Chapter 57

Li Daoxuan’s hand trembled on his sword, nearly dropping it. He glared at Shen Qing, signaling her to move closer.
Yet Shen Qing, playful to the extreme, tilted her head innocently, blinking.
Li Daoxuan suppressed the urge to push her away, nodded with a wry smile, almost through gritted teeth: “Very well, I’ll comply, ”
He leaned close, whispering in her ear, “Shen You’an, do you know? Men being spoiled like this makes me shiver.”
Shen Qing, having momentarily forgotten her male guise, froze.
Li Daoxuan patted her hand, slowly releasing it.
To outsiders, it looked like they were whispering intimately, seemingly flirting.
Madam Xing watched, furious and anxious. She believed the cross-dressed girl was the Fourth Prince’s concubine, now eyeing Yuanchun Pavilion, aiming to take her hard-earned business through imperial power.
Life threatened and wealth at stake, she finally broke down, crying.
Shen Qing, surprised, said, “Ah, you’re crying already. You still haven’t told me who Ah Chou in Old Madam Ah Si’s records is.”
“Here’s the deal: tell me who Ah Chou was and how she died, and I’ll spare you. I’ll even forget Yuanchun Pavilion, and I won’t pursue the Southern Ocean pearls.”
For a moment, the madam truly could not tell whether Shen Qing had come for Ah Chou’s case, or whether she had merely stumbled upon Ah Chou as a convenient excuse to seize Yuanchun Pavilion for herself.
Seeing her hesitation, Shen Qing leisurely leaned back in her chair, admiring her own pale, jade-like fingers. Li Daoxuan, without realizing it, followed her gaze and looked down at her hand as well.
Her hand was small, the touch exceedingly soft. Her nails were neatly trimmed, the nail beds a healthy pale pink, with faint crescent moons at the base…
Li Daoxuan’s gaze stalled for a beat, then he calmly shifted his eyes away as if nothing had happened.
Shen Qing, entirely unaware, continued to toy with her fingers. After a while, she said casually, “Your Highness might as well kill this false mother. Why waste any more words?” Her eyes curved into a smile, her brows brimming with excitement. “How wonderful, Yuanchun Pavilion will be mine any moment now!”
The words had barely fallen when the utterly lawless man actually listened to his “concubine,” lifting his sword and walking toward her.
His steps were unhurried. Each one felt like it landed squarely on the madam’s heart. Her pulse thundered, tears blurring her vision as she looked up at Li Daoxuan.
The youth was like a vicious ghost crawling out of the Asura Hell, a life-taking blade in hand. His brows were frozen with killing intent, his aura pressed so low it suffocated. With just a slight lift of his eyes, the overflowing malice in them was enough to pin her in place.
This was no gaze a normal person could have. It was the look of someone who had truly seen blood, killed before, someone who had walked once through hell itself.
The last time the madam had seen such eyes was years ago. She had happened upon an execution then: several bandit leaders, men drenched in blood, whose lair of mere dozens had required nearly three thousand troops to suppress.
Every one of those bandits had blood on their hands. Even bound tightly, they showed no fear. A single glance from them was enough to make ordinary civilians’ legs give way, true cold-faced Asuras unmoved by mountains of slaughter.
After their execution, the court even dispatched eminent monks from Dongshan Temple to sit vigil on the spot, chanting for forty-nine days straight, solely to prevent their resentment from lingering and transforming into vengeful spirits.
The madam understood now, he meant it. Her mental defenses collapsed completely. She did not even dare cry anymore.
“I’ll confess! I’ll confess everything! Please, Your Highness, spare my life! I’ll tell you everything!”
Shen Qing exchanged a glance with Li Daoxuan, triumph shining in her eyes.
Hmph. I told you this would work. Hit the snake at its vital point, never fails, Shen Qing thought smugly.
Greedy and terrified of death, the madam’s mind had already broken under the double pressure from Shen Qing and Li Daoxuan. Cracking her mouth open now was easy.
Li Daoxuan seemed to hear her thoughts. He gave a soft scoff, unwilling yet forced to concede.
She truly was skilled at striking the heart.
At the doorway, Liu Siyuan, who had been escorted there by the young guard, suddenly stopped. Hearing the madam’s hysterical sobbing from the hall, his expression darkened. He was about to step forward when the guard blocked his path.
The guard smiled gently. “His Highness is interrogating a major suspect. Lord Liu, please wait.”
Liu Siyuan asked cautiously, “May I ask, guard, there is no case at present, why is His Highness interrogating the madam?”
“You’ll find out soon enough.”
Forced to halt, Liu Siyuan could only listen like an ant on a hot pan. Gradually, cold sweat soaked his back.
Until he heard the madam scream, “I’ll confess everything!”
Liu Siyuan finally lost his composure and moved sharply,
Only for the next instant to find his mouth covered and his body locked in place.
His eyes widened in shock.
The guard apologized with a smile, his tone ironclad. “Forgive me, Lord Liu. You may enter only after His Highness finishes questioning the suspect.”
Liu Siyuan stared fixedly toward the hall.
Inside, the madam cried, “Ah Chou, Ah Chou was just a menial girl in the tower! One day she died for no reason at all. I found it unlucky, so I threw her into the back courtyard pond to feed the fish!”
At that, Shen Qing lightly uttered two words: “A lie.”
If the body were truly gone, where would the Xisangyao have come from?
Li Daoxuan pointed his blade at her. “If she had died so simply, why would everyone in your tower fall silent whenever her name is mentioned?”
As he finished speaking, someone else entered, holding a thick ledger.
Li Daoxuan took it and skimmed through a few pages. Shen Qing leaned over to look as well. After reading, she sighed sincerely, “Truly swimming in oil.”
“But why do you want their account books?” she asked, puzzled. “They don’t seem related to Ah Chou’s case.”
“Private business,” Li Daoxuan replied, eyes still on the pages.
If not for Ah Chou’s case involving both the Court of Judicial Review and Yuanchun Pavilion, he would never have noticed, this tower’s owner was merely a woman with no background or status.
Yuanchun Pavilion had stood firm for years, prospering endlessly. On a whim, he had ordered the account books brought.
They recorded years of business. Just one day’s income rivaled what an ordinary family would spend over several lifetimes.
Shen Qing, unfamiliar with such matters, saw nothing amiss.
Li Daoxuan, however, saw far more. When he looked at the madam again, his gaze was no longer so simple.
He closed the ledger calmly and handed it to a subordinate. “Send it to my residence. Guard it carefully.”
The subordinate hesitated, then whispered, “When we arrived, the person guarding the accounts tore out two pages and swallowed them, then jumped out the window to flee.”
“By the time we caught up, he was already dead.”
Li Daoxuan’s gaze darkened. “Dead? Then cut his stomach open. Do I need to teach you that?”
“Of course not,” the subordinate replied quickly. “We had someone perform the autopsy immediately, but someone had already gotten there first and removed the pages.”
Li Daoxuan fell silent for a long moment. “Understood. Do not spread word of this.”
The brief interruption passed quickly, but Li Daoxuan sensed something amiss.
Seeing Shen Qing’s confusion, he said, “Yuanchun Pavilion’s owner is just a defenseless false mother.”
The words struck like lightning.
Such a lucrative prize would naturally attract envy. Yet for so many years, Yuanchun Pavilion had not only remained unharmed but grown ever more prosperous. To believe there was no one backing her was impossible.
Both Shen Qing and Li Daoxuan thought simultaneously of Old Madam Ah Si’s journal.
Ah Si had been illiterate. Neighbors and tower workers alike all said she was mad, how could she read?
And yet the first page of the journal, laden with resentment, bore handwriting entirely different from the later pages.
The conclusion was obvious: Ah Si had been illiterate, until Ah Chou arrived at Yuanchun Pavilion and taught her to read and write. Ah Si simply never revealed it publicly.
In the current dynasty, literacy implied wealth. Ordinary families could not afford education. If Ah Chou could read, her family background must once have been decent.
This made Liu Wanxiu’s so-called “older sister” even more suspicious.
Shen Qing said, “Could it be that this false mother and Liu Siyuan were in cahoots?”
She recalled how Madam Liu had firmly claimed ignorance of Liu Wanxiu having an elder sister. Shen Qing suspected Ah Chou was at least connected to Liu Siyuan, perhaps even his illegitimate daughter.
Otherwise, with Ah Chou’s striking appearance, the shrewd madam would have long forced her into entertaining clients, rather than hiding her in the back courtyard as a menial, spending her days with a half-mad woman.
Shen Qing leaned close and whispered, “Could Ah Chou really be Liu Siyuan’s illegitimate daughter? And to ensure the madam protected her, Liu Siyuan has been backing Yuanchun Pavilion all these years?”
What Shen Qing thought of, Li Daoxuan naturally considered as well.
He dismissed it without hesitation. “If she were an illegitimate daughter, there would have been countless ways to secretly bring her into the household, or at worst, set her up in a private residence. There’s no need to send one’s own daughter into a pleasure house.”
“And the account books are my private matter. The connections are complex. What you’re guessing has nothing to do with the truth. Don’t meddle, and don’t speculate.”
Shen Qing choked. “Oh.”
She turned her thoughts back to Ah Chou.
A literate Ah Chou. A girl with a striking appearance, overlooked by a greedy madam and spared the fate of entertaining clients. A hidden existence in the back courtyard. And Liu Siyuan’s wife claiming ignorance, yet Liu Wanxiu calling her “older sister” with such intimacy.
The clues were tangled, yet all pointed toward Liu Siyuan and his wife. The truth of the Xisangyao’s origins was just one step away, yet that final thread tying everything together was missing.
What was it?
As for Ah Chou’s cause of death, Shen Qing found she cared less about that now. What she truly wanted to know was who Ah Chou was, was she Liu Siyuan’s daughter or not?
She turned to Li Daoxuan and saw him deep in thought as well.
Suddenly noticing the madam playing dead, Shen Qing remembered their original questions: Ah Chou’s background, and then her death.
The madam’s answers had sounded substantial but were all evasions.
Ah Chou was dead. She died mysteriously. Her body was thrown into Huachun Pond.
Which was to say, nothing at all.
Shen Qing immediately realized she had been led around by the nose. A truly cunning old fox. Even that earlier display of terror had likely been part performance.
She said coldly, “What a fox.”
Li Daoxuan never liked making things difficult for himself. Seeing that nothing more could be extracted, he waved his hand and ordered the madam dragged away and imprisoned.
One had to know that this Madam Xing could very well be one of the bait used to lure the Xisangyao here.
Even as she was being dragged away, Madam Xing kept crying out that she had been wronged. Shen Qing rolled her eyes at her. “Whether you’re wronged or not, we’ll know once Ah Chou comes back.”
Madam Xing froze like a chicken whose neck had been seized, eyes wide, a broken “heh, heh” rasping from her throat.
How could the dead come back?
Yet when she saw the schadenfreude flickering in Shen Qing’s eyes, an answer slowly surfaced in her mind.
Naturally, by returning as a demon or a ghost.
This time, Madam Xing truly went limp, collapsing into a heap as she was dragged away.
Seeing Madam Xing hauled off with his own eyes, Liu Siyuan forced himself to remain calm, wiping the thin sheen of sweat from his forehead as the guard led him into the main hall.
At that moment, Shen Qing had taken a sheet of paper and was carefully sketching with a brush. On the left she wrote Ah Chou, on the right Xisangyao, then added Yuanchun House and Liu Wanxiu.
Halfway through, she paused. She was missing just one line, one connection that could tie all the clues together. She bit the end of the brush, deep in thought.
Unnoticed, a drop of ink slid down the tip of the brush and splashed, smearing the words “Xisangyao.”
The moment Li Daoxuan saw it, he reached to snatch the paper away. Shen Qing pressed his restless hand down. “What are you doing?”
“The paper’s dirty. What’s wrong with changing it?”