After the confession was signed and marked with a fingerprint, Lord Yang sentenced Madam Wen to exile three thousand li away.
Next came the household of the Vice Minister of Revenue.
Lord Yang had already ordered everyone in the Vice Minister of Revenue's household arrested.
Just then, the men sent to the burial ground returned, bringing twenty paper effigies with them.
Guagua: [Host, they're back.
Those twenty paper effigies are the twenty people buried as sacrifices.]
Song Yaoyao: [Mm.]
Lord Yang ordered the bailiffs to remove the paper clothing from the twenty effigies and wipe the makeup off their faces.
Now everyone could see clearly: these were twenty human beings.
Their faces still looked just as they had in life, so lifelike.
Lord Yang truly could not pass judgment on this matter.
Twenty years had passed since the emperor issued his decree forbidding the burial of living people as sacrifices, and no one had dared commit such a crime in open defiance of it.
This was the first such case he had encountered!
Lord Yang could not make the decision himself. He had to report it to the emperor and let him decide.
After having the members of the Vice Minister of Revenue's household locked up for the time being, Lord Yang adjourned court. He needed to visit the palace.
What happened next was beyond Song Yaoyao and the others' control, so they left the Capital Prefecture.
To their surprise, the moment they came out, Jiang Mengli and her maternal grandfather blocked their path. Without another word, both knelt and kowtowed again.
After listening in the courtroom for so long, Jiang Mengli had also realized that the reason anyone had discovered she was trapped in the coffin was most likely that Guagua had told Song Yaoyao.
Jiang Mengli was truly