Zhou Ziqin immediately slammed the table in anger: “Outrageous! Instead of seeking revenge against the perpetrator, this old man abuses his daughter like this—is he even human!?”

The tea master shook his head and sighed: “Pitiful. His daughter Dicui knelt in the street, fainting two or three times from crying, but the old man wouldn’t open the door! Think about it, a fifteen or sixteen-year-old girl, suffering such a terrible fate, becoming the talk of the entire city, pointed at wherever she goes, and then her father says she brings shame and tells her to die outside—how could anyone do such a thing?”

Though Huang Zixia maintained a calm expression, she felt a wave of sorrowful anger rise in her chest. She forcefully suppressed it and asked: “Then afterward, where did his daughter go?”

“She knelt in the scorching sun for over two hours, while her father kept the door closed. Finally, we couldn’t bear to watch anymore and tried to help her up, but she grabbed the hemp rope and stumbled out of the West Market, who knows where she went… Alas, now who knows which wilderness she died in!”

Zhou Ziqin was so angry he couldn’t speak, and after a while finally pointed at the candle shop across the street and cursed: “This old man will definitely face retribution!”

“Ah, if there was to be retribution, it would have come already! This old man had a daughter late in life, his wife was already old and died of postpartum hemorrhage, leaving just this one daughter. Dicui was truly good, helping her father with work from age four or five, standing on a stool to cook for her father by seven or eight! But the old man? Every day cursing and saying his daughter was useless, every time he saw someone with sons, his eyes would bulge as if they’d pop out—tell me, among the million people in Chang’an, many favor sons over daughters, but have you ever seen an old man so obsessed with wanting a son he’s gone mad? If he gets struck by lightning one day, the neighbors wouldn’t be surprised at all!” The tea master said, shaking his head and sighing as he went outside to fetch water, still muttering, “Us neighbors say heaven must be blind! That Mangy Sun had been sick for many years, if Dicui had run when he attacked her, he definitely couldn’t have caught up, so how did he catch her that time?”

Zhou Ziqin was also furious. He turned to look at Huang Zixia and saw her lips pressed tightly together, her hand gripping the table so hard the veins were nearly bursting through.

He was startled and asked: “Chonggu, what’s wrong?”

Huang Zixia took several deep breaths before finally releasing her grip, forcing her voice steady as she said: “Nothing… just never seen someone abuse women like this before, a bit angry.”

“There’s one more thing, did you hear what the tea master said? Don’t you find it strange? Why was Dicui caught by that weak sick man, why didn’t she escape? I think she would have struggled desperately to resist, and the Sixteenth Prince’s residence area isn’t particularly secluded, if she had called out it might have helped…”

Huang Zixia thought to herself, how would you know about the involvement of Wei Ximin from the Princess’s mansion in all this?

Zhou Ziqin asked in surprise: “You’re not shocked at all? Not surprised at all?”

“Very shocked, very surprised.” Huang Zixia sighed, standing up and saying: “Though I don’t want to deal with this old Lu, we still need to ask questions. Get your notebook ready, let’s go over together.”

Lu’s family business of four generations, this candle shop in the West Market, had grown quite old with time.

The narrow shop left only enough space to turn around after entering. On the left was a row of iron candle racks filled with candles of various heights and shapes, on the right was a wooden counter where old Lu was hunched over carving a dragon-phoenix wedding candle as thick as an arm.

The shop was only half a room, through the open back door one could see a small shed in the remaining half of the space, filled with wax blocks and molds. A pot of red wax was currently heating on the stove, giving off a strange smell.

Sensing someone enter, Lu Zhiyuan didn’t raise his head, his voice hoarse: “What would the customer like to buy?”

Huang Zixia cupped her hands in greeting, saying: “Elder Lu, I’m from the Court of Judicial Review, we met at Jiefu Temple before, do you remember me?”

Only then did Lu Zhiyuan put down his carving knife, squinting at her, his face showing a murky smile: “Oh, it’s the Magistrate.”

“Regarding Wei Ximin’s death, the Court has some questions for you, do you have time?”

Old Lu cradled the candle in his hands, saying: “Please wait a moment, the weather is hot, if I leave the freshly carved shape on the counter for a while, it will deform immediately, I need to color it first.”

“Please go ahead.” Huang Zixia and Zhou Ziqin stood in the shop, watching him carry the candle to the pot of heating red wax in the back, then grab the reed stem at the candle’s base and quickly dip it in the pot, instantly coating the white candle with a thin layer of red wax, the color bright and eye-catching.

He threw some dark yellow material into the pot to melt, stirring with a brush while asking: “What is it?”

“Where were you when Wei Ximin died?”

“Didn’t I say before? At home in Fengyi Ward!” He pointed with his brush toward Fengyi Ward not far behind, saying, “See, after I delivered it early that morning, I was so tired I collapsed right under the candles and couldn’t get up! The cart driver Ma Liu who delivered things with me took me home, and the Wu aunt in the back courtyard called a doctor to examine me—that useless quack couldn’t figure anything out, just prescribed some qi-supplementing medicine and told me to rest well. Just after he left, I heard the news that my candle had been struck by lightning and exploded! I was so angry, wanted to get up and see, but as soon as I stood up, I got dizzy and fell, couldn’t go until the next day!”

Huang Zixia frowned slightly, unable to find any holes in his story, and asked again: “Then what were you doing the day before the Jiefu Temple ceremony?”

“Though Jiefu Temple is wealthy, they only gathered all the different waxes to send over a month ago. Do you know how much effort it takes to make such a huge pair of candles? Especially in the final days before completion, my daughter… was driven out of the house for certain reasons, and Zhang Yan who had been helping me also fell ill, I was alone setting up scaffolding to make candles, working through the night, never left—ask the neighbors, was I not working on things all night, did I ever leave?”

As he spoke, he saw the gold paint in the pot was ready, so he dipped his brush and slowly colored the raised dragon phoenix and auspicious cloud patterns on the wedding candle, no longer looking at them.

Huang Zixia asked again: “Regarding Wei Ximin’s death, what do you think…”

“Great, I’d love for him to die!” he said without hiding anything, “A dog using his master’s power, that eunuch, the sooner dead the better! Too bad that lightning strike ruined this old man’s lifelong reputation, destroying my candle!”

“What do you think about this old man… is he suspicious?”

Zhou Ziqin carefully asked Huang Zixia who was walking forward silently.

Huang Zixia frowned, walking and saying: “Don’t know, need to ask more questions first.”

When they reached Lu’s home in Fengyi Ward, it was just past the hour of the monkey. A group of women were washing clothes in the shade by the well while gossiping about household matters.

Huang Zixia went over to greet them, asking: “Excuse me, sisters, how do I get to old Lu Zhiyuan’s house?”

Several women pointed to a courtyard with walls covered in vines: “There, that’s the Lu house, but old Lu is at his shop in the West Market during the day, no one’s home now.”

“Then… does he come home at night?”

“Of course he comes home at night, oh my, being his neighbors, we sometimes really get tired of him. Especially this past month, this old man working on those candles day and night, those copper molds and iron rods, making noise every night so people can’t sleep.”

Another woman chimed in: “Isn’t that right, remember the day before the Jiefu Temple ceremony? He woke up butcher Liu next door, who cursed at him across the wall half the night, but old Lu didn’t make a sound, just kept clanking away at his candles, butcher Liu said he wanted to take an ax and chop down his door!”

Huang Zixia asked again: “Then his daughter Dicui now…”

“Dicui? Don’t know…” the woman’s expression changed, saying sympathetically, “Alas, such a good girl, so fresh and lovely, quite a few young men in our ward liked her, who knew she’d be ruined like this.”

“That’s right, I say, if lightning was going to strike, it should have struck that Mangy Sun dead, why did it strike the eunuch at the Princess’s mansion?”

“Could the lightning have missed?”

“Maybe that Mangy Sun doesn’t dare go outside at all?”

“Hey, do you remember what happened last month? When Dicui hid a candle stick wanting to fight Mangy Sun?”

“Who doesn’t remember! That old Lu truly has a wolf’s heart and a dog’s lungs! As soon as he got the silver, he snatched away the candle stick and slapped Dicui to the ground! It’s strange though, they say that Mangy Sun had been sick for many years with no money for treatment, where did he get so much money to give the old man?”

“Dicui’s life was bitter! Born without a mother, and then to meet with such a thing…” An easily moved aunt started wiping her tears with her apron, “Better to go underground early to see her mother, rather than suffer in this world.”

It seemed the Princess’s mansion had handled things well, the common people didn’t know that Wei Ximin had interfered in Dicui’s tragedy.

Huang Zixia and Zhou Ziqin left Fengyi Ward. Zhou Ziqin saw her lost in thought, stepping as if walking on cotton, unsteady. He was a bit worried and reached out to support her shoulder, asking: “Chonggu, what’s wrong?”

“Putting myself in her place… I feel… it’s terrifying.” Huang Zixia murmured, involuntarily crouching down, feeling waves of nausea rise in her chest.

She crouched, hand against a nearby tree, only able to breathe forcefully, pressing down the depression in her heart bit by bit.

Zhou Ziqin didn’t understand why Yang Chonggu, being a eunuch, would empathize so much with a young girl’s tragedy. He crouched beside her looking confused for a while, and only when he saw her pale complexion gradually fade did he carefully ask: “Are you alright?”

“…I’m fine, I think I might be too tired.” She leaned against the tree trunk, forcing an explanation, “The case the Princess assigned seems not simple.”

“Exactly, the best explanation is a coincidence, but the Princess insists we find the culprit.” Zhou Ziqin said, then asked with concern, “Shall I take you back to Prince Xi’s mansion?”

“No… I want to go to Zhang Xingying’s place first, to see… A-Di.”

“Alright, but…” Zhou Ziqin carefully asked, “Are you hungry? Don’t go find A-Di, let me buy you something, what do you want to eat?”

Huang Zixia gave him a helpless look: “I think there’s a very good chance that A-Di is Dicui.”

Zhou Ziqin jumped up, his mouth hanging open, but his eyes opened even wider than his mouth: “What? Why? How do you know?”

“The time Dicui left home seeking death matches when Brother Zhang Two rescued A-Di on the mountain road; A-Di refuses to see people, hiding in Zhang’s courtyard every day, and also crying secretly at night…” Huang Zixia let out a long sigh, saying softly, “It’s very obvious, isn’t it?”

Zhou Ziqin continued to stare in shock, and after a long while, shook his head vigorously: “I don’t believe it! A-Di… gets along so well with Brother Zhang Two, how could such a terrible thing have happened to her!”

Huang Zixia breathed heavily, lowering her eyelashes, her gaze falling to her feet.

In the soil under the tree shade, several ants were busily searching for direction, crawling around her toes.

She was blocking the ants’ way home.

Huang Zixia slowly moved her foot away, watching the ants joyfully surge out of their nest, watching the excited ants returning home, and also seeing the ants she had unknowingly stepped on, silently crushed to dust.

Heaven and earth are indifferent, huge forces sweep everything away, invisible hands push everyone’s fate forward, moving involuntarily onward. Perhaps the force controlling everything behind them is also involuntary, perhaps they also don’t know that sometimes their small actions can be devastating disasters for others.

She lifted her foot and walked to the stone path beside her.

Zhou Ziqin looked at her puzzled, calling softly: “Chonggu…”

She slowly raised her head to look at him: “What?”

“Oh…” he looked uncertainly at her normally calm face, hesitating before saying, “Nothing… for a moment there, I thought you were crying.”

Huang Zixia looked up at the sky, saying: “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“Zhang Xingying’s house.”

Zhou Ziqin immediately followed her forward: “Then, Chonggu, what identity should we use? Are we assisting the Court of Judicial Review with the case, or…”

Huang Zixia pondered for a moment, saying: “No, just as Zhang Xingying’s friends.”