Chapter 249 – An upright official that fell from the sky (2)
Sometimes, women were like animals that would self-comfort themselves. Ning Yuxuan had only stated two facts, and Wen Wan had supplemented everything else in her imagination.
And so, this female lead that whole-heartedly believed the male lead was in love with herself, foolishly allowed herself to be persuaded by these words. She never considered what would happen to her child if Nie Sangyu had a child of her own in the future.
After making such a big scene, Wen Wan left without obtaining anything and even sent a message to the empress to say good things about Ning Yuxuan.
Marquis Moyu liked foolishly cute women. In contrast, a woman like Nie Sangyu was too difficult to deal with.
—
Wen Wan had stopped making a fuss, but poor Xi-er was very sick for several days. He almost didn’t recover. During this time, Ji Man was very busy with taking care of him.
When she was finally able to take a rest, Ning Mingjie came to Feiwan Courtyard with Jinse. They also brought the news of someone’s death.
Qian Lianxue had died.
Ji Man’s first reaction was that Qian Lianxue had to be pretending. How could this be possible? Qian Lianxue had countless hidden secrets. She had even deliberately made herself sick in order to turn around her fortune. How could she have died so quietly?
With an indifferent expression, Jinse said, “She committed suicide by drinking poison. Just as the cases had been figured out and before she could be confronted, this servant went to her courtyard. She died in her bed with a bottle of poison in her hand. Danzhu had disappeared.”
For a while, Ji Man couldn’t digest this information.
Ning Mingjie cupped his hands and said, “This one didn’t live up to your expectations, but the cases were solved by another official in the Ministry of Justice. The whole truth has been revealed.”
What was the real truth?
—
Ji Man blankly followed them to Qian Residence. Qian Yingchen was currently kneeling in front of Qian Lianxue’s room. Inside the room, there were people here to prepare Qian Lianxue’s body for the funeral. They were currently at the stage of doing her make up. The burial would happen three days later.
The doors were open, but most people wouldn’t have dared to go inside. Ji Man wasn’t even scared of ghosts, and she didn’t care if she saw another corpse. And so, she followed Ning Mingjie inside.
She asked, “Why did they say she committed suicide?”
Qian Lianxue was lying on the bed, and her clothes were tidy without any sign of being moved.
“There weren’t any traces of a struggle. Also, according to what the servants said, Qian Lianxue hadn’t been wearing an outer garment while she was recuperating from her illness. But, when she died, she was nicely dressed up. The bottle of poison was also found in her hand. So, they determined that she had committed suicide.”
Ji Man cast her gaze across Qian Lianxue. When Qian Lianxue had been alive, due to her poor health, she couldn’t use rouge and could only use cold cream on her face. And now that she was no longer alive, the servants were applying a thick layer of makeup for her. Her face looked very glamorous.
There were also servants that were slowly sorting out the jewelry that would be buried with her. Ji Man cursorily looked in that direction. She absently noticed that there was a dragon-shaped jade accessory among the other items.
She didn’t pay any extra attention to it. The mood in the room wasn’t good, so Ji Man didn’t dare to linger in this room for too long. She left the room right after saluting Qian Lianxue.
The dead should be respected.
After walking to the courtyard, Ji Man saw the official that Ning Mingjie had mentioned earlier. He had written down all of Qiannxue’s crimes and was currently showing the paper to Marquis Moyu so that he could look it over.
Ning Yuxuan’s expression was especially ugly. It was so ugly that Ji Man was extremely curious about what was written on that paper.
He glanced at her, then handed the paper over to her. “Here, you can look.”
Ji Man hurriedly took the paper.
The words were densely packed together, and there were also several traditional Chinese words that she couldn’t read. However, she was able to read enough of the words to grasp the general meaning. After she finished reading the paper, her mood was also very heavy.
Should she praise this official for being a teenage Bao Qingtian? He had been able to find all of the evidence for the three cases in such a short time. Not only did he find witnesses and material evidence, he had also found a few of the servant girls that had attended to her when she was giving birth. The witnesses had testified that Qian Lianxue had been the one responsible for everything.
(T/N: Bao Qingtian is a fictional nickname of Bao Zheng, a Nothern Song official renowned for his honesty. He’s honored as a cultural symbol of justice.)
According to this paper, Qian Lianxue had been responsible for the ghost baby and the multiple miscarriages in the marquis’s estate, even the crime of kidnapping her baby was being placed at Qian Lianxue’s feet.
Other people had thought these three cases were impossible to solve, but he had found overwhelming evidence by sheer coincidence and neatly resolved them.
This person’s last name was Fan. Henceforth, everyone called him Fan Qingtian.
(T/N: Fan means pattern, model, rule, law. Qingtian can mean clear sky as well as upright and honorable when used to describe an official.)
Ji Man thought the whole thing felt kind of fake.
A person with many secrets had inexplicably died. All of the crimes had fallen onto her head. If she was watching this as TV show in the modern times, she would definitely think Qian Lianxue was a scapegoat.
Reading this report that very reasonably wrote out all of the evidence and concluded Qian Lianxue as the culprit, Ji Man suddenly really wanted to know; who was Qian Lianxue’s other master? Did she have more than one?
Although the case had been solved, her child still remained missing. Since Qian Lianxue had died, no one knew where she had sent her child.
Ning Yuxuan was silent for a long time, before he held her hand and led them out of Qian Residence.
“Is Sir Fan one of your men?” Ji Man quietly asked.
Marquis Moyu lightly said, “What do you mean by one of my men? He’s an official of the court.”
Until now, he hadn’t noticed Fan Tianxiang’s quiet, nobody existence in the Ministry of Justice. But now, he had suddenly appeared like someone that had fallen from the sky and solved a difficult problem.
—
Qian Yingchen was affected by his older sister’s crimes; the emperor demoted his rank and dispatched him to Xu Province.