CH 56

The object of everyone’s curiosity and inquiry finally appeared by the gate, followed by eight attendants. The leader was a young man who looked at the people present with a blank and indifferent expression.

“You are Zhao-daren?” Magistrate Yin stepped forward and asked, “I wonder if Zhao-daren has a token?”

The man arrogantly handed the token to him, and the group hurriedly gathered together to verify the authenticity. But that person looked at Zhao Yelan and Yan Mingting covertly, with a trace of eagerness in his eyes.

With a smile at the corners of his mouth, Yan Mingting nodded at him.

Li Yucheng opened his mouth wide, staring at the so-called “Zhao-daren.” Wasn’t he the little servant next to Zhao Yelan?

“It really is Zhao-daren, this is the Imperial envoy token.” After speaking, Magistrate Yin hurriedly led the group of people to salute. “We didn’t know Zhao-daren was visiting today, and failed to welcome you. Please take a seat inside.”

Gao Tan nodded. Walking into the lobby, he cleared his throat and said pompously: “The others are excused. I only came to inform you that I was ordered to investigate this matter. You just need to cooperate with me.”

“Naturally, I don’t know which matter Zhao-daren came to investigate? Is it related to the governor?” Magistrate Yin asked.

Gao Tan waved his hand, signaling him not to ask again: “You only need to follow orders, and I will make arrangements myself. It is getting late, I’ll go back to the inn to rest. Where is your best inn?”

“General Yan is staying at that inn,” Magistrate Yin said.

Only then did Gao Tan look at Yan Mingting openly, but he didn’t step forward.

Magistrate Yin observed the expressions of these two people. They were not close at all, and he could tell at a glance that their relationship was not good. But even so, how could someone as proud as Zhao-daren allow Yan Mingting to cheat behind his back?

“Why don’t I send my lord and the General back together?” Magistrate Yin’s eyes darted as he led the way.

These people also followed, and when they arrived at the inn, Magistrate Yin asked Gao Tan if he needed an extra room or if he would be residing with Yan Mingting.

Gao Tan naturally wanted to live separately!

Magistrate Yin immediately understood that these two people had their own separate lives, so he smiled and asked for another upper room for him, both on the third floor. He deliberately stayed and waited for the others to go back to their rooms before starting to talk to Zhao-daren.

“Zhao-daren has worked hard on his journey, rest well tonight and be energetic tomorrow,” Magistrate Yin said.

Gao Tan nodded indifferently.

“General Yan has been in Jiangnan for some time, is my lord aware?”

Gao Tan nodded indifferently.

“Then there is that Fu Qian-gongzi who claims to be the most beautiful man in the capital, is my lord aware?” Magistrate Yin hinted a bit.

Gao Tan nodded indifferently.

“The General has a very close relationship with that Fu-gongzi, is my lord aware?”

Gao Tan nodded indifferently, then shook his head vigorously: “Fu Qian?”

“Exactly.” Magistrate Yin was secretly delighted, and promptly began to lament, “My lord, you don’t know that General Yan and this Fu Qian are actually having an affair!”

“An affair?” Gao Tan was at a loss.

“Yes, behind your back, it’s true!”

Gao Tan was shocked: “Where is Fu Qian? I’m going to beat him to death!”

“He’s next door!” Magistrate Yin quickly grabbed him. “My lord, don’t be hasty. There is no need to rush. Fu Qian is at fault, so is General Yan not at fault?”

“Next door?” Gao Tan’s eyes turned, and he adopted a forbidding appearance. “That’s fine.”

“That – that’s fine?” Magistrate Yin looked at him in surprise. “My lord, are you sure it’s fine?”

“Oh, what I mean is that it’s none of your business. I’ll take care of the rest.”

Family strife should not be publicized. Magistrate Yin knew this quite well, and said with a smile: “Good, if you need anything, my lord, you can come to me at any time.”

In the middle of the night, the inn returned to silence.

Zhao Yelan’s room was not silent at all. First a black shadow sneaked in, and then another black shadow jumped in from the roof.

“My lord, General, I’m here,” Gao Tan whispered.

“Good boy, ah, you didn’t reveal our secrets.” Yan Mingting smiled and patted him.

Gao Tan scratched his head with a smile: “As my lord said, as long as I keep silent and cherish words like gold, and don’t show any expression, I can deceive many people. No one would dare to pretend to be an Imperial envoy at this juncture.”

Moreover, Gao Tan had followed Zhao Yelan for many years, and he had long been influenced by his temperament, so no one was more suitable than him.

“What did Magistrate Yin tell you just now?” Zhao Yelan asked.

“He kept saying that although he and the governor are in-laws, he was completely unaware of his collusion with the bandits. He also said……about the General and……” Gao Tan intermittently glanced between Yan Mingting and Zhao Yelan.

Zhao Yelan: “He said that Yan Mingting and Fu Qian were cheating behind your back?”

“Right!”

Yan Mingting: “……” Why did these words sound so awkward?

“My lord, is it true?” Gao Tan asked in a low voice.

“Fu Qian is me,” Zhao Yelan said.

“Yeah, I guessed right!” Gao Tan immediately beamed with joy. “Then should I pretend to be very angry?”

“Remain the same as before. If you can’t talk, don’t talk. If you can’t show your face, don’t show your face.”

“Okay.”

After Gao Tan left, Zhao Yelan looked at Yan Mingting and saw that there was still some dirt on his clothes, and asked him to take a bath first.

The sound of water came from behind the screen, and Zhao Yelan asked from his seat outside: “You hurried back from Quzhou?”

“En.”

“How many days did it take?”

“Two days.”

According to the distance, it would take four or five days at the least, but this fellow came back so quickly. Zhao Yelan asked: “What are you doing coming back so early?”

“You ask what you already know.”

“I insist on asking.”

“Okay, ba.” Yan Mingting smiled. “It’s because I missed you and I was afraid something would happen to you, so I wanted to see you soon. Is this answer satisfactory?”

However, he didn’t receive an answer, only slight footsteps as Zhao Yelan came around the screen and looked straight at him. 

Yan Mingting subconsciously covered the key parts. Then he thought, in the end, it was all covered by water and they were husband and wife, so what were they afraid of ah!

The water vapor was so dense that Yan Mingting’s face began to turn red. He pretended to be calm and said: “What, do you want to take a mandarin duck bath together?”

The corners of Zhao Yelan’s mouth twitched, then he walked behind him and looked down at his back. There were no new injuries, so he breathed a sigh of relief, then walked outside the screen as if he was just there for a casual stroll.

“You’re just leaving?” Yan Mingting poked his head out, staring desperately at the situation outside the screen. “Shouldn’t you stay a while?”

“What’s there to stay for?”

“Just……” In Yan Mingting’s mind, the gorgeous scene of the other party helping him dry his body suddenly appeared. His blood surged up and his face flushed as he said, “Help me dry off.”

“Don’t you have hands?”

Yan Mingting dried his body dejectedly. This person clearly came to tease him on purpose, and then didn’t care to put out the fire! Damnit!

Fine, since you are heartless, don’t blame me for being unrighteous!

After Yan Mingting got dressed, he sat down beside the bed without saying a word. Zhao Yelan was already lying down at this time, and he raised his eyelids and looked at him idly.

The next moment, Yan Mingting grabbed his own sleeve and slowly pulled it down, exposing his shoulder.

The corners of Zhao Yelan’s mouth twitched.

Yan Mingting pulled down the sleeve on the other side, and finally reached down to untie his belt, licking his lips in a pretentious manner.

“Don’t.” Zhao Yelan suddenly pressed his hand down, got up, and held the bronze mirror to face him. “Take a look at yourself, does it look good?”

Yan Mingting took a closer look and saw that his clothes were partly undone, revealing his muscular arms, which was incongruous and not at all like the half-exposed, lively appearance he had imagined.

“……” How shameful.

He pulled off his clothes awkwardly and stiffly, and silently prepared to make the bed. As soon as he took out the blanket, Zhao Yelan held his hand and led him to the bedside: “Forget it, for the sake of your hard journey, you are allowed to sleep in bed tonight.”

Yan Mingting immediately threw away the blanket in his hand and got into bed, for fear of being kicked out if he wasn’t quick enough.

The candles were extinguished, and the two lay side by side on the bed. Having been separated for a few days, they had many things to say, but at this time they didn’t speak, and only listened quietly to each other’s breathing.

After a long time, Yan Mingting turned sideways and hugged him in his arms without any explanation. The other party struggled slightly, and seeing that he couldn’t push him away, he just acceded to him.

Yan Mingting had succeeded. In the darkness, the corners of his mouth quietly rose, and he touched that waist with his hand, letting out a ‘hiss’: “Are you losing weight again?”

Zhao Yelan remained silent.

“So thin.” Yan Mingting said so, but what he thought in his heart was that if he was too thin, would it hurt him badly? It was a physical activity, after all. “This won’t do, you should eat more and take care of your body. You will look better if you are fatter.”

Zhao Yelan’s face instantly collapsed. Who wasn’t good-looking?!

Suddenly, Yan Mingting was kicked hard on the thigh and was almost kicked off the bed. Fortunately he managed to stabilize himself, but the other party obviously didn’t let him get away with it, and said coldly: “Get out your bedding!”

The cool wind blew, and Yan Mingting stood outside the door with his bedroll in his arms and an indescribable expression on his face. An undercover life was so miserable.

The next day, Yin Pinglu learned that Yan Mingting had returned to Huaizhou and immediately went to him and asked: “Where is Zuo Ran? Did she come back with you?”

“No, she returned to Beijing with the team escorting the governor. She said that she didn’t want to be a person who has to sneak around. This time, she followed me to arrest people and put in a lot of effort. I plan to let her go to the capital to show her face first, and then make up for her military merits. With He Cuizhang taking care of her, there will be no danger, and the capital is much safer than here,” Yan Mingting said.

Yin Pinglu nodded and breathed a sigh of relief: “Thank you, General.”

“I still need to ask, do you want to leave Huaizhou now?”

Yin Pinglu shook her head: “If I leave now, I can’t do anything but be protected by you. If I stay here, perhaps I can help you, as long as you don’t think I am a burden.”

“How will you help?”

While they talked, a thin old man ran into the lobby and shouted: “Imperial envoy! Where is the Imperial envoy? I want to see the Imperial envoy!”

“Who is this person?” Yan Mingting whispered.

“Kuang Sheng,” Yin Pinglu said. “A few days ago, my lord took me to watch from a distance, and suspected that he was acting on his own in regard to the water report letter.”

“Acting on his own?” Yan Mingting looked at the person in the lobby with surprise. Kuang Sheng was asking the shopkeeper which room the Imperial envoy was staying in.

The upstairs door opened. Zhao Yelan walked out slowly, and Li Yucheng and Gao Tan also came out one after another.

Zhao Yelan glanced at Gao Tan, who immediately got into character and deliberately lowered his voice: “Who is looking for me?”

Kuang Sheng raised his head to look, trotted upstairs, and knelt down in front of Gao Tan. He said agitatedly: “Imperial Envoy, I have something to say to you!”

“Come inside before speaking,” Zhao Yelan said, then told Li Yucheng in a low voice to take care of the other people present and not let the news spread outside.

Then the group of people entered Gao Tan’s room, and Kuang Sheng knelt in the middle, kowtowing continuously: “Imperial Envoy, you must take care of this one!”

“Tell me what happened, in detail,” Zhao Yelan said.

Kuang Sheng found that it was this person who spoke every time and had some doubts in his heart, but he still told his story in front of everyone: “This one is a water reporter, and is responsible for observing precipitation and changes in the water volume of the Huaihe River. I added some numbers to the water report I submitted to the Imperial court last month, and this one is willing to accept the punishment, but before I die, there is one more thing that I hope my lord can take care of for this one.”

“What is it?”

“This one wishes to report on the Pi County Magistrate, who preys on the people, bullies men and women, and disregards human life!”

“The Magistrate of Pi County?” Zhao Yelan looked at Yin Pinglu. If he remembered correctly, Yin Pinglu seemed to have mentioned this person. He was her third brother-in-law. The relationship between husband and wife was not harmonious, but he got along very well with Magistrate Yin.

Yin Pinglu nodded slightly at him.

“Do you have evidence?” Zhao Yelan asked.

“This one has a letter, which was written by my daughter herself.” Kuang Sheng took out a badly worn letter, and his tears overflowed.

Zhao Yelan took the letter, and the several other people gathered around to read it together.

This was her last letter.

The Kuang family was originally from Pi County, and Kuang Sheng moved to Huaizhou alone because he was awarded the post of Water Reporter.

The daughter married into an ordinary family with a clean background in the local area, and the two ran a shop, but unexpectedly, the magistrate saw the daughter’s beauty and secretly sent someone to take her away, tarnishing her innocence. She already had a fetus in her womb, and she accidentally miscarried.

After her husband learned this, he rushed to the magistrate’s office with a knife, but was accused of attacking a court official and was given eighty strikes with a board, resulting in his lower body becoming disabled. He passed away within a few days.

Her own brother was furious, and in order to ask for an explanation for his sister and brother-in-law, he reported to Magistrate Yin. But he was tricked by Magistrate Yin, and when he returned home that night, he was retaliated against, resulting in not only serious injuries, but blindness.

The daughter thought that everything that happened was her fault, so she wrote a final letter and committed bitter suicide. At the same time, she hoped that her father would stop seeking justice for her, so as not to incur a murderous disaster. They were just commoners, and could not escape the grasp of these powerful people at all.

This group of people looked at the weeping old man in astonishment. His back was hunched over, and his hair had already turned gray in his forties.

Yin Pinglu’s eyes reddened in empathy, and she helped the old man up, assisting him to sit down on a chair.

For a while, only the crying of the old man could be heard in the room.

Some time later, Zhao Yelan said slowly: “You knew that the officials in this area were colluding with each other and reported their crimes to no avail, so you deliberately tampered with the water report in hopes that the Imperial court would send an envoy to investigate their corruption? This way, you could report their crimes in person to the Imperial court?”

Kuang Sheng nodded: “Exactly.”

As a water reporter, although he received a salary from the Imperial court, this official position was very unenviable. For one thing, it was a new position and there was only one water reporter within several prefectures, so he was fighting alone. Secondly, he worked for the Imperial court but was usually restricted by the local government. This small official position seemed to be very useless, and wasn’t valued by the government and the people at all.

He thought about secretly writing his grievances directly in the letter, but the letter had to be approved by the government before it could be reported to the Imperial court. 

Thus, he prepared in advance for the opportune moment. It must rain at a time when many people traveled to the capital city, so that the Emperor could discover the falsified letter and then suspect that some officials had tampered with it.

Fortunately, when the local government approved it, they didn’t understand the difference in precipitation at all. After checking that there was nothing unusual, they had the courier send it to the capital. It also coincided with the concubine draft in the palace, and there were many ladies of officials in Jiangnan, along with their entourages, so the Emperor would definitely discover a clue.

“I arrived in Huaizhou half a month ago. Why didn’t you come to me?” Yan Mingting asked. “Did you not know I was here?”

“How could I not know? As soon as General Yan arrived in Huaizhou, everyone knew about it. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to look for you, but that I dared not.” Kuang Sheng had waited for the people from the capital every day, but he heard that Yan Mingting had arrived and immediately gone to the Magistrate’s house, and then it was rumored that the general and Magistrate Yin’s daughter had met at the border and would be married. He was worried that Yan Mingting would be won over by Magistrate Yin, so he didn’t dare to act rashly.

“What marriage?” Yan Mingting was even more depressed. “How dare Magistrate Yin spread rumors!”

Yin Pinglu also frowned, and intuitively explained to Zhao Yelan: “There is pure conduct between the General and I.”

“En.” Zhao Yelan could naturally guess Magistrate Yin’s thoughts, and asked Kuang Shuang again, “Do you have any other evidence besides this letter?”

“Yes, but I didn’t bring it with me.” Kuang Sheng didn’t dare bring all the evidence, fearing that the Imperial Envoy would also be swayed, so he hid the rest.

“All right, you go back now. Be sure to return in an obvious way and let everyone know that you have been to see the Imperial Envoy.” After speaking, Zhao Yelan glanced at Yan Mingting.

Yan Mingting understood. “Okay, I will escort him back personally.”

Seeing this, Kuang Sheng became more and more confused about who the Imperial Envoy was.

After the two left, Zhao Yelan took the letter and handed it to Yin Pinglu: “It is up to you, the daughter of the Yin family, to act.”

“Don’t worry, I know what to do.” Yin Pinglu took the letter and turned around to go back to her room.

Only then did Xiao Gao lean forward: “My lord, it’s my turn. What should I do?”

“You just stay in your room and eat and drink.”

“Ah……okay.” Gao Tan also wanted to immediately guess what his lord was thinking like those others, then go to work with a swish. How smart he would look!

“Go back to your room, ba.”

After Li Yucheng saw to the people in the inn, he went upstairs to find Zhao Yelan. He was the only one left in the room, and asked: “Where are the others? They left?”

“En.” Zhao Yelan poured himself a cup of tea.

Li Yucheng sat down next to him in boredom, then glanced over at him and said: “Why do you look a little haggard today?”

The teacup that was brought to his mouth halted at once, and Zhao Yelan looked at him in disbelief: “Haggard?”

“Yes, ah. Your face is so pale, and there are still bruises under your eyes. Is it because you’re too tired these days and haven’t rested well?” Li Yucheng asked.

Zhao Yelan walked to the bronze mirror incredulously. The more he looked, the more he felt that he really was haggard and worn-down. No wonder Yan Mingting dared to say that he was ugly last night!

“Do you want to try this?” Li Yucheng took out a copper box from his sleeve. “This is the Cheng family’s best-selling powder cream. After applying it, the skin will be pale and smooth, and no traces of smearing can be seen at all.”

“Are you using women’s things to mock me?” Zhao Yelan gave him a blank look.

“Hey, you’re too short-sighted. It was only when I arrived in Jiangnan that I realized there are also men who wear powder and makeup. Beauty should not be divided between men and women. I thought in vain that you had the widest vision of all. You even like men, so are you afraid that others will say that you enjoy wearing powder?” Seeing that he was unmoved, Li Yucheng gave him a final blow, “Don’t you want to be a little more beautiful? No one would reject a beauty, including Yan Mingting.”

Zhao Yelan remained motionless.

Realizing that his persuasion was ineffective, Li Yucheng walked to the door resentfully, but heard the other party call: “Wait.”

Li Yucheng was overjoyed. It seemed that his uncle had taught him well! To sell something, one must first find a suitable buyer, then make them feel anxious, so that they are willing to spend a lot of money!

He turned around and smiled: “It is ten taels of silver, but considering our relationship, I will only charge you at cost, eight taels.”

Zhao Yelan threw a silver ingot over directly: “Don’t say anything.”

“Okay!” Li Yucheng was satisfied with earning his first profits, and suddenly felt that the sky was bright. “Wahaha! The next richest man in Beijing is me!”

Zhao Yelan stayed in the room for a while before he heard Yan Mingting’s footsteps coming back. The other party pushed open the door and said: “That person has been sent home, and some more people have been sent to stand guard.”

“En.” Zhao Yelan hurriedly hid the thing in his sleeve.

“What are you doing?” Yan Mingting walked in front of him curiously and stared at his face, his head getting closer and closer.

Zhao Yelan blinked at lightning speed, turning his face away: “What are you looking at?”

Yan Mingting held his cheeks, rubbed his thumbs under his eyes for a moment, and said doubtfully: “What did you get on your face? Wall dust?”

“……” Zhao Yelan choked up. He had forgotten that the other party had excellent eyesight. He was so angry that he threw out the copper box in his sleeve, and it happened to hit Li Yucheng on the head as he was eating wontons outside.

“Ah! Who is it? Who dares to assassinate this young master!”