Shen Shixu sat for a while longer before leaving on the pretext of being drunk. After returning to the small courtyard he rented, he had Little Stone, the servant who attended him, prepare brush and ink, and he wrote a long letter to his family.
Before going to sleep, he instructed Little Stone to wake him early the next morning and send the letter out.
He slept soundly on his end, but over in the palace, candles burned until dawn in the Crown Prince’s bedchamber. Xiao Jinyi stayed by Xiao Yuanqi’s side the whole night, and Emperor Wu’an and Empress Lin also learned of the Crown Prince being cuckolded.
Emperor Wu’an was furious at being deceived by the Yongning Marquis household, and Empress Lin was equally enraged. Yang Wenhui was the daughter-in-law she had personally selected, and she had never imagined the girl would turn out to be so two-faced, so shameless and dissolute.
At the thought that this woman had nearly married her son and become her daughter-in-law, Empress Lin felt a wave of lingering dread and disgust.
Emperor Wu’an patted Empress Lin’s hand to comfort her. “This time we truly owe Shen Shixu our thanks. If he hadn’t been bound to that system, I’m afraid we really would have let Qi’er marry such a lowly creature.”
Empress Lin was also full of gratitude toward Shen Shixu. “Your Majesty is right. We must properly thank this top scholar. I’ve heard that Jinyi has given him the position of Vice Minister of the Court of Judicial Review. Whether or not he finds anything while helping Jinyi with this investigation, I believe the position should be his all the same.”
Only Empress Lin would dare say such a thing. Had anyone else in the harem said it, Emperor Wu’an would already have flown into a rage.
“What Wei’er says is true. Besides, I have a feeling Shen Shixu won’t need my help at all, he can secure that Vice Minister position on his own merits.”
Shen Shixu, still fast asleep, had no idea how highly Emperor Wu’an regarded him. He was only having a wonderful dream, one in which he rose steadily through the ranks and married a rich and beautiful woman, though why did this rich beauty look even taller than himself?
The next day, Shen Shixu was woken by Little Stone. After washing up, he changed into a long robe of azure blue, took a fan of autumn bamboo in hand, ate two meat buns and a bowl of sweet soup, and hurried off to Prince Jing’s residence.
Just as Shen Shixu arrived at the gates of Prince Jing’s residence and was about to knock, a carriage pulled up behind him. He turned to look, and Xiao Jinyi stepped out, dark shadows under his eyes.
Seeing that Shen Shixu had already arrived, Xiao Jinyi couldn’t be bothered to go back in for breakfast. He headed straight for the Court of Judicial Review with Shen Shixu, casually buying two sesame flatbreads along the way to munch on.
Once inside the Court of Judicial Review, a minor clerk in a blue robe came over. Xiao Jinyi ordered coldly, “Brief Vice Minister Shen on the case of the missing girls.”
The clerk froze for a moment, looking at Shen Shixu who stood behind Xiao Jinyi. He had worked in the Court for many years, no expert at solving cases, but when it came to reading people, he was second to none.
One glance told him that Shen Shixu was a dragon among men, and that he must not be underestimated simply because he was young.
He lowered his voice as he explained the case. “Lord Shen, the case of the missing girls came to light three days ago. It was discovered by the owner of a rice shop. When he went to his warehouse to get rice, he found a woman in ragged clothes. She was still breathing at the time, and when she saw him, she begged him for help.
“But before the shop owner could call anyone over to save her, she breathed her last.
“Boss Qian of the rice shop saw that the woman’s body was covered in scars whip marks, knife wounds, and burn marks, so he quickly reported it to the authorities.”
First the officials from the Jingzhao Prefecture came to look, but they had no leads, so they handed it over to the Ministry of Justice. The Ministry found nothing either, and then it was passed to our Court of Judicial Review.
Later, Prince Jing heard about the case and took it over. It was thanks to Prince Jing that we learned the victim’s identity before that, we didn’t even know who she was.
She was the younger sister of a vanguard officer under Prince Jing. She had been missing for two years. Her family had searched for her but found no trace at all, and then she suddenly turned up here. The foul play involved goes without saying.
Moreover, according to the coroner’s examination, the woman’s virginity was gone. And although her body bore many wounds, none of them were fatal, they looked more like the sort of marks from bedroom play.”
The clerk didn’t dare look at Shen Shixu as he said this. This Lord Shen looked like someone who had never known the pleasures of the flesh, and the clerk feared that speaking of such decadent matters would dirty Shen Shixu’s ears.
As they talked, they arrived at the autopsy room. Xiao Jinyi had been worried that Shen Shixu might be frightened, but to his surprise, Shen Shixu stepped right up, lifted the white cloth covering the corpse, and bent down to examine it carefully.
Shen Shixu first looked at the clothing on the female corpse. Though it had been soaked black by her own blood, he could still tell it was made of tianxiang silk.
The embroidered flowers on tianxiang silk fray easily and cannot withstand frequent washing, so poor families would never buy this fabric for clothing.
Someone who could afford to wear such clothes came from a family with some modest wealth, but not great riches, which matched Shen Shixu’s speculation.
When he heard the clerk say the woman had been missing for two years, searched for two years without a single trace, and had now suddenly appeared, he realized that after being taken, this woman must have been held captive somewhere the entire time.
Then, thinking of the “bedroom play” wounds the clerk had mentioned, he could roughly guess what the woman had endured after being abducted. And there was no way she could have been the only one, there were likely many other women being held as well.
As for this corpse, she must have gone to great lengths to escape, been pursued and injured, and finally managed to hide in the rice shop, only to die from excessive blood loss due to the severity of her wounds.
From the rice shop’s location, one could roughly determine where the woman had fled from. With so many wounds on her body, she couldn’t have run far, the place she escaped from should be very close to the rice shop.
Seeing that Shen Shixu seemed to have formed some idea, Xiao Jinyi shared what he had uncovered. “This woman was called Qiaoying, the younger sister of my vanguard officer. She disappeared from their hometown two years ago. After she vanished, her parents reported it to the authorities immediately and searched on their own as well, but there was not a single trace. No one imagined she would turn up in the capital, a thousand li away.
Discovering her identity was pure coincidence. That vanguard officer came to the capital with me and intended to visit a friend at the Court of Judicial Review, when he unexpectedly came upon his own sister’s corpse. That was how the identity of this female corpse was revealed.
After confirming her identity, I went to investigate the rice shop where she was last seen, and had people inquire around the area to see if anyone had seen Qiaoying.
The information I received was that no one had seen Qiaoying appear anywhere nearby, she seemed to have materialized at the rice shop out of thin air. I searched the rice shop thoroughly and found that the window of its storeroom had been opened. There were bloodstains on it, along with a strip of cloth, and outside the window several crates were stacked, stained with blood.
That strip of cloth can be confirmed to have come from Qiaoying’s clothing. She must have broken the warehouse window while trying to escape, climbed onto boxes, and crawled in through the window into the rice shop. She was trying to seek help, but because of her grave injuries, she couldn’t move or even make a sound and so she bled to death.
That is all the information this prince has obtained. Has Young Master Shen discerned anything from it?