Chapter 19: Bodhisattva Man (Part 7)
Jin Xiangshi originally worked in the Ministry of Rites, but because of his outstanding painting skills, he was transferred to the Hanlin Academy of Painting as a waiting official after the winter examination. He went to Wanning to paint maps two months ago. After returning to report a few days ago, he has been staying at home claiming to be sick.
Because of the suspicion that people in official circles were involved and the cause of the case was unclear, the Night Office had not yet formally reported the winter examination case to Emperor Zhengyuan, so when questioning the officials in the Imperial Examination Hall, they could only ask questions indirectly.
Ni Su was unable to get up during these days due to his injury. The Night Division had investigated several Fengmi officials, but there were not many things they could ask in the Imperial Examination Hall. When Jin Xiangshi came back, he was praised by the government and rewarded with a pound of Tougangtuan tea. He took leave as soon as he returned to the mansion and refused to leave.
The Night Watchman has no reason to come and inquire.
Ni Su originally wanted to inquire through Madam Sun, but the incident of the Ruqing Poetry Society had already shown that Madam Sun was very concerned about Ni Su's identity and it was absolutely impossible for her to have any contact with her anymore.
"Are the incense and candles I lit during the day really effective? Are you feeling any pain?" Ni Su crouched behind a lush bush in the Jin family's courtyard and reached out to pull Xu Hexue's sleeve.
"It doesn't hurt."
Xu Hexue gathered her sleeves and shook her head.
"Then can I hold your sleeve? You can't see, so I have to pull you away." Ni Su asked him in a low voice.
It was night time and she was breaking into someone else's house, so she couldn't hold a lantern in her hands.
"Um."
Xu Hexue nodded, tentatively raised his hand in the direction of her voice, and held his sleeve for her.
Feeling the force of her pulling on his sleeve, Xu Hexue's eyelashes moved slightly.
"Let's go this way."
Ni Su looked around the courtyard for a long time, and seeing that no servants were approaching the study with the light on, she took Xu Hexue by the hand and tiptoed to the lattice window behind the study.
The lattice window was half-propped up by a bamboo stick , and Ni Su took the opportunity to peek inside.
In the brightly lit study, Master Jin Xiang absentmindedly chewed his braised beef and took another sip of wine. "Why didn't you tell me that you were not feeling well? Can't we afford a doctor? Now those ladies in the poetry club know that you were looking for a herbalist, so you come to me to complain."
"Is this something that can be easily said? It's not that I haven't hired doctors before, but they can't take a close look. I've taken the prescriptions they prescribed, but it doesn't help. I have abdominal pain every day, and you didn't ask me about it?" Madam Sun was angry and sat with her back to him. As she spoke, she wiped her tears with a handkerchief. "If it wasn't for the unbearable pain that day, I wouldn't have listened to Madam Cai and asked that young lady to treat me."
"Aren't you afraid that she will kill you? Don't you know what a medicine woman is? How many of them can use proper methods? There are many who kill people, but how many of them can really save people?"
Master Jin Xiang didn't even raise his eyes and stuffed another piece of braised beef into his mouth. "If there really is, it's just a blind cat catching a dead mouse."
"But I am definitely feeling better."
Madam Sun covered her cheek with her handkerchief.
"Now all the other wives of officials know about your relationship with the medicine woman. Do you think they will go home without telling their husbands? Will those men let you corrupt their wives again?" Jin Xiangshi snorted coldly, "I told you to stay at home and not to start a poetry club with others. Now you've made me suffer the consequences. Who knows what those adults will say about me for not managing my family well behind my back."
"I think you don't have to go to the poetry club. You'll just make people laugh at you."
"Why? Madam Cai is still associating with that young lady openly. She dares to stay in the poetry club, so why can't I go?" Madam Sun turned around, and the hairpins on her temples swayed.
"How is Madam Cai like you? Although her father was a civil servant before he retired, he was also a military supervisor in the northern army in his early years, so he must have been tainted with some of the rough and careless habits of military men. Now she is married to the Taiwei Mansion, so isn't that still a group of military men? Her husband is the only civil servant, and isn't her eldest brother a military officer in the Palace Guards? She has to speak softly in front of the chief guard of the Ministry of Internal Affairs... Their family is rude and unrestrained, do you want to learn that? Maybe after this incident today, those ladies won't allow her to continue staying in the poetry club."
Jin Xiangshi had just received the emperor's praise, so she couldn't help but feel a little proud. "It's settled today. You don't have to go to the poetry club anymore. It's just a group of young ladies. Meng Xianggong's wife Jiang and Pei Shangren's wife Zhao have rarely shown up. What's the point of you going? You can't get familiar with them."
"My dear..."
Madam Sun wanted to say more, but Master Jin Xiang became impatient and waved at her, "Go out, I'll go to Xing'er's room tonight."
Not only did he block her from going out and socializing with other girls, he even mentioned the concubine named Xing'er in front of her. Madam Sun's eyes became even redder, but she didn't dare to say anything else. She left the room with a suppressed breath.
After Madam Sun left, Master Jin Xiang was the only one left in the room.
He sat alone at the table, unable to help showing some solemn worry. He didn't eat the braised beef in soy sauce, but kept drinking sip after sip of wine.
Suddenly a gust of cold wind blew against his back, making him almost unable to hold the cup in his hand. The candles on the table went out in an instant, and the room was barely illuminated by the faint moonlight. Smoke dissipated from behind him. Master Jin Xiang's back stiffened and the muscles on his cheeks twitched. He turned around slowly, and in the floating mist, he vaguely saw a half-real, half-illusory figure in white.
He was startled and fell off his chair, breaking the wine cup.
"Xu Ziling,"
Ni Su, who was peeking in through the window, reminded quietly, "He's on your right."
Xu Hexue paused and turned to the right as he was told.
"Master Jin Xiang."
Under the gauze curtain, the face was hidden, and the shadow of a person or a ghost was lingering in the moonlight, as thin as mist, and accurately called out his name.
“You, who are you?”
The muscles on Master Jin Xiang's cheeks twitched even more violently. The mist and wind intertwined and rushed towards him. He barely blocked it with his sleeves, and his eyes were sore.
"Ni Qinglan."
This voice is filled with ice and snow.
Master Jin Xiang's eyes widened, and his expression suddenly became even uglier.
"You know me."
Although Xu Hexue couldn't see, she could hear his breathing clearly.
"No, I don't know, I don't know anything..." Master Jin Xiang's knees were weak and he moved back instinctively.
But the more he said this, the more Xu Hexue became certain of his guess.
"Master Jin."
Under the white gauze curtain hat, Xu Hexue's eyes were lifeless, "I am now a lonely soul in the wild. If I don't remember why I died, I can't enter the underworld."
Master Jin Xiang saw the ghostly figure turn into mist and then re-condense into a shape a few steps away from him. He was so scared that he wanted to scream, but he felt the mist wrapped around his neck like silk.
Master Jin Xiang covered his neck in fear, and then heard the cold and quiet voice slowly: "Master Jin, what do you know? Please tell me the truth."
He saw a faint glow surrounding the innocent shadow.
Ni Su saw this scene from the window and knew that Xu Hexue had used his magic again. She was worried. Looking at Master Jin Xiang who was shaking like a sieve, she immediately said, "Master Jin, hurry up and tell us! Do you want to do the same as us?"
Suddenly, another female voice came. Master Jin Xiang looked around in panic, but he didn't see any female figure. The fog was getting thicker, and he was so scared that his lips trembled: "You, who are you?"
"I am a female ghost who drowned in a dry well. Lord Jin, do you want to go play in the well with me?"
Ni Su deliberately dragged out her voice.
"Ah?" Master Jin Xiang put his hands on the ground and kowtowed desperately: "I didn't harm you, Mr. Ni. I'm not the only one who copied under a false name..."
"If that's the case, why did you pretend to be sick and stay at home after returning from Wan Ning?" Xu Hexue asked.
"I, I did see Mr. Ni's test paper, because the essay was really well written and the handwriting was also very good, so I had an impression of it. After I copied it, I handed the test paper to someone else and didn't care about it anymore. But later, a colleague had a stomachache when he had to hand in all the test papers with the names covered, so he asked me to hand it in on his behalf..." Jin Xiangshi was sweating all over his head and back, and he didn't dare to look up. "I just have a good memory. On the way to hand in the test paper, I flipped through it casually and saw the article again, but the handwriting was not the one I copied!"
Jin Xiangshi had many doubts in his mind, but he kept them hidden until he went to work at the Hanlin Academy of Painting. He put the matter behind him and rushed to Wanning to draw maps.
However, after returning from drawing the map, Jin Xiangshi heard that a dead body was found in the Mud Bodhisattva Temple on Qingyuan Mountain in Guangning Prefecture. It was Ni Qinglan, a candidate in the winter examination. He also heard from his old friends in the Imperial Examination Hall that people from the Night Office had recently visited the Imperial Examination Hall. Jin Xiangshi was worried, so he took the opportunity of Emperor Zhengyuan's happiness over obtaining the map to ask for leave.
He locked himself up in his mansion these days because he was afraid of the interrogation of the Night Police and was also afraid that he would be implicated in something bad.
He had intended to keep this matter to himself.
Tick, tick.
Master Jin Xiang felt cold, wet drops of water dripping from the top of his head, down his forehead, to his nose bone, and finally dripping onto the ground. Only then did he see clearly that they were bright red drops of blood.
The blood bead instantly turned into white dust, floating and dissipating before his eyes.
The tense string in Master Jin Xiang's head snapped, and he fell to the ground, fainting from fright.
The moon is bright, the wind is clear, and the long alley is quiet.
"Didn't I tell you? Don't use your magic. He will be scared if you just stand there." Ni Su held a person's sleeve and walked slowly.
Xu Hexue didn't say anything at first, just followed her step by step, but after a moment, he remembered that when she was at Jin's house, she pretended to be a female ghost and dragged out her voice, and he suddenly said: "He should be more afraid of you."
Ni Su felt a little uncomfortable, "You are too polite, not scary at all. I did that just to make him tell the truth quickly."
He is obviously the ghost.
"Your brother's test paper must have been switched."
Xu Hexue said.
Speaking of his brother, Ni Su lowered his eyes and nodded gently, "Yes, but he dared not hide this from the ghost, but he would not necessarily tell the night division."
"Didn't you leave a note?"
The cold moonlight shone on Xu Hexue's pale face. "If Master Jin Xiang was afraid of being haunted by evil spirits, he would definitely take the initiative to report this to the Night Guard."
As soon as he finished speaking, he noticed that Ni Su seemed to be unstable, so he immediately grabbed her wrist and pulled her back.
Ni Su bumped into his chest unexpectedly.
The spring flowers are buried under the snow, with a cool and faint fragrance.
The warmth all over her body made Xu Hexue look like a person in an everlasting and bleak winter. He clearly rejected her warmth and clearly resisted being so close to her at this moment.
But Xu Hexue just blinked her eyelashes, motionless like a snowman casually built by someone. He didn't dare to let go of her hand easily, so he could only lift his chin which was lightly rubbed by her hair bun and called her: "Ni Su?"
"Um."
Ni Su's temples were covered with cold sweat. She shook her head and explained, "It's okay. I just accidentally touched the wound when I climbed in through the window."
