Gao Zhijie dragged his injured leg to shift his posture. “These are all just your side of the story. I have never heard such arguments before.”
Wang Zhaoming mocked him mercilessly, “Then that only proves that you, Master Magistrate, are ignorant and ill-informed. Regarding this point, you ought to reflect on yourself properly—there’s nothing to be proud of here.”
“Believe it or not, I have no need to explain so much to you.”
Gao Zhijie glared angrily with furrowed brows. “Aren’t you afraid that I, as an official, will have you arrested and burned at the stake as a monster?!”
“Oh, I’m so scared~~”
Wang Zhaoming feigned a terrified expression, patting her chest.
A breath of air got stuck right in Gao Zhijie’s chest, neither going up nor down.
Wang Zhaoming’s scoundrelly attitude actually overturned all of his previous suspicions.
He felt that if things were truly as he had suspected, then when he interrogated her just now, a guilty look would definitely have appeared on Wang Zhaoming’s face.
Yet from beginning to end, he didn’t see even a trace of guilt on her face.
Instead, that face was filled with expressions of unutterable disdain toward his actions.
There was also a possibility that Wang Zhaoming was acting.
However, thinking of the Wang family’s attitude toward Wang Zhaoming, Gao Zhijie felt that the Wang family couldn’t possibly be so foolish as to not recognize their own daughter.
It could only indicate one thing: Wang Zhaoming was indeed Wang Zhaoming.
Perhaps her past foolishness was merely a facade to disguise her own capabilities and put on a show for others.
Gao Zhijie’s expression shifted slightly—this Wang family was hiding something quite deep.
But why were they hiding such a formidable figure?
Once Wang Zhaoming’s capabilities were exposed, there would be no shortage of dignitaries and high officials flocking to her, offering gold and silver to beg her for favors; there would be no need to live such a impoverished life.
For a moment, he actually couldn’t read this ordinary farming family.
Gao Zhijie went through a cycle of inner speculation without speaking a word.
Wang Zhaoming didn’t utter a sound either, lowering her head to pick at the hangnails on her fingers.
Both were waiting for the other to take the initiative.
The first to lose patience was Gao Zhijie. His leg still bore a wound pierced through by a bamboo splinter; sitting here and communicating with Wang Zhaoming right now relied entirely on his willpower.
He had originally thought that since Wang Zhaoming was young, seeing those unjust matters would make her eager to explain the whole story to him clearly.
She would feel pity and sympathy for those women who died tragically, and angrily demand that he seek justice for them.
Who could have expected that she wouldn’t act according to his expectations at all?
From the time he entered until now, he hadn’t managed to ask a single piece of useful information, and he had even been angered twice.
His leg injury didn’t allow him to continue wearing out his patience with Wang Zhaoming.
“Can you tell me what on earth happened yesterday?”
Seeing that he was finally willing to get down to business, Wang Zhaoming straightened her back slightly, tilted her head, and said with eyes full of earnestness, “Master Magistrate should be clearer on this than I am.”
“To put it another way, didn’t you fall into their trap precisely because you came for one of them?”
This time, Gao Zhijie’s expression changed very noticeably.
He had truly underestimated the little girl in front of him.
He and Wang Zhaoming had never even met before, nor did she know his birth details or his life history. Merely relying on these two brief encounters and her performing a ritual once to help him subdue those wronged spirits, she could see right through his purpose for coming this time.
In this world, people with such ability were simply unheard of.
He suddenly understood in his heart why the Wang family had kept Wang Zhaoming’s uniqueness hidden.
If those high officials and dignitaries knew that someone in the world possessed such ability, they would certainly try every possible way to claim her as their own.
According to those people’s style of doing things—preferring to shatter like jade rather than remain whole as a tile—even if they couldn’t obtain her, they would destroy her.
What awaited Wang Zhaoming might not be fine food and rich clothes, but absolute disaster.
Yet a new question arose: since the Wang family had hidden it for so long, why would it be exposed at a time like this?
Exposing it at this moment wouldn’t necessarily bring rich living, but could potentially result in the ruin of the family.
He was the County Magistrate, after all; exposing these things in front of a County Magistrate was hardly a rational choice.
Unless…
Gao Zhijie thought of a possibility.
That was, this little girl’s power was already strong enough that she had no fear of those dignitaries’ methods.
He felt this guess was somewhat absurd. The girl before him was only about eight or nine years old—how could that be possible?
Yet Wang Zhaoming’s attitude made him hesitant to be certain.
She was far too calm, holding the initiative in the conversation from start to finish.
Wang Zhaoming had no idea that in just this short time, Gao Zhijie had already built up an image of her in his mind as a deeply scheming and far-sighted strategist.
She didn’t want to speak not because she wanted to compete with Gao Zhijie, but simply because she didn’t want to talk.
She was imitating her Master, putting on an unfathomable appearance.
After all, every time Master read fortunes for people, as long as he put on this appearance, others believed him implicitly.
Thinking of her Master, Wang Zhaoming subconsciously adopted that immortal and transcendent demeanor her Master usually used to fool people.
In Gao Zhijie’s eyes, however, it seemed as though Wang Zhaoming had suddenly been coated in a divine radiance.
She appeared even more inviolable.
Gao Zhijie seemed affected by this radiance, his mind devoid of any ulterior thoughts.
He slowly fell into memory.
“My elder sister had a playmate. The two were of similar age, grew up together from childhood, and were quite familiar with me as well.”
“Originally, our lives were peaceful and heartwarming, but those peaceful days were shattered in the year they turned fifteen.”
That was a very ordinary day.
The two agreed to go out of town to enjoy the flowers, and also invited several close friends.
The adults of each family were happy for them to socialize and did not stop them.
Before leaving, the family even dispatched guards, carriage drivers, old nursemaids, and maidservants to escort them.
The strange thing about the matter was that with so many people escorting them, all the girls who went out to play that day vanished completely.
Only his sister was found halfway up the mountain, but she was covered in injuries and unable to speak.
Not long after being rescued back, she passed away.
They were unable to ask anything from his sister’s mouth.
Where were those who disappeared taken?
Who did it? What was the purpose of kidnapping them?
After his sister died, the family broke apart as well.
His mother was heartbroken; within two years, her health broke down due to missing his sister, and she followed his sister to the grave.
Because that flower-viewing gathering had been organized by his sister, the families whose daughters had gone missing vented their anger on his family.
Under the siege of these families, the family business rapidly shrank.
Compounded by his birth father remarrying and focusing all his mind on the newly born child…
His status plummeted, and his situation became difficult.
The imperial examination became his only way out.
“I often think, if Sister hadn’t held that flower-viewing gathering, would all these subsequent events not have happened?”
He truly had no talent for studying.
He could only rely on diligence to make up for his clumsiness. Enduring an untold number of cold glares from his stepmother, he finally passed the imperial exam as a scholar and secured his current official position.
This location was somewhere he had deliberately requested, for the purpose of thoroughly investigating the events of that year.
“I have never given up investigating Sister’s death and the disappearance of her friends. I hired many people and spent a lot of money.”
“In the end, all clues dead-ended in Qingping County.”
“A county town has seven towns, and a town contains at least four villages. Those who were abducted and trafficked couldn’t possibly be recorded in the population registers or documented in the county gazetteer. I could only take advantage of visiting the villages to inspect them, hoping to get relevant clues from the local villagers’ mouths.”
“Traces are left wherever a wild goose flies; hard work pays off for those who persevere. Through my efforts, I finally pried open a corner of this mystery.”
“The first time I came to Chen Village was because an unsolved murder case occurred in the village. Everyone had an alibi, so I could only lock down the culprit as an outsider from another village.”