings and the others can keep up with the workload.
Under the scorching sun, fortunately there was a temporary platform that provided some shade.
Magistrate Liu was sweating profusely from the heat, and he glared hatefully at Zhang Mazi and his group.
It's all because of these city parasites that they've corrupted the city's atmosphere!
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