Old Clerk

Having activated the Golden Finger and unexpectedly obtained a suspected Magic Item, Su Mo was in quite a good mood.

He glanced at the sky. It was around the hour of the Rooster, a little past five in the afternoon.

It was time to eat.

He took a piece of cured meat from the cabinet, intending to cut off some meat to celebrate.

But the moment he picked up the cured meat, the dried corpse in the Locust God Temple suddenly surfaced in his mind. It looked exactly like air-dried cured meat. He nearly vomited and lost every bit of appetite for meat.

Forget it. He would just eat white rice.

Add some salt, and two big bowls would carry him through until morning.

In the Great Wu Dynasty, salt was not cheap. Ordinary people could only eat coarse salt filled with impurities, such as sea salt and mineral salt.

Su Mo was not from a science background, but he still knew a little about purifying salt.

The simplest methods were dissolving it in water and evaporating it into crystals.

The advantage was that it took little effort. Once it was dissolved and filtered, he could simply let it evaporate naturally.

The disadvantage was that the result was not quite as good. Compared with top-grade green salt, it was slightly inferior even to well salt.

Su Mo naturally knew that this was a money-making business.

But for someone without backing or strength—

Producing it secretly on a small scale, passing it off as well salt, and earning a little pocket money would not be much of a problem.

But if he wanted large-scale production and to grow rich, the moment he put out the recipe, he would probably be lying on a coffin board the next instant.

The interests tangled up in salt and iron were simply too enormous, with far too many winding paths within them.

Forget a mere unranked runner.

Even a county magistrate or prefectural governor would not fare much better than an unranked runner.

At the very least, it would take court officials of the third rank or above, and they would need to be the sort who traveled in packs and shared the profits evenly, before there was any chance of pushing it through.

Just as he was about to light the fire and cook, someone suddenly knocked on the wooden door.

Su Mo frowned.

He was all alone, and he had deliberately kept a low profile to avoid exposing any flaws. The only people he associated with were his Third Uncle's family.

His old uncle should not have finished work at the yamen yet.

Other than Third Uncle, who else would come knocking?

Could Zhou Meng have reported him to the authorities, and the yamen had come to arrest him?

That did not seem right either.

Su Mo had often followed Chen Ping and his Third Uncle to arrest people.

Whether the target had committed a crime or not, they kicked the door in first and gave them a show of force—unless it was the gate of a gentry or powerful clan.

Suspicious, Su Mo opened the door.

The person standing outside was unexpectedly the little widow Qin.

She had changed into a pale blue pleated ru skirt cinched at the waist, which added considerably to her gentle and graceful air. One hand carried a food box, while the other held the hand of her exquisitely doll-like daughter, Dian Dian.

Seeing Su Mo stare straight at her, the little widow's pretty face reddened slightly. She explained softly, "This humble woman made some dumplings today, but accidentally made a few too many."

"Thinking that you surely had not eaten dinner yet, I brought them over..."

As Su Mo reached for the food box, he smiled. "How could I possibly accept that?"

"Come to think of it, I have not eaten dumplings in a long time either."

The handle of the food box was so small.

With one careless movement, he touched her little hand.

Mm, it was somewhat rough. She made pancakes all day long, so naturally her hands could not be all that soft and smooth.

Still, it felt quite nice.

The little widow recoiled her hand as if struck by lightning, panic flashing across her face.

Only then did Su Mo come to his senses.

This was an ancient era of restraint!

Even though the current Empress held the sacred vessel of the realm, and women could serve as officials, like that "quest NPC," the Female Captain—

Men and women were not supposed to touch when giving or receiving things. Rules passed down for thousands of years could not be changed merely by saying so.

Forget thousands of years.

Take Su Mo himself. The worldview established over more than twenty years in modern society was stubborn indeed.

Even after three months here, and after inheriting some of the original owner's memories, he still felt utterly out of place. He did not even dare say too much.

Su Mo coughed twice and turned his gaze toward the little girl of three or four.

"Is this your daughter?"

"I remember her childhood name was Dian Dian, was it not?"

The little widow Qin nodded gently. "Mm."

"Dian Dian, call him Uncle Su."

"Hello, Uncle Su!"

The little girl truly was sensible.

She must rarely have met strangers. The instant she finished calling Su Mo Uncle Su, she hid behind her mother and timidly poked out half her little head, sizing Su Mo up with curious eyes.

Su Mo smiled. "Hello to you too!"

As he spoke, he habitually reached into his sleeve to see whether he had a few large coins or something.

According to the customs of his old hometown, when a child visited for the first time, they had to be given a red envelope.

Before he could pull out any large coins, a hoarse cough sounded.

Su Mo looked up.

Chen Gan appeared several meters away, his face dark.

The little widow hurriedly handed the food box to Su Mo. "Young Master Su, this humble woman will take her leave."

Chen Gan gave a sinister snort. "Do not leave yet!"

"I have something to say to you later!"

Qin Bi'er's pretty face filled with terror, and she did not dare move an inch.

Do not be fooled by the fact that Chen Gan was merely an old Assistant Servant.

Changping County was enormous, with over a hundred thousand households and several hundred thousand residents. It was a superior county among superior counties. Not counting the Strong Squad and Black Squad, the yamen's registered Regular Servants in the Fast Squad numbered only a few dozen altogether.

A few dozen people had to handle public security, taxes, corvée labor, and more for hundreds of thousands of people. Naturally, they could not possibly manage it all.

The far more numerous and massive groups of Assistant Servants and unranked runners were the true main force of law enforcement!

An old clerk who had served for years naturally had no simple network of connections.

In Ping'an Ward, he was outright a local tyrant.

Several vicious thugs and evil men were at his beck and call. To ordinary people, he was someone whose very name made their faces change.

Though Qin Bi'er had driven off many hooligans with her ruthless decisiveness, when faced with an old subordinate clerk who represented the power of the authorities, she naturally had no means of resistance and feared him greatly.

Chen Gan stared darkly at Qin Bi'er for a while, then turned to Su Mo and snorted. "You beat Zhou Meng because of her?"

Su Mo frowned slightly. "Third Uncle knows?"

Chen Gan snorted heavily again. "How could I not?"

"Zhou Meng reported it to the authorities!"

"If your Third Uncle did not have a few connections in the yamen, and if the Criminal Affairs Office had not suppressed the case, the one who came would not have been me. It would have been yamen runners carrying arrest tokens!"

He paused, then waved his hand. "Let us talk inside!"

The three entered the inner room. Chen Gan spoke to Qin Bi'er without the slightest courtesy. "Go wait in the side room!"

Qin Bi'er answered softly and hurriedly dragged Dian Dian toward the side room.

After the little widow left, Chen Gan first picked up the earthenware kettle, poured himself a bowl of cooled boiled water, moistened his throat, and asked gravely, "Speak!"

"What exactly happened?"

Su Mo naturally did not conceal anything and recounted the matter.

Chen Gan's face darkened as he snorted. "You handled this badly!"

"Since when have you heard of the yamen needing evidence to arrest someone?"

He sneered. "As long as you throw someone into the prison, under the Three Wooden Instruments, what evidence could you not get?"

"How long could that little widow endure?"

Su Mo's expression stiffened at once!

The more Chen Gan spoke, the angrier he became. He stared fiercely at Su Mo, as though he hated iron for failing to become steel. "You have not been an unranked runner for only one day!"

"How are you still this foolish!"

"Since you chose to make a move, you should have done it thoroughly! Did you think that because you showed mercy, Zhou Meng would let the matter rest?"

After being scolded from head to toe, Su Mo could not quite keep his face. "What, was I supposed to beat him to death?"

Having served as an unranked runner for some time, Su Mo knew a little about the Great Wu Law.

He could still distinguish which carried the heavier sentence: injuring someone or killing someone.

At the beginning of Great Wu's founding, chaos had erupted everywhere. Above, officials were corrupt and rotten; below, unscrupulous commoners committed every kind of wicked crime; outside, remnants of the previous dynasty watched like tigers eyeing their prey.

Thus, Emperor Wu the Founder ordered the laws of the previous dynasty revised and the Great Wu Law compiled. Its laws were exceptionally severe.

For instance, seriously injuring another person in the previous dynasty brought merely "thirty strokes of the cane and exile a thousand li away." One could even pay redemption silver, reducing the sentence by up to three degrees.

Under the Great Wu Law, however, it was "one hundred strokes of the cane and exile three thousand li away." If a commoner injured an official, the punishment increased by one degree.

Moreover, injuring someone was a serious crime.

Serious crimes could not have their sentences reduced through redemption silver!

If even injury was treated thus—

Then murder was naturally life for life!

When he heard Su Mo mention killing the man, Chen Gan was so angry he nearly laughed. "Who said doing it thoroughly meant killing him?"

He took a deep breath. "At the time, you should have seized Leper Zhou and marched him through the streets to the yamen. The more people who saw it, the better!"

"Then tear up the little widow's clothes and have her, hair disheveled, accuse Leper Zhou of publicly humiliating a respectable woman!"

Chen Gan paused, then snorted. "As long as the commotion became known to everyone, even if Magistrate Ma stood behind Leper Zhou, he would never dare protect him!"

"Besides!"

"If that Big Wart Ma truly had no shame left to lose."

"The widow's short-lived husband had studied for several years. He was a scholar."

"If we fanned the flames in secret, would those blockheaded scholars stand by with folded arms after seeing a fellow student's widow so cruelly humiliated?"

Chen Gan took a deep breath, and contempt appeared on his old face. "Could a mere assistant miscellaneous official suppress that?"