Bold Measures
"Zhenguo Commandery Princess, everything the elder said is true. But at the time, I never joined hands with the Fifth Master willingly. The Fifth Master of the Bai clan threatened me with the lives of my wife and son……"
Rolling his eyes, Magistrate Zhou heaped yet another crime upon the Fifth Master's head.
"The Fifth Master of the Bai clan held my wife's and my son's lives over me. What choice did I have but to obey?"
Having said this much, Magistrate Zhou suddenly began to sob aloud.
"As an official of Suyang, I should have protected the people. Instead, I abandoned that duty for the sake of my own wife and child. I am a sinner before the people of Suyang."
"What nonsense is this?"
The Fifth Master was so furious his mouth twisted out of shape.
"When did I ever threaten you with your family's lives? You're the one who came sidling up to me first, trying to win my favor——"
The clan chief pressed down hard on the Fifth Master's hand, and he could not continue. Choking back his burning rage, he clenched his jaw and glared at Magistrate Zhou.
"Commandery Princess, just look at the state of him. I knew the Fifth Master would never admit to anything. He'll deny buying that mansion with the hot springs for a mere five taels of silver to the very end — after driving this elder's son to his death, no less!"
Magistrate Zhou turned his head toward the old man who had come to make the accusation and asked, "Isn't that so, Elder?"
The old man had no idea why Magistrate Zhou had suddenly turned on the Bai clan's Fifth Master, but sensing that the man was serving as a witness on his behalf, he nodded again and again.
"Magistrate Zhou speaks the truth."
Bai Jingyan arched a brow. This Magistrate Zhou was slicking his words over like a cunning old serpent — and every time, he had slithered neatly out of the affair.
"Magistrate Zhou, you were indeed threatened with the lives of your wife and child, though it is true that you failed in your duty as an official. However, today is the day the Bai clan's ancestral hall is opened to pass judgment on the clan kin. Once the matter of the Bai kin is settled, you will submit a confession of your crimes yourself. If you do not, I will write one for you and submit it in your stead. Do you understand?"
Bai Jingyan spoke with unhurried ease as she regarded Magistrate Zhou.
"I shall bear it in mind, Commandery Princess. Have no fear! I can testify as a witness to nearly everything the Bai clan kin have done — all the crimes they committed flaunting the power of the Dadu Bais. I promise you, they will not be punished lightly."
Magistrate Zhou looked so upright and forthright that even Bai Jinchi found herself believing him.
"Send someone to fetch the land deed and house deed for the hot spring mansion," the clan chief said to the Fifth Master.
At the news that he would have to give up the mansion with its hot springs, the Fifth Master felt as though his chest were being torn apart. He furrowed his brow and said nothing, feigning ignorance with all his might.
"Now!" the clan chief barked.
With Bai Jingyan having drawn her blade against the clan chief's own younger brother, there was no choice but to comply. The clan elders one and all turned to their children and ordered them to hurry and return whatever they had taken from others — and if the item had been given away or could not be brought back, to pay its worth in silver.
Seeing Bai Jingyan's momentum, it was clear that unless proper restitution was made today, this matter would never end.
The Bai kin who had run rampant through Suyang committing every manner of outrage were now all deep in their cups of misery.
Only those kin who had quietly tended their own households and lived blameless lives stood tall.
Magistrate Zhou had kept a careful record all along of what the Bai kin had forcibly seized from which households, and which household's members they had driven to their deaths, which made the business of settling accounts considerably easier.
By the time the mountain of crimes the kin had committed was fully dealt with, darkness had already fallen. Yet not one of the commoners standing outside the Bai clan's ancestral hall made any move to leave.
Inside the hall's courtyard, the lanterns burned bright.
Bai Jingyan rose slowly from her chair and spoke.
"The ancestral teaching of the Bai family puts loyalty and righteousness first, and personal glory and even life second. That teaching still hangs in the great hall of this ancestral shrine. 'If you are a descendant of the Bai clan, regard the people as your own flesh and blood, serve the realm with talent and skill, and protect the common folk!' When His late Majesty granted our family the title of Duke of Zhenguo, our ancestors laid down this commandment for the Bai descendants."
"Look around you once more. Reflect on what you have done here in Suyang. You abducted common women, seized other people's mansions and shops, took human lives — committed every evil that could be committed, did you not? These deeds are a disgrace even to the Bai ancestors, a stain upon the Bai family's honor. Such men have no right to call themselves descendants of the Bai clan!"
"Restitution has been made — but as Bai descendants, you must also answer to family law and clan rules. Clan chief, give your orders for how they are to be dealt with."
Bai Jingyan turned her head to look at the clan chief.
In the flickering candlelight, Bai Jingyan's eyes concealed a razor's edge somewhere deep within them.
The clan chief, who had been standing there all day long, was utterly spent. He gripped his cane tightly.
The Bai family's law and clan rules were far harsher than the statutes of Great Jin. If every last kinsman were punished according to family law, not a single one of them would survive the rod.
Never mind the others — his own son, his grandsons, even his younger brother. The crimes they had piled up were so many that under family law, they might well be beaten to death beneath the rod.
When the clan chief hesitated, Bai Jingyan turned her head away and gave the order to light the torches.
"Jinchi! Prepare the rod and the whip!"
At Bai Jingyan's words, the clan chief's chest tightened. He shut his eyes firmly, then opened them again and spoke.
"They have committed every sin imaginable — they are unworthy of being Bai descendants. What if we cast them out of the clan and let Magistrate Zhou pass judgment on them instead?"
The clan chief asked it tentatively, probing.
So long as the family law was not carried out — so long as they could live — he could think of another way after Bai Jingyan returned to the capital. He would spend silver to protect his grandsons and his son, and if possible, naturally his brother's family as well.
"Father!"
Bai Qiyun dropped to his knees before the clan chief.
"Father, I am your own son — the future head of this clan. Father, you must not cast me out of the clan."
"Brother! Are you in your right mind?"
The Fifth Master's eyes went round with shock.
"I'm your own flesh and blood brother!"
"Clan chief, you cannot do this. You absolutely cannot cast us out of the clan!"
The kin fell to their knees, weeping and wailing. But the clan chief did not waver in the slightest.
"When you committed your crimes, did you not know that a day like today would come?"
Bai Jingping looked with cold eyes at the kneeling men begging with hands and feet for mercy. Then he lifted his head slightly and, ever so discreetly, shook his head toward his father, Bai Qihua.
His father had warned the clan chief again and again that the kin would come to exactly this end. But each time, the old patriarch had punished his father for his insolence, until Bai Qihua, worn down, gave up his persuading and shut himself away at home, burying himself day after day in old manuscripts and rare volumes.
Through the six great doors of the Bai clan's ancestral hall, the wailing of the Bai kin rang out from within — while from without rose the sound of the common people's long-choked hearts finally bursting open.
Watching his son beg so piteously, his face white with terror, the clan chief steeled his heart and shook off the hand of the boy clinging to his hem. Then he declared in a great voice:
"I am the head of the Bai clan. If I did not know, that would be one thing — but now that I know the truth, I can never again stand by and watch you torment the common folk under the Bai family's name. I cannot let those who defiled a hundred years of Bai honor simply be let be."
At the sight of the clan chief forsaking even his own son, the kin were thrown into still deeper shock.
"Enough, all of you! The clan chief is too busy currying favor with the Zhenguo Commandery Princess to spare us a thought — does he care whether we live or die? He'd cast out his own son and his own brother, so what are the rest of us to him!"
One of the kneeling suppliants spat out the words.
Those of the clan whose hearts were already filled with bitterness — already resentful at being cast out — shouted as though they had finally found an outlet for their fury. The Fifth Master cursed his elder brother. They had come from the same mother's womb, and yet he would cast him out of the clan.
Leaning on his son's arm, the Fifth Master rose to his feet, glared at the clan chief with reddened eyes, and cried out:
"We only did whatever the blood urged us to do! Back then, no one told us we were doing wrong — and now you want to cast us out of the clan! What is the meaning of all this, Clan Chief? No — brother!"
The clan chief looked at his brother, who could not read the room at all, with cold, dark eyes. This whole affair had begun the day the Fifth Master seized the ancestral mansion by force. Had it not been for that, the kin would never have been driven into such a corner.
Worse — if this were settled by family law or clan rules, that wretch would most likely lose his head.
But he could hardly say so outright. These fools never thought that far ahead, and were raising this whole uproar all the same. They didn't even know that facing family law meant losing their lives — and now, incapable of grasping their own position, they had the gall to stand there stupidly blaming everyone but themselves.
"If the decision is made, then give your orders."
Bai Qiyun had crawled forward on his knees, about to plead for leniency, when Bai Jingyan's voice rang out.
"Stop those people. Zhan Yu, help Magistrate Zhou, so that those the clan chief has struck from the register may be handed over to His Highness the Crown Prince's custody."
Zhan Yu and Magistrate Zhou answered in urgent haste.
"Have no fear, Commandery Princess. We will see this handled with perfect fairness."
The clan chief lifted his brush. Listening to his son's despairing sobs, he began, one by one, to strike through the names of the guilty. Each time the clan chief crossed out a name, the Crown Prince's guard and pages dragged the struck-off man outside — and for anyone who did not emerge from the hall, they went in to seize him themselves.
The kinsmen who had once filled the great courtyard of the ancestral hall dwindled to a bare handful.
Only four elders remained, each standing with their own children at their sides, backs held rigidly straight. Having never done wrong, they looked more upright than ever — and their hearts, if anything, felt relieved. They even thought themselves fortunate indeed that their sons had never tormented the common folk.
Bai Jingping swept his gaze over the few kinsmen left in the courtyard, then turned his eyes back to Bai Jingyan. His chest swelled with reverence.
Only by such bold measures — by pulling the rotten teeth from the clan — could the remaining kin learn what fear was. Only then could the Bai clan be made clean.
In truth, Bai Jingyan, as the Zhenguo Commandery Princess, had no need to go to such lengths. Simply expelling them from the clan outright would have been cleaner and far less laborious.
Yet Bai Jingyan had not done so. Bai Jingping was deeply grateful to her for refusing to abandon the clan.
The clan chief set down his brush with a trembling hand. Unable to smother the fury blazing within him, he demanded of Bai Jingyan in a loud voice:
"Commandery Princess — is that enough for you now?"
Without so much as a word in reply, Bai Jingyan turned her head and asked the Bai household guard:
"Has that old man arrived?"
Now it was not only the clan chief — even the remaining elders felt the strength drain from both their legs. It wasn't over yet? There was still more to be done?
"Commandery Princess, the old man has been waiting outside for quite some time."
A Bai household guard stepped forward and bowed.
"Show him in."
Lifting her teacup, Bai Jingyan gave the order in a voice light as a sigh.