Zhang Yao returned home and changed out of his mourning clothes. Just as he was about to leave again, he heard Zhang Min coughing in the kitchen.
He walked to the doorway, then turned back.
As soon as he opened the kitchen door, he saw Zhang Min crouching alone beside the sink, coughing so hard that both cheeks had turned red.
This was an old illness of hers. Every year after the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the weather turned cold, she suffered through it. But she had always been good at enduring hardship and never complained to Zhang Yao.
Zhang Yao stepped into the kitchen and pulled her to her feet. Lowering his head to look at what she had coughed up, he saw Zhang Min hurriedly turn sideways to block his view.
“It’s nothing. I’m fine.”
“Move.”
“Yaoyao…”
“I still have things to do outside. Don’t hold me up.”
Because he wore a gloomy face and spoke with the air of someone burdened by outside affairs, Zhang Min sympathized with him and said no more. She lowered her head and stepped aside.
Zhang Yao scooped a ladle of water from the water jar and washed away the bloody phlegm in the sink.
“Tomorrow, go find Du Lingruo. Have him get someone to appraise my timber. If the price is reasonable, sell all of it. Hire a few people to stay by your side and take care of you.”
Zhang Min shook her head.
“You’re not going to redeem her anymore? And now you’re talking about hiring servants?”
Turning around, Zhang Yao helped Zhang Min lean against the stove. He picked up the kettle and poured her a bowl of water, then lifted the lid off the pot and quickly scooped out the rice and dishes that had been simmering inside.
“Whether I live or die is my business. It has nothing to do with you. Live however you’re supposed to live. If you want people, money, or a house, you can have them.”
“I don’t want any of that.”
Looking at his back, Zhang Min said softly,
“I just want our Yaoyao to be safe and well.”
Whenever Zhang Min called him by his childhood nickname, Zhang Yao felt the conversation could no longer continue. So he casually changed the subject.
“How much medicine do you have left?”
Holding the bowl in both hands, Zhang Min drank as she spoke.
“Didn’t you just bring me medicine from the palace a couple of days ago? This batch of pills smells much better than before. Taking them doesn’t make me feel as sick. And Du Bibi brought me a huge box of pear syrup candy. It tastes wonderful. One piece is enough to suppress all the nausea from the medicine. Don’t worry, Yaoyao. Your sister is doing fine.”
Zhang Yao replaced the lid on the pot and went to wash his hands by the sink.
“But I think your illness is worse this year than it has ever been.”
Zhang Min shook her head.
“Ah, if even the Imperial Pharmacy’s medicine can’t cure me, then it’s simply my fate. Hmm?”
She suddenly noticed that Zhang Yao had changed into a robe she had rarely seen him wear before.
“Why did you change into that outfit? It’s pitch black. How ugly.”
“Oh.”
Zhang Yao shook the water from his hands.
“I have business tonight. This outfit is cheaper.”
“Then… you’re not eating dinner at home?”
“Mhm.”
“That’s fine too… You’ll probably eat better outside.”
Setting down her bowl, Zhang Min walked over and helped straighten his collar.
“Go early and come back early.”
Zhang Yao lowered his arms and let her fuss over him.
Noticing how unusually relaxed he seemed, Zhang Min couldn’t help smiling.
“Why are you being so obedient today?”
“Zhang Min.”
“Alright, alright, I won’t say it anymore… Oh, right.”
Her hands paused on his collar.
“Actually, after all these years, my health has improved quite a bit. If the imperial medicine is too expensive, we can switch to something else. Maybe some doctor outside the palace might have better luck treating me.”
“Zhang Min.”
Zhang Yao cut her off.
“Don’t even think about it.”
Zhang Min smiled awkwardly.
“I was only saying it. If we’re not changing it, then we’re not changing it.”
She released his collar and stepped back.
“There. You can go now.”
Just as Zhang Yao turned to leave, Zhang Min suddenly stopped him again.
“Wait, don’t go yet. If you’re not eating dinner, take this with you.”
Looking down, Zhang Yao saw her stuff a Li Gong peach about the size of a fist into his hand.
Riding through the streets of the capital just before the night curfew began, Zhang Yao headed straight for the Ministry of Justice Prison.
Du Lingruo was drinking tea from a large bowl at a tea stall outside the prison gates.
The stall owner was hurrying home before curfew and had already packed away the benches. Holding his tea bowl awkwardly, Du Lingruo stood beneath the prison wall and waved at Zhang Yao.
“Want some tea? There’s still one bowl left.”
“No.”
Zhang Yao dismounted and walked over.
Du Lingruo looked him up and down with obvious disgust.
“What are you wearing? It’s ugly as hell.”
“A burial robe.”
Zhang Yao answered bluntly.
The tea in Du Lingruo’s hand splashed all over the ground.
“What?”
“The kind dead people wear.”
Thinking that his own death was only moments away, Zhang Yao felt unusually cheerful. He didn’t care what Du Lingruo thought and answered with complete honesty.
Unfortunately, Du Lingruo treated it as nonsense and didn’t think deeply about it.
“You don’t look anything like a noble young lord of Wuling.”
“What noble young lord of Wuling?”
“‘The youths of Wuling compete—'”
“Speak like a human.”
“You look like a customer at a brothel.”
“…”
At the word “customer,” Tougulong let out a long neigh.
Silence fell beneath the horse.
Du Lingruo tossed him a black veiled hat.
Zhang Yao swatted it away without hesitation.
Accepting his fate, Du Lingruo ran over to pick it up.
“You’re really not wearing it? Have you no shame?”
Zhang Yao tugged on the reins to steady Tougulong. His expression was as gloomy as the Earth God statue in Pichang Temple.
Dusting off the hat, Du Lingruo said,
“This is the only crooked path into the Ministry of Justice Prison. I know you’re the type who won’t even take off your underclothes when you bathe, so I can’t expect you to convincingly pretend to be a brothel customer. Just put on the hat later, follow me, and don’t talk.”
With that, he handed the hat over again.
Zhang Yao glanced at it.
“Why do you even know about this route?”
Du Lingruo spread his hands.
“It’s an old route from ten years ago. My master used to use it often. After the old man died, all the connections along this route came to me. Unfortunately, I’d barely taken over when the route got blocked. It only reopened tonight.”
He paused before continuing.
“Brother Yao, I honestly don’t know whether to call you lucky or say you’ve accumulated bad karma.”
Zhang Yao continued adjusting his sleeves without replying.
Du Lingruo sighed. Turning toward the prison gates, he continued,
“Actually, that female Vice Minister of Justice shouldn’t have been killed at all. During her ten years at the Ministry of Justice, the flesh trade in the women’s prison disappeared for ten years. Now that she’s about to be executed, someone is taking revenge on her by selling off her final night.”
He clicked his tongue.
“She never harmed the heavens, never abused the people. Even if she had to be executed, it should’ve been done the way the court executes famous ministers—letting her go to the execution ground with a clean face and clean clothes.”
“But now…”
“Tsk.”
“A final meal and a final drink are one thing. Fine if those are absent. But there should never have been this extra night meant to destroy her chastity… to destroy her dignity. The Ministry of Justice Prison is truly shameless.”
When Du Lingruo mentioned the execution of famous ministers, a ringing suddenly filled Zhang Yao’s ears, making him frown.
But since he was going to die soon anyway, he couldn’t even be bothered to raise a hand and press his temples.
“Hey.”
Du Lingruo turned to look at him.
“I don’t know why you want to see her. But based on what I know about you, if you play the role of this ‘customer,’ you’ll probably be able to protect her final night before the execution.”
“How do you know that?”
“Because taking off your underclothes would be the same as taking your life.”
Du Lingruo burst into laughter.
“Hahahahaha…”
He knew that any mention of underclothes rendered Zhang Yao speechless, which only made him more animated.
“As for me, forget it. I’m sickly. A bag of bones like mine would scare people. But you’re perfectly healthy and still this awkward. Who knows? Maybe you’ve got a flower tattooed all over your back and body…”
Du Lingruo laughed as he spoke.
Zhang Yao, however, said nothing.
A faint stab of pain spread across his back.
Seeing how unpleasant his expression had become, Du Lingruo gradually stopped laughing.
“Sorry. I got carried away.”
Zhang Yao ignored the apology and instead asked,
“It’s one thing for Zhang Min to sympathize with her. You sympathize with her too?”
Du Lingruo shot back a question.
“You’ve never dealt with her before?”
“No.”
“You have.”
Du Lingruo raised a hand and pointed into the air.
“You just forgot.”
After saying that, Du Lingruo suddenly grew serious, and his voice lowered.
“Last year, Chen Xinglin from the Hanlin Academy died of illness in the Imperial Prison. Chief Censor Wu carried his family’s ancestral tablets and impeached you. The Emperor couldn’t overrule him, so he ordered the Ministry of Justice to deliberate your punishment. In the end, they sentenced you to fifty strokes across the back.”
“Before the punishment at Shenwu Gate, the Ministry of Justice wanted to strip off your upper garments. I don’t know what madness took hold of you, but you absolutely refused. The people from the Northern Pacification Bureau nearly came to blows with those sour-faced scholars from the Ministry of Justice.”
“I figured making a bigger scene wouldn’t benefit anyone, so I wanted to find someone in the Ministry to smooth things over for you. And that’s how I found her.”
“Hey, didn’t you see her when the punishment was carried out?”
When Du Lingruo mentioned it, Zhang Yao did remember something.
Before the punishment at Shenwu Gate last year, someone had submitted a written petition to Zhao Heming. The Ministry of Justice officials had surrounded the author of that petition and argued heatedly for quite a while, all red-faced.
Unfortunately, the person in the middle was too short. Amid the crowd, not even the top of their head could be seen.
Zhang Yao had also been standing too far away. He couldn’t even hear what they were arguing about.
He only remembered that person’s voice being calm and somewhat softer than everyone else’s.
In the end, Zhao Heming accepted the petition.
They let him keep his undergarments.
Then they beat him with a hundred strokes.
Thinking of that, Zhang Yao suddenly remembered the sight of Yu Lin sitting across from him, eating peaches.
If he had known the person who wrote that petition for him at Shenwu Gate had been her, he should have sent her a basket of peaches afterward.
Now it was a little too late.
Otherwise, before leaving home, he should have carried over the whole basket from his house.
For no apparent reason, Zhang Yao’s thoughts wandered far afield.
Meanwhile, Du Lingruo continued talking to himself.
“She’s Zhao Heming’s student, but she’s not quite the same as him. Not nearly as rigid.”
“Although she never entered the Grand Secretariat, I dealt with her quite a bit while I was serving in the Directorate of Ceremonial.”
“I’m a eunuch. Which official in court actually respects people like me? Their faces are all spring breezes while they’re sharpening knives in their hearts. Do they think I can’t tell?”
“But she was different. She treated people with courtesy. Pleasant, polite, never pretentious. No matter how long I talked with her, I never got tired of it.”
“She was truly a remarkable person. A genuinely proper court official.”
“Before anyone knew she was a woman, even Chief Censor Wu—the man who cursed half of Liangjing—praised her.”
“You know, that…”
Du Lingruo’s words poured out like floodwaters bursting through a dam, forcing Zhang Yao to interrupt him.
“What did you just say?”
“Huh?”
Du Lingruo froze.
He had just said an entire basketful of things.
“Which sentence are you talking about?”
“The one after you mentioned how the court executes famous ministers.”
“Oh.”
“‘They go to the execution ground in plain clothes and with clean faces.’ What about it?”
“Nothing.”
Zhang Yao pulled the veiled hat onto his head.
“Let’s go.”
Zhang Yao had visited the Ministry of Justice Prison many times.
Even without lamps, he knew exactly where the Temple of the Prison God was and where the forbidden chambers were located.
But tonight he wore the veiled hat.
His vision was obstructed.
Apart from Du Lingruo’s lean figure ahead of him, all he could see was a single dark-red lantern.
Du Lingruo had called it a “guest-guiding lantern.”
Carrying that lantern through the prison signaled to everyone inside that they had come for this sort of business.
Zhang Yao thought to himself that Wang Shaolian might be useless at everything else, but he certainly knew how to make this kind of thing look elaborate.
Walking in the lantern’s glow, Zhang Yao listened as Du Lingruo smoothly exchanged words with the prison guard carrying the lamp.
“What’s your warden getting rich off these days? Tell me too. The Directorate of Ceremonial has become poorer and poorer these past few years.”
“Oh, come now. Our Warden Wang only just managed to squeeze out a little profit and immediately burned incense in your honor. What fortune could he possibly have left?”
“What incense? I didn’t smell any. Are you sure you weren’t worshipping at the wrong temple?”
“How could we fail to recognize your sacred grounds? We were just waiting for your birthday— Ah, watch your step.”
The red lantern light revealed a puddle of water.
Du Lingruo lifted his robe and sidestepped it.
“If it’s money earned from a filthy place like this, I don’t want it.”
“What about women… would you want those?”
“Pah.”
Du Lingruo spat toward him.
“Trying to make things difficult for me?”
“I wouldn’t dare.”
The lantern-bearing guard laughed apologetically.
“I was talking nonsense. These prisoners don’t know anything. How could they possibly be worthy of serving someone like you? It has to be the ones trained outside, the obedient and experienced kind, right?”
Du Lingruo glanced back at Zhang Yao and noticed that he had stepped directly into the puddle Du Lingruo had avoided.
Unable to help himself, he laughed.
“Now that’s something my honored guest wouldn’t like hearing.”
The guard immediately slapped his own mouth.
“My dog’s mouth deserves a beating. It deserves a beating.”
Zhang Yao said coldly,
“Bring a clean set of clothes. And a basin of water.”
The guard looked troubled.
“Water is no problem. As for clothes… Honored Guest, the only clothes we have here are prison uniforms…”
Du Lingruo remembered his own words about “plain clothes and a clean face before execution” and immediately understood.
Stepping back between them, he said,
“That’ll do. It’s hot tonight. After a… session, right? The clothes underneath will need changing anyway.”
The guard quickly nodded.
“Of course. I’ll have someone prepare them immediately.”
Du Lingruo pulled out a bundle of silver from his sleeve and handed it to the lantern bearer.
“Take good care of my honored guest. There’ll be more reward afterward.”
By now, the forbidden chambers of the Ministry of Justice Prison had appeared before them.
The lantern bearer carefully handed a clean prison uniform to Zhang Yao.
“The clothes you requested.”
Zhang Yao accepted them and casually draped them over his arm.
Another guard arrived carrying a basin of water with a clean cloth laid across the top.
Zhang Yao accepted it with one hand and held it steadily.
For a moment, he felt slightly insane.
How had he let Du Lingruo’s nonsense convince him to come here intending to wash Yu Lin’s face and help her change clothes?
Forget it.
He would treat it as repaying the favor she had done him at Shenwu Gate last year before he died.
Looking at his reflection in the basin, Zhang Yao comforted himself with that thought.
Seeing how steady his hands were, the lantern bearer finally offered him the lantern.
“Please go ahead, Honored Guest. If you need anything, just call for me. If the female prisoner refuses to cooperate, you only need to say the word.”
“Even though she’s shackled, well…”
“We’re still worried she might go mad and hurt you.”