Even after Fan Chang Yu had left the room, the person seated at the desk writing something never lifted his head. Only his lips pressed together slightly tighter.

Listening to the retreating footsteps, he finally set down his brush and leaned back against the chair. His dark eyes were filled with gloom.

Call him when needed, dismiss him when done?

She certainly had the nerve.

—

After instructing her younger sister not to run around the house, Fan Chang Yu greeted Aunt Zhao next door and prepared to head for the county office.

But Aunt Zhao said, “Your uncle and I will go with you. That place is terrifying. I heard if you’re even a little careless, they’ll beat you with punishment rods. After dozens of blows, wouldn’t your skin split open? If your uncle and I are there, we can at least help think of something if anything happens.”

People always said commoners should never fight officials.

Since Fan Da had connected himself to the county clerk who already held a grudge against Fan Chang Yu’s family, the elderly Zhao couple had been so worried these past few days they could barely sleep.

Though Fan Chang Yu possessed martial skill, appearing in court was still her first time in eighteen years. After brief consideration, she agreed.

The three of them took an ox cart to the county office. Although it was still early when they arrived, the entrance was already crowded with townspeople eager to watch the excitement.

Fan Chang Yu understood the trial procedures.

Once the magistrate opened court, she and Fan Da would first be summoned inside. Fan Da would restate his accusations, while the registrar recorded the testimony. If there were disputes, witnesses might also be summoned.

The witnesses Fan Chang Yu found were neighbors from near the Fan family’s old residence.

Normally, no one would willingly involve themselves in such trouble, but Fan Da’s family truly lacked any ability to get along with others. They had offended many neighbors over the years. Once Fan Chang Yu visited, several households openly expressed disgust toward Fan Da’s conduct and agreed to testify that he was a gambling addict.

Time slowly passed.

The crowd outside the county office grew larger and larger. Bailiffs had already gone into the courtroom to arrange the command sticks and striking block on the magistrate’s desk, yet Fan Da, the plaintiff, still hadn’t appeared.

Even Fan Chang Yu began feeling puzzled.

Being late to court hearings resulted in punishment by beating. Could Fan Da have actually forgotten the hearing entirely and overslept?

Aunt Zhao looked around and muttered softly, “Why hasn’t Fan Da shown up?”

An absurd thought suddenly crossed Fan Chang Yu’s mind.

Had she spent so much effort memorizing laws these past two days that her resentment became so strong she sleepwalked and kidnapped Fan Da herself last night?

As the three drumbeats announcing the opening of court sounded, her wandering thoughts instantly snapped back.

The three squads of bailiffs entered the hall first, lining both sides in formation like geese in flight. Each held a punishment staff nearly as tall as a man, their faces fierce and intimidating.

The commoners watching outside immediately broke into nervous murmurs upon seeing them. Clearly, they feared these officers greatly.

Fan Chang Yu also noticed that none of these bailiffs looked familiar. Not a single one belonged to Constable Wang’s men. She didn’t know whether the clerk had manipulated things behind the scenes, but her heart quietly tightened.

The county magistrate, dressed in official robes, entered from the side door and ascended to the high bench behind the desk. His fat face squeezed his eyes into thin slits as he glanced below before slamming the striking block heavily onto the desk.

“Court is now in session!”

The bailiffs simultaneously slammed their staffs against the floor and roared:

“Respect the law——!”

The pounding of the staffs almost blended with the pounding hearts of the crowd outside.

The thin county clerk with a pointed mustache shouted, “Bring forth the plaintiff and defendant!”

Though nervous, Fan Chang Yu still gave Aunt Zhao and her husband a reassuring look as the bailiffs escorted her into the courtroom.

Yet even now, Fan Da still had not appeared.

Only she, the defendant, knelt alone before the court.

The fat magistrate clearly had never encountered such a situation before. He exchanged a glance with the clerk, both equally confused.

The crowd outside also burst into discussion.

This stalemate couldn’t continue forever. Finally, the magistrate questioned Fan Chang Yu first.

“Who kneels before this court?”

Fan Chang Yu answered, “This commoner woman is Fan Chang Yu.”

The magistrate glanced at the complaint document and shouted, “Where is the plaintiff, Fan Da Niu?”

No one inside or outside the courtroom responded.

Within the heavy silence, even the deliberately hushed whispers of the spectators outside became unusually noticeable.

The fat magistrate slammed the striking block down again.

“Outrageous! After all my years judging cases, this is the first time I’ve seen a plaintiff fail to appear in court at all! This is utter contempt for the law!”

Beside him, the county clerk—thin as a bamboo pole—glanced at Fan Chang Yu several times before saying, “Please calm your anger, Your Honor. Fan Da Niu is merely a commoner and surely wouldn’t dare miss court intentionally. There may be hidden circumstances. Why not send bailiffs to his home to inquire? It would demonstrate Your Honor’s fairness and wisdom.”

The magistrate pondered briefly.

“Approved!”

Bailiffs were quickly dispatched to search for Fan Da. The magistrate temporarily suspended proceedings, so Fan Chang Yu no longer needed to kneel in court.

With such an unexpected turn of events, not only did the watching crowd refuse to disperse, they became even more curious about why Fan Da had failed to appear.

Fan Chang Yu sat on a small stool rubbing her knees when suddenly a minor clerk approached her.

“Constable Wang wishes to see Miss Fan.”

Thinking he had something important to tell her, Fan Chang Yu followed the clerk through a side door to the offices behind the county building.

The clerk was clearly one of Constable Wang’s trusted men. After she entered, he remained outside keeping watch.

The moment he saw Fan Chang Yu, Constable Wang skipped all pleasantries and directly asked:

“Your eldest uncle… you didn’t kidnap him, did you?”

Fan Chang Yu thought to herself that she really had considered doing exactly that at first, but after finding another solution, she’d completely abandoned the idea.

She immediately shook her head.

“How could I possibly do something so foolish?”

Constable Wang visibly relaxed.

“That’s good.”

He only asked because he remembered Fan Chang Yu previously questioning him about what would happen if Fan Da failed to appear in court.

Lowering his voice, he warned, “Fan Da bribed Clerk He. Even if you used such a method, he’d only accuse you in return afterward. If they pin the charge of disregarding the law on you, you could very well end up imprisoned.”

Fan Chang Yu nodded.

“I know.”

The yamen hadn’t even used Constable Wang’s men to search for Fan Da. The meaning behind that was already obvious enough. Constable Wang was completely powerless in this matter.

After leaving the office, Fan Chang Yu returned to wait outside the courtroom.

But even after another half hour passed, the bailiffs searching for Fan Da still hadn’t returned.

The magistrate grew impatient and ordered someone to hurry them. Yet another half hour later, the bailiffs finally returned carrying a stretcher covered with a white cloth.

Fan Da’s wife Liu Shi and the two elderly members of the Fan family followed behind them, wailing loudly.

Clearly, the body beneath the white cloth was Fan Da.

Shock appeared on Fan Chang Yu’s face.

Fan Da was dead?

The crowd outside the county office instantly erupted into heated discussion, all while continuously glancing toward Fan Chang Yu.

Fan Da had tried to seize her family property, yet died precisely at this critical moment. Anyone would inevitably become suspicious.

“How did he just happen to die on the day of the trial?”

“Fan Da was built like an ox. Ordinary people probably couldn’t kill him so easily…”

Feeling all the various gazes landing on her, Fan Chang Yu pressed her lips together slightly. Her own heart was equally filled with shock and confusion.

Who killed Fan Da?

Her mind instinctively flashed to Yan Zheng’s earlier remark about “getting rid of” Fan Da, but she quickly dismissed the thought.

Leaving aside the fact that Yan Zheng’s injuries had worsened and he’d barely left the room these past few days, he had also painstakingly taught her every legal statute she might need in court. There was no way he would kill Fan Da after all that.

Besides, he was only pretending to be her live-in husband. He had no grudge whatsoever against Fan Da. There was simply no reason for him to kill him.

When the magistrate heard the plaintiff had died, he rushed out from the side room so hastily that even his official hat sat crookedly on his head. Terror showed in the thin slits of his eyes. Clearly, he’d never expected a simple property dispute to turn into a murder case.

“Th-this… what is going on? Is there no law anymore?”

One of the constables who had gone searching respectfully reported:

“Replying to Your Honor: when we found Fan Da Niu, he had already been dead for quite some time. There were multiple sword and blade wounds on his body.”

The magistrate ordered someone to remove the white cloth covering the corpse. But after only one glance, the fat on his face trembled violently from fright.

“Summon the coroner immediately!”

Fan Da’s wife Liu Shi nearly fainted from crying as she collapsed beside the body. The moment she saw Fan Chang Yu, she lunged at her like a crazed ghost demanding a life for a life.

“Was it you who killed him? Was it you?!”

Fan Chang Yu stepped back to avoid her and coldly replied:

“Auntie, don’t falsely accuse people. My eldest uncle owed gambling debts everywhere. Who knows whether he fell into the hands of debt collectors and met disaster? What does it have to do with me?”

Liu Shi and the old Madam Fan continued wailing endlessly. The magistrate developed a headache from the noise and ordered bailiffs to drag them away first.

Before Old Master Fan left, he looked at Fan Chang Yu as though he wanted to say something. His lips had gone pale, almost as if he’d remembered something terrifying.

Since Fan Chang Yu was directly involved in the lawsuit with Fan Da, she had no choice but to remain.

After examining the body, the coroner delivered his findings.

Fan Da had likely died that very morning on his way to the county office. He had eleven wounds in total, but only the sword thrust through the heart had been fatal.

The coroner said, “The first ten wounds were inflicted viciously, yet every strike deliberately avoided vital points. The killer was likely someone who used blades regularly. If these injuries weren’t inflicted out of vengeance, then they appear more like interrogation torture.”

That conclusion made Fan Chang Yu frown deeply.

Interrogation?

What could Fan Da possibly have been interrogated about?

Were they trying to force him to repay debts?

But if debt collection was the goal, there would’ve been no reason to kill him afterward.

At once, Fan Chang Yu felt completely lost in a fog of confusion.

Still, since Fan Da had been murdered on the road while traveling to the county office, her own suspicion could largely be cleared. She herself had also been traveling at that same time. The elderly Zhao couple and the ox cart driver could all testify for her.

But the clerk clearly had no intention of letting her off so easily.

Turning toward the magistrate, he said, “Your Honor, although Miss Fan has evidence proving she wasn’t present at the scene, what if… she hired someone else to kill him? I’ve heard she’s rather close with the local hooligans led by Jin Lao San in Lin’an Town. To be safe, shouldn’t we still send people to search her home?”

A murder case appearing right before the New Year made the magistrate feel terribly unlucky. Since it now involved homicide, he no longer had time to care about his own private interests.

He immediately appointed the experienced Constable Wang to lead the search.

“You take men and search the premises!”

Fan Chang Yu feared no shadow because she had done nothing wrong. Since Constable Wang was leading the search, she met the clerk’s weasel-like gaze without the slightest fear.

—

By the time the group of bailiffs reached the residential alleys in western town, the northern wind had grown especially fierce.

One bailiff sniffed hard.

“Did someone slaughter pigs nearby? The smell of blood is so strong.”

Constable Wang smelled it too.

But since Fan Chang Yu’s home was nearby and she made her living slaughtering pigs, he didn’t think much of it at first.

Yet when they opened the gate to the Fan family courtyard and saw the corpses strewn everywhere, even the constables who had witnessed countless murder cases in the capital turned pale.

Dead bodies covered the courtyard.

Fresh blood had dyed the snow that hadn’t yet been cleared completely red.

Constable Wang had been an old friend of Fan Chang Yu’s father and knew there was still a younger daughter in the family. Not seeing any child’s corpse in the courtyard, he hurried into the house to search.

The moment he climbed the steps, he saw a body lying face-up at the entrance of the main hall. The man’s neck had been shredded apart by some kind of hooked claw. Several feathers the size of goose down lay scattered nearby, and the door itself bore slash marks from blades.

Constable Wang’s heart lurched violently.

He hurried farther inside.

Another corpse lay inside the northern room, completely dead, with a kitchen cleaver embedded in its back.

Judging by the angle, the blade had struck directly into the spine.

Yet the cleaver had sunk in nearly two-thirds of its length. One could hardly imagine the terrifying strength of the person who threw it.

Constable Wang searched every room with growing dread but found neither the younger Fan daughter nor the live-in husband.

For a moment, he couldn’t tell whether that was good news or bad.

In a heavy voice, he ordered:

“It seems someone came seeking revenge against the Fan family. Hurry back to the county office and report this!”

—

The sky was gray and overcast. Goose-feather snow drifted steadily down, occasionally shaking loose powdery snow from the pine needles.

The front of Xie Zheng’s robes had already been completely soaked with blood.

Behind him, crows burst screaming from the dense forest. Chaotic footsteps crunching through snow tightened around them like a closing net, yet he acted as though he heard nothing.

Leaning against a pine tree, he planted his bloodied sword three inches deep into the snow while using strips of torn cloth to bind the wound on his hand.

Several drops of blood splattered across his pale jaw. His lips pressed downward tightly, making it clear his mood was absolutely terrible.

Chang Ning and the gyrfalcon—now several shades grayer from smoke and dirt—cowered not far from him. One of the bird’s claws still dangled scraps of pale pink flesh.

Chang Ning sobbed intermittently, her tiny face deathly pale with fright.

Xie Zheng coldly raised his eyes.

“No crying.”

Chang Ning immediately suppressed even her sobbing sounds, though tears continued falling in large drops.

“What exactly did your Fan family provoke?”

Naturally, the terrified child before him could never answer. The question sounded more like him muttering to himself.

At last, the chaotic footsteps closed in completely.

Xie Zheng tilted his head and bit one end of the cloth strip, tying the knot securely. The taste of blood spread across his tongue with a faint metallic tang.

Within his fierce and ruthless phoenix eyes reflected the figures of masked men advancing through the pine forest with swords drawn.