After waiting for a little over an hour, Lord Cao from the Ministry of Justice finally arrived belatedly. Today being Chinese New Year’s Day, he had been drinking and by the haste of his approach, it was clear he had just left a feast. Because he had been summoned by Prince Heng’s people, and the house servants had explained the whole situation to him in detail, Lord Cao, who typically seemed stern and sparing of words, had already understood the ins and outs of the matter before his arrival.
He led his subordinates inside. After entering, he first greeted Rong Heng, then ordered his men to start investigating the case, not dilly-dallying at all, not even glancing at his own daughter. He wasn’t idle either, going straight to the Shopkeeper to understand what had happened at the time.
At this point, no one had come to question Tang Yuan yet. She simply kept her head down, sketching, indifferent to the commotion around her. Content originally comes from novęlfire.net
It wasn’t until the government officials had finished collecting testimonies and reported back to Lord Cao that he looked over the statements, furrowing his brow, and then walked over to Tang Yuan.
"Miss Tang, Cao Bingkun. My men have already inquired in detail about the situation just now. Here are the statements. Do you have anything to add?"
Tang Yuan just glanced at them briefly and laughed, "Lord Cao, is this how the Ministry of Justice decides cases, so casually? Just asking for some statements and calling it quits?"
"Shouldn’t the crime scene be reenacted? Even if the footprints at the scene are chaotic and don’t help with judgment, shouldn’t you at least clearly understand everyone’s positions? You haven’t done anything but ask for testimonies from these guests and want to convict me—aren’t you being too naive?"
Tang Yuan’er’s mockery was unmasked, and Lord Cao, affronted and left without face, quickly swept his gaze past her. The government officials, understanding their superior’s intent, immediately shouted orders for everyone to assume their original positions as they had first stood.
Tang Yuan passed the piece of paper she was holding to Rong Heng and then found her own place to stand.
Rong Heng had always been curious about what Tang Yuan had been doing; her drawing was so rapid that it dazzled him. However, as people began to reposition themselves, he was surprised to find that the scene was gradually starting to match the figures on the paper—of course, with some minor discrepancies.
He couldn’t stop moving his gaze back and forth between the scene and the drawing. As his expression grew increasingly grave and astonished, eventually, it caught Cao Bingkun’s attention. When Cao Bingkun came over to look, he too was transfixed by the array of drawings.
Next, Tang Yuan stood at her original spot, comparing the current arrangement to the footage she had repeatedly watched in her mind and began to verbally rehearse the positioning of the people.
"Firstly, Miss Qingyi, at that moment you were holding a phoenix hairpin. Your two maids were trying it on you, the one in pink on the left holding a bronze mirror, and the maid in blue on your right was about to put the hairpin on you. Indeed, as you initially stated, you didn’t witness what happened. Am I correct, or am I mistaken?"
Miss Qingyi looked incredulously at Tang Yuan, then turned to both Lord Cao and Prince Heng before bowing respectfully.
"To respond to Prince and the official, what this young lady said is absolutely true; I was indeed trying on the phoenix hairpin."
This lady was positioned at the farthest left; she hadn’t followed the crowd claiming to have seen the event and had testified for Cao Lihua. She was grateful, so after receiving their direct answers, she respectfully bowed in their direction: "Thank you for telling the truth; this detail has already been captured in my drawing."