Speak of the devil and he appears. Lu Ying looked out the window and came face to face with Wang Daxia, who looked like a homeless dog.
Wang Daxia even had the audacity to wave and smile: “Oh my, Commander Lu is still the most capable. No matter how well I hid, you still found me. Thanks for giving me a ride. Until we meet again—farewell!”
Lu Ying gritted his teeth: “Arrest him—”
Lu Bing behind him said: “Bring him up. This lead involves him. Face-to-face questioning will be clearer.”
Solving the case was urgent, so Lu Ying had to restrain himself and change his words: “Get in the carriage. I have questions for you.”
Wang Daxia was seized by a swarm of Imperial Guards and dragged into the carriage.
Lu Bing asked him: “I heard you and Chen Dalang fought at Red Sleeve Pavilion over Miss Yingying and exchanged curses? What exactly did you curse? No lies.”
Lu Bing held a high position—below one person, above ten thousand others—naturally possessing an aura of authority. He questioned directly. Wang Daxia, like a newborn calf unafraid of tigers, had experience from appearing in court at the Prefectural Yamen before. He responded calmly, completely unintimidated by Lu Bing:
“When cursing someone, naturally you expose their shortcomings. Commander Lu, wouldn’t you agree?”
The Imperial Guards and Northern City Military Commissioner had fought group battles. Wang Daxia thought: You can lose people but not momentum. Though I have no official position, I must maintain dignity on the surface. You can’t treat me as a suspect for questioning again.
“I’ve never cursed anyone, unlike your rich experience.” Lu Ying impatiently pointed at the carriage door. “If you keep speaking in riddles, you’ll spend a night in imperial prison.”
“Don’t be anxious.” Wang Daxia asked: “Do you know what Chen Dalang’s greatest shortcoming is?”
Lu Ying: “He has no scholarly achievements to this day—he’s a commoner with no learning or skills, just waiting for his father to die so he can inherit the Imperial Guard Qianhu title.”
Wang Daxia touched his nose and laughed: “In this respect, Chen Dalang and I are exactly the same. I’m also waiting to inherit a Qianhu title. If I exposed this shortcoming, wouldn’t that be killing the enemy while damaging myself by eight hundred?”
Lu Ying was truly eye-opening today: “You can still laugh? How can you be so shameless?”
Wang Daxia patted his chest: “Since my family has a title to inherit, why should I strive for scholarly achievements? Better to leave opportunities for commoner children. This shows my noble character—not competing with the people for profit.”
Hearing this, Lu Bing immediately became interested in Wang Daxia: This dandy was quite interesting.
Wang Daxia said: “Therefore, Chen Dalang’s greatest shortcoming is that the Chen family has had single-heir transmission for five generations. He’s already twenty-seven years old, been married for seven or eight years, yet has no sons under his knee—not even a daughter. I cursed him as a castrated rooster that couldn’t produce chicks even if put in a henhouse.”
Lu Ying paused: “Your mouth is quite vicious.”
Wang Daxia felt quite wronged: “He cursed me first, saying I was born but not raised by my mother, calling me a jinxed broom star who killed his mother. I returned the favor by calling him a castrated rooster. ‘Propriety’ reciprocated—how fair.”
Lu Bing asked: “What else? How did Chen Dalang respond afterward?”
Wang Daxia pondered a moment: “Well… we had both drunk quite a bit then. After exchanging curses, we started fighting. Chen Dalang’s body had long been hollowed out by wine and women—he was no match for me. I alone fought him and his book boy—more than enough.”
Wang Daxia was quite proud of his “battle record.” Lu Bing said: “My informant said when you called him a castrated rooster, he replied: ‘You’re talking nonsense. My fiancée was once pregnant with my child. I’ll definitely have another one eventually.'”
Wang Daxia sneered: “Men like to boast about their bedroom prowess. Miss Yingying once said not to believe a single word men say in brothels.”
“Of course, except for me.” Wang Daxia smiled at the Lu father and son: “You can trust me like Miss Yingying does. I’m a man of my word—what I say, I do.”
Lu Ying flew into a rage and wanted to charge over and beat him: “Who are you comparing to that courtesan?”
“Stay calm.” Lu Bing raised his hand to stop him. “This is a lead. Chen Dalang indeed has a fiancée surnamed He. Her father was once my subordinate. When the Chen and He families arranged the betrothal, they sent out many invitations, and I gave a gift. Later, the He family committed crimes, and Miss He became a government slave for sale. The Chen family bought her and reportedly settled her in the suburbs. Respectable people and slaves cannot intermarry—how did Miss He become pregnant with his child? And why didn’t the child survive in the end? This is terrifying to think about deeply.”
Author’s Note: The Imperial Guards are still well-informed. Daxia escaped, but Caiwei is in danger. Looking at the previous chapter’s comments, everyone seems generally younger than me and unfamiliar with neighbors sharing food. When I was little, I lived in a courtyard similar to Machang Alley in the novel. Whenever my family had something delicious, we had to share with neighbors. Once we got a basket of oranges, and I was forced to run around two apartment buildings (three floors total)—I was exhausted.
A neighbor on the first floor had built a pen in the courtyard to raise pigs. Every day I had to deliver our leftover food to the neighbor to feed the pigs. This usually happened around 6 PM after dinner, right when cartoons were starting. To avoid missing the opening theme, I would run downstairs like crazy with the bowl. Later, when they slaughtered the pig during New Year, it was also divided among the two apartment buildings. My mom cured our share into preserved meat. That year’s preserved meat was truly fragrant.