Li An

Biodata

Background / History

Official Position and Trafficking

Li An held the senior-third-rank office of censor-in-chief. After his murder, courtiers competed to take charge of the investigation because they believed his position would have given him evidence against many of them 3.

Behind his official standing, he served as Lin Bian’s capital contact in a human-trafficking operation. Lin Bian gathered beautiful women, sometimes engineering accusations against their families to force them into selling themselves. The women were trained at Pleasant Breeze Courtyard before being sold elsewhere 35.

Cui Rou, later known as Rouniang, was among these victims. Li An participated in the scheme that ruined her family, acquired her sale contract, and kept her for himself. He left her in Jiangnan for training before having her sent directly to his residence in the capital 13.

Abuse Within the Li Household

At court, Li An and Madam Li were praised as an unusually devoted couple. According to Rouniang, this reputation was deliberately maintained: Madam Li could not endure his sexual brutality and arranged other women for him, while Li An concealed their actual role by bringing them into the household as maids 4 8.

Rouniang described being sent to a training matron who punished mistakes with whipping and starvation. She later became Li An’s preferred victim because she had some education, and said that for the preceding two years he had summoned almost exclusively her. Her testimony described repeated injuries and other women dying from his abuse 8 9.

Birthday Incident

Two years before his death, an attempt was made to drug Pei Qing during Li An’s birthday celebration. Rouniang discovered that an aphrodisiac was intended for an important guest and interfered, initially believing the target was a respectable young woman. The guest instead proved to be Pei Qing 14.

Rouniang was exposed to Hundred Flowers Dew, a potentially fatal aphrodisiac incense. Pei Qing treated her and helped her escape through a window before Li An and the others arrived. She feared Li An would kill her for disrupting the scheme 14.

Personality

Li An was highly concerned with appearances, preserving a public image of marital harmony while concealing systematic sexual abuse. Rouniang’s account portrays him as violent toward people under his control; she recalled him beating her more viciously while complaining about money lost when a girl supplied through the trafficking operation was returned 8 13.

His possessiveness also shaped household security. After discovering that an enslaved attendant was secretly meeting another servant, he ordered the courtyards locked every night. Those restrictions later helped his killers trap the household during the fire 9 35.

Residence

• Locked inner and outer quarters — Movement between the household’s sections was restricted at night, apart from patrols and servants on night duty 9 35.
• Bedroom implements — Investigators recovered a decorated whip handle, jade objects, daggers, and other implements. Their scattered positions indicated that another person had been with Li An before the fire 4.
• Concealed passage — A hidden stone stairway behind a fire-resistant wall led from his room to a woodland hut outside the city. The route contained paired floor traps 17.
• Evidence of captivity — Fresh blood, chains, and ropes in the hut suggested that captives had recently been held there and moved onward 17.

Relationships

• Madam Li — His wife. Their celebrated marital harmony concealed his abuse; Rouniang said Madam Li arranged other women for him because she could not endure his treatment 4 8.
• Cui Rou / Rouniang — An enslaved woman whose sale contract he held. She poisoned him after prolonged abuse and cooperated with another victim in his murder 8 13 35.
• Unnamed male bedmate — One of the men Li An kept for sex. He delivered the fatal stab wound and then set the residence on fire 35.
• Lin Bian — His partner in trafficking, supplying women through the operation centered on Pleasant Breeze Courtyard 35.
• Lou Yun and Pei Qing — Investigators assigned to his murder. Their inquiry exposed both the killers and his connection to the trafficking network 3 35.

Story Role / Murder Investigation

Murder and Initial Findings

• Rouniang bribed household guards to buy medicines from different shops, mixed them into a poison intended to kill Li An during intercourse, and repeatedly added it to his tea 8.
• After Li An collapsed during intercourse, his male bedmate stabbed him from behind. The man then left the room and started the fire, while Rouniang escaped through the secret passage 35.
• Lou Qing announced the murder at court, condemning both the killing of a high-ranking official and the fire’s many casualties. Lou Yun, acting as crown prince, and Pei Qing took charge of the case 3.

Resolution and Consequences

• Rouniang initially claimed sole responsibility and refused to identify her accomplice. Lou Yun eventually presented both her and the male bedmate at court, explaining their respective roles 10 35.
• The inquiry encountered attempts to suppress evidence. Officials claimed that all the household’s women had died by suicide while in custody; Lou Yun subsequently accused the serving censor-in-chief of deliberately harming witnesses, and he confessed after Xu Lin threatened him 21 35.
• Li An’s murder case was closed. Lou Yun and Pei Qing secured Rouniang an exemption from execution, though she remained imprisoned with release dependent on a possible general amnesty 35.
• The wider investigation implicated the minister of rites and other officials. Its aftermath sharpened the division between Pei Qing and the second prince’s faction, while a new minister of rites supported students of humble birth 34 36.