Quite a few people were kneeling in the county yamen’s main hall, but the county magistrate and his constables were all standing outside, with one constable curiously peering inside.

“Your Honor,” he asked, “what major case is being investigated? Even officials from the capital have come.”

The county magistrate glared at him: “Mind your own business. Don’t inquire about matters that don’t concern us. Do you want to go in and be interrogated yourself?”

The constable ducked his head and dared not speak anymore.

The county magistrate kept his eyes down, listening to the sound of something being thrown down in the main hall—it was his judgment board being tossed to the ground.

Deng Yi withdrew his hand and leaned back in his chair, looking at the four people kneeling on the ground. Besides the cart driver, there was the newly found “Madam Yang”—the courtesan Linian, a doctor, and the station master.

Money and jewels were placed before each of them, some with more, some with less.

“Let’s hear from all of you,” Deng Yi said, his gaze sweeping over the four before settling on Linian. “If I’m not mistaken, you should be the first one.”

Linian quickly raised her head: “No, no, my lord, this humble woman wasn’t the first. That young lady had already found the doctor first.” She extended her hand to point at the man beside her.

The man was a doctor who anxiously said: “My lord, I, I, I don’t know anything.”

Deng Yi calmly said, “It doesn’t matter. Once you speak, this official will know.”

The doctor hurriedly responded and took a deep breath to organize his thoughts: “I’m a traveling physician. That day I was walking on the road and saw two girls resting by the roadside—”

Deng Yi interrupted him: “Those two girls, how old were they? What did they look like? Be detailed.”

The doctor thought for a moment and said: “The smaller one was twelve or thirteen, the older one not more than fifteen. Both were dressed plainly. The older one was standing, the younger one was sitting. The younger one was quite pretty, with a small face and large eyes.”

Eyes that seemed to speak, and a voice that was pleasant to hear—delicate and frail, naturally arousing sympathy.

That was why he had been so bewitched at the time.

Deng Yi raised his hand in a gesture: “Continue.”

“That young miss called me over, saying she needed medical attention. She gave me a bag of money—I thought I had found a customer, but she wouldn’t let me examine her. She said that in a few days, she would have me come to the postal station to treat a woman, with only one requirement: regardless of my findings, I was to say that the woman was beyond medical help and didn’t have long to live.”

At this point, he secretly glanced at the official seated in the hall, seeing that the man’s expression remained calm, revealing neither pleasure nor anger.

“I, I wouldn’t normally deceive people like that. I thought I would see the situation when the time came. If I could treat the patient, I would certainly do my utmost to cure the illness.”

Deng Yi said nothing, while Inspector Qi, standing to the side, sneered. This greedy ghost was still making excuses for himself.

The doctor kept his head lowered, not daring to look at them.

“For the next few days, I often wandered near the postal station. As a traveling physician, it wasn’t unusual. Sure enough, one day a postal servant ran out looking for a doctor, bumped into me, and brought me in. That’s when I met this madam.”

He turned his head to look at Linian beside him.

After her initial panic, Linian was no longer nervous. After all, she hadn’t done anything truly terrible—she had merely taken money to pretend to be someone’s mother. Seeing the doctor look her way, she gave him a coquettish smile, then raised her head to look at the official—

“My lord~” she said.

The lord glanced at her, and Linian, accustomed to all sorts of clients in the pleasure houses, stiffened and straightened her kneeling posture.

“That day I was taking an afternoon nap in the brothel when those two girls climbed through the window, giving me quite a fright. I was on the third floor! I thought they were burglars.”

Being from a pleasure house, she was more perceptive than the doctor. Without waiting for Deng Yi to ask, she voluntarily provided details.

“As it turned out, they were two girls about thirteen or fourteen years old. Though they looked ordinary at first glance, the smaller girl was quite pretty.”

Linian’s eyes sparkled—as someone who served with her beauty, she was most adept at recognizing beauty.

“When she grows a few years older, at seventeen, eighteen, or nineteen, she’ll be a peerless beauty. However, her eyes were a bit too fierce, which isn’t good—men wouldn’t like that—”

Deng Yi interrupted her: “Focus on the main point.”

Linian looked sheepish and continued: “This young girl threw me three bags of money, saying she was hiring me for three days to pretend to be her mother.”

She pointed to the money bags in front of her, which were much more numerous than the doctor’s, with scattered gold and silver hairpins and jade bracelets.

“My lord, I’m just a woman who sells herself. Whether it’s to a man or a woman, whether pretending to be a wife or a mother, this humble woman doesn’t have much choice.”

“I just had to lie there pretending to be ill, then speak according to what she taught me—”

At this point, she quickly leaned forward to look at the station master kneeling at the far end.

“Master Xu, those words weren’t my intention. They were all what my ‘daughter’ A-Fu told me to say.”

The station master remained expressionless and didn’t respond to her, turning his head away. Today, he had lost all the face he had built up over his lifetime.

With the station master silent, the cart driver couldn’t wait any longer and anxiously kowtowed: “My lord, my lord, I didn’t know anything! I never met anyone else, just this madam who said she needed a cart, then said she didn’t need it anymore. She said I didn’t need to return the money to her, so I just, just—”

An opportunity not taken is an opportunity wasted.

He pushed forward the handful of money in front of him—compared to the others, his was the least.

“I don’t want it anymore, I’ll hand it over. Please spare me, my lord.”

Linian said from the side: “My lord, he was found by me and has nothing to do with A-Fu—A-Fu is what that girl called herself. Besides, A-Fu told me to stay in the cart to Yang Village before getting off, then leave after the cart driver was gone. But I thought it unnecessary and got off earlier. As a result, indeed, the plan wasn’t perfect and was discovered by you officials—”

As she spoke, she gave an embarrassed smile.

“If that young miss knew about this, she would probably withhold my payment.”

Deng Yi also smiled, thought for a moment, and nodded: “She probably would.” His gaze turned to the station master, “Station Master Xu, you—”

The station master bowed deeply and kowtowed: “This official is guilty of being blinded by greed and failing in his duties. Please punish me, my lord.”

The money piled in front of him was substantial—

Inspector Qi pointed at him from above, saying hatefully: “Old Xu, I’ve told you many times, everything about you is fine except for your greed. I knew you’d get into trouble sooner or later!”

Before Deng Yi could speak, hurried footsteps sounded outside the door, and a young man wrapped in a cloak rushed in.

“Lord Deng,” he asked urgently, “have you found my sister?”

Deng Yi smiled at him: “Young Master Chu Ke has arrived.”

So this must be the young master from the Chu family who came looking for his sister but remained comfortably seated in the prefecture office, as Inspector Qi had mentioned, thought the station master as he lay prone on the ground. He raised his head slightly to look—to see if this young master looked anything like the deceitful A-Fu.

This young master was seventeen or eighteen, quite tall with fair skin, and currently wore an anxious expression, his emotions unrestrained and impetuous.

A-Fu wasn’t like that at all. Although she was delicate and fragile, either weeping appeals to him or kowtowing in gratitude, in retrospect, that girl had been very composed.

Without composure, how could she have deceived so many people?

“Lord Deng, I heard you found something?” Young Master Chu Ke asked anxiously.

“Young Master Chu Ke,” Deng Yi said, “please first look at these valuables and see if they belong to your family.”

Only then did Chu Ke notice the money piled in the hall, his gaze falling on the valuables in front of each person. He immediately exclaimed: “Yes!” He reached out to grab the jade bracelets and vermilion hairpins in front of Linian. “These belonged to my mother—they were part of her dowry.”

At this, his face was filled with anger.

“That little wretch, she dared to steal!”

Linian looked at the young man before her and thought to herself, tsk tsk, to call his sister a “little wretch”—clearly this young master didn’t have a good relationship with his sister.

“And these,” Young Master Chu moved to the station master’s side and saw the piled money, angrily exclaiming, “So much! I don’t even know where the money in our house is kept. How did she manage to steal so much? So much money, such precious jewelry, and she gave them away so easily! Has she gone mad?!”

Deng Yi smiled and said: “Miss Chu Zhao isn’t mad—she’s heroic.”