Chapter 8: Being Eunuch (Part 2)
Fortunately, the patrolling soldiers in the street came as soon as they heard the calls. After they greeted Li Shubai, they quickly tied up the murderer.
When the midwife arrived, she was greatly surprised and said, “The mother was frightened, so she pushed hard and the child came out quickly. Fortunately, the mother was healthy enough, don’t worry as both the mother and child are safe – I’ll wash the baby now.”
The father of the child held the new mother’s hand and said affectionately, “My wife, you’ve worked hard. I’ve decided that we should call this child ‘Jing Sheng’*, what do you think?”
*(The mother had induced labor after sudden shock).
The weak mother leaned weakly on the bed. “Jing Sheng?”, she rolled her eyes and sneered, “Why not name the baby ‘Xia Sheng’* instead?
*(The mother had induced labor after being terror-stricken.)
“ah, that’s a good idea. So it was decided then, ‘Wei Xia Sheng’, it’s good, very good…”
Huang Zixia heard that, and even the lofty and cold person like Li Shubai couldn’t help it but corners of his mouth twitched slightly.
Cui Chunzhan and Wang Lin were stricken with dismay when they received the news. When they came to the Prince Kui manor, it was already the time of dawn.
Looking at their red eyes, Li Shubai did not say anything. He ordered people to serve tea to calm them down. He said, “The murderer of the four directions case has been arrested. Let’s open a trial tomorrow.”
Wang Lin quickly nodded affirmatively but Cui Chunzhan was a little hesitant and asked, “Your Highness, these four directions case, so far, there are no clues about the cause of the crime and the material evidence of the crime. Is Your Highness sure that the murderer of the four directions case was caught tonight?”
“Will you not find out if the culprit caught is the right one after tomorrow’s interrogation?” Li Shubai raised his teacup in a salute to his guests as he spoke, “There is a curfew in the capital. At night, the street gates are closed, and no one can enter or exit. He must have stayed in the inn of Puningfang in advance. You can check the inn where he stayed.”
The next day, the officials of the Ministry of Justice and the Court of Judicial Review tried together to check the weapon, and it was confirmed that it was indeed the weapon that was used to kill the previous victims. In the inn where the murderer stayed, the scriptures copied by the murderer were found, which was in complete agreement with the handwriting left behind by the murderer at the scene.
Knowing that he could not deny it, the assailant had to confess, and give the details and reasons of the previous murders. Finally, the four directions case, which had been the root of clamour in the capital for more than three months, was solved in one fell swoop.
At the Zhi Chen Hall of the Great Daming Palace, the Emperor Li Cui, who had been ill for a long time suddenly, became mentally aroused and ordered people to summon the princes, Cui Chunzhan, the Deputy Captain of the Court of Judicial Review, and Wang Lin, the Minister of the Ministry of Justice.
Huang Zixia had just woken up from slumber, and ran to meet Li Shubai in the Yu Bing Court to receive his commands.
“Change your clothes and follow me into the palace.”
Huang Zixia, who was a little surprised, asked, “Into the palace?”
“I said that if you can solve this case in ten days, you will be qualified to work for me. So, from today on, I have a matter for you to do for me, and for this matter, you need to be given a fixed identity.” He stood up; his posture was casual and elegant; he didn’t look like he was engaging in trading with her, “In short, today is an important day for you as a little eunuch of Prince Kui manor. If I don’t take you, would it not be less fun and merry?”
She bowed her head and replied, “Yes.”.
Li Shubai went to the door again and ordered the people standing there, “Call Jing Yi over.”
After a while, Jing Yi came. He looked very clean and smart. He looked at Huang Zixia for a moment and then asked, “What is Your Highness’s order?”
Li Shubai asked leisurely, “You are the personnel in charge of the people under my manor. I ask you, how many eunuchs are there in the mansion now?”
“There are three hundred and sixty-seven people in total.”
“What if the three hundred and sixty-seven people now become three hundred and sixty-eight people?”
Jing Yi took a look at Huang Zixia and thought about it for a while, and said, “I remember that last year, the Jiu Cheng Palace suffered from a rainstorm and natural disaster, and many young eunuchs were lost. Most of those eunuchs were orphans who were sent to the palace, and some of them have not been found and do not know their whereabouts until today.”
Li Shubai nodded. “In this case, so to speak, he might be one of the eunuchs separated from the others during the disaster in the Jiu Cheng Palace?”
Jing Yi earnestly replied, “It was according to this humble servant’s conjecture, but I can’t remember who it is, please allow me to check the archives.”
Li Shubai immediately waved his hand, indicating that he may leave. After a while, he returned with a thick names register and said, “I have found out that there is a young eunuch named Yang Chonggu in the Jiu Cheng Palace. He was responsible for the sweeping of the Yan Gang Court. He was about sixteen or seventeen years old, five feet and five inches tall, slim and slender. He entered the palace as an orphan, he was lonely and friendless who stayed alone in the Yan Gang Court. Everyone thought he had died in last year’s natural disaster, and his name record had been canceled in the palace.”
“Hmm, it turned out unexpectedly that Yang Chonggu survived the disaster and entered my manor.” Li Shubai looked at Huang Zixia and asked, “What do you think of the identity Jing Yi said?”
Huang Zixia stood there, brimming with emotion. She fled for several months and tried to cover up her identity. However, in such a short period of time, she could have another identity and become another person. From then on, she could appear in front of others in an open and aboveboard manner, and no longer needed to cover up.
Who dared question what Li Shubai, the Prince of Kui, said in this dynasty?
So she bowed to Li Shubai and said, “This servant, Yang Chonggu, thank you, Your Highness.”
When one entered from the Jianfu Gate of the Great Daming Palace, they could see the Hanyuan Hall standing high after passing through the overlapping red gate and high wall. On the high platform, rows of imperial city watchtowers, just like a phoenix spreading its wings around all the people who enter the palace gate.
After Hanyuan Hall, there was the solemn and gorgeous Zhi Chen Hall. Behind the hall, splendid and resplendent cornices and arches stretched beyond the viewer’s vision.
Zhi Chen Hall was the inner hall. In recent years, the emperor had not summoned his ministers in Hanyuan Hall, especially in the Zhi Chen Hall. As Huang Zixia waited in the palace, the emperor soon emerged in black clothes surrounded by eunuchs. He was a little plump, but not fat. His round chin, slender eyebrows and eyes had a kind of amiable appearance.
Emperor Lǐ Cuǐ, who was only 35 years old that year, has been indulging in sensual pleasure and ignored state affairs since enthroned ten years ago. Although it was a bit far-fetched to say that he was a good and capable emperor as he had done nothing to disturb the people, and the people were living fairly stable lives.
Huang Zixia thought that although he was one of his brothers, the emperor looked more gentle than Li Shubai. After looking at the Prince of Zhao, Li Rui, and the rest of the princes, she thought in her heart, ‘Everyone seems to be better at deception than this Li Shubai, ah!. Why him? Why is it only him who can help me?’
The emperor sat down and said to Li Shubai with a smile on his face, “Fourth brother, there has never been anything that would make it difficult for you to fail you! I just thought about the four directions case the day before yesterday. As a result, before I could even ask you to handle them, you had solved the case last night. It was really quick.”
Li Shubai said, “The credit does not fall on this imperial younger brother. Someone else solved the case.”
The emperor’s eyes fell on Cui Chunzhan. Cui Chunzhan quickly bowed down in fear and said, “Everything related to the cracking of the case depended on the Prince of Kui. This subject and other officials were guilty, and were only patrolling the east of the city and did not obey the instructions of Prince Kui, and Prince Kui went to the scene, captured the true killer, and broke the case… ”
The emperor’s eyes fell on Huang Zixia who was behind Li Shubai and asked, “Fourth brother, the little eunuch behind you, I seem to have never seen him before?”
“Replying to Your Majesty, this is the person who solved the case, so this imperial younger brother didn’t dare to take credit and took him to the palace to meet Your Majesty.”
All of them looked at Huang Zixia in surprise. They saw that the little eunuch had a beautiful face, peerless and outstanding. From beginning to end, her eyelashes were always cast down, and her face was calm. Not even her hair moved.
The emperor said with a smile, “This is the inner hall. Usually this imperial one gathers here with my brothers, there is no grand etiquette between us. You see, today my brothers and relatives are at present. Chunzhan is also the nephew of the Dowager Consort Cui. Minister Wang is the uncle of the Empress. This little eunuch, you need not be too restrained. What’s your name?”
“This humble servant, Yang Chonggu, pays respects to Your Majesty.” She went forward and knelt down.
The Prince of Kang, Li Wen was naive and young after all. Seeing that she was about the same age as himself, he quickly jumped out and asked, “Are you the one who solved the crime? I found this case utterly incomprehensible. Tell me quickly. Isn’t this a ‘four directions’ case? Why were there murders in the south, north and west, but the last one is not in the east?”
Huang Zixia looked up at the emperor and saw him nod his head for her to explain, “This merely reflects the habitual way of people’s mind. After combining the Buddhist scriptures of four directions of the Bodhi tree “Chang, Le, Wo, Jing”, people assumed that the murderer’s pattern was south, east, north and west of the city. When there were murders in the north, south and west of the city, people were almost sure they were right. However, who would have thought the murderer would make use of this law of four directions as a pretext. In fact, the third person killed by the murderer was in Chang’anfang in the southwest of the city, not in the west of the city at all. So I thought it was a mistake to make decisions according to the law of four directions.”
Li Rui, Prince of Zhao immediately intercepted, “Then, I heard afterwards that you set the target of the murderer on the first day as southeast of Chang’an, and on the second day at Puningfang, northwest of Chang’an. What’s the reason for that?”
“This case is complicated. We should start with the Buddhist scriptures that Master Zhuang Zhen misread.” Huang Zixia said carefully, “On that day in the Jian Bi Palace, I heard the princes talk about the details of the case. The Master Zhuang Zhen must have read a thousand words on the day of the Buddhist rituals, but the murderer was able to hear that one single mistake in the Buddhist scriptures. If he is not a Buddhist monk, then he must be a believer who is familiar with the Buddhist classics. In the capital curfew, the only way to kill people at a certain place must stay for a night one day before that day. There are no Buddhist temples nearby in the first few places where the crime happened, moreover, if a monk stays overnight outside, people are very quick to notice the unusual. Therefore, a believer had a greater chance to be the criminal. Besides, the man who killed many people was definitely not a true follower of Buddhism. In fact, he must have been fascinated by folk hearsay and was a superstitious man who had an absurd faith. According to the previous inference, this case has no relation to the ‘four directions’, hence, it crossed my mind that superstitious people often have a habit of reading the almanac (calendar book) …”
Therefore, after reading the almanac, she found that the location of the murderer’s target was completely consistent with the auspicious location measured on that day in the almanac. On the day of the third murder, the auspicious location was directed to the southwest as written in the almanac. Take a quick look through the first two murders — one was murdered in the auspicious location to the north, and the second in the auspicious location to the south, which was exactly the murderer’s killing location. Therefore, she conjectured that the murderer’s rationale must be based on the almanac, unlike what everyone guessed, which was one person from four sides. (Please read original translations from cloudmanor and stop supporting theft.)
Li Shubai had also noticed this point immediately after she read the almanac, so on that day the auspicious location was directed to the northwest, both of them waited in front of the pregnant woman’s house in Puningfang for the murderer to walk straight into the trap.
“I see!” Li Wen quickly asked another question, “Well, how do you know which family the murderer was sure to attack? How do you know that this time the target would certainly be pregnant women?”
“Because of the first three dead people, one watchman was an old man, and the other was a strong grown man who was a blacksmith. These two people were killed, not to mention that the child in the charity hall was isolated and weak. He was dying. Even if he was not killed by the murderer, he would not live for long. Why did the murderer kill him?” Huang Zixia asked, pausing for a moment, then said, “And then I noticed something, the young blacksmith, the crime scene where he was murdered, it’s in the medicine hall – in other words, he was killed when he went to see a doctor.”
Li Wen was still thinking. Li Run was holding a glass of wine and sighed, “The four hardships of life – birth, old age, sickness and death.”
“That’s exactly what happened. One old, one sick, one dying. The only missing piece was the ‘birth’ – and that pregnant woman was the only one who was about to give birth in northwest Chang’an. If the murderer wanted to attack on that day, he could only focus on this target. When he went out to kill people that day, he happened to meet a woman in labor. He was overjoyed that he thought God was helping him to complete the mission ‘birth’.”
Cui Chunzhan sighed and continued, “The Court of Judicial Review and the Ministry of Justice joined hands in the interrogation, and the murderer confessed. The killer confessed that his family had been killed, and he was left alone since January. He was afraid and worried, and believed in a sect from the western regions. This evil sect was ostracized by the locals and unexpectedly, it spread to the Central Plains. They had a kind of evil method, which said that calamity could be passed on to others. He believed that by killing those four people, he would be able to escape from the four hardships, and then he’d be free from disease and disaster. He is now in prison, still stubborn, making a lot of noise in prison, saying that he is using Buddhist Scripture to judge himself. He is really unrepentant!”
There was silence in the hall. The emperor waved his hand and said, “No need to wait until autumn*. Since he has confessed and the evidence is complete, why would we still keep a good-for-nothing heinous criminal? You should take care of it in these few days, so that he won’t make any noise.”
(Autumn was a season for death row)
“It is inevitable for him to receive the death penalty. This subject is ready to take Your Majesty’s verdict.”
“Cut him in half.”
The bloody murder case plaguing in the capital city for months has come to an end. Everyone was thinking about those brutal murder cases, and then they saw the thin and emaciated eunuch of sixteen or seventeen years old standing in front of them like a willow in the early spring. But such a delicate boy, from everyone’s helplessness and cluelessness, he effortlessly pulled the first strand of clue to clear the muddled path and sorted out all thoughts. Unconsciously, there is an inexplicable emotion welling up in their hearts.
Li Rui tittered and said, “This little eunuch is really smart. No wonder last time I asked for him from the fourth elder brother, the fourth elder brother was reluctant to nod.”
Li Shubai replied with a faint smile, “Ninth younger brother is kidding, I did not say a word against it at that time.”
“Yes it’s true, I can testify for the fourth elder brother.” Li Wen interjected.
The emperor was so good-natured that he kept smiling and watched them bickering until a female official came in and whispered in his ear. Then he smiled even broader as he said, “Fourth younger brother, you have had double happiness recently. Let this imperial one set you a family banquet first. Later on the day of your wedding, the empress and I will attend your palace in person to congratulate you.”
A group of people suddenly showed a surprised look, Prince of Kang, Li Wen, was the first to ask, “The Fourth elder brother has chosen his consort? Who’s that maiden and from which family?”
The emperor cheerfully said, “She has not been chosen yet, but will be soon. Once confirmed, the Golden Books and Jade List (official announcement) will be issued. You just have to hold back your curiosity and wait. In short, the consort of the fourth younger brother, of course she has to be the finest and most noble lady in the world. She and fourth younger brother are a pair of beautiful jade*, who reflect and brighten each other.”
(A pair of beautiful jade – they are suitable to one another/ well-matched)
Hazel’s thoughts: I should’ve shown the picture of the Chinese calendar book (almanac) in earlier the chapter, so that you could’ve a better understanding. My grandpa was well versed in the almanac, too bad that I’ve learn nothing from him. If you want to learn more about it, you could read from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tung_Shing
Cloud Manor 