"I... I..."
The girl's face flushed crimson in an instant. With the whole family watching, her embarrassment deepened, her lovely almond eyes misting over, glistening in the candlelight.
I usually prefer older sisters, but bullying a little sister who'd cry for hours at one punch feels pretty satisfying... Xu Qian mused inwardly.
Xu Lingyue puffed out her cheeks and, with the resolve of one who had nothing left to lose, lifted her head and met Xu Qian's eyes. "I just want to know how Big Brother saw through the case from those files."
Xu Xinnian, who had been pretending he didn't exist, could no longer maintain the pretense. He silently raised his head.
He considered himself clever. He'd read those same files, studied them over and over, and found nothing. Yet the moment Xu Qian borrowed them, he'd cracked the case.
Auntie didn't voice an opinion, but her chopsticks stopped mid-air, and she ceased chewing.
"There is no perfect crime in this world. Apart from coincidence, any man-made case leaves traces," Xu Qian said.
Xu Xinnian unconsciously straightened his back, listening intently.
"First, I noticed problems with the tax silver through the distance of the escort route and the silver's weight..." Xu Qian laid out his reasoning step by step.
Xu Xinnian's eyes grew brighter and brighter as he listened, like a student finally receiving clarity from his teacher. Beneath the table, his hands clenched into tight fists.
When Xu Qian finished, the Second Son of the Xu family wore an expression of studied indifference. "Not bad."
The Xu family's second son never said what he meant. The household was long used to it.
The sixteen-year-old beauty lowered her head, tucking away the faint gleam of admiration in her eyes.
Xu Pingzhi slammed the table with excitement and cursed in the local slang before exclaiming, "So that's how it was. And I never noticed."
Xu Xinnian glanced at his father and thought, It would be strange if you had.
Xu Qian looked at his uncle and recalled a phrase: The illiterate man, with nothing to say, conquers the world with 'holy crap.' His uncle was a martial man whose literacy extended only to signing his own name — and even that came out crooked as chicken scratch.
"You rough brute, can't you even weigh and measure?" Auntie jabbed at her husband.
Xu Qian asked, "When they counted the silver, were they wearing hand guards?"
Uncle Xu thought back for a moment, then looked surprised. "Now that you mention it, I think they were. How did you know?"
So it really was sodium metal? Xu Qian stared at him. "Why wasn't it mentioned in the testimony?"
"An insignificant little detail. Why would it be worth mentioning?" Here, Uncle Xu launched into a string of complaints. "It's all that fellow Lu's fault. He passed me a jug of osmanthus honey wine. You know your uncle's capacity for drink — unfathomable — so I got greedy and had a few sips, didn't pay much attention to anything else. I'd completely forgotten until you brought it up."
The worst kind of liability is a teammate like you. If this detail had been in the files, I could have reached the truth much faster. So many brain cells lost in vain. Xu Qian sighed.
To his uncle, this was probably on the same level as what clothes someone wore or how they styled their hair. He'd never once considered it a noteworthy clue.
"That being the case, this man surnamed Lu that Father mentioned is almost certainly the one who framed Father," Xu Xinnian pointed out with needle-sharp precision.
"It's all my muddle-headed fault. I nearly destroyed our whole family." Xu Pingzhi suddenly turned wistful. "Ningyan, back then, your father and I fought back-to-back in the Mountain-Sea Campaign. We swore we'd survive together and rise to glory together. I survived. Your father fell in battle. That was when I thought — if I want to live better, I have to live differently."
No more cannon fodder.
"So I sent Xinnian to study and chose for you to train in martial arts. Truth be told, there was selfishness in it."
Auntie rolled her eyes. "Right, all your heart went to your nephew," she said. One hundred-plus taels of silver every year.
"From Auntie's tone, does that mean Second Brother isn't really yours?" The moment Xu Qian said it, he swore — this was not what he meant to say. Instinct had outrun his brain. The original body's resentment toward his aunt ran deep.
"You little pest. What do you mean by saying something like that?" Auntie slammed the table in fury.
Xu Xinnian and Xu Lingyue kept their heads down and shoveled rice. They seemed used to this.
Xu Pingzhi's scalp prickled. "Enough! I've barely escaped with my life, and now I have to listen to you two fight? I'd rather be dead."
Everyone lowered their heads and ate.
Speaking of the Mountain-Sea Campaign, Xu Qian had some recollection. The world was vast and boundless. Great Feng dominated the Central Plains, claiming orthodox rule over all under heaven. The dynasty was founded on martial strength and governed through Confucianism. At its height, ten thousand kingdoms came to pay tribute. By now, the national line had stretched six hundred years.
Twenty years ago, Great Feng allied with the kingdoms of the Western Regions and fought a decisive battle against the northern barbarians and the southern barbarians at Shanhai Pass. All sides together committed over a million soldiers. From the war's beginning to its end, barely half a year passed. In that half year, a million lives were extinguished.
It was one of the bloodiest wars in recorded history — the Mountain-Sea Campaign. Xu Qian's father had died in that war.
"With my armchair-historian knowledge and the patterns I've gleaned from tabloid histories, no dynasty escapes the Three-Hundred-Year Rule."
The so-called Three-Hundred-Year Rule was Xu Qian's own coinage. As a pseudo-history enthusiast, he'd extracted a pattern from five thousand years of his past life's history. Setting aside the feudal lords ruling independently in the ignorant, backward Zhou Dynasty, not a single dynasty's national fortune had lasted past three hundred years. Even the two Han and two Song dynasties were restructured successor states.
After much thought, the Great Feng's six-hundred-year unbroken reign probably had something to do with this world's power systems.
The little bean was brought back by Lü E. Hungry now, she'd stopped crying. She was too small to reach the table, so she sat in Lü E's lap and was fed.
"Mama, why did we have to live in the black house? There wasn't enough to eat every day." The little bean recalled her recent experiences. She called the prison 'the black house.'
No one at the table spoke. Auntie's face softened with pity.
Uncle Xu sighed. "Father did something wrong."
"Oh," said the little bean, then added, "Yesterday I woke up hungry and caught a bug. It had this on its head." She stuck two stubby fingers up on top of her head.
A cockroach. Along with rats, the two local tyrants of any prison.
Everyone's faces changed. Shame and pity mingled. That a child this young had to endure such suffering — it was their failure.
"Did you... did you eat it..." Li Ru's lips trembled. Her eyes reddened. She'd been past thirty when she bore this youngest daughter. The child might be a little dim, but she was doted on.
The little bean, Xu Lingyin, chirped brightly, "Then I heard Mama's tummy go grumble-grumble."
The air went still. Everyone's heart sank.
Auntie's face went pale. Her voice shook. "And then?"
"And then I put it in Mama's mouth! Mama ate it so fast." The little bean beamed, the look of a child seeking praise.
Auntie swayed.
Xu Xinnian slowly set down his bowl and chopsticks. "I've eaten my fill."
Xu Lingyue: "Me too."
Xu Qian: "Full, definitely full. Heh heh heh..."
Uncle Xu: "..."
Auntie sat frozen for a few seconds, then pitched forward under the table. "*Blergh...*"
"Waaaaah..." Before long, a child's pig-slaughtering wail echoed through the night sky.