Shaoxing was still some distance away from Jinling. Wei Luo took two guards, including Chang Feng, and two small officials assisting in the investigation. They rode out of Beijing all the way, eating and sleeping in the open. It took six days to reach Shaoxing.
Before entering the city, Wei Luo only took Chang Feng to the inn to stay overnight and arranged for three other people to inquire about the “disappearing case of the civilian women”.
As night fell, the three of them returned one after another and entered Wei Luo’s room, speaking in low voices.
The suspect in that case was the Third Master of the Shi family, a prominent local family named Shi Zifeng. He was thirty years old at that time, already married and had a son. However, just last September, a maid named Hua’er, beside Shi Zifeng, suddenly disappeared. The Shi family assumed that something happened when Hua’er went home to visit relatives, so they sent someone to inquire. However, she never returned.
Hua’er’s natal family sought help from someone important in the Shi family. Several servants of the Shi family claimed that Hua’er had left the house. Thus, the Shi family avoided blame, and the government filed a case to find other clues.
In the twelfth lunar month of last year, another maid disappeared beside Shi Zifeng’s mother, in exactly the same way as Hua’er.
At that time, some people in Shaoxing had already suspected the Shi family. They reported it to the government, and Liuzhi County conducted a serious investigation, but there was still no evidence.
Then, in February of this year, Ping’er, a maid of the Shi family who was in charge of cleaning the garden, disappeared.
Ping’er was an orphan, and it stood to reason that her sudden disappearance would not attract the attention of people outside the Shi family. However, she had a partner – a hawker who waited for his sweetheart. He went to the Shi Mansion, bribed the woman in charge, and inquired about the news, learning that Ping’er had disappeared. The person then thought of the two missing maids from the Shi family before and guessed that Ping’er had encountered an accident. Anxious and angry, he ran directly to the capital and sued the Shi family and Liuzhi County to the Ministry of Criminal Justice.
Emperor Yongping attached great importance to the perversion of the law by officials, so he sent his son Wei Luo to investigate.
Wei Luo didn’t have a specific official position in the Ministry of Criminal Justice. It was more like an eye placed by Emperor Yongping in the Ministry of Criminal Justice to let his trusted prince supervise the officials in performing their duties faithfully.
Although he had no official position, Wei Luo had the right to attend the trial of the case and consult various cases. If he encountered any doubts, he could go to the corresponding official of the Ministry of Criminal to confront him, or even directly report it to Emperor Yongping.
If he was a lazy person, the errand could turn into an idle one, but Wei Luo was diligent and looked at cases when he had nothing to do. With him in the Ministry of Criminal, almost no officials dared to neglect their duties.
In addition to Wei Luo looking for work to do on his own, Emperor Yongping would also temporarily arrange errands for him, such as the case in Suzhou last year, and the case of the Shi family in Shaoxing.
“My lord, Liuzhi County is the nephew of Mr. Tian, the magistrate of Hangzhou. He is a top-ranked Jinshi who just passed the exam last year. It is said that after taking office, he has contacts with several famous families and wealthy businessmen in the local area.”
“My lord, Shi Zifeng’s two elder brothers and three cousins are all Jinshi-born officials in other places. Shi Zifeng was famous when he was young, but he has not participated in the Imperial Examination Festival four times in a row. Despite being named on the gold list, it is said that after he failed the Imperial Examination last year, Shi Zifeng was so drunk in the brothel that he almost strangled a singer to death.”
Wei Luo learned about the basic case, and early the next morning, he went to Shaoxing as an Imperial Envoy. The county government asked Liuzhi County to reopen the Shi family case.
Liu Zhixian didn’t know that Wei Luo was a prince, but an Imperial Envoy directly appointed by Emperor Yongping, yet he dared not neglect that status.
At Wei Luo’s request, the officers brought all the members of the Shi family, including the servants of the mansion, to the county government office.
Knowing that there was an Imperial Envoy, three of the servants who had confessed that they saw Hua’er and Ping’er leaving the Shi Mansion with their own eyes began to tremble.
Wei Luo focused on interrogating these three people and overturned their previous confessions.
Since the three maids did not leave the Shi Mansion, the rest was easy to handle.
Wei Luo ordered people to tie up Liu Zhixian, and then escorted him to the Shi Mansion to search for people.
In fact, Liuzhi County sent people to search the Shi Mansion, and searched it twice, but it was just a show, and the search was not thorough. So after searching carefully, Chang Feng found a secret underground room in Shi Zifeng’s study that seemed to have been newly repaired not long ago, and found three maids imprisoned there. All were skinny, and their bodies were covered with traces of cruel abuse, new wounds overlapping old wounds.
The evidence was solid, and Shi Zifeng, Liu Zhixian, and all those who helped Shi Zifeng cover up his crimes without knowing the facts were all sent to jail.
That case seemed simple, but if the man didn’t go to the capital to look for one of the victimized maids, it was very likely that the truth would be buried forever under the circumstances that local officials and prominent families were colluding.
After solving the case and taking a rest for the night, Wei Luo set off alone with Chang Feng to the Xue House, the residence of his cousin Wen Ruyue.
Wen Ruyue’s husband was Xue Huan, a Concubine’s son of Yongcheng Houfu.
During Wei Ang’s reign, the Marquis of Yongcheng’s family had a favorite Concubine, so during the three years of war, the Marquis of Yongcheng supported Wei Ang very much. The whole family was sentenced to exile, only Xue Huan, who had never personally participated in the war, was not implicated due to his early achievements in fighting the war and his marriage to Wen Ruyue. He was still serving as a garrison in Shaoxing.
At the beginning of Emperor Yongping’s uprising, Xue Huan demoted Wen Ruyue to a Concubine in order to please the Imperial Court, and Wei Luo made a note of him.
But before he had time to deal with Xue Huan, Wen Ruyue’s letter arrived, explaining that Xue Huan did that just to protect her, and the couple had a son. For the sake of his cousin and nephew, Wei Luo didn’t pursue Xue Huan’s fault.