old house
It was the middle of the night, and the moon was hanging high in the sky. The moonlight was so dim that people could roughly see the road under their feet, but they could not see the dark scene in the distance.
At that moment, on the deserted streets of Qingzhou City, Suxi walked unsteadily along the alleys, feeling a little dizzy, but not quite drowsy, just the right pace. A few meters behind her, a wheelchair slowly rolled along, always keeping a distance from the person in front, neither too close nor too far, yet following closely, leaving a long trail of wheel tracks on the moonlit ground.
After walking for about half an hour, Suxi arrived at the Qingzhou government office. It was late at night, and the surroundings were pitch black and silent, with autumn insects chirping incessantly. Two guards stood before the heavy red gate, nodding occasionally. They looked utterly sleepy, yet they were forcing themselves to stay awake, a truly exhausting sight.
However, Suxi had no intention of wasting his aphrodisiac on the two of them.
During the day, she came to the government office early in the morning and walked around it. She immediately took the cloth bag and walked around to the back door where the slop was usually transported. She leaned against the wall and looked out.
The defense at the back door was apparently lax, with only a sleepy soldier standing guard. To be on the safe side, Suxi pulled a slender bamboo tube from his cloth bag and examined it carefully. He then took out a copper needle and poked a small hole in the front of the tube. He blew hard at the open back of the tube, and a stream of white powder immediately erupted from the hole. In a moment, the soldier, who had barely been standing, stumbled and fell to the ground. Seeing this, Suxi quickly put away the bamboo tube, stepped forward, and gently kicked him twice. Seeing that the man was motionless and snoring loudly, Suxi bravely peered through the crack in the door. The government office was completely dark, and nothing could be seen clearly. However, with his ear pressed against the iron door, he could clearly hear the chirping of autumn insects, but no human voices were heard.
Just as he felt relieved, Suxi pulled out the small copper needle that had just been inserted in his bun and aimed it at the keyhole. He pressed the needle left and right according to the method taught by the black market dealer until he felt the obvious bulge in the keyhole. Suxi immediately twisted it hard, and with a click, the lock popped open. Suxi was overjoyed. He immediately and carefully untied the heavy iron chain wrapped around the copper lock and placed it on the ground to avoid making too much noise and attracting attention. Then he opened the door and closed it gently, not noticing that someone was watching his every move at the foot of the wall where he had been hiding.
After entering the government office, Suxi finally saw the layout clearly. She remembered that when she was a child, she and her father had visited Shen Pingchang at the Qingzhou government office. However, she was too young at that time and could not remember many things clearly. Now that she came here again, she felt very familiar, and the vague memories became clear in an instant.
Standing beneath a lush osmanthus tree in front of the back door, Suxi looked up at the front hall, a hundred meters away. Qingzhou Prefecture was enormous. The front hall's gate, locked, led to the outer street. It was where the prefect sat and tried cases. The front hall connected to the backyard, where a corridor curved in a circular pattern. Each step in the corridor faced a room. At the far left end of the corridor were the officers' quarters, with side rooms, toilets, and kitchens in the middle. A small door on the far right led underground, where case files were stored.
After figuring out the layout of the government office, Suxi tiptoed to the small door and unlocked it with a copper needle. With a click, the door opened. She looked around and saw that there was no one there, so she closed the door with confidence. She lit a tinder and walked down the narrow marble stairs one step at a time. She pushed open another marble door and saw a dark secret room with no light at all. Several tall wooden cabinets were neatly arranged in the secret room. On each cabinet were stacked bamboo slips tied to cloth bags, and on the slips were wooden plaques indicating the year and case files.
"The third year of Yongping... the sixth year of Yongping... the tenth year of Yongping..."
Following the years, Suxi found the case file of Lin's cloth shop. The description in the case file was exactly the same as the account book in the old lady's courtyard, with nothing special.
After putting the case file back as it was, Su Xi squatted down again and found the Su family's case file on the lower level.
For a moment, his heart beat inexplicably faster. Suxi took out the case file wrapped in a cloth bag and unfolded it carefully. He read the whole thing, and anger rose in his heart, unable to dissipate.
The case files allege that Su Bingwen, patriarch of the Su family, forged banknotes to evade taxes and even circulated them among the public for profit. Fortunately, Qingzhou Governor Shen Pingchang promptly discovered and stopped the situation, averting further disaster. The handwriting on the case files differed markedly from the calligraphy found in Shen Pingchang's study, suggesting it must have been written by someone specializing in recording the case files. The similarity in style to the Lin family case further confirmed Su Xi's conviction that Shen Pingchang was behind the Lin case as well.
After pondering for a while, Suxi put the case file back to its original place, stood up and looked around with a tinderbox, but he didn't see any table, drawer or secret compartment here. There was only an extremely worn mahogany chair placed aside, which was probably used by the officials to sort the case files.
Bending down, he saw two extremely clear footprints on the mahogany chair in the faint light of the tinder. Inexplicably, Suxi was driven by something and subconsciously stepped onto the stool and stood up straight. In an instant, the dusty cabinet top was instantly illuminated by the fire. He could clearly see the dense spider webs in the corner, the peeling ceiling, his own dark shadow cast on the wall while holding the tinder, and a small blue-black wooden box on the top of the wooden cabinet in the corner.
Seeing that the flickering flame of the tinderbox was getting weaker and weaker, Suxi hurriedly jumped off the chair, dragged the wooden chair to the wooden cabinet closest to the wall, stepped on it, stood on tiptoe and stretched out his hand to grab the box.
"call---"
For some reason, he felt inexplicably excited. Su Xi gently blew away the dust on the box, pried open the small lock with a copper wire, and opened the lid. Inside the box, he saw dozens of white-grained papers the size of silver banknotes stacked together. Each one had a portion of the pattern on the banknote painted on it. The higher he turned, the more detailed the patterns became, the more realistic the handwriting became, and even the color of the dye was almost identical to the real banknote, making it impossible to tell the difference. Except for—
Su Xi was surprised for a moment and took out the fake silver banknotes he found in Shen Pingchang's study at the last Mid-Autumn Festival banquet from his sleeve pocket.
By the way, the wooden box contains drafts meant to mimic realistic drawings, and the one in my hand is the finished product. But if this person's forgery skills are so advanced, why did he make such a mistake with the paper used for the banknotes? Why not use twill paper, but instead the easily distinguishable white paper?
Without giving it much thought, Suxi took out the banknotes one by one and was about to put them back into the wooden box when she suddenly caught a glimpse of an envelope at the bottom of the box. Because the envelope was too dark and the light was too dim, she hadn't noticed it at first.
Su Xi put the banknote in his pocket, opened the envelope, and unfolded the letter. On it were two lines of small characters, the handwriting very similar to that on the banknote: "From the prefect. The twenty taels of silver I made have been deposited in the Su family treasury. The draft is attached to this letter. I have not kept any of it privately. I hope the prefect will agree as soon as possible and send the silver to the old Lin family residence, second courtyard from the left on the west side of South Street. Liu Min's handwriting."
Liu Min? Old Liu? So this was built by Old Liu?
“West side of South Street…”
Suxi paused, as if he suddenly thought of something.
Isn't that the old house west of South Street the abandoned, haunted house where human traffickers once kept women? No wonder there are so many abandoned looms, dyes, and other things there; it turns out it was once a small compound where the Lin family's cloth shop housed its workers years ago. The Lin family's weaving skills were exceptional, and Old Liu, having once worked as a weaver for them, naturally allowed him to replicate the complex, over a dozen different dyes used on the banknotes. As for the paper, I suspect it was intentionally left out to make it easier for the authorities to identify and convict the Su family.
What a vicious heart! Thanks to my father for helping him when he was in trouble, I didn't expect that he would end up raising a tiger to harm him!
Suxi was very angry, but he had no time to think about it. He hurriedly put the letter into his pocket, stuffed the envelope into the wooden box and put it back as it was, wiped the footprints on the stool, hurried out of the secret room, locked the door, slipped out through the back door, tied the iron chain as it was, and walked along the alley towards South Street.
At the other end of the courtyard wall, a wooden wheel creaked out. Shen Yunqiu sat there, watching the woman's back getting farther and farther away, his brows tightly knitted. Before the back turned the alley, he walked around the government guards who were knocked unconscious by the incense and followed her. After turning the alley, he followed Su Xi around in the dark corner alley. After the last turn, he saw a poor alley blocked by a big stone in front of him. There was no trace of the woman. Not far away, the door of the haunted house in Qingzhou was open, creaking with the autumn wind, as if a ghost was crying in the middle of the night.
After entering the Lin family's old residence, Suxi went straight to the haunted house, the place where the women who had lived there before dared not set foot. He kicked the door open, and the dust from inside swirled in the wind, wafting into his nose. Suxi covered her mouth and nose, coughing repeatedly. She then opened the window frame, where the paper was nearly peeling off, and took two steps back. Vast clouds of white dust condensed into a mist in the dim light of four o'clock in the morning.
By then, the tinder had long since burned out, and Suxi had no choice but to open all the windows, only then could he vaguely see the mess inside. Aside from a few abandoned looms, all that remained was a wooden table, on which lay several dishes of long-dried dye. The edges of each dish were stained beyond recognition, presumably from Liu Min's experimentation with dye colors.
The Su family case occurred in early July, and Liu Min must have been gone before that. As for the ghostly cries he'd heard every night, they were probably the sound of the wind blowing through the tattered window paper and hitting the crumbling wooden loom.
To be on the safe side, Suxi stuffed the small dish of paint into the cloth bag, then bent over to look around and found that there was actually a drawer on the wooden table.
Suxi gently opened the drawer to prevent dust from flying again, but saw that there were still a lot of white-grained paper cut into the size of silver bills in the drawer. There was no writing on the paper, but there were many torn pieces of paper underneath the paper. They were not white-grained paper, but letter paper with ink stains.
Sensing that this thing would be of great use, Su Xi hurriedly took out the scraps of paper and piled them on the table, piecing them together one by one according to the handwriting. Soon, following the ink marks, the scraps of paper were restored to form a square piece of letter paper. The handwriting on the letter paper was beautiful, with only two lines:
"I'm writing to Liu Min personally. I know you're swamped with gambling debts and struggling to make ends meet. I'd like to ask for your assistance. Upon completion, I'll reward you handsomely. I'll meet you in Xiangya Pavilion on the second floor of Fuyu Tower at noon three days from now. --- Lin."
"Written by Lin?"
Suxi was almost certain, and immediately wrapped the scraps of paper in white-textured paper and put them into a cloth bag, secretly delighted in his heart.
With these evidences, it is enough to prove the conspiracy between Shen Pingchang and Lin. As long as we find Uncle Dou in prison in a few days and ask him for some details, we will not be afraid of overturning the case. When we go to Beijing to appeal for justice and the Jingzhao Prefecture brings him to trial, Uncle Dou can just take the opportunity to come out. With witnesses and material evidence, how can this cunning guy Shen Pingchang turn over? When Shen Pingchang is executed, we can follow up the investigation and find out the person behind Shen Pingchang, catch them all in one fell swoop, and completely clear the Su family's name. By then...
Suxi was overjoyed and walked out of the house humming a little tune. However, before he stepped out of the threshold, the relaxed expression on his face suddenly froze and his steps suddenly stopped. He looked at the young man who was hidden in the shadow of the old tree outside the threshold with his eyes, and his mind was blank.
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