Moral Fiber

Feudal society had its advantages too. Take this trick of "playing god and ghost," for instance—back when Sun Shaozong had been a criminal police captain, the media might have denounced him to the skies for it!

But now, this simple, crude, utterly low-tech method won unanimous praise from both the constables and the onlooking crowd—especially Jiang Laoqi, who kept blurting out "uncanny calculations" and "solving cases like a god," laying it on so thick he was practically swelling from all the bootlicking.

Next came the moment when the truth was laid bare.

Just as Sun Shaozong had deduced, when Xu Gengsheng came to call, Zhang Erhu had been sharpening his knife beneath the tree. After trading a few words, the two began to quarrel. Zhang Erhu shoved Xu Gengsheng, sending him stumbling right beside the whetstone.

Seeing Zhang Erhu rush after him to continue the fight, Xu Gengsheng suddenly felt rage rise in his heart and evil stir in his gut. He snatched up a kitchen knife and stabbed wildly with all his strength.

Zhang Erhu let out a miserable scream and collapsed. He fell silent on the spot.

Xu Gengsheng panicked at the sight. He hurriedly ran all the way back to his own courtyard, then later disguised himself as a curious spectator and mingled into the crowd that had come to witness the pig-caging. None of that was particularly surprising, but the reason he and Zhang Erhu had come into conflict truly left people sighing.

As it turned out, Xu Gengsheng had long been secretly in love with Li Shi. Whenever he heard Zhang Erhu beating her, it felt as though knives were carving his heart; he wished he could take her place.

That day, he vaguely heard Zhang Erhu beating and berating Li Shi again. At last unable to endure it any longer, Xu Gengsheng came to stand up for her. Beating his chest, he assured Zhang Erhu that all the gossip concerning Li Shi was nothing but rumors spread by meddlesome old women, with absolutely no basis in fact.

Who could have guessed that Xu Gengsheng's impulsive act would instead arouse Zhang Erhu's suspicions? Zhang Erhu suspected that he was the man sleeping with his wife, and so beat him viciously, setting off the tragedy that followed.

Having explained the whole chain of events, Xu Gengsheng knew he could not escape his guilt. Yet he spoke more openly now, craning his neck as he shouted at Zhang Dalong and his wife, "Now I'm not afraid to tell the truth! For the past half year, I've had my eye on Xiujuan Li Shi every single day. If she'd shown even the slightest crack, it wouldn't have been anyone else's turn to make a move! But she truly is a woman of the highest chastity and fierce virtue—there has never been the slightest illicit affair! It was all you petty people, catching shadows from the wind and spreading nonsense, ruining her good name for nothing!"

Zhang Dalong and his wife had no answer. Li Shi, listening nearby, was equally tangled in turmoil, unable to calm herself for a long while—she likely never could have imagined that the two words "innocence," which she valued above all else, would ultimately be spoken by the enemy who had killed her husband!

For a time, the courtyard was filled with sighs.

Only Sun Shaozong remained as calm as though nothing had happened. It was not that he was cold as iron and hard as stone; he had simply witnessed too many human tragedies, and his capacity to bear them naturally far surpassed that of ordinary people.

Still, he tactfully kept silent for a moment. Once everyone had collected their emotions, he rose to his full height, calmly brushed the dust from his clothes, and said in a crisp voice, "Officer Jiang, I am currently on leave. I'll leave this case to Wanping County."

With that, he took Ruan Rong by the hand and walked out without another word.

He had been in office for less than half a month and had already solved the naked corpse case. Even if he accumulated another merit now, it would merely be adding flowers to brocade; he could not possibly be promoted again so soon. Rather than share this credit with Liu Zhizhong, he might as well do Wanping County a favor. Besides, so many commoners had witnessed it—no one could erase his reputation.

Jiang Laoqi and the others were left rather dumbfounded. They were used to superiors scrambling for credit, but had never seen one who treated credit as nothing, even casually giving it away!

But on second thought, was it not precisely such extraordinary moral fiber that made him worthy of the name "Divine Detective Sun Judicial Assistant Magistrate"?

Sun Shaozong climbed into the carriage amid the escorting crowd of constables and commoners. After they had raced through more than half a street, he looked back and could still see a hundred or so people stretching their necks to watch him leave. He was secretly feeling rather pleased with himself when he noticed that Ruan Rong beside him looked distracted, as though she were still immersed in the case they had just handled.

Sun Shaozong quickly drew her into his arms and, with the motion, lifted that little face lovely as a painting. Looking into her eyes, he asked softly, "What is it? Are you still thinking about Xu Gengsheng?"

Ruan Rong nodded silently. After hesitating for a long while, she said, "I just feel that Xu Gengsheng is rather pitiable. If he and Li Shi had become a couple, they surely could have been a loving husband and wife. But Heaven toys with people, and in the end he came to such a fate."

A loving husband and wife?

That was hard to say. As the saying went: a wife is not as good as a concubine, a concubine is not as good as a stolen affair, and a stolen affair is not as good as one that cannot be had—perhaps if Xu Gengsheng had married Li Shi, he would have begun longing for Wang Shi and Zhang Shi instead.

Still, it was best not to say something so mood-killing in front of a woman.

So Sun Shaozong followed Ruan Rong's lead and sighed quietly. "What can pity change? He took a life and violated Imperial Law—and Imperial Law has no room for human sentiment."

Ruan Rong's expression darkened by another degree, but then he gave a chuckle. "Still, if you ever became another man's wife, I'd certainly kill her husband and take his wife. Never mind imperial edicts or Imperial Law—even if the Heavenly King himself tried to stop me, I'd kill first and worry about burial later!"

Hearing such nakedly direct words of love, Ruan Rong was both delighted and moved. The little trace of sorrow in her heart was flung beyond the nine heavens.

After returning to the residence, she naturally did not spare any tender attentiveness, joining techniques such as the upside-down candle with Sun Shaozong's repeated practice. They played until midnight before finally falling asleep in a daze, entwined like conjoined twins.

The next morning, the household servants mentioned that Cheng Rixing, who had visited once the night before, had come eagerly calling again that morning. Only then did Sun Shaozong remember the matter of hiring an adviser.

He promptly had Cheng Rixing summoned to the side hall and examined him carefully for half the day, making Cheng Rixing sweat all over before he finally barely passed.

Once he had hired the adviser, Sun Shaozong saw that the Lantern Festival celebrations were already in full swing. He immediately took Ruan Rong and slipped out of the residence again, enjoying themselves to the fullest at the festival for two days.

Revolving Lanterns, Lotus Lanterns—they brought back half a cartload. Especially on the sixteenth day of the first month, they bought two palace lanterns painted with "Divine Detective Sun Judicial Assistant Magistrate Cleverly Solves the Naked Corpse Case," which gave Sun Shaozong another small burst of pride.

Unfortunately, the figure in the painting was far too ugly: leopard-headed, ring-eyed, and black as coal, like Zhang Fei reborn and even more so Li Kui returned to the world. Ruan Rong therefore took the chance to tease him mercilessly.

"Humiliated into anger," Sun Shaozong naturally put her through another long night of torment. They rested for only an hour or so around the fourth watch before he hurried to the government office—on the seventeenth day of the first month, Jia Yucun was to assume office. As an important member of Jia Assistant Minister's faction, Sun Shaozong naturally had to arrive early to lend him some presence.

Though he was only there to lend some presence. Given Jia Yucun's standing, naturally no one dared stroke the tiger's whiskers.

Thus, after Jia Yucun smoothly assumed office, Sun Shaozong worked at the yamen for several more days. During that time, he went out on official business once and solved a murder case disguised as a suicide by jumping into a well.

Since he captured the true culprit within half a day again, his name as a "divine detective" grew even louder, and his position within Shuntian Prefecture became increasingly secure. Apart from Lin Delu, the registrar, who still gave him no pleasant face, no one else dared provoke him lightly.

Things remained calm until the twenty-ninth day at the end of the month, when someone suddenly came bearing an invitation. It was from the young master of General Feng Tang, the Divine Martial's household, inviting Sun Shaozong to a noon banquet at Hundred Flowers Pavilion the following day.