Ji Donghe suddenly broke out in a cold sweat—she was actually going to strike him...
After Jing Yi snatched the court staff from Chu Chu’s hands, he placed her beside Xiao Jin Yu and swiftly retreated to the corner of the room before anyone could utter a word.
If it weren’t for the fact that this girl had just handled a corpse, Xiao Jin Yu would have truly wanted to pull her over and give her a few hard smacks on the backside.
Xiao Jin Yu’s face darkened as he said in a low voice, "Chu Chu, do not disrupt the court proceedings..."
Chu Chu was utterly unapologetic, lifting her chin defiantly. "This is exactly how County Magistrate Zheng conducts interrogations!"
Zheng Youde...
Chu Chu bit her lip and added quietly under her breath, "And he even tried to harm you..."
Xiao Jin Yu didn’t know how to reprimand her and sighed silently. "Stay here and don’t move..." He then glanced down at Ji Donghe, who still wore an expression of someone who had narrowly escaped disaster. "Ji Donghe... Will you confess on your own, or shall I help you confess, or perhaps the Imperial Concubine will help you confess?"
Steward Wang quickly tugged at Ji Donghe’s sleeve. "Master..."
Ji Donghe frowned and shook off his hand. "I have nothing to confess."
Xiao Jin Yu’s voice deepened. "Chu Chu..."
"No, no, no!" Steward Wang hastily waved his hands. "My master is a scholar, frail in health—he cannot withstand a beating! I’ll confess... I’ll confess everything! I beg Your Highness to show mercy and not trouble my master!"
Xiao Jin Yu looked at Ji Donghe, who was sneering coldly. "Very well... If you utter a single lie, both you and your master will receive twenty strikes."
"Yes, yes, yes..." Steward Wang moistened his dry lips. "That day... I heard my master and his wife arguing fiercely, so I went upstairs to try and calm them down... But instead of easing the situation, their quarrel only escalated. My master struck his wife a few times in anger, and in her fury, she grabbed a pair of scissors from her sewing basket and lunged at him. In desperation, my master... wrestled the scissors from her and accidentally... accidentally killed her..."
Chu Chu quickly tugged at Xiao Jin Yu’s sleeve. "Your Highness, it was scissors! The mark on the severed surface of the neck is narrow on the inside and wide on the outside—exactly the shape of scissors!"
Xiao Jin Yu nodded slightly. "If the wife died at that moment, then the one crying throughout the night must have been her maid?"
"Your Highness is most wise... The wife died instantly when the scissors pierced her neck, without making a sound. I quickly covered the maid’s mouth to prevent her from screaming and ordered her to imitate the wife’s crying during arguments with the master, to keep weeping without stopping... The maid was terrified out of her wits and did exactly as she was told..."
Xiao Jin Yu looked calmly at Ji Donghe, who continued to sneer bitterly. "Lord Ji is a scholar—even if he had the courage to dismember a body, he would lack the skill to do it so meticulously... Steward Wang, according to my guards’ investigation, you come from a family of butchers."
"That’s right... My ancestors for three generations were butchers. A few years ago, a band of bandits broke into my home. I returned late and narrowly escaped with my life. It was Lord Ji who dispatched men to eradicate that nest of bandits, avenged my family, and took me into his household..."
"My master is an upright official who never associates with corrupt bureaucrats. I feared that if this matter were exposed, my master would face grave consequences, so I urged him to keep it hidden...""I dragged my wife into the bathtub and used my family's heirloom butcher knife to cut her into pieces... Afraid someone would recognize she'd been stabbed to death with scissors, I followed the scissor wounds to sever her head... chopped off her limbs, removed all identifiable human bones and flesh, dug out the internal organs, then cleaned and cut the remaining parts according to standard pork butchering methods..."
Immediately, waves of retching sounds emerged from both sides of the threshold and behind the screen.
"I knew the five butchers at Full Fragrance Butchery were always careless, with small courage and narrow minds. So I pried open their back door late at night and mixed the cut-up corpse into their meat storage ice cellar... Later I recalled hearing my wife complain about buying ribs from them before visiting her parents, when they cheated on the weight and she argued with them. Thinking I might as well frame them for this, I threw the remaining minced remains into their courtyard..."
"I expected their cowardice would make them report to authorities immediately, leading to quick discovery of the minced corpse in the ice cellar. Who knew they could be so foolish..."
The five men were already vomiting too violently to even curse.
"When I returned, everyone in the mansion had already retired. I burned the clothes my wife wore that night. Worried the bloodstains on her jewelry wouldn't wash off completely, I buried them under the plum tree in the garden... Later when Wang Ye moved into the mansion, I feared he'd notice the disturbed soil beneath the plum tree. I kept looking for opportunities to retrieve them, but worried about the prince's guards watching... I planned to cut down the tree under the pretext of preparing my wife's funeral, intending to retrieve the jewelry during soil leveling. But the gardening maid cherished those trees and delayed, and just when she was about to start, the Imperial Concubine stopped her..."
"The next morning, following the master's instructions, I had my wife's maid wear her clothes and weep while boarding the carriage. I accompanied her to the main gate while offering comfort, and no one in the mansion suspected anything... I thought... thought the matter was thus concealed..."
Xiao Jin Yu stared steadily at Ji Dong He, whose face still bore a cold smile, and slowly stated, "Ji Dong He, when I inspected your and your wife's room that day, I noticed something missing... an unfinished embroidery with threads clearly cut by scissors rather than bitten off. The sewing basket lacked scissors, and no scissors could be found anywhere in the room... After killing, to destroy evidence, you threw the scissors through the window into the lake. Unexpectedly, you startled the gardening maid, and in your panic, you scolded her. Am I correct?"
Chu Chu suddenly recalled the maid's description of a dark shadow with a pointed mouth and two wings falling into the lake - exactly resembling a pair of closed scissors!
Ji Dong He nodded calmly, smiling coldly, "Correct... I merely killed accidentally during an argument, can only blame my wife's unfortunate fate... Destroying the corpse, planting evidence, and framing others were neither my idea nor my doing. According to our dynasty's laws, I shouldn't be the one paying with my life for this case."
Steward Wang looked at the cold-eyed Ji Dong He with astonishment, "Master, you..."
Xiao Jin Yu's voice turned icy and solemn, "Accidental killing? That's not what your wife's maid said."
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