Wicked Deeds
"Big Sister, are we heading back to the inn now?"
Bai Jinchi asked.
"We should be wandering among the people by now. I want to hear how the common folk speak of the Bai clan of Shanyang, and find out exactly what the Shanyang Bais have been up to. The more people know that I'm looking into this, the better. The prefect should hear of it too — that man is a sly one."
The corners of Bai Jingyan's lips curved upward.
The Shanyang Bai clan had assumed that once the Bai family returned to Shanyang, they would have no choice but to lean on their kinsmen. It was high time someone taught them what position they truly held in Shanyang when this Commandery Princess was not standing behind them.
The Shanyang Bais had committed every vile, contemptible act imaginable. Very well, Bai Jingyan thought — then let this wipe away, all at once, the stain that their grandfather and the Bai family had carried for shielding them all these years. Call it the price owed for his long indulgence of them.
* * *
When word reached the prefect that the Zhenguo Commandery Princess and the Gaoyi County Princess had quarreled with the clan patriarch upon returning to their kinsmen — that the conflict had grown so fierce a teacup had been shattered — an uneasiness began to gnaw at him.
Worse still, rumors were spreading that the Commandery Princess and her party had abandoned their horses and were going among the common people, asking what the Shanyang Bais had been doing here all this time, how they had tormented the locals.
The prefect's heart began to pound. Could it be that the Duke of Zhenguo and the Commandery Princess had never known of the Shanyang Bais' depredations? Was that why she had returned now — to settle all those many accounts at once?
Restless with anxiety, he paced back and forth in his study.
Before long, a subordinate came with a report: the Commandery Princess's party had gone to the home of Zhang Gui, the man whom the Bai clan patriarch's grandson had beaten to death.
The prefect sank heavily into his chair.
They truly meant to bring it all to a reckoning in one stroke!
At the thought of Bai Qiyun, fury surged through him in an instant. He sprang up and was halfway out the door to confront the man — then turned right back around.
This was no time to be demanding answers from Bai Qiyun. He needed to extricate himself from this affair first.
He paced the room a while longer, then stopped abruptly and bellowed at the top of his lungs.
"Someone! Have my private advisor bring out every case involving the Bai clan that I've buried these past years and put them all in order — now!"
Having given the order, the prefect sat down at his desk and began hunting through the pile of complaints he had long ignored.
* * *
By the time Bai Jingyan and Bai Jinchi had made a circuit of Shanyang City, no small number of the townsfolk had caught wind that someone was investigating the crimes of the Shanyang Bai clan.
At first the people hesitated, shuffling and glancing about. But when word spread that Bai Jingyan's party had visited the home of Zhang Gui — the man beaten to death by the clan patriarch's own grandson — and even left silver for the family, they finally swarmed forward, pouring out every evil deed the Bais had committed in Shanyang like beans spilling from a split bamboo tube.
Bai Jingyan sat with them beneath the willows at the village entrance, listening, and soon had a fairly clear picture of the truth.
The first among the Shanyang Bais to do wrong had been the patriarch's own household. Emboldened with each success, they grew ever more brazen, and when the clan's distant branches saw the patriarch's line growing fat and prosperous by borrowing the authority of Bai Jingyan's grandfather, greed overtook them and they began to follow suit, one after another.
In time, more and more of the collateral branches joined in the patriarch's family's outrages, grinding the common people down for profit. And so the good name of the Shanyang Bai clan collapsed into ruin.
Worse, the people believed all of it had been winked at by Bai Jingyan's grandfather himself.
Hearts are easily seduced by the lure of wealth and rank. The main household of the clan, once honest and upright, had begun to waver when they watched the patriarch's line flourish under the shadow of the old Duke's name. At first they would have moved cautiously, one small transgression at a time — and when nothing came of it, when everything passed smoothly, they grew bolder.
The people of Shanyang had suffered injustice with nowhere in all the world to lodge a grievance.
There was no telling how many tenant farmers had been forced to sell their own children under persecution from the Bai kinsmen.
And when they tried to appeal to the magistrate's office, the office — cowed by Bai Weiting's authority — had suppressed them by force. One man who had first dared to accuse the Shanyang Bais was instead branded a slanderer, and in the end he tightened his own belt around his throat, choosing death to prove his innocence.
With justice sealed away like that, the people could only nurse their grievances in silence — and curse, in their hearts, the Bai family of Dadu.
Hearing all of this, Bai Jinchi was driven half-mad with fury. To trample the Bai family's name into the mud like this!
Bai Jingyan turned her head and spoke to the guard recording everything beside her.
"Write it all down."
"Yes, my lady!"
The guards answered as one.
Someone among the onlookers, unable to contain her curiosity, finally spoke up.
"Young lady, which household are you from? Why do you ask after the Shanyang Bais' affairs? Aren't you afraid of earning the Bai family's enmity? The Shanyang Bais are under the protection of the Zhenguo Commandery Princess — the one they call the Slaughter God. A truly terrifying woman!"
"What nonsense is that! What's so terrifying about my sister?"
Bai Jinchi snapped.
"Your... sister?"
The villagers turned to stare at the young woman seated beneath the willow, who had been listening so intently to their accounts of the Bai clan's crimes.
Her face was so flawlessly beautiful that she scarcely seemed human at all. An unmistakable air of nobility flowed from her every movement, and she carried herself with a formidable presence. Though slender and tall — and so seeming delicate on the surface — her eyes were resolute and iron-willed. No matter how they looked, she was no ordinary young lady from some common household.
The villagers all fell silent. A flicker of fear stole over them.
Bai Jingyan rose and bowed with perfect courtesy to the crowd gathered around her.
"We were ignorant, all this while, that the Bai kinsmen had been using the name of the Duke of Zhenguo Estate to commit outrages here in Shanyang and torment its people. Because we never thought to look into it properly, you have all endured such hardship. That is our failing."
The people's mouths fell open.
"Then this... this lady is... the Zhenguo Commandery Princess?"
Someone this beautiful? This young lady who had listened so gravely, so patiently, to their every word? The rumors said the Slaughter God, the Zhenguo Commandery Princess, had put ten thousand surrendered Xiliang soldiers to the sword!
"Are you truly... the Commandery Princess?"
an old man who had been bold all along asked, his eyes gone round as saucers.
The old man, leaning on his staff where he sat on the stone bench, shot up in alarm and dropped to his knees, trembling.
"C-Commandery Princess!"
The villagers, who only moments before had been sitting in a circle pouring out their sorrows, all knelt in his wake and bowed deeply to Bai Jingyan.
"There is no need for this!"
Bai Jingyan steadied the old man with her hands as she spoke to the crowd.
"Everyone, please rise! My grandfather, my father, and I were far too negligent. Until this very day, we had no idea the Bai kinsmen were treating human lives in Shanyang as less than grass, plundering the people, committing such outrages. But fear it no longer. If what you have told me is true, then I, Bai Jingyan, swear that this will not be allowed to stand."
The villagers exchanged wary glances. It was plain they did not quite believe her. They looked everywhere but at her, avoiding her eyes.
Bai Jingyan said nothing more, and bowed once more to the people of Shanyang.
* * *
The party left the village and arrived at the gates of the Heavenly Fragrance House before midday.
From within the upper story drifted the sound of a child sobbing, and the pleading voice of the establishment's mistress.
"I'll sign it! I'll sign it right now, young master! Only please, let my little one go! What crime has such a small child committed? I beg you, don't cut off his hand!"
Bai Jingyan's party found their way blocked by servants of the Shanyang Bai clan barring the entrance to the Heavenly Fragrance House. The servants spoke with unbearable arrogance.
"Make way for the Shanyang Bai clan! The young masters of the family are conducting an important transaction with the mistress of this house. All you riffraff, clear off!"
At a glance and a tilt of her elder sister's head, Bai Jinchi narrowed her eyes, snapped the servant's wrist in one motion, and kicked him sprawling. The Shanyang Bai servant dropped to his knees where he stood.
Before the other servants guarding the entrance could come swarming, Bai Jinchi drew the whip from her belt and swept into the Heavenly Fragrance House with the guards at her heels.
Wretched screams rang out from within, and every passerby stopped in their tracks, craning their necks to peer inside.
Before long, the Bai servants — and the young masters who had come to force the mistress into surrendering her establishment for nothing — were flung one by one out the doors of the Heavenly Fragrance House, their faces and bodies striped with welts.
Bai Qingjie, the patriarch's grandson, hauled himself up, whip still clutched in his hand, and bellowed at Bai Jinchi where she stood outside the gates.
"How dare you strike us! You've got gall, woman! Do you know who we are? I am the grandson of the Bai clan patriarch! And you dare raise a hand to me? I'll see you driven out of Shanyang City entirely!"
Bai Jinchi's eyes went cold. She swung the whip again, cracking it hard across his mouth. Blood spurted at once, and a thick reek of it filled Bai Qingjie's mouth. He clapped a hand over half his face in a panic — his teeth felt loose.
"That is your punishment for strutting about with neither law nor decency. The grandson of a mere clan patriarch — and what of it? Death, death, death — is that all you ever have to say?"
"You damned—"
Bai Qingjie spat out a mouthful of blood.
"Our Bai family is protected by the Zhenguo Commandery Princess! The Crown Prince's darling — the future empress!"
The whip came down harder. Bai Qingjie went sprawling to the ground.
"And that is your punishment for lording it over the name of the Bai family of Dadu while behaving worse than swine, for tormenting the common folk."
Before Bai Qingjie could even rise, the whip cracked down again, and he flattened himself against the earth.
"And this is for daring to spew filth from your mouth in front of my elder sister — for insulting the bond of lord and vassal between the Crown Prince and her."
The onlookers were struck dumb with awe. The Bais had run wild over Shanyang, men with neither law nor honor among them. Yet where had this woman descended from — some goddess of vengeance? She was actually laying her whip across members of the Bai clan!
Astonished as they were, the people were cheering inwardly.
Bai Qingjie glared with fury.
"A hundred taels of silver to whoever seizes these wretches today!"
"Go on, then — try it!"
Trembling with rage, Bai Jinchi lashed out with the whip like a woman possessed. Every crack of it through the air sent shivers down the crowd's spines.
The young masters who had followed the patriarch's grandson in extorting the Heavenly Fragrance House from its mistress free of charge felt something go wrong, and turned to look at the figure standing beneath the establishment's plaque. There, a woman stood with her back straight, sheltered by the guards and the whip-wielding girl.
She wore a simple white riding outfit, her hands clasped behind her back. Her features were so breathtaking they could steal a man's soul, yet her eyes were as calm and fathomless as a windless sea stretching ten thousand li. The moment their gazes met hers, their hearts clenched, their breath caught — as though some immense pressure had closed over them and would not let go.