Inside the county office.
County Magistrate Li Zhongping was sitting in his study, drinking tea while humming a little tune.
"Think it over carefully, I cannot bring myself to answer him with harsh words. Here I force myself to play the rotting fool, while he deliberately leaves us dangling. Ah, tears well up despite myself, and I think on it again. Draw my lover with me into the gauze-and-gold bed curtains, and never forget these vows as deep as the sea and high as the mountains."
The lilting little melody was full of leisure and idle pleasure.
He had heard this little tune from the concubine he had just taken in. Thinking of the way she sang it, thinking of her delicate, graceful figure, thinking of the tender affection in her eyes and brows, Li Zhongping felt an itch rise in his heart that he simply could not suppress. He decided he would spend the night in his concubine's room again tonight.
Just then, a scream sounded outside the door.
Immediately after came a clattering burst of noise.
"Murder!"
"Help!"
"Run!"
The noise grew more and more chaotic. Li Zhongping shot to his feet.
Murder?
Were unruly commoners storming the county office?
In a panic, he went to the door and peered outside through the crack.
He saw a group of young, able-bodied men armed with sabers, spears, sticks, and clubs chasing and beating the yamen runners and clerks of the county office. He also saw that the county vice magistrate had already fallen in a pool of blood.
"Not good! There really are unruly commoners causing trouble!"
Li Zhongping turned ghastly pale with fright and looked all around the study in a fluster.
In the end, he spotted the window at the back. Without even thinking, he climbed onto