Chapter 21

Thirteenth Son wore a cangue and was shackled in chains. He was shoved by the yamen runners and brought into the prison ward. On the way, he slightly tested the strength of the cangue and confirmed that he could easily snap it open, but thinking that if he broke out by force, he did not know whether it would implicate Ninth Lady, he could only endure it silently and wait for Wei Xun to meet him.

Bao Lang had already received the news in advance and stood at the gate of the large prison to welcome him. He thought that the true culprit had finally been captured, and his eyes flashed with cold light while a cultured smile appeared on the edges of his lips.

"Little Master, do you know who I am?"

Thirteenth Son looked at him with clear eyes and said, "I heard the bailiffs introduce you on the way. You must be Special Envoy Bao Lang."

Bao Lang smiled and asked, "Then who are you?"

Thirteenth Son answered with poise and calm, "This little monk is Shanyuan. Greetings, Special Envoy. With shackles on my body, please forgive me for not paying full respects."

Bao Lang was quite astonished in his heart. Although this novice monk was young, his bearing was calm and collected, completely lacking the panic of those bald-headed fellows who had been arrested earlier. He also thought that only extraordinary martial artists of the jianghu could have stolen treasures from the pagoda, so he figured he was no ordinary monk who ate vegetarian food and chanted Buddhist scriptures. Thus, he exchanged a glance with the jailers, signaling them to draw their sabers and be on strict guard.

Bao Lang showed him the prisoners hanging from the roof beams who wished they were dead, and the branding irons burned red in copper basins, threatening him, "Seeing the sights of this prison, are you not afraid?"

Thirteenth Son said in a resonant voice, "Why would I be afraid? But a straight upright body does not fear a crooked shadow. I did not steal the pearl. If it is destined for me to suffer this tribulation, then fear cannot help me escape it. The Buddha says, 'All various fruits arise from causes, and all various retributions arise from deeds.' This calamity of the snake pearl must have originated from someone; there is surely retribution waiting for him. Could it be that the white snake came back to seek revenge?"

"Seek revenge?! Ha! Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!" Hearing these words, Bao Lang's expression changed in a rage. After a burst of bone-chilling laughter, he said, "To tell you the truth, this very pearl was snatched by me when I personally slew the white snake. Even if that monstrous fiend comes back to life and wreaks havoc, I can still chop it into two halves all over again, let alone a bald-headed thief spreading heresies like you!"

He then ordered the jailers, "Administer the punishment!"

The jailers immediately came forward to unlock the wooden cangue, preparing to hang the novice monk from the roof beams.

Thirteenth Son said, "Wait a moment."

Bao Lang sneered, "You were still stubborn with your mouth just a moment ago. Not a single whip has landed yet, and you're already going to confess?"

Thirteenth Son said, "That's not it at all. Please allow me to take off my monk's robes and shoes and socks first. This small-sized monk's robe is hard to come by, and you can't buy a well-fitting one at a second-hand clothing shop. If it gets torn to shreds and stained with blood, this little monk truly has no means to buy a new one."

Bao Lang was startled, then burst into loud laughter.

Clouds obscured the mist and the moonlight was dim. The houses on both sides of the street stood in quiet stillness. In the dead of night, there was no longer any light within the window lattices. Wei Xun walked quickly toward the encampment where the craftsmen gathered, feeling worried in his heart that Bao Lang would go to the Reflection Pavilion to harass them again, and wishing only to resolve this matter quickly. Suddenly, he heard a pattering sound of hurried footsteps behind him. He stopped, and those footsteps stopped as well. He took another step forward to resume walking, and the footsteps followed closely behind him once more.

He had never encountered such an awkward and clumsy stalker. Wei Xun sighed, turned around, and waited for her to catch up.

Bao Lang's name had no bearing here; Baozhu walked out from the dark with her head lowered. The sleeves of her Hu Garments were worn through, a seam on her shoulder was torn, and she had brushed against wall ash all over her body. One could tell at a glance it was the disheveled result of climbing through windows and scaling walls.

That outward-facing window of the Reflection Pavilion could not be considered particularly high, yet it was still close to two zhang up. She had climbed down by herself without anyone assisting her. Wei Xun felt a lingering fear and a burst of retrospective panic as he said in a deep voice, "Thirteenth Son's lightness kung fu is not good, and if he falls, he merely takes a tumble. If you fall, you will break your spine and neck. Why didn't Old Yang stop you?!"

Baozhu also felt that she was covered in dirt and ashes and looked rather unsightly, yet she lacked the skill to climb back up and change her clothes. Gloomily, she said, "I deliberately sent Registrar Yang away, telling him to boil tea."

Wei Xun listened closely to her footsteps and breathing, and neither showed any abnormalities. He asked, "Did you scrape your hands and feet anywhere?"

Baozhu could not save face, feeling that she had been looked down upon. She proudly raised her head and said, "What? Could it be that your master and fellow apprentice are the only ones in the whole world who know martial arts? I am also someone who has practiced martial arts since childhood; it's not like I've never been injured. I've even fallen from a spooked horse."

There was nothing Wei Xun could do with her. He could only say, "Yes, yes, you are the number one martial artist in the world. Shall I send you back, or..."

Baozhu let out a hum. "I won't go back! Anyway, it's the middle of the night and no one can see that my clothes are torn. Without my guidance, you might not even be able to find that pearl tonight." She walked over to Wei Xun's side, meaning that she wanted to go together to the craftsmen's encampment.

Since they had already found the source of the note, they had discussed that if they could retrieve the stolen white snake pearl in advance, they might directly solve the case and clear Thirteenth Son of suspicion, sparing him from taking on the identity of a wanted fugitive after breaking out of prison. Huo Qi had gone out of the city to prepare equipment. Wei Xun had all along been uneasy about Baozhu staying alone in the Reflection Pavilion, but now that he had her by his side watching with her own eyes, he felt much more at ease, and so he stopped trying to persuade her to go back.

Baozhu did not know how Thirteenth Son would endure this night, and she still wore a worried expression. Wei Xun comforted her, saying, "That kid has thick skin and flesh. Practicing martial arts since childhood means taking beatings. If you had climbed out a window and fallen just now, you probably would have been injured worse than him."

Baozhu thought to herself that when she learned horse-riding and archery, everyone around her was terrified that she would scrape even a tiny bit of skin, otherwise inevitable joint reprimands and punishments would follow. Her masters had never dared to raise their voices to scold her either, always using kind words to coax her. Yet under Chen Shigu's tutelage, the moment you heard about it, you had to endure a lot of suffering. She softly asked, "Did you also suffer a lot of beatings when you practiced martial arts as a child?"

Wei Xun was stunned. A lot of old memories rose up from the dregs of the past, bubbling up from the bottom of an underground river. He quickly pushed them back down and laughed lightly as he said, "Not really. As long as you ran fast enough, Master couldn't hit you, which is why I practiced lightness kung fu. Those who ran slowly could only practice the Invincible Vajra Body along with Four-Fatty."

Baozhu was somewhat puzzled, thinking to herself: What about before you could run fast enough?

The two of them walked together all the way to the place where the craftsmen gathered. In the dead of night, most of the campfires in the encampment had already gone out, leaving only one or two embers slowly burning in the dark, vaguely reflecting the outlines of various tents and equipment. Wei Xun concentrated his vigilance, guarding against that unmasked expert secretly harming Baozhu.

Passing through the tents where the craftsmen slept, they arrived at the corner of the city wall, coming before that strange tomb that had been buried at dusk. They saw that the simple tomb mound had already been piled up, and two people were huddled by the side of the mound, tending a campfire and boiling porridge to drink.

Even Baozhu felt this action was a bit strange, and she whispered, "Do folk funeral rites have this kind of custom?"

Wei Xun shook his head.

Seeing strangers visiting in the middle of the night and standing here without leaving, those two men panicked a bit. They stood up and shouted, "Where did these wild mandarin ducks come from, running to a grave mound to talk about love!"

Wei Xun smiled. "That's still better than chatting and eating midnight snacks on top of a fresh grave."

One of them picked up a carpenter's chisel in his hand and rebuked, "Are you guys deliberately looking for trouble?"

Turning a blind eye, Wei Xun leisurely said, "Business is at the door. Aren't you craftsmen from Changzhou? I'd like to custom-make a Seven-Inch Size, Gold-and-Silver Inlay Seven-Treasure Glazed-Glass-Lacquer Box to give to someone."

Those two men were both startled and suspicious, saying, "We are not lacquer artisans; we don't know how to make that."

Baozhu said, "Perhaps you could make it just by looking at the pattern?" As she spoke, she pulled out the lacquer box pattern she had rubbed with Stone Eyebrow Pigment, displayed it to the two men, and added, "It's best if a lacquer artisan named 'Faming' makes it with his own hands."

She described the details of the container holding the white snake pearl to test them. Those two men truly reacted as if they had seen a living ghost, their faces filled with terror as they turned and ran.

Seeing that Wei Xun stood without moving, Baozhu asked, "Aren't you going to catch them?"

Wei Xun said, "There's no rush. You can run from the first day of the year, but you can't hide from the fifteenth. The tomb is right here, so the main culprit can't run away."

After a while, sure enough, seven or eight people came crowding around a lame man leaning on crutches-it was precisely that cripple they had encountered by chance outside the walls of the Lotus Flower Temple that early morning.

Baozhu remembered it clearly. It was this craft leader who had gone to the County Yamen to request Wu Zhiyuan to open the city gates and let them out. At the time, she had heard that this batch of Changzhou craftsmen had come from Xuzhou along with Bao Lang. Bao Lang went to Chang'an to present the pearl, while the craftsmen went to do corvée labor constructing her mausoleum. Princess Wanshou had passed away hastily, and after the underground palace was sealed, the spirit-way stele had not yet been erected. The grand hall, sacrificial altars, stone figures, and stone horses were all unready, waiting for Tombstone Carvers, stonemasons, carpenters, lacquer artisans, and laborers of various trades to go construct them.

The cripple also recognized this pair of young male and female youths, revealing a look of astonishment. He asked in a hoarse voice, "I heard the young gentleman wants to make a lacquer box to give to someone?"

Wei Xun nodded. "That's right. You must be the lacquer artisan Faming?"

The cripple shook his head and said, "No, I am a stele carver."

Wei Xun immediately exchanged a glance with Baozhu, knowing they had found the right person. Even if this cripple hadn't made critical remarks pointing out her calligraphy outside the Lotus Flower Temple, they still could have tracked down the actual person through his trade.

Wei Xun said, "It's fine even if you don't know how to make a lacquer box. Then I'll just commission a gravestone instead."

He fished out the eight-character slip of paper he had stolen from Bao Lang, folded it in half on both sides, and cupped it in the palm of his hand, letting only a tiny bit of ink at the edge show so he could let him see it: "Can this kind of handwriting be carved?"

When that cripple saw this slip of paper, his face instantly turned ashen like dead wood. His hands trembled, he dropped his crutches, and with a thud, he dropped to his knees.

"Since the young gentleman has already found this place, take me to see the officials! It was I, Chen Yu, who wrote this slip of paper, and it was I who climbed the pagoda to steal the luminous pearl!"

Wei Xun and Baozhu both secretly gave a start of surprise, neither expecting that a major case involving such wide implications would have him admit guilt so easily, while at the same time being unwilling to believe it. This cripple not only walked with crutches, but he was also a disabled person with a severe foot affliction. Even an ordinary person with sound limbs would find it extremely difficult to climb the Many-Treasures Pagoda to steal a pearl; how could this cripple possibly climb up?

Yet without showing the full appearance of the handwriting on the paper, he had recognized it, proving without a doubt that he was an involved party. Meanwhile, the people around him wore faces full of fear and worry, uniquely devoid of any look of astonishment, which showed that they could not wash themselves clean of complicity either.

Wei Xun said indifferently, "Why must you be in such a rush? I am not a runner for the government yamen; I'm merely a guest who came to have a lacquer box made."

The people surrounding them helped the stele carver Chen Yu up. With a bitter face, he said, "I did it all by myself. It has nothing to do with the others."

Wei Xun said, "The hour is late, and I haven't eaten yet. How about inviting us to the side of the grave to eat a bowl of porridge?" His tone was unhurried, yet his gaze was stern and cold, revealing a clear sense of threat.

With guilty consciences and at their wits' end, that gang of craftsmen had no idea what the two of them actually intended. Someone held a chisel and a plane in his hand, yet was cowed by the youth's victorious and overbearing aura of absolute control, not daring to launch an active attack at all.

Wei Xun patted Chen Yu on the shoulder. Subjected to his coercion, the stele carver could only prop himself up on his crutches and follow along. Watching with cold eyes, Wei Xun saw that for years he had relied on one foot for force, causing his spine and shoulder blades to have long since become severely deformed, twisted to a point where they could no longer be corrected. Taken by surprise when Wei Xun tripped him with a crutch, Chen Yu let out a cry of alarm, his body swaying as he crashed heavily to the ground.

Baozhu immediately cast a reproachful look his way, whispering, "He's sick and lame, and he can't run away at all. Why must you injure him further?"

Wei Xun explained, "I'm only testing him."

Baozhu asked, "You mean he faked a fall?"

Wei Xun shook his head. He had intentionally tripped the cripple's crutch by surprise to observe his muscle response capabilities; when caught off guard, a person finds it hardest to conceal their instincts, and even if an action has the slightest bit of concealment, it is difficult to escape his eyes. When Chen Yu fell, his body was heavy and lacked the ability to react-he was a genuine disabled person.

He said to Baozhu, "Hard to say about other things, but the person who climbed the pagoda to steal the pearl is definitely not him."

Chen Yu fell extremely hard and could not climb up by himself. Being in the wrong to begin with and daring to be angry but not dare to speak, the craftsmen could only support him and come over to the side of the tomb.

Wei Xun ladled out a bowl of porridge himself and sat unhurriedly on the craftsmen's folding cot, eating large mouthfuls. As he ate, he pointed at the tomb mound with his chopsticks and asked, "The stolen goods are hidden inside the coffin, right?"

Hearing this, everyone was dumbstruck, expressions of extreme terror welling up on their faces. The timid ones had clothes trembling on their bodies.

Wei Xun could tell that this group of people did not know martial arts, and in his heart he only guarded against that unmasked expert. He continued, "You buried them at dusk, which was already suspicious. There are no expressions of grief on your faces, which shows that what's inside is not the corpse of a companion; nine times out of ten, it must be the white snake pearl. If I hadn't made a vow never to touch people's tombs again, I'd dig it out right now and take a look."

A look of anger suddenly appeared on Chen Yu's face as he abruptly raised his head and said in a loud voice, "That is my family's heirloom luminous pearl; it is not a snake pearl!"

Unflustered and slow, Wei Xun said, "Whether it's a snake pearl or a luminous pearl, I don't care. It's just that I'm curious about the process of how you stole it. Why don't you recount it in detail?"

Chen Yu's eyes were filled with resentment and depression, and he tightly clamped his mouth shut again.

A round-faced craftsman with a kind appearance hurried over and said with trembling fear, "Since the young gentleman is not an official runner, are you then short on money? Although the few of us are not wealthy, we can still scrape together twenty or thirty strings of cash."

Clearly on their own turf and numbering close to ten able-bodied men, yet for some reason every single one of them felt dread in their hearts toward this youth. Swept by those long, narrow, and sharp eyes, everyone felt nothing but trepidation.

Baozhu did not know that Wei Xun was guarding against a sneak attack, and she also felt that his temperament tonight was vastly different from his usual cunning and teasing demeanor. There was a fierce and domineering aura about him, as if standing next to him made the temperature drop quite a bit compared to the surroundings. She subconsciously took two steps back, which Wei Xun immediately noticed as he sternly signaled her to move closer and not scatter.

Faced with that submissive and pleading craftsman, Baozhu also felt she could not bear to watch and rebuked, "Do you think we came here to shake you down? Because of your pearl-stealing, how many innocent people have been arrested, and under torture, how many wrongful souls have been created? Don't you feel any shame?"

The craftsmen all wore looks of shame and lowered their heads.

Chen Yu's turbid eyes were bloodshot as he said in a hoarse voice, "A thousand wrongs and ten thousand faults are all my fault. It is enough for me alone to surrender and turn myself in."

Yet Baozhu said, "Even if you surrender and submit to the law, you still have to make your story hang together. Do you take the government's handling of cases as child's play?"

Chen Yu closed his eyes and simply refused to speak of the means by which he had stolen the pearl.

Seeing his resolute expression, Baozhu quietly said to Wei Xun, "It looks like he wants to take the blame entirely upon himself to cover for his other accomplices. If he's sent to the County Yamen with this frame of bones, I'm afraid he won't survive till dawn under torture."

Understanding tacitly, Wei Xun reached out and hoisted Chen Yu up by the back of his collar, saying, "Since someone has confessed to the crime, I'll take him away to collect the reward." Sweeping his gaze one by one over the remaining craftsmen, he threatened gloomily, "You'd better not touch this tomb mound again, or else I'll break the cripple's other leg and tear him into half a man."

Although Chen Yu was withered and handicapped, he was still an adult male, yet Wei Xun lifted him up as effortlessly as picking up a pair of chopsticks. Although young, he was a top-tier figure who had long made a name for himself in the jianghu, naturally possessing a pressing might. Terrified and alarmed, the craftsmen all wept, yet none dared to block his path.

Observing their behavior, Wei Xun felt secretly strange in his heart. Whether young or old, these craftsmen were honest, law-abiding folks who dared not resist the powerful, wilting at the slightest scare. They did not look like daring master thieves capable of stealing the Military Governor's treasures.

Baozhu did not know where Wei Xun was taking the stele carver. After she and he walked far away from the encampment, Wei Xun found an uninhabited desolate courtyard and dragged Chen Yu up to the loft by his waistband. Leaving his crutches behind, this cripple could only crawl; unless he wanted to break every bone in his body, he had no way of climbing down by himself, making guards completely unnecessary.

The night had already grown extremely heavy. As the two of them walked down the silent street, Baozhu lowered her voice and said to Wei Xun, "The case is about to come to light, but Chen Yu said the white snake pearl was his family heirloom. This sentence has been weighing on my mind all along."

Wei Xun said, "You're afraid what he said is the truth, right?"

With a sympathetic pang in her heart, Baozhu nodded dejectedly. Although she lived deep within the imperial palace, she frequently heard of powerful aristocrats in high positions forcibly seizing things, ruining original owners and destroying their families simply for the sake of an antique or a pretty serving girl. If this white snake pearl had indeed been plundered from the common folk, then the original owner must have suffered immensely.

"Bao Lang's heart is as venomous as a snake's. If it is said that he was the one who snatched the pearl from Chen Yu's hands, it is truly very believable." She paused, then added, "Although he claims to have personally slain the white snake and does not fear the snake demon at all, ever since Registrar Yang claimed I was possessed by a snake demon, he hasn't stepped foot near us even once. Yesterday I heard Wu Zhiyuan say that when Bao Lang saw someone in the Official Guesthouse carrying a jar of medicinal wine steeped with snakes, he lost all color in his face, drew his saber, and chopped that wine jar to pieces. Isn't this having a guilty conscience?"

Wei Xun nodded. "He says he's not afraid with his mouth, but in reality, he is extremely wary. The city has been locked down for so long without finding the snake pearl, and now the city is short on grain. I'm afraid they won't be able to keep the lockdown going much longer. Having lost the pearl, Bao Lang will definitely be held to account by Cui Keyong. Under the anxiety and fear, he will gradually go crazy and lose control."

Wei Xun thought of another matter. When he went to intimidate and used force to take Chen Yu away, the hypothetical lightness kung fu expert had still not shown up. He could not help doubting whether such a person truly existed in this world. Yet if there was no one else to help them, how on earth had these craftsmen who knew no martial arts stolen the snake pearl from the Many-Treasures Pagoda?

While lost in thought, he suddenly looked toward the edge of the sky and said, "Huo Qi has succeeded. We'll set off before dawn, but first we must send you back to the Reflection Pavilion."

Baozhu looked around in all directions without seeing a trace of Huo Lang-Huo Qilang, thinking that perhaps their martial arts sect had some special method of contact.

Walking back together outside the courtyard wall of the County Yamen's inner residence, Baozhu once again grew eager to scale the wall herself. Looking at her scraped clothes, Wei Xun furrowed his brow and asked, "Is there something wrong with me carrying you up?"

Because Thirteenth Son had been suddenly arrested, Baozhu had temporarily forgotten the complications of their previous cold war. Now that old scores were being brought up again, she said in a cold tone, "Go away. I certainly won't let you carry me the way you carried Chen Yu."

Seeing her so resolute, Wei Xun froze for a moment, took a deep breath as if mustering his courage, and then slowly reached out toward Baozhu, asking in a low voice, "Then... shall I carry you on my back up there? Would that be alright?"

Looking at the hand he extended, Baozhu remembered how he had treated her like something to be avoided at all costs earlier, and she remained resentful. Haughtily, she said, "Forget it. Didn't you hate people touching you? We'd better stay far apart to avoid suspicion."

Wei Xun lowered his eyes, his expression complex-a mixture of dread and shame. Those palms of his that could crack steles and rocks and kill countless people were extended so flatly in the empty air, and yet he had to force self-control upon himself just so they wouldn't tremble.

He had pondered for a full night as to why he felt terror when facing her. Now, striving for calm, he stated the result of his reflections truthfully: "I truly do hate it. That's because I was born with an affliction; my body is as icy as a dead person's, and everyone loathes it. I don't wish to invite contempt upon myself of my own accord, which is why I don't touch people."