"Which families do these belong to?"
Looking at the sheer number of documents, Shen Tang had assumed they were a combined record of several families. She picked one up and opened it, only to hear Qi Shan say with a dark expression, "One family. Every single one concerns the Zhang clan."
Shen Tang nearly dropped the bamboo-slip dossier.
Her fingers trembled as she pointed at the stack.
"Are you saying—one family?"
How many people could there possibly be in the Zhang clan of Heyin?
How could they have committed so many atrocities?
Shen Tang skimmed through the dossier. In short, a household's son had been falsely accused of stealing a chicken by the Zhang clan's steward, Diao, who managed the front courtyard. It was a battle-hardened fighting cock, worth as much as several acres of prime farmland.
By law, the thief had to pay double the loss.
Unless the accuser agreed to settle privately.
How could that family possibly afford it?
The head of the household had fallen gravely ill while serving in the military years ago and died. All that remained were his widow and their two children. She had struggled to raise her son and daughter while enduring attacks from her in-laws, contempt from the neighbors, and rejection by her clan. They all believed her fate had cursed her husband and son.
To appease Diao and make good on the loss, she offered to sell herself and her daughter into prostitution and liquidate the savings she had scraped together over the years.
Desperate and helpless, the widow rushed into the house and grabbed a blunt knife.
Before everyone's eyes, she cut open her son's belly.
She meant to prove that all three members of her family were innocent.
As it turned out, there was no chicken meat in