On the third day, before dawn had fully broken, every spare seat in the city was already occupied.
The storyteller had even replaced his usual wooden clapper with a brand-new one.
A muffled smile tugged at his lips as he remembered the night before. The Chen family had paid him far too generously!
Today, his courage had risen right along with his purse.
Smack!
“Ladies and gentlemen! This old man is here today to tell you all about the latest misdeeds of that Hell King Xu!”
The tea drinkers below exchanged glances, then stretched their necks in unison.
“That Xu Youde forcibly seized two thousand three hundred mu of fertile land south of the city, dug up three thousand graves, and embezzled eight million taels of government silver!”
“Eight million taels?!” one of the tea drinkers gasped. “How much revenue does the Ministry of Revenue take in over an entire year?”
“Heh, and that’s not all!” The storyteller lowered his voice and said conspiratorially, “Someone saw it with their own eyes. Beneath his headquarters, there are more than a dozen enormous coffins lined up in the cellar! And what do you suppose was inside them?”
Someone in the crowd shouted, “Corpses!”
The whole teahouse erupted. Everyone wore just the right amount of fear on their faces.
“My heavens! How dreadful!”
“Then it must be true!”
The storyteller smiled calmly. “Not corpses! The coffins were packed to the brim with gold ingots and silver sycees!”
The entire hall exploded into an uproar.
A stagehand in the corner muttered, “Eight million taels in silver—how many coffins would that take to—”
Before he could finish, the man beside him spat back, “Why are you calculating the accounts for a corrupt official?”
The stagehand shrank back and fell silent.
The same story was being told simultaneously in more than a dozen teahouses and taverns across Jinling.
The Chen family’s planted informants were each more outrageous than the last.
By noon, the story had evolved into a claim that Xu Youde had dug a secret tunnel beneath his headquarters, running straight to the Grand Canal so that he could transport silver under cover of night.
Xu Youde would have said: Even my daughter Qinghuan couldn’t pull off something like that!
The owners of the city’s bookstores were working through the night as well, rushing out an illustrated volume titled A Sequel to the Ten Great Crimes of Xu Youde.
“Eight qian of silver a copy!”
“Why don’t you just rob us?”
“Buy it or don’t.” The shopkeeper rolled his eyes. “There are plenty of people waiting behind you.”
The line stretched from the counter all the way across the street. In less than an hour, all five hundred copies of the sequel had been snatched up.
…
Chen Wenhan held the silk document aloft, his voice already hoarse.
“Everyone! The Jiangnan Scholars’ Joint Petition has now gathered more than five hundred signatures!”
The platform was surrounded by a sea of heads.
Those who had come today were not only young students. Several elderly examination graduates of considerable renown in Jiangnan had also signed their names with trembling hands.
Chen Wenhan unfurled the newly drafted articles and read them out word by word, each one bitten off through clenched teeth:
“Xu Youde has seized land, disturbed graves, and embezzled untold fortunes. He is, in truth—the greatest parasite since the founding of this dynasty’s civil examinations!”
“The greatest parasite!”
The crowd roared the words back at him.
Two scholars from out of town who were traveling through the region were caught in the middle of the crowd. Before they knew what was happening, someone had thrust brushes into their hands and forced them to sign. By the time they came to their senses, their names had already been written on the silk document, impossible to erase.
Only one person had refused to write his name: a young student in an old cotton robe, standing beneath a corridor pillar in the corner. He had watched the entire spectacle from beginning to end without lifting a brush.
One of his companions tugged at his sleeve. “Why aren’t you signing?”
The young student pulled his sleeve free and said quietly, “Three hundred people have signed their names to condemn the word ‘corruption.’ But the silver paid out at twice the market price was exchanged by the Datong Bank in broad daylight, before half the city.”
“But… can that really be right?”
“And what if it isn’t? The entire city of Jinling is saying it is!”
“The entire city of Jinling is saying it,” the young student replied with a faint smile, though the anxiety in his heart was impossible to hide. He turned and forced his way out of the crowd. “Then all the more reason not to sign.”
He left Minglun Hall and walked away along the base of the wall without ever looking back.
Outside the Jiangning County Office, the crowd had swollen once again.
The “tenant farmers” hired by the Chen and Fang families had grown from a dozen or so to thirty or forty. Mixed in among the genuinely bewildered commoners, they wailed and pounded their chests, their performances becoming more impassioned by the day.
One old man cried himself unconscious. Someone pinched his philtrum until he came around, gave him a bowl of hot soup, and then laid him down to continue crying.
The rear entrance of the county office was under watch as well.
Magistrate Wu was trapped in the signing room, so anxious that sores had broken out around his mouth. He had walked around the table eighteen times already.
“In my previous life, whose ancestral grave did I dig up to deserve this?” He slammed a palm onto the table. “How did I end up saddled with a mess like this?”
The secretary leaned closer and lowered his voice. “Master, perhaps we could send a private note to the headquarters? Give them a warning, and let Magistrate Xu know that those people outside aren’t residents of Jiangning County at all. They were hired.”
Magistrate Wu stopped in his tracks.
He stared at the secretary for a long while, then finally shook his head.
“A private note?” His voice was hoarse. “If the Chen family finds out, they’ll say I’m colluding with the imperial inspector. And Xu Youde may not appreciate the favor either.”
“Caught between both sides, I’d lose this official hat of mine—and my head along with it.”
“Then… are we just going to sit here and wait?”
Magistrate Wu dropped back into his chair. “Wait it out! Yes, that’s right. We’ll simply wait it out!”
After thinking it over, he muttered a few words to himself before continuing, “For a matter this serious, the responsibility rests with Yingtian Prefecture. If Yingtian can’t handle it, then the capital will. If the capital can’t handle it, someone else will.”
“There’s only one thing for us to do: guard the gates and keep kicking the ball upward, one kick at a time!”
At the headquarters, in the rear courtyard bedroom, Hu Shun barged in for the fifth time.
Three angry sores had now appeared at the corners of his mouth, and every word he spoke sent a sharp stab of pain through him.
“Master!”
Xu Youde was wrapped in a thick cotton quilt, half reclining against a bolster. He held a little illustrated storybook in his hands and was engrossed in the middle of a scene.
A dish of fried pumpkin seeds sat on the small table beside the bed. He cracked one open, then casually spat the shell onto the floor. The shells were scattered everywhere.
“Master! The shouting outside has spread through all thirty-six wards! More than three hundred scholars have signed the petition! Pamphlets are flying everywhere, and they’ve even invented stories about coffins hidden in your cellar!”
Hu Shun was practically in tears.
Xu Youde did not even look up.
“I know.”
He turned a page.
“Close the door. Don’t let the draft in.”
Hu Shun stood there, unable to catch his breath, and nearly collapsed.
He retreated beneath the veranda and began pacing anxiously, only to run straight into the accountant, who had just returned from gathering news in the city.
The accountant’s face was ashen. He leaned over and whispered, “Steward Hu, the city… the city has even made up nursery rhymes.”
“What nursery rhymes?”
“The children are singing them all over the streets…”
“‘Hell King Xu, digging graves all day, hiding silver in coffins along the way.’ And the candy sellers are making little sugar figures of Hell King Xu. Five wen apiece. Some of them have sold more than a hundred in half a day…”
Hu Shun’s vision went black.
He gritted his teeth, turned around, pushed open the bedroom door again, and dropped to his knees. Then he knocked his head firmly against the floor.
“Master! I know I shouldn’t be meddling! But things have come to this. You have to come up with some kind of plan!”
At last, Xu Youde set the storybook down.
“Either,” Hu Shun said, counting on his fingers, “we mobilize the garrison and suppress them, starting by arresting the ringleaders at Minglun Hall!”
“Or we write an urgent letter tonight and send it to the capital by express courier, asking the Grand Secretariat to make a ruling!”
“At the very least… at the very least, we could open the main gate for once, post a notice, and publish the accounts showing that the silver was exchanged at twice the market price. We could prove your innocence, Master!”
Xu Youde looked at him for a long, long time.
The stare made Hu Shun’s heart prickle with unease.
“What are you in such a hurry for?”
Xu Youde finally spoke. His tone was as flat as if he were asking what they were having for lunch.
“The worse they curse us, the safer our victory.”
“Get out. And shut the door behind you.”
Hu Shun stood there with his mouth open, still wanting to say something, but Xu Youde waved a hand. Hu Shun could only stumble out in a daze.
Standing beneath the corridor, he shuddered as the cold wind swept over him.
It was over.
Had his master… decided to let everything collapse?
The news that Xu Youde had shut himself away and refused to receive visitors spread throughout Jinling that very day.
In the main hall of the Chen residence, a spy bowed as he reported, “...The gates of the traveling command post have remained shut for three days. Xu Youde hasn’t shown his face even once, nor has he issued so much as a single notice of clarification.”
Chen Shichang slapped the armrest of his grand chair and threw back his head, laughing three times.
“Excellent! Excellent! Excellent!”
He sprang to his feet and paced back and forth across the hall, his eyes gleaming.
“He doesn’t dare leave, doesn’t dare issue a clarification, and doesn’t dare mobilize troops. What does that tell us? It tells us that he knows perfectly well those accounts of the silver won’t withstand scrutiny!”
“That old dog is afraid!”
The trusted steward stepped closer and advised in a low voice, “Master, while he’s holed up inside the command post, why not add fuel to the fire? Send men down the Grand Canal to Suzhou, Hangzhou, and Yangzhou. Have them scatter the pamphlets through the bookshops and teahouses of every prefecture. Let the flames spread from Jinling to the entire Jiangnan Circuit!”
“Burn until Xu Youde has nowhere to run and nowhere to hide!”
Chen Shichang clapped his hands. “That’s exactly what we’ll do!”
He immediately approved three hundred taels of silver and ordered men to travel south by fast boat that very night.
“Remember,” Chen Shichang said as he stood beneath the corridor, gazing toward the docks, “the fire must burn hot, and the rumors must be poisonous. I want the censors in the capital to be unable to pretend they haven’t heard a thing!”
In the study of the Fang residence, candlelight flickered.
Fang Jinhai sat alone before his desk, going over everything that had happened during the past three days from beginning to end.
The more he thought about it, the more wrong it seemed.
What sort of man was Xu Youde? A second-rank Minister of Revenue, an imperial commissioner, a man who held the authority to mobilize troops and carried an imperial command token. For someone like him, suppressing several hundred scholars would be no more difficult than crushing a nest of ants.
Why hadn’t he acted?
Fang Jinhai’s fingers tapped against the tabletop, once after another.
He had not mobilized troops. He had not issued a clarification. He had not even left the gates.
There were only two possibilities. Either he was truly afraid—but would a man who dared force the three great clans of Jiangnan into a desperate corner be afraid of several hundred scholars?
Or else…
Fang Jinhai did not dare continue down that line of thought.
Then he remembered another suspicious matter. Yang Bonian had supposedly “fallen ill,” yet to this day, not a single member of the Yang family had stepped forward to support the joint petition. The three clans had sworn an alliance by blood, but now it was the Chen and Fang families who were leading the charge. The Yang family had not shown even a shadow.
“Someone come.”
The steward entered at once.
“Quietly send someone sharp-witted to circle around the Yang estate,” Fang Jinhai said in a lowered voice. “Find out whether Yang Bonian’s illness is genuine.”
The steward accepted the order and turned toward the door.
“Wait.”
Fang Jinhai called him back. He opened his mouth, hesitated for a moment, then fell silent.
The memorial had already been submitted, and the seal had already been stamped. There was no turning back now.
He waved his hand. “Go. Be careful, and don’t let anyone spot you.”
That night, a solitary lamp burned in a secluded study in the rear courtyard of the Yang estate.
Yang Bonian sat upright and vigorous before the desk, showing not the slightest sign of illness.
Spread across the desk was not a prescription, but a map of the southern part of the city.
Dense markings in red ink covered it. The boundaries of each aristocratic clan’s farmland, the locations of their ancestral halls and family graves, along with every weakness and piece of compromising information secretly gathered over the years, had all been marked with painstaking precision.
Yang Jingzhi leaned beneath the lamplight, checking the last few figures.
“Master, the Fang family sent someone over, claiming he came to inquire after your health. He circled around outside the estate twice and even tried to coax information from the gatekeeper.”
“Fatty Fang has more sense than Chen Shichang,” Yang Bonian said with a snort. “Unfortunately, he’s too late.”
“Then… should we drive the man away?”
“Drive him away? Why?” Yang Bonian picked up his vermilion brush. “Let him look. The more carefully he looks, the better.”
“Tomorrow morning, do everything as usual. Have the physician boil medicine in the main hall, and dump the dregs by the base of the courtyard wall.
“Have the maids carry chamber pots in and out, and make sure their faces look mournful. Pay them extra for a convincing performance—remember, a generous extra!”
Yang Jingzhi hurriedly nodded and committed every instruction to memory.
“Once the Fang family’s spy returns, he can report to Fatty Fang that Old Man Yang is truly on the verge of death.”
Yang Jingzhi bowed. “Yes.”
Yang Bonian lowered his head. His vermilion brush landed on the southeastern corner of the map, circling the final name.
The tip of the brush paused.
“Seventh Prince, tell me,” he said, staring at the circle, “once this map reaches Xu Youde’s desk, how many families do you think will still be left in Jinling?”
Yang Jingzhi lowered his eyes, not daring to answer.
Seeing that he remained silent, Master Yang smiled faintly and waved for him to leave.
Deep into the night, at midnight.
The lamps throughout the traveling command post went out one after another.
Only after everyone else had dispersed did Xu Youde rise from his bed. He threw on a slightly worn long robe and paced over to the writing desk.
From beneath his pillow, he took out a letter.
The letter had been written long ago and sealed tightly with red wax. There was no recipient’s name on the envelope, only a tiny secret mark in one corner.
Xu Youde raised his hand and gently knocked twice against the wall.
A hidden door slid open without a sound, and a thin, elderly servant slipped out and stood with his hands clasped before him. The old servant had been concealed in a secret chamber of the command post for days. No one in Jinling had ever seen him.
“Take the waterways,” Xu Youde said, handing him the letter. “Avoid every courier station and official road. Deliver it straight to the Earl of Chengyi’s residence in the capital, and place it in the young lady’s hands personally.”
“Yes.”
The old servant tucked the letter into an inner pocket close to his body, bowed, and slipped through the hidden door in the rear wall. Without making a sound, he vanished into the snowy night.
Xu Youde remained where he was, gazing in that direction. For the first time in three days, he broke into a broad grin.
“My daughter,” he murmured to himself.
“Your father’s performance was passable, wasn’t it?”
The next morning, in broad daylight, the gates of the traveling command post remained tightly shut.
Yet an even more explosive piece of news had already begun racing through the teahouses and taverns—
Someone had supposedly seen three large chests being carried out through the rear gate of the command post at the third watch the previous night.
The chests were so heavy that four strong men could barely lift them. Wrapped in black cloth, they had been loaded directly onto an unmarked black-canopied boat.
Then the boat had headed north along the Grand Canal!
“He’s run! Xu Youde is moving the stolen silver!”
The Delightful Moon Teahouse erupted in an uproar.
“No wonder he’s been hiding and refusing to show his face. He was packing up his valuables!”
“Eight million taels! How could three chests possibly be enough? Those must have been only the first batch!”
Even several neutral merchants who had originally chosen to watch from the sidelines began pounding their tables and cursing.
No one knew that the three chests contained nothing more than old account books and survey maps that Xu Youde had ordered removed from the storehouse and sent back to the capital for archiving.
But at a time like this, everyone was willing to believe only what they wanted to believe.
When Chen Shichang heard the news, he could no longer sit still. That very night, he summoned Fang Jinhai and the Chen family’s younger generation to the Chen residence for a secret meeting.
“Everyone!” He slammed a palm onto the table. “Xu Youde moved the stolen goods under cover of night. What does that tell us? It tells us he’s already preparing to abandon his post and flee!”
“That’s a good thing!” Chen Wenhan’s eyes lit up. “Uncle, how so? If he runs, wouldn’t that simply let him off the hook?”
“Run?” Chen Shichang sneered. “Under Heaven, all land belongs to the emperor. Where could he possibly run? The moment he flees, the charge of embezzlement will be proven beyond doubt! Our memorial signed by the people has already reached the capital, and the public outrage is plain for all to see. If he runs now, even His Majesty won’t be able to protect him!”
“Pass on my orders. Have men watch every wharf, ferry crossing, and official road along the Grand Canal!”
Chen Shichang drove his finger hard against the tabletop.
“If we can intercept those three chests along the way and catch him red-handed, Xu Youde won’t be able to explain himself even with a hundred mouths!”
The Chen family’s men all rubbed their fists and eagerly voiced their assent.
Only Fang Jinhai sat below them, holding his teacup without taking a sip.
“Brother Chen,” he finally said, his voice dry, “if Xu Youde truly intended to flee, why would he wait until today? He holds the imperial commissioner’s seal of authority. He could take whichever route he pleased. Why secretly transport three chests—and why, of all things, let someone spot him?”
The hall fell silent.
Chen Shichang shot him a sidelong glance and let out a derisive laugh.
“Brother Fang, your courage isn’t any bigger than the tip of a needle.”
“Xu Youde is only human! With memorials from the capital piling up and the whole city calling for his blood, what’s so strange about him panicking and giving himself away?”
Fang Jinhai’s lips moved, but in the end, he said nothing more.
