Chapter 80: Confrontation (Part 1)

Deep in the mountains, tree shadows rustled and cicadas droned on.

Even though he had long known that Shao Hongzhen was the one who had orchestrated all this, Le Wuya still couldn't help but feel a pang of regret: "Why put yourself through all this?"

"What do I have to regret?" Shao Hongzhen stood with torch in hand, speaking gently. "Ten years of grinding away at my books, and then one day, I became an official. A seventh-rank county magistrate is a post countless scholars spend their whole lives chasing and never reach. In this world, it's the common folk who bear the brunt of the suffering. I wonder if Magistrate Wenren has heard that saying: 'The little people must keep their hands and feet moving...'"

Le Wuya continued: "...'No work, no food.'"

Seeing Le Wuya compose himself so quickly, Shao Hongzhen let out a chilly sigh. "If we'd met anywhere else, I'd have gladly bought Magistrate Wenren a drink."

Funny thing—Le Wuya had been thinking the exact same thing.

But that was never going to happen now.

With that, Shao Hongzhen turned away.

He'd already passed sentence on Le Wuya without a word.

Behind Shao Hongzhen stood a dense mass of dark shadows, as if born from his own silhouette—dark, menacing, and deeply unsettling.

As he turned, those shadows solidified into something real.

The mild-mannered villagers stepped out of the shadows, turning into wolves, closing in on him step by step.

Le Wuya's anger flared, and he hurled the arrow in his hand straight at Shao Hongzhen: "Stop!"

Of course, he'd held back a good deal of his strength.

The waxwood arrow flew straight and struck the back of Shao Hongzhen's head.

Shao Hongzhen was speechless.

The insult stung far more than the blow itself.

But Magistrate Shao was an easygoing sort—the kind of man who could let someone spit in his face and just let it dry.

"You dare touch Magistrate Shao? You're begging for death!"

As the shadows around them began to shift and stir, he merely gave a calm order: "I'm fine. Don't drag it out—make it quick."

Listening to his pitying tone, you'd almost think he was a generous, good-hearted man.

Le Wuya ignored his lackeys and barked: "Where are the men I brought with me?"

Shao Hongzhen glanced at him, said nothing, and kept walking.

He'd come up the mountain for one reason: to see for himself who was behind this mess.

Seeing that it was Le Wuya, his shock and hesitation lasted only a moment before he made up his mind:

Him too, then.

...

Shao Hongzhen had indeed been held up by that long-winded Prefect Lyu.

But his thoughts were still on the villagers of Yinjia Village. After getting back to Xingtai, he skipped the county seat and came straight here.

Just as he reached the edge of the village, he was shocked to see flames blazing in the heart of Yinjia Village, with shouts of "Put it out! Put it out!" echoing nonstop—pure chaos.

He didn't rush over right away. Instead, he hurried into the village and called for the people who'd stayed behind.

When the villagers saw Shao Hongzhen, they looked at him like he was a god, speaking rapidly in their local dialect, flustered and desperate to explain.

But they'd been cut off from the world for too long—gesturing wildly, stammering, unable to say clearly who the newcomers were—first calling them small-time military men, then calling them scholars.

Since they couldn't explain themselves, they just led Shao Hongzhen to the village chief's backyard.

A few soldiers lay sprawled on the ground, still breathing.

A villager stood guard. The moment any of them showed signs of waking, he'd pinch their noses and pour another bowl of strong liquor spiked with sleeping medicine down their throats.

They weren't completely cut off from the world—they knew enough to fear officials and didn't have the guts to harm them lightly.

If Pei Mingqi had just let himself be taken down, he wouldn't have ended up running for his life all over the mountain.

Shao Hongzhen checked the unconscious men and could tell from their clothes and swords that they were no ordinary soldiers.

Just one problem after another.

He took off his glasses, steadied himself for a moment, then spoke in a hoarse voice, giving his orders: "Once the ruckus over there dies down, strip their clothes off and burn them, and toss their swords into the furnace to melt down..."

He pinched the bridge of his nose in frustration, looked up at the village chief, and spoke like he was scolding a disobedient kid: "...Chief Yin, you're the head of this village—you need to keep an eye on them. You can't just see that others have nice clothes and good swords and decide to keep them for yourselves. If anyone finds out one day, it'll be another headache... Do I have to spell this out every time?"

The village chief, who was in his sixties, laughed in embarrassment and confusion, nodding over and over.

He looked just like he had all those years ago when they'd walked out of the mountains together—timid and eager to please.

Shao Hongzhen's heart softened for a moment, and his tone gentled as well: "...Bury them in the ground—give the flower fields one last dose of fertilizer. No need to kill them first—don't make it bloody and messy, that's harder to deal with. Got it?"

Chief Yin, being the chief, had a bit more sense than the illiterate villagers: "Then, Magistrate Shao, what if someone comes asking where they went? What do we say?"

Shao Hongzhen was extremely patient, walking them through it step by step: "Say you didn't see anything. There are plenty of bandits in these mountains—if they got picked off by one gang or another, it won't come back on Yinjia Village."

Chief Yin immediately looked deeply impressed, nodding along.

Having dealt with that headache, Shao Hongzhen pointed toward the opium poppy fields: "So who's making trouble over there?"

Chief Yin looked sorry, shaking his head over and over.

Seeing that he really didn't know, Shao Hongzhen had no choice but to go check it out himself.

Now that he saw who the troublemaker was, Shao Hongzhen did the math: there was no way Wen Ren could've gone back to Nanting and then returned to Xingtai in a single day.

In other words, Wen Ren had decided on the spur of the moment.

Which meant it was unlikely anyone else knew he'd come here.

So he'd have to die as well.

Shao Hongzhen did want to ask how Wen Ren had figured him out.

But on second thought, there was no real need.

A man that clever—better not to let him talk.

With still no sign of reinforcements, and unsure whether Zhi Jie and Wen Ren were alive or dead, Le Wuya was frantic with worry. He finally broke out in a childish snarl: "If you want the whole of Xing Tai County buried with you, then go ahead and leave!"

That did the trick.

Shao Hongzhen stopped in his tracks.

Le Wuya was dead tired, so he just plopped down on the ground, hands on his knees, wheezing, swallowing down the wet, coppery taste in his mouth, and struck a pose like he was ready for whatever came next.

The mountain folk had never seen anyone act so weird, and they were totally thrown off. With Shao Hongzhen not giving orders, and Pei Mingqi behind him glaring like he wasn't someone to mess with, they hung back, too scared to make a move.

So the two sides just stared each other down.

Shao Hongzhen knew he shouldn't be the one to talk to Wen Ren right now.

But that remark had hit him right where it hurt.

He let out a quiet sigh and walked back over to Le Wuya: "Magistrate Wenren, what's that supposed to mean?"

To his surprise, Le Wuya didn't say a word, just stared straight at him.

Shao Hongzhen had run into Magistrate Wenren a few times at the Prefect's meetings.

His face was grimy, but his eyes were bright and lively, always making Shao Hongzhen think of mountain spirits like the Qingqiu foxes.

Shao Hongzhen was sharp, of course. After a quick beat of confusion, he caught on to what Le Wuya meant.

He let out a dry chuckle and told his men, "Bring them out."

The moment he said that, Zhi Jie and Wen Ren were shoved forward by a bunch of hands.

Seeing the two of them could still move, Le Wuya let out a small sigh of relief.

He'd called it right.

Shao Hongzhen was the type to handle everything himself, so he'd probably told the mountain folk more than once to keep at least one of them alive for him to deal with.

Seeing Le Wuya and Pei Mingqi boxed in too, Wen Ren gave Le Wuya an apologetic look and shook his head, nodding toward Zhi Jie.

Le Wuya's eyes moved, and when he saw the state Zhi Jie was in, his heart nearly stopped.

—Zhi Jie was down on one knee, his right arm grazed by a crossbow bolt, blood soaking through his sleeve and dripping down.

He was pale from blood loss, breathing fast, barely holding on to consciousness, refusing to black out.

When he felt Le Wuya's eyes on him, he gave a weak smile, like he was saying he wasn't dying anytime soon.

At that, Le Wuya's eyes went ice cold.

He swept his gaze over everyone there, one by one, before locking onto Shao Hongzhen: "Magistrate Shao, there's something I've been meaning to ask."

Shao Hongzhen: "Magistrate Wenren, don't be so polite. Ask away."

Le Wuya: "Your own people grew the opium—so aren't the ones hurt by it your people too?"

Le Wuya had served in border armies, played a traveling merchant between the two sides, and roamed far and wide—he'd seen a lot.

He'd seen plenty of opium users—some destroyed their families, some went crazy, some bawled their eyes out, some turned to robbery and murder.

He really wanted to know how Magistrate Shao squared it with himself—claiming to love the people while hurting them.

Shao Hongzhen said, completely unbothered: "I've never sold opium to Dayu folks. I brought the seeds from across the border and sold them right back over it—to the Jing tribe, to Annam, to the Liao people. Not one Dayu person got hurt."

Le Wuya pointed at Pei Mingqi: "Then what about us? Why'd you try to kill us? Aren't we Dayu folks too?"

Shao Hongzhen: "Officials and soldiers live off the people's labor, fed by the common folk. Those who bleed the people dry for their own gain aren't subjects—they've got their own sins."

Hearing that logic, Le Wuya couldn't help but burst out laughing.

So that was it—now he got it.

This guy was a real piece of work—everything he did made perfect sense to himself.

He choked back his laughter and asked, still grinning: "Then what about the seven people killed in Yin Family Village? Don't they count as your folks, your subjects?"

At the mention of those seven heavy lives, Shao Hongzhen's eyes dimmed a little. He didn't answer, just shook his head and said: "Magistrate Wenren really is a sharp judge, already grilling me?"

Le Wuya: "I'm not grilling you. It's just that you're gonna end up in court sooner or later, and I'm giving you a head start on practice."

Shao Hongzhen figured Le Wuya must have something on him.

...A bit of a pain. But no big deal.

He was sharp, no doubt, and said straight out: "Magistrate Wenren, I know you're highly capable. Since you came straight to my Xing Tai, you must have some evidence on the Xing Tai massacre case—but that evidence has to be shaky. That's exactly why you risked coming here in the dead of night to poke around. If your evidence is shaky, what's there for us to talk about?"

"Wrong."

"Wrong?"

"It's not me who needs to cut a deal with you—it's you who'll have to beg me to talk."

Le Wuya glanced at Xiaoliu's hurt arm, his eyes stinging like he'd been pricked by a needle, and he quickly looked off.

"Before, I was gonna make a deal with you," he said, staring straight at Shao Hongzhen. "I can prove to you I'd help keep the Yin Family Village operation going. I've got two big bargaining chips sitting in the Nanting prison. If you just sent us back to Nanting, I could hand them over to you... But now, I don't wanna deal with you anymore."

Shao Hongzhen was always a serious man.

But this situation made him want to laugh.

They'd all been caught, not one left behind—where did they get the nerve to talk terms?

Still, those locked up in the Nanting prison...?

After a moment's thought, Shao Hongzhen had already pieced it all together.

"You've figured it out," Le Wuya said. "Your bandits didn't do a clean job—they came to our Nanting to pawn off the stolen goods."

"Those two men had thick calluses on their fingers, clearly from years of hunting with bows. And the calluses were uneven, meaning they used homemade arrows."

Shao Hongzhen steadied his breath: "Mountain hunters live by hunting; that's possible."

"But why would mountain hunters take such a huge risk to come to our Nanting county town to pawn off goods from a massacre case?"

Hearing Le Wuya say this, Shao Hongzhen showed a hint of pain and closed his eyes.

"Yes, you've guessed right. They came to buy medicine." Le Wuya spoke fluently, with ease. "I caught two men in total—one entered the city to buy medicine, while the other had a severe leg injury and waited on a slope outside the city. I thought the one who entered would at least buy some hemostatic powders like Baizhi San or Jinchuang Yao for external application, but what did he buy? Corydalis, Chuanxiong, Baishao... all for pain relief and numbness, treating symptoms rather than the root cause."

"So I wondered, what medicine did they really want?"

"Magistrate Shao, if I were to summon the pharmacy owner of Nanting County to inquire, do you think this person, when he went to fetch medicine, ever mentioned wanting opium paste for pain relief?"

"The pharmacies in Nanting have long been swept clean by me; no one dares sell such things. So this person had to settle for second best, grabbing many pain-relieving drugs to make do."

Shao Hongzhen was stricken with remorse, unconsciously clenching his fists.

...He had instructed them countless times not to touch a single bit of it.

But they just had to...

Le Wuya: "When I arrived at Yin Family Village and saw the Yin and Hang families, deep in the mountains, building their homes with walls over ten feet high, I roughly had my conclusion."

"Magistrate Shao, you conspired with the Yin and Hang families to build tall walls and grand courtyards, keeping prying eyes out, processing opium into raw paste in these mountains, then transporting it out without a trace—you've made a fine fortune. Wasn't this all just to keep Xingtai safe?"

"I used to wonder how you brought such order to Xingtai. If Xingtai were rich, wouldn't it attract even more bandits? Now I understand: Xingtai doesn't lack bandits—you used the massive profits from opium to hire bandits, who in turn protect Xingtai!"

Le Wuya's expression was flippant, yet he kept pressing: "Should I go investigate the backgrounds of your local soldiers, to see what they did before becoming soldiers?"

All of Shao Hongzhen's schemes were laid bare by Le Wuya in the bright moonlight.

Yet his expression didn't change one bit.

Seeing that Shao Hongzhen did not refute, Le Wuya continued: "You must have arranged for local soldiers... bandits—well, let's just call them local soldiers—to guard the high gates of the Yin and Hang estates, keeping outsiders away. But you overlooked one thing: you can't put a fox in charge of the henhouse."

"Now is the harvest season for the opium," Le Wuya said. "They watch batches of paste being sent out day after day, thinking, 'Such good stuff—if we skim a little off the top, surely Magistrate Shao won't notice, right?'"

Hearing this, Pei Mingqi finally put it together.

...So that's how the massacre came about?

The guards of the two estates, having consumed opium, were sometimes drowsy, sometimes frenzied. A disagreement with the Yin family escalated into a brawl, and...

The Hang family came out unscathed, likely because they saw the tragic fate of the Yin family. With that warning before them, they dared not resist and let the guards ransack the place, thus saving their own lives.

After the culprits sobered up and realized the trouble they'd caused, they scattered and ran.

No wonder Magistrate Shao stalled, refusing to report the bloodshed right away!

Precisely because Xingtai's local soldiers and bandits were one and the same, he was wary. So he intentionally had the military office stall the report and staged the scene himself as the so-called "Xiao Jiatuo Mountain bandit robbery."

The twenty "Xiao Jiatuo Mountain bandits" he killed were likely the "rotten apples" Shao had singled out—those who had secretly consumed opium.

He had them executed without a second thought.

The remaining six were probably just as guilty.

Magistrate Shao clapped his hands lightly: "Magistrate Wenren, you really are as good as they say."

He adjusted his glasses: "So, the 'bargaining chips' you mentioned—are they the two men locked up in Nanting's jail? But they must know that mass murder is a capital crime. At most, they'd confess that they're from Xingtai, that they usually smoke opium, and that when they heard about the murders at Yin Family Village, they went to see if the killer had dropped any loot, hoping to make a buck. They found this item by the mountain road and, not daring to pawn it in Xingtai, fled to Nanting, over a hundred li away. ...That lie wouldn't be hard to pull off."

Le Wuya flashed a dazzling smile:

"First, they won't lie obediently as you think, because they consume opium—they don't have the brains. I just need to whip out a bit of black paste, set it in front of them, and trick them into thinking it's opium, and they'd die for me."

"Second, who told Magistrate Shao that only those two wretches are my 'bargaining chips'?"

Le Wuya raised his thumb, pointing to the Little Phoenix standing ready behind him:

"The one behind me is General Dingyuan—Pei Mingqi, also known as Pei Fengyou."

"The one next to you..."

Le Wuya pointed toward Wen Ren, pausing briefly, thinking that calling him the future number one scholar would be too presumptuous.

So, he smoothly made something up: "He's from the capital, having come with the person beside him."

...After all, although the Ming Xiangzhao case was quite famous in Yizhou, few had actually seen Ming Xiangzhao in the flesh.

Le Wuya pointed to the last person: "The one you're holding, wounded and near death, is the sixth son of the current emperor, Xiang Zhi Jie."

With that, Le Wuya smiled: "He was last seen at the gates of the Yizhou prefectural office, leaving Yizhou city with me. If he were to vanish here, Xingtai, Nanting... no, the entire Yizhou would go down with him."

Shao Hongzhen: "............"

He looked down at the remarkable young man beside him, feeling as though he were in some nightmare.

...A mere magistrate of Nanting, how could he have such extraordinary talents by his side?