Yu Daniu and Su Xiaotian had initially refused to confess to anything regarding their families or their crimes, but they were far too inexperienced to match wits with Fang Zichen.
He had plenty of ways to pry their mouths open.
No one knew exactly what they'd been through. When the third-in-command saw the two of them being brought back in, aside from their earlier injuries, there was no new marks on them—but their minds were clearly addled. They were trembling and cowering as if they'd been scared out of their wits, and there was a distinct stench of urine about them.
"First Brother, Second Brother—what happened to you?"
Yu Daniu shuddered violently, his whole body shaking uncontrollably.
"H-he said he was going to nail our limbs to wooden frames, flay one of us alive and skin the other. And if we were still breathing, h-he'd feed us to rats."
Fang Zichen had patted his face at the time, looking down at him from above. "You know what flaying alive means?"
Yu Daniu, coming from a village, had no idea—he'd never even heard of it.
"It means taking a little knife and cutting off pieces of your flesh, bit by bit... Usually after about three thousand cuts, the person dies. As for skinning—I don't need to explain that, do I? It means slowly peeling your skin off. Normally, with this kind of torture, the person croaks halfway through. But of course, there are exceptions—if you don't die, that is." Fang Zichen clapped his hands, and a soldier brought in a cage filled with several small rats scurrying about frantically.
"See their teeth? Do you think they're sharp?"
Of course they were sharp. Every year when the village harvested grain and stored it in wooden barrels, the rats could chew right through them. How could those teeth not be sharp?
"So tell me—if I stuffed these into your bellies, don't you think they'd scurry around inside, slowly gnawing through your heart, liver, lungs, and everything else?"
Anyone with even a basic grasp of common sense would know that if a live rat were swallowed, it would either be crushed in the throat or suffocate from lack of air once inside the stomach. But at that moment, Fang Zichen was holding a small, gleaming knife and slowly tracing it over their bodies, as if weighing where to cut first. The terror he had already planted in their minds, combined with their complete lack of education—they had never heard of anyone swallowing a live rat before—made them believe that if the rat went down alive, it would certainly stay alive in the belly. And a rat trapped inside a stomach, growing hungrier by the moment... Just that image alone was enough to shatter their mental defenses completely.
"One last time—where are your families?"
"I'll talk! I'll talk! I'll talk!"
After the Yu and Su families were "raided," over two thousand taels were seized. The Yu family members wept and wailed, insisting they had nothing to do with it and begging for mercy!
How could they have nothing to do with it?
They'd eaten well and grown fat on stolen silver, swaggering about the village—and they claimed to have nothing to do with it?
The fact that only the adult men had been detained while the elders and children were released was already an act of mercy.
Fang Zichen took full charge, with Yang Chengfeng assisting. The crimes of Yu Daniu, Su Xiaotian, and the third-in-command were so egregious that they were sentenced to immediate beheading. As for the others—the men from the Yu and Su families who'd been imprisoned for covering up the crimes—they were to be held in custody for now. Fang Zichen had future use for them.
Of the twenty-odd bodies, eighteen were claimed and compensation was paid. The remaining few were nothing but bleached bones, dating back over a decade. Their families had either moved away or perished in the original attacks, and no one came forward to claim them. Fang Zichen had his soldiers bury them properly and burn plenty of spirit money for them. They had lived hard lives, suffered greatly, and died young—may they not endure such suffering in the world below.
The unsold goods from robbed merchants that had been found in the storehouse were also returned to their owners.
All of this took another week to sort out.
In the end, over four thousand taels of confiscated assets remained, and Fang Zichen deposited them into the public treasury.
By then, news of what had happened in Anhe County had spread far and wide. The common people were both awestruck and deeply admiring of this young prefect. He looked so young, yet he'd proven incredibly capable—he could blast through mountains and wipe out bandits. The Anhe County matter was a separate issue, but regarding the bandit suppression—troops had been dispatched before, with the county magistrate personally leading the operation, yet they had failed entirely, scouring the mountains for days without finding even a trace of the bandits. But the moment The prefect arrived, the enemy had nowhere to hide. With the mountain bandits wiped out, the people could see tangible, real benefits—they could do business without living in constant fear, and their daughters and gers no longer had to be kept locked up at home for fear of being kidnapped.
The prefect was formidable—and more than that, he was an official who actually did things for the people, unlike his predecessor.
The public's opinion of the new prefect changed overnight, and his standing in their eyes grew immensely.
Some merchants, staring at the banknotes in their hands, even wept with emotion.
It wasn't about the money.
The very bandits who'd made them live in terror for over a decade were now gone. And The prefect had sent soldiers to deliver banknotes to them personally.
As compensation for the goods that had been stolen from them long ago.
In truth, those goods would have sold for several hundred taels. The compensation didn't match that amount—it was considerably less—but that wasn't the point. The point was that they lived far from Shunan and couldn't make the journey, yet The prefect still remembered them!
The soldiers who came had said: "It's because we officials failed in our duty—we didn't maintain order properly, and you common folk suffered for it. The goods stolen from you years ago can't be recovered now, so we can only offer this compensation. We're sorry."
Their eyes reddened—not for any other reason, but for that single apology.
The prefect had said he was sorry to them.
How could a high official say such a thing to mere merchants like them?
Everyone said merchants were cunning and greedy—and they couldn't deny that—but they'd never done any real evil! The silver they earned was hard-won through toil. And yet, despite their wealth, people of status all looked down on them.
But the prefect was different from all of them.
An official served the people. A ruler served the state.
Officials took taxes paid by the people—so they ought to serve the people. But now, having failed to protect the people and let them suffer harm, saying "I'm sorry" was simply the proper thing to do.
Some merchants from Shunan were deeply moved and personally came to the yamen, originally intending to thank the the prefect in person. But when they arrived outside and saw the solemn, imposing yamen with its fierce stone lions flanking the entrance, they suddenly came to their senses. Who did they think they were? The prefect was buried in government affairs—would he ever have time to see the likes of them?
The few of them snapped out of it, exchanged awkward glances, made some small talk, and were about to leave when a soldier came out from the gate: "Who are you people? Gathering here—do you have business?"
The merchants didn't dare lie and stammered out their purpose.
"Wait here, then. I'll go in and report to see if His Lordship has time."
The soldier was polite and didn't drive them away. The merchants were flattered.
Fang Zichen heard the report, thought for a moment, and said, "Let them in."
Once inside the yamen, the merchants didn't dare look around. They were so nervous they nearly walked with their left and right hands and feet moving in unison. When they saw Fang Zichen, they barely dared to breathe.
The merchants hadn't been in town the day Fang Zichen escorted the bandits back to the city. They'd only heard that the new prefect was young. Now that they saw him in person, "young" wasn't enough—he looked almost too young.
Though tall, his face was more immature than a grown man's, with a hint of boyish shrewdness still lingering.
No comments:
Post a Comment