Chapter Twenty-Two: Seeing the Light Again

The coroner inwardly lamented his predicament, realizing he had overlooked something crucial. He hurried to justify himself, saying, “I only discovered something was amiss yesterday. I was about to report it to Your Honor, but you already saw through everything. I deserve punishment—please reprimand me as you see fit!”

The county magistrate, renowned for his pride, was well understood by the clerks in the yamen. Fortunately, he was otherwise upright, and relations between superiors and subordinates remained stable.

Zhen Qian, standing nearby, glanced meaningfully at the coroner. The coroner immediately grasped his intent and added, “The deceased’s family is truly cunning. After returning home, the deceased consumed a soup of white fungus, lotus seeds, and dates, yet his family deliberately withheld this information from Your Honor. Their conduct is reprehensible—I implore you to investigate thoroughly!”

What Zhen Qian did not know was that the coroner had also accepted favors from the deceased’s family and thus neglected to scrutinize the case. Now, seeing Zhen Qian intervene, he assumed the Zhen family was supporting Song Yi and dared not oppose them, promptly shifting blame and exposing the deceased’s family.

The county magistrate, quick to perceive the truth, flew into a rage. “Go! Arrest the wives, concubines, and servants of the deceased’s household. I will reexamine this case myself!”

Zhen Qian, having achieved his objective, knew lingering would only provoke the magistrate’s displeasure. The magistrate now wavered—should he overturn Song Yi’s conviction or preserve his own reputation by upholding the original verdict? Moreover, with Zhen Qian involved, avoiding the matter was impossible. By providing the magistrate an excuse, Zhen Qian’s influence rose in his eyes.

Returning home, Zhen Qian quietly awaited news from the yamen. Two days later, a messenger arrived: Song Yi’s case had yielded new discoveries—not accidental food poisoning, but conflict between the main wife and a favored concubine. The deceased had become enamored with the concubine and intended to divorce his wife. In a fit of anger, the wife fed him spoiled white fungus, then, fearing exposure, falsely claimed the poisoning occurred at Song Yi’s restaurant.

The magistrate’s notification to Zhen Qian, in Zhen’s view, was a subtle gesture of apology. As for other details, Zhen cared little; if the magistrate truly desired a specific outcome, nothing could stop him. Zhen did not believe the magistrate was a paragon of virtue.

In the county jail, an elderly man with white beard gazed at the light filtering through the iron bars, his heart full of desolation. His business ruined, his family implicated, the future bleak, he wept silently, pain overwhelming him.

A fellow prisoner watched him with a mocking smile and said, “Song Yi, the verdict is out—just accept your fate. As the saying goes, a wound the size of a bowl for the dead, and twenty years later you’ll be a man again. It’s not a bad deal. The man you allegedly poisoned had a harem and land by the thousand acres. Someone like that dying at your hand—what is there to regret!”

“Nonsense! I didn’t kill him—I’m innocent!” The elderly man, Song Yi, jumped up at the jeering. But after days of torment in prison, he was frail and had no strength to resist, quickly beaten and driven to a corner by the others.

“You claim innocence—so do we all!”

“Look around—how many here say they’re innocent? Yet heads still roll when the time comes. Just accept your fate. Yo