◎ Into the Trap ◎

Granny Wang was a housekeeper the Liu family had brought on through an introduction when they first set up their household in the capital. Lord Liu had come from humble scholarly origins; the Liu residence was small and tucked away in an out-of-the-way part of town. Madam Liu, shrewd as she was, never paid the inflated prices the capital’s noblewomen paid for fresh produce delivered by traveling carts, and usually sent servants out to buy things directly instead.

In most grand households, the servants tended to be families who’d settled in for generations, loyal retainers raised in the house since childhood—but the Liu household, having only recently been established, didn’t need so much formality. Granny Wang had come up from a rural estate looking for work, couldn’t get into a noble household, and had been referred to the Liu family instead.

She’d long harbored thoughts of finding a better position. Madam Liu was shrewd and stingy, Lord Liu was a mere civil official, and the household ran on a thin, meager budget—nothing like the prosperous households of the capital she’d once imagined. A year ago, when the eldest daughter married, she’d brought a substantial dowry with her, and life had improved somewhat since.

But it seemed their luck had turned sour of late—the eldest daughter had died, and one misfortune after another had struck the household. Madam Liu had cut back on servants again and again; the three young maids who used to accompany her on errands had all been let go.

She carried her basket alone into the fruit shop she frequented. The moment she stepped through the door, a young girl took the basket from her hands, smiling as she led her in. “Auntie, we’ve got some fresh fruit in today—perfect timing. Have a taste, and if you like it, don’t forget to send others our way.”

The usual shopkeeper and old woman weren’t in the store. It seemed, unbeknownst to her, the shop had hired two new maids, both quite lovely. Granny Wang shook out her hands, and seeing the girl’s smiling face, felt her spirits lift considerably. “I haven’t seen you before, girl. Is Shopkeeper Zheng not in?”

“He went back to his hometown to visit family, might be a while before he returns,” answered the other maid at the counter, busy with an abacus. She wore coarse hemp clothing and had a cloth wrapped over part of her face, though her eyes shone with striking brightness. “We’ve made some new fruit pastries. If you like them, take extra—I see from the register you’re a regular, so this time it’s on the house.”

“Thank you, miss. What happened, why do you have your face covered?”

“Caught a bit of a chill, came out in a rash. It’s nothing serious.”

Granny Wang wandered around a couple of times, thoroughly charmed by the sweet-talking girl’s flattery, and ended up sampling one of every kind of pastry available. Unable to finish them all at once, the other maid brought her a stool to sit on and poured her tea attentively.

“Are you Shopkeeper Zheng’s relative, miss? You’re awfully pretty!”

With no other customers in the shop at the moment, the two of them pulled up stools and sat with her, eating pastries and chatting over tea, growing more talkative as the conversation went on. Granny Wang was a straightforward sort, and before long she was airing her recent troubles. “Not sure what’s gotten into our household lately—the master’s career’s hit a rough patch, the young master’s caused some trouble too, and my lady’s been so consumed with clearing her daughter’s name she hasn’t had time for anything else. It’s us servants who suffer for it—shopping, cooking, every last chore falls to us…”

The maid without the face cloth asked, curious, “Is your lady the one who wrote her petition in blood and took it up with the Ministry of Justice? Such devotion to her daughter—truly something to admire.”

Granny Wang preened a little, and feeling she had plenty of inside knowledge to share, went on a bit further. “That’s her, my lady herself.”

“Strange thing, though—when the eldest young lady was still living at home, she never got much affection from her mother. Before the wedding, there was no end of turmoil in the house. My old sister followed her over there and told me privately about the young master’s temperament—goodness! Even a mountain of wealth means nothing if you’ve no fortune to enjoy it. The eldest young lady died so tragically. Death seemed to stir up my lady’s motherly love, though—she’s thrown all her old dignity to the wind over it.”

Qu You glanced across at Zhi Ling, who sat without her veil.

The two of them chatted with Granny Wang for a long while, stuffing her with pastries, and once they’d sent the beaming woman off, Ai Disheng slipped in through the door, quietly closing it behind him.

“Something’s very wrong with this Liu household. That confession Zhen’er wrote can’t be entirely trusted.”

Qu You pulled the cloth from her face and drew several deep breaths. She’d happened to run into Ai Disheng while going to Bo Ying for help, and after a brief discussion, Boss Ai had sent his men to investigate the shops the Liu household frequented for its shopping, bringing the two of them here.

“We were rushed earlier and I didn’t get the chance to ask—why did you want to look into the Liu household in the first place?” Ai Disheng poured himself a cup of tea and sat down beside Zhi Ling. “What’s wrong with her confession?”

“In her statement, she says Lianxi failed to kill her husband and fell into the well instead,” Qu You said, recalling the confession. “I didn’t notice anything off the first time I read it—it wasn’t until my husband pointed something out that it suddenly struck me. If a man kills his wife, the harshest penalty is exile. But if a wife kills her husband, it’s not just a capital crime—word of it getting out would ruin her natal family’s reputation as well.”

Ai Disheng said, “That’s true enough.”

“If Zhen’er were really as loyal as she claims, she had no need to confess any of this at all. Lianxi was already dead—the two of them were the only ones who knew. If she’d wanted to keep it hidden, who would ever have guessed? And besides… in her earlier statement, she went to great lengths to paint Du Gaojun’s cruelty in vivid detail. Anyone without much guile would naturally, almost instinctively, conclude Lianxi died at his hands out of persecution. I think that’s exactly the impression she meant to create.”

Zhi Ling, who’d been listening, looked confused. “You mean all that righteous indignation was deliberate?”

Qu You continued, thoughtful. “Exactly. She did it on purpose, to make whoever read the confession angry enough that they’d overlook the vagueness of what came after—her words all hint at Du Gaojun murdering his wife, but she never actually witnessed what happened that day. It’s evasive, deliberately unclear. A confession like this offers plenty of outrage but no real substance.”

It was a remarkably clever piece of psychological manipulation and strategic maneuvering—she found it hard to believe it had come purely from Zhen’er’s own initiative.

Would a loyal maid of Liu Lianxi’s really produce a confession that could only condemn her mistress as a would-be murderer, one crafted to manipulate emotions while remaining entirely vague about the actual circumstances of her death?

Ai Disheng tapped his fingers on the table. He was a gaunt, sharp-featured man, always shrewd and efficient, with a pair of glazed spectacles perpetually hanging at his collar and calluses on his fingers from years of working an abacus. “But everything you’re saying is still just speculation. The world isn’t without its coincidences.”

“True—which is why I came straight to North Street the moment I left the Ministry of Justice,” Qu You said with a wry laugh. “When I attended the banquet at the Gao residence, I ran into Madam Liu. Yunyue told me she’s normally a reserved, cautious woman by nature—but the moment she saw me, she made a scene right there in public, crying and carrying on with no restraint at all. Yunyue had to have her taken to a side chamber to keep it from disrupting the banquet. It was a complete contradiction to everything I’d heard about her being so careful and reserved.”

“And both she and Zhen’er kept emphasizing, over and over, how badly Lianxi had suffered. I genuinely don’t understand—would a mother who loved her daughter so dearly, who was willing to sacrifice her own reputation for her, really have urged her to simply endure everything while she was alive, only to abandon her husband’s precious ‘reputation’ entirely once she was dead?”

Ai Disheng’s expression grew grave. “You suspect Madam Liu’s behavior was deliberate?”

“I had my doubts at the time, but I also thought—her daughter died horribly, some strong reaction was only natural.” Qu You shook her head with a sigh. “Both her actions and Zhen’er’s testimony had holes in them, which is exactly why I felt I had to come investigate. And sure enough, you heard everything Granny Wang just told us. Madam Liu comes from a rural background with a strong bias favoring sons—Lianxi was never well-loved in that household, always expected to yield to her younger brother in everything.”

Granny Wang had let slip a great deal of information in her idle chatter with Zhi Ling and Qu You. Madam Liu habitually favored her son, holding great hopes for him, while treating Liu Lianxi coldly. Growing up in such an environment was likely exactly what had shaped her into the kind of person Gao Yunyue had described upon first meeting her—quiet, gentle, even a little timid.

Only someone like Madam Liu, who valued money above all else, could explain why Liu Lianxi had been forced into marrying into the Du family and had never been able to escape it. She’d probably never expected much from her natal family to begin with—and when she’d finally worked up the courage to tell her mother about her husband’s cruelty, all she’d gotten in return was a single word: endure.

“Are you saying, Lady Zhou, that this entire case might be a trap?” Ai Disheng had fully grasped her meaning now. “Du Gaojun kills his wife, the Capital Prefecture handles the trial, Chancellor Fu deliberately shields him, procedure followed to the letter—if no one had come forward to demand justice, there’d have been no reason for suspicion at all. But someone instructed Madam Liu to make a scene over it, specifically insisting Xiaobai take over the case, and prepared an untrustworthy maid to back it up…”

“Granny Wang mentioned the household’s had one misfortune after another—after the eldest daughter died, the master’s career hit trouble, the young master caused an incident too, leaving Madam Liu scrambling to raise money to deal with it all. I suspect someone engineered all of this deliberately, to force her to go to the Ministry of Justice and seek out Zhou Tan,” Qu You said with a bitter smile. “They probably calculated that Zhou Tan and I, so righteously outraged on behalf of the women of Fangxin Pavilion, would be primed by Madam Liu and Zhen’er’s account of her tragic marriage and murder to lose our heads with anger and want to seek justice for her too, just the same. Think it through, Boss Ai—if Zhou Tan really submitted that confession as it stands, what would happen?”

“If Zhen’er changed her story during the Three Judicial Offices’ joint review, or before the throne, that would spell serious trouble.” Ai Disheng set down his teacup, thinking it through. “Xiaobai’s already earned a reputation as a harsh, ruthless official for breaking open old cases at the Ministry of Justice—if she recanted, it would only confirm accusations of coerced confession under torture. And more importantly, with the Du father and son being tools of the Chancellor’s faction, might His Majesty suspect Xiaobai of using any means necessary to eliminate a political rival?”

“From the time the Capital Prefecture handed down its original verdict, to the moment Zhou Tan took over the investigation, a full several days passed in between.” Qu You twisted the hem of her robe in her hands, a simmering anger with nowhere to vent, and could only close her eyes and breathe deeply. “If my husband could use Wuping’s death to pull the tongue right out of Chancellor Fu’s mouth, then naturally, the other side can just as easily invite him to walk right into a trap.”

“Now that he’s gotten his hands on this case, getting out unscathed is going to be difficult.”

Ai Disheng said gravely, “I’ll send men immediately to keep close watch on Madam Liu and the maid stationed at the Ministry of Justice. Does Xiaobai know what you’ve found?”

“He’s probably already guessed as much.”

Qu You reached for the key Zhou Tan had given her, tucked away with her at all times, and thought back on what he’d said as he left the Ministry. Her thoughts in turmoil, after much hesitation, she still didn’t tell Ai Disheng about the key.

If Zhou Tan had specifically instructed her to act as though it never existed, he surely had his own reasons.

This key was, in all likelihood, the sole variable Fu Qingnian’s meticulous scheme hadn’t accounted for. Judging by Du Gaojun and Fu Qingnian’s actions so far, they probably had no idea Liu Lianxi had possessed it at all.

Liu Lianxi had already been married into the Du family for a full year—she must have understood, by now, that ordinary corruption, wrongdoing, even a death or two, would never be enough to truly threaten the Du father and son. As long as Fu Qingnian remained secure in his position at court, there would always be countless more Peng Yues and Du Huis acting with impunity.

Zhou Tan might already know something, but Fu Qingnian had summoned him too urgently for the two of them to say much more.

She wondered what plan he had in mind to break this deadlock.

Qu You went backstage and changed with Zhi Ling, planning to head back to the residence first. The bells hanging from the carriage’s eaves jingled softly. She suddenly found herself thinking of the historical record—that a hundred years after Zhou Tan’s death, Great Yin would collapse under the weight of factional strife, and the armies of the Western Shao would march on the capital, engulfing half of the Central Plains in the smoke of war.

A lifetime of scheming and rivalry—looking at it from the outside, as she was, it all seemed as insubstantial as drifting clouds. But to those caught up in it, what must it feel like?

Thinking this, Qu You suddenly lifted the carriage curtain. The driver outside asked respectfully, “My lady?”

Qu You said, “Turn toward Chancellor Fu’s residence. Let’s go pick up my husband.”