Volume 5, Chapter 20 – Cold Case

Late at night, Tao Ran returned to his home in the Xia Capital. Just before entering the residence courtyard, he vaguely sensed someone behind him.

He turned to look, but saw no one. His face immediately sank, and he quickly had the servants shut the gate before entering the courtyard.

“Why are you looking around like that, Master?” a servant asked while closing the door.

After all, Tao Ran usually came home very early. Court sessions took up, at most, a single morning, and he would normally be back around noon. They had never seen him this tense even as he entered his own home.

“That has nothing to do with you.” Tao Ran frowned, feeling a deep dislike for the servant.

He wanted to lash out, but then remembered that this was now the ritual order of the new dynasty. From the day the Xia Code was promulgated, it had abolished the old dynasties’ “four-tier classification of the people.” In other words, there were no longer first-rank commoners, second-rank commoners, or even servant-folk. Among the subjects of Great Xia, the only distinction was whether one was innocent or guilty.

This servant had not violated the Xia Code, so Tao Ran was not allowed to beat or kill him. If he insisted on acting willfully and caused a death, he had better be able to cover it up. Once word leaked out, not only would he lose his official hat, his entire household would be implicated and sentenced along with him.

Tao Ran had come from a Confucian scholarly background, a standard civil cultivator. His own cultivation had reached only the 4th Layer of Refining Qi. The reason he had risen so high was that, in his early years, he had led local forces into submitting to the new regime early on, making him one of its meritorious founders. Later, he also received the backing of his clan, and only then did he climb step by step to his current position.

Very few people knew how complicated his feelings toward the new dynasty really were.

In the final years of Yao Yu, ritual and music had collapsed. A Confucian scholar like Tao Ran naturally despised that to the core. So when the imperial court first began legislating, claiming it would help restore ritual order to the world, many Confucian scholars, Tao Ran among them, supported it with all their strength and felt they had backed the right side.

But the good times did not last. As the Xia Code continued to be drafted and expanded, adding new innovations atop its original foundation, these people gradually began to realize something was wrong.

Perhaps my learning is too shallow, but can someone explain to me what it means that “when princes and nobles break the law, they are punished the same as commoners”?

And what does it mean that “a person’s standing is judged only by innocence or guilt, and all who are innocent are equal regardless of rank”?

At that point, Tao Ran and the others finally came to their senses and hurried to submit remonstrances to the imperial court, saying that the Xia Code could not be written this way!

All they wanted was to restore ritual order and return the world to its original peace. They had never intended for the imperial court to use that as a basis to abolish certain old rites and create another kind of collapse of ritual order on an entirely different level.

They did submit memorials, but Bai Zhuqing ignored them completely.

The Xia Code had abolished the four-tier classification of the people and raised the social standing of the lower commoners. But that status had not appeared out of thin air. It had been carved from the flesh and blood of clans and great families like theirs.

From then on, household servants could no longer be bought or sold through bonded contracts. Regardless of rank or station, social classes could not brawl at will except under special circumstances. Causing injury or taking a life meant conviction and imprisonment, and court ministers had to abide by the same rules.

It was the injury done to aristocratic interests that formed the real reason Tao Ran and the others had turned against the imperial court, and why some among them had even begun to lean toward Northern Yu.

After dismissing the servants, Tao Ran returned to his room. He washed up, then pretended to go to sleep.

Only just before dawn, when the sky was at its darkest, did he get up again to dress. He pressed lightly on the bookshelf beside the table and watched it slide aside, revealing a deep, shadowy passage.

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He entered the passage. Inside was a tiny room with a table and chairs set in the middle. A figure was already seated by the table, as if it had been waiting for a long time.

Snap.

Tao Ran struck a match and used it to light the lamp. The cramped room brightened.

Looking again at the figure, he saw a man over nine chi tall, fat and heavily built, with a pair of scarlet beast-eyes in his skull. No matter how one looked at him, he did not resemble a normal human at all.

“I just came from Chancellor Zhang’s residence,” the burly man said, his voice rolling through the secret chamber like muffled thunder.

“I saw people already confiscating his property… What exactly is going on?”

In truth, he had gone to other places as well, including Grand Commandant Liu Fanghe’s residence, and found those estates being raided and liquidated too. Only then had he realized something was wrong, and so he had hurried over to Tao Ran for confirmation.

“Empress Bai Xiang has returned.”

Tao Ran said only that one sentence.

“Hm?”

The burly man’s eyes first went wide. The hair all over his body bristled. He shoved himself to his feet in one motion and cried out, “Impossible!”

“It’s true.” Tao Ran looked at him with a dark expression, a trace of mockery mixed into it. “The Sacred Cicada Sword was as docile in her hand as an infant… That Regent could never have found a stand-in of that caliber.”

“You saw it with your own eyes?” The burly man was startled again. Once he had confirmed it through discussion, his face immediately filled with misery. He said to Tao Ran, “This matter is far too serious. I have to leave at once.”

“You do need to get moving.” The skin on Tao Ran’s face twitched twice. “That qi-path divine pool was mysterious to begin with. When she wasn’t around, you lot already had to go to enormous lengths to deceive it. Now that she’s back, who knows what changes there’ll be.”

The burly man’s expression turned even uglier. He immediately strode to a hidden door. “Then I’m leaving right now!”

He pushed lightly on the hidden door.

It did not budge.

The burly man froze. In the next instant, with a thunderous boom, the door panel blasted backward into him, smashing him so hard that he coughed blood and staggered back several steps. He glared at the attacker before him.

“Demon!” Dust billowed, and from it emerged Huang Qian’s dark, resolute face. “We hadn’t even come to collect you yet, and you dared run wild in the Xia Capital.”

“Die for me!”

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That final roar was like a thunderclap from a clear sky. Not only did it shake the secret chamber to the verge of collapse, it directly knocked the panicked Tao Ran unconscious, sending him crumpling limply to one side.

Boom!

With another explosive crash, two figures shot out of the room. They were the burly man and Huang Qian.

The moment the burly man landed in the open, he revealed his true form: a black-backed pig demon with sword-like bristles growing from its spine. Layer upon layer of explosive muscle bulged across its upper body. It stood more than four meters tall, like a mountain of black flesh in the shape of a tower.

“Oink!” the pig demon shrieked as it charged Huang Qian, its two sharp tusks carving pale arcs through the air. One did not need to ask what would happen if they struck.

“Hmph!” Huang Qian glared, made no move to dodge, and instead slammed forward with brute force of his own, intending to seize the pig demon’s tusks with both hands.

Boom!!

The courtyard shook. The two sides collided like locomotives crashing head-on. In the next instant came a shrill scream, and the giant tower-like shadow was sent flying backward, crashing into the courtyard and plowing a deep trench through the ground.

The two were not evenly matched. Before the pig demon could struggle back up, Huang Qian smashed down with a punch, striking it squarely in the front of the skull and ending its life on the spot.

Rustle, rustle.

Only then did a group of soldiers in black mystic armor break through the gate and rush in. Seeing the scene in the courtyard, they were not surprised at all. Together, they stepped forward and bowed to Huang Qian.

“Grand Commandant!”

“Go inside and search. See whether there’s anything else to be found.”

Rubbing his hands together, Huang Qian looked toward the house with excitement on his face.

“Arrest everyone surnamed Tao for me. Don’t let a single one of them escape this estate!”

The fates of Tao Ran and the others had already been sealed from the moment Bai Xiang returned to the Xia Capital.

Feixiang Heaven was not with her, but she had obtained the Shenming Sword. Through that sword, she could directly link her soul-consciousness to the qi-path divine pool that covered the skies above the Xia Capital. That meant that if she wished, she could listen in on almost every “vibration” in the city.

The qi-path divine pool was like a spiderweb.

In the past, that spiderweb had no master. Certain filthy things could use their methods to slip through its gaps. Even if they occasionally got a limb stuck and brushed the web, it was no great matter.

But now Bai Xiang was back.

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With her seated at the center, the moment those filthy things made even the slightest larger disturbance, she could lock onto them directly through the qi-path divine pool and then notify Huang Qian and the others to lead teams over and deal with them.

That pig demon had really been careless.

It had not even stopped to think that the Tao Ran standing before it was also from the Refining Qi line.

Talking conspiracy in front of Tao Ran was the same as forwarding the whole conversation to Bai Xiang over a private chat channel.

The turmoil at the Public Investigation Office continued until the next morning. When Bai Xiang received Huang Qian’s report, she was in the front hall meeting Guo Rongzhi. After reading it, she turned naturally to look at this Senior Brother Guo, who had chosen a quiet life outside officialdom.

“Senior Brother, you were deliberately waiting for me.”

“Correct.” Guo Rongzhi nodded and snapped open his folding fan.

“What happened with Liu Yong?” Bai Xiang asked him. “Tell me every detail.”

She had changed into a new outfit again, one specially tailored for her by Bai Zhuqing: a black robe patterned in gold with roaming dragons, bound at the waist with a broad black brocade sash that set off Bai Xiang’s graceful figure without diminishing her nobility.

As for why she was asking about Liu Yong, it was naturally because Bai Shengju and Xiang Xian had both mentioned the matter to her earlier.

“Your disciple Liu Yong, so that your prestige would not fall, plunged deep into the demon tide and was left crippled while saving someone.”

Those had been Bai Shengju’s exact words.

With Bai Zhuqing as such a capable younger sister, there was actually not much for Bai Xiang to manage in the Xia Capital. Once the spies had all been arrested and interrogated, and a final decision made, she could spare the time to deal with these personal matters.

Yesterday, Bai Xiang had also spoken with Liu Yong over the phone.

On the call, she had told her overly emotional disciple to rest well and wait for her to return and help nurse him back to health, but she had not asked the person involved for details.

She did not want Liu Yong to relive those painful memories.

“I knew that would be the first thing you asked about.” Guo Rongzhi raised his brows slightly, then lowered his voice. “Did you ask Elder Bai… whether he’s gone back to the ancestral ground these past years?”

?

Bai Xiang froze, then narrowed her eyes.

The ancestral ground? The Bai family ancestral ground? The place where she had first risen to prominence?

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Senior Brother Guo would not ask something like that for no reason. Since he had, then Grandfather had most likely never gone back.

That was not normal.

Now that the new dynasty had been established, the Bai family could practically be called the imperial clan. By all rights, they should have gone back to the ancestral ground to perform sacrifices. There was no reason not to.

Bai Xiang immediately realized that this probably had something to do with her Little Aunt Bai Nianchan.

Because that place was not only the Bai family ancestral ground. It was also where Bai Nianchan’s remains had been buried.

Back then, Bai Xiang had sworn before all the members of the Bai family, with her sword as witness, that she would win justice for her little aunt.

It could be put this way: to many members of the Bai family, whether Eastern Xia had been established and whether the family had become imperial kin was not actually important.

On the contrary, what they cared about even more was whether Bai Nianchan’s injustice could be cleared away, whether every person connected to that case could be seized and dealt with, and whether her spirit in heaven could be consoled by it.

Bai Xiang was not sure about the others, but Grandfather Bai Shengju certainly thought that way.

So Grandfather had not returned to the ancestral ground because he felt too ashamed to face Little Aunt’s grave?

And the reason he felt that way was because her cold case still had not been solved?

With that thought, Bai Xiang asked, “Who was Liu Yong trying to save? And in the end, did he save them?”

Guo Rongzhi fell silent and did not answer.

Then I know enough.

Bai Xiang already had her conclusion.

On the surface, this seemed almost unbelievable. The new dynasty had already been founded. The name of Eastern Xia was known throughout the world. The Bai family was practically imperial kin. Yet solving an old wrongful case was still so difficult and brought so little return.

But in truth, this was perfectly normal.

First, too much time had passed. After years of war, many crucial witnesses, evidence, and case records had long since been lost.

Second, Grandfather and the others did not possess abilities of their own.

They could not search souls or read spirits. They could only investigate one clue at a time whenever they found one, so their efficiency was naturally extremely low.