After rushing about for an entire day, Jiang Mu had only managed to visit three households.
Dragging his exhausted body back home, he found that his aunt had already prepared dinner and was waiting for him.
Seeing him looking utterly worn out, Yan Wenxiu scolded him irritably, “Your Uncle An told you to investigate the case properly, and you really went and worked yourself to death? Don’t you know how to take care of yourself?”
Jiang Mu washed his hands and sat down at the dining table, sighing with heartfelt feeling.
“Now I understand how impressive Uncle An is. Dealing with people is exhausting—especially those high-ranking households. Each one is harder to handle than the last, and even speaking to them means winding around seven or eight turns.”
“What good is being impressive? What use is some empty reputation as a ‘Divine Constable’? In the end, he’s still just a petty constable.”
As Yan Wenxiu placed food into Jiang Mu’s bowl, she complained,
“Don’t you end up like your Uncle An, trapped in the yamen for your whole life. Listen to your aunt. Since your brain has finally opened up, study properly. If you can earn scholarly honors, that would be the proper path.”
Study?
The moment Jiang Mu heard that, his head ached. He gave an awkward, perfunctory reply. “Forget studying. I might as well go cultivate.”
“Don’t even think about cultivation. That stuff depends entirely on talent.”
Yan Wenxiu said, “If your root bones aren’t good, cultivating your whole life would be useless. Back when Xiao Yun entered the academy, I had her master test your aptitude. It was very ordinary. Even if your mind has opened up, things like root bones can’t be changed.”
Yan Wenxiu did not mind dampening his spirits in the slightest.
Otherwise, if this brat really got stubborn and went off to cultivate, the gap between him and her daughter would only grow even wider.
Today, she had made a tentative trip to the Shi family, hoping to discuss the marriage between Shi Xueying and Jiang Mu. Naturally, nothing had come of it.
Although the eldest Shi daughter had said she would try to persuade her younger sister, judging from Shi Xueying’s attitude, even if that girl went to Jingshui Nunnery and became a nun, she probably still would not marry down to Jiang Mu.
A phoenix that had flown up to the branch—how could it possibly look upon a lazy toad in the mud?
Yan Wenxiu had given up.
After returning home and thinking for a long while, she finally decided to follow her husband’s idea and let her own daughter and Jiang Mu give it a try.
Though it left her very unwilling.
But if Jiang Mu’s elder brother had not risked his life to save her husband back then, she would long since have become a widow.
Without the pillar of the household, how could a woman like her have survived with a child in tow?
People, in the end, had to know gratitude.
Of course, the premise for all of this was that Xiao Yun herself had to be willing to become Jiang Mu’s wife. Otherwise, they could not force it.
“That’s true.”
Jiang Mu did not refute his aunt’s words.
Because in his previous life, when he had transmigrated to the Xuanming World, his root bones had also been very ordinary.
Back then, his master had looked down on him quite a bit.
So he had cultivated diligently, advancing one step at a time—and successfully married his master.
Only then had he gradually taken off.
Wait!
That sudden fragment of memory made Jiang Mu jolt.
He finally remembered that his wife in the Xuanming World… seemed to have once been his master?
So,
I was a rebellious disciple.
Beast!
But what did I rely on to win my master over?
Sincerity?
Jiang Mu patted his head, but he truly could not remember.
Forget it. For now, he should first deal with the culprit in this case, then think about cultivation.
If he could take off in his previous life, he could take off in this one too.
At worst, he would replicate the same path in this life: take another beautiful master, and then—go for it, damn it!
If he could not find a beautiful master, surely he could cling to a rich woman.
Where was the rich woman?
—
Deep in the quiet of night.
Tang Jinxian leaned over her desk, carefully leafing through the personnel roster in her hands by the dim yellow candlelight.
Because she was alone at night, she wore only a soft silk sleeping robe the color of pale moonlight.
Her sash was not tied tightly.
The collar was slightly open.
Revealing a stretch of jade-like, delicate neck and refined collarbones.
The candlelight shone from the side, making the thin fabric almost transparent and clearly outlining her full curves.
“The Yan City Patrol Yamen Office has nine branch halls and one Inspectorate under its command. Among the mid- to high-ranking officials who knew of the arrest plan beforehand, there are twenty-one people in total…”
“Of course, someone among them may have informed their own trusted aides, causing the arrest operation to be leaked… But no matter what, left-handed people are rare.”
Tang Jinxian deliberately circled the names of these two high-ranking officials.
These two were the left-handed people she knew of.
One was the hall master of the Third Hall, Yan Qingshan.
The other was an official of the Inspectorate, Guang Wenyang.
“Could it be one of them?”
She set down her brush and sank into thought.
As she pondered, she felt that something was truly burdensome, so she simply rested it on the desk.
Letting the small writing desk bear a pressure it ought not have had to bear.
Investigating either of these two would be quite troublesome.
Yan Qingshan had been a trusted confidant of the previous Chief, with deep roots in the local area and considerable prestige.
As for Guang Wenyang, as an inspector, his authority was special.
He was responsible for supervising the interior of the Patrol Yamen Office and had the right to report directly to the Central Office. There were bound to be connections behind him.
If she investigated openly, it would very easily provoke backlash.
She could only investigate secretly.
But how should she begin?
After thinking bitterly for a long while, she only felt an ache swelling at the corners of her brows. Fatigued, she rubbed them, rose, and walked to the half-open window. Looking at the bright, solitary moon in the night sky, she murmured,
“Mother-in-law was right. The waters of Yan City run deep.”
Originally, she had felt somewhat resistant to her father-in-law and mother-in-law directly placing her in the high position of Chief.
She would have preferred to start from the bottom and climb step by step.
Now, it seemed that if she truly did not borrow their influence and instead hid herself among the lower ranks, investigating and handling cases like this would be difficult beyond measure.
“I hope that fool Jiang Mu can successfully find some clues.”
As her thoughts turned to Jiang Mu, she could not help but recall that shameful memory in the cave.
These past few days, every night she had been troubled by similar dreams, dreaming that she knelt before Jiang Mu like a pet, even letting out “woof woof” barking sounds…
Each time she woke with a start, she was both humiliated and terrified.
Several times, she had even been seized by the impulse to take up a blade and thoroughly erase this hidden danger.
But in the end, she suppressed that killing intent.
First, Jiang Mu was an innocent person.
From a certain perspective, he had even saved her from the villain’s hands. He was her benefactor.
Second, she had an intuition.
That spiritual object was inside her body. Once she killed Jiang Mu, she would very likely suffer a backlash.
How grave the consequences might be, she did not dare gamble.
“There should be a way to eliminate this spiritual object.”
Tang Jinxian could only comfort herself this way.
Only after repeatedly running through the subsequent investigation plan in her mind several times did she blow out the candle and go to bed.
That night, she had that dream again.
In the dream, she was still on all fours, happily wagging her tail and barking toward Jiang Mu, as though a tail had even grown behind her…
Very soon, the scene in the dream changed.
She had actually been locked inside a gloomy dungeon.
And Jiang Mu was holding a thorny switch, “punishing” her…
…
When Tang Jinxian woke with a start from the dream, the sky outside the window was still dark and heavy.
Within the room, there was only the sound of her hurried breathing.
The woman wiped the sweat from her forehead, then sensed that the bedsheets were sticky and damp as well. Her face immediately flushed red, and she gritted her pearly teeth as she cursed inwardly,
“Jiang Mu, you bastard!”
Only, the woman did not notice that on her abdomen, a mysterious pattern slowly emerged, then gradually faded away.