Beyond Absolution
Immediately afterward, an elderly man, Old Gao, came hobbling in, a cane in one hand and a bundle of bamboo-slip ledgers clutched in the other. Behind him followed the clan steward, the official who managed the clan branch's accounts, shuffling and trembling as he trailed at the old man's back.
The moment the clan chief saw Steward Bai Yong of the clan branch and Old Gao appear together, a chill shot down his spine and his heart plummeted.
"Eldest Commandery Princess, Fourth Commandery Princess."
Old Gao bowed to Bai Jingyan and Bai Jinchi.
"Together with Steward Bai Yong, who oversees the assets left by our ancestors, I have compared, item by item, the ledger detailing the silver sent from the Dadu Bai family, the imperial rewards, and the lands and shops purchased on behalf of the clan branch."
The clan chief, already worn hollow from standing all day, staggered under the shock.
"Grandfather!"
Bai Jingping lunged forward to steady him, and very nearly toppled to the ground along with the old man.
The clan chief clutched his grandson's hand tightly. He had finally understood—Bai Jingyan's arrow had, in the end, been aimed at him all along.
"These ledgers record silver that vanished without ever appearing in the ancestral assets, as well as the gifts His Majesty bestowed and sent from Dadu. The lands and shops granted to the clan branch don't match the amounts our Dadu Bai family was asked to pay at the time, either! And the accounts for these charitable lands and shops don't balance at all!
Every year, the clan chief went weeping to the Zhenguo King, complaining that the silver was not enough. There were clansmen struggling in poverty, he said—please, send help. Hearing of the branch's hardships, the Zhenguo King ordered silver sent to the clansmen. Yet not one of those sums was ever entered into the clan branch's ledgers."
Chun Tao took the bamboo slips from Old Gao's hands and passed them to Bai Jingyan.
Eyes blazing, Old Gao fixed his gaze on the clan chief and pressed on in a ringing voice.
"Every single item the Dadu Bai family sent to the clan branch was received by the clan chief himself and his son Bai Qiyun. In the name of showing proper respect, they said. And every time I asked to have the steward audit the ledgers against the records, the clan chief would demand before the Zhenguo King whether I did not trust him, and the matter was always brushed aside. So this is why, is it? Because he was busy with such filthy schemes."
The truth was that the Zhenguo King had long known the clan chief was pocketing the silver. But believing that an elder ought, at times, to turn a blind eye to the failings of his juniors, he had let it pass every year. He had never imagined his indulgence would breed a result like this.
Bai Jingping could scarcely contain his astonishment. His grandfather—swallowing even the silver the Bai family had sent?
Of course, Bai Jingping had never been in a position to understand how the family's affairs actually ran. He had lived his whole life on the receiving end of handouts.
Bai Jingyan skimmed the bamboo slips briefly, then passed them to the guard standing beside her and spoke without a flicker of expression.
"Show them to the other elders as well."
The guard answered, then carried the ledgers over to the handful of elders who remained. The men snatched up the bamboo slips and hastily unrolled them.
One slip listed the total sum the Dadu Bai family had sent to the clan branch each year in recent years. Directly beneath it was the total the clan had actually received. Set side by side, the discrepancy was staggering. The clan chief had skimmed an ever-growing share into his own pockets, until at last he was taking more than half.
Another slip was a ledger of the Emperor's bestowed gifts. Yet the items the clan chief had surrendered amounted to only a fraction of what was listed.
The more the elders read, the hotter their fury burned. These things belonged to the clan by right—and he had meant to devour them all under the pretext of being clan chief!
"Not long ago, I heard that Bai Qiyun's wife was to take Bai Jingjie in her arms and go to Prefect Zhu, begging him to release the prisoners. I found it strange at the time. But now I see it—the clan chief's coffers are full, that's all!
The honor of the Bai clan was won with the lives of the men of the Dadu Bai family. And this clan chief takes the silver that Dadu Bai sent home and stuffs it into his own purse! Your descendants have already besmirched the Bai name by tormenting the common folk—is that not enough, that you now use the silver our men traded their lives for to shelter and aid such offspring? Did you cast your conscience away entirely? What shameless ingratitude!"
"You deceived all these people and embezzled all that silver—and then lived so brazenly, playing the devoted patriarch who'd staked everything for the sake of the clan? What a remarkable clan chief you are! No wonder your children turned out as they did. As the old saying goes, only when the water upstream runs clear does the water downstream run clear!"
The most aged of the elders sneered, recalling the clan chief's origins.
"Being born of a concubine is no fault of his, of course! But even registered under his legitimate mother's name, that filthy nature he was born with never changed. A man with no sense of shame!
The previous clan chief indulged in his petty self-interest too, but he kept the line. This one, though, takes after his concubine mother exactly—always grasping whatever he can for his own house! Even the way he stretches out his hand in broad daylight and then has the gall to insist the deed isn't his—it's her all over again!"
Bai Jingyan glanced out of the corner of her eye at Shen Qingzhu, who stood by the entrance, and gave a slight nod.
Shen Qingzhu returned a fist-and-palm salute and departed swiftly.
The clan chief strove with all his might to compose himself, but the hand gripping Bai Jingping's was trembling uncontrollably.
"This matter has nothing to do with me! I knew nothing of it! Brother—you may discipline me, as my elder brother, and I will never once blame or resent you for it! But my father is no longer of this world, and above all, he was your elder! So mind your words!"
All this while, the clan chief had never involved himself directly in the silver that passed between the clan branch and the Bai family, leaving it all to Bai Qiyun. And since Bai Qiyun had already been expelled from the clan, his prospects of succeeding the clan chiefship were dead. The more that was true, the more the clan chief could not afford to step down. Only by clinging to his seat could he protect his son. If he lost his standing altogether, there would be nothing left to shield his son and grandson with.
Gritting his teeth, the clan chief spoke as if making a great resolve.
"The exchange of silver has been Qiyun's responsibility all along. He is, after all, the one meant to inherit the clan chiefship—I had much to teach him of such matters! Your Highness, Prefect Zhu—why not summon Qiyun and hear what he has to say? He is my son. Whatever else may be said of him, he would never have coveted the silver the Dadu Bai family sent to the clan branch, nor the goods His Majesty bestowed."
He knew that flatly declaring it his son's doing would only deepen his own predicament, so he had to appear all the more eager to see the matter investigated.
Scarcely had the clan chief finished speaking when his wife came hobbling in, cane in hand, weeping and wailing.
"Bai Jingyan's guards brought the Crown Prince's guard troops and stormed into our home! They opened the storehouse and, like a band of thieves, hauled out all our possessions! What in the world is the meaning of all this?"
For a moment, the clan chief could not breathe.
Even then, Shen Qingzhu was leading the Crown Prince's guards slowly into the courtyard, carrying jewels and pearls, jade, the goods the Emperor had bestowed in years past, tribute, leathers, and silks—while the common folk looked on from every side.
Night's curtain had fallen, but the roaring bonfires lit the area around the Bai ancestral shrine as bright as day.
When the onlookers saw those dazzling jewels and corals carried in without even a cloth thrown over them, their eyes stung with avarice and outrage—and inwardly, they heaped curses upon the clan chief who had taken so much.
The clansmen who remained in the courtyard bristled as well. They felt as though they could flay the skin from the clan chief's back then and there.
One of the older elders let out a cold laugh.
"You said you knew nothing of this, clan chief? Goods like these come out of your storehouse, and still you plead ignorance? You're not blind."
The clan chief's wife, utterly lost as to what was happening, lifted her head and stared blankly at her husband.
White-faced, the clan chief looked at Bai Jingyan. At last, he understood everything. Bai Jingyan had come with every piece already in place. She did not merely mean to cast out the children who had caused the trouble, along with Bai Qiyun—she meant to purge the entire clan branch, and to cast out the clan chief with them.
Shen Qingzhu returned carrying the bamboo slips and offered a fist-and-palm salute to Bai Jingyan.
"Your Highness, following the ledgers Old Gao and the clan steward reconciled, we searched the clan chief's storehouse and found the goods that were never recorded in the accounts. Most of them are tribute items, so they were not difficult to identify. The ones we could not locate are marked in red—please review them."
With that, Shen Qingzhu placed the bamboo slips on the table set beside Bai Jingyan and turned her gaze on the clan chief's wife, who stood wringing her hands in anguish.
"When we were moving the goods, the clan chief's wife tried to bar us and ordered us not to touch them, so my men had no choice but to restrain her. I ask that you overlook this."
Bai Jingyan did not unroll the slips. Instead, she tapped the table lightly with one finger.
"Clan chief... you have betrayed my grandfather's trust."
The clan chief stood rooted in place, silent for a long while. Now that the goods had been found in his own storehouse, any defense he offered would only be one more excuse. After a long silence, he finally spoke.
"I never imagined Qiyun would commit such a wicked thing against the clan branch. As his father... I too bear responsibility, and so I will gladly step down from the clan chiefship."
In the end, the clan chief had chosen to abandon his son—and to wash his own hands of the affair entirely.
Bai Jinchi unrolled one of the bamboo slips, read it, then sneered and slammed it down onto the table.
"I see you think that stepping down as clan chief will make this whole matter go away—but everything here consists of items bestowed by His Majesty himself. If these were merely gifts from the Dadu Bai family to the clan branch, there'd be no problem. But if goods bestowed by His Majesty were lost or given away by the clan branch, that is a crime of defiling the dragon's countenance. Should His Majesty take offense... it won't just be your eldest son in danger—it's execution for the whole family, nine generations of kin and all. Must we all lay down our lives for the greed of one clan chief's son?"
Prefect Zhu, sharp-eyed as ever, chimed in at precisely the right moment.
"Precisely. Goods bestowed by His Majesty are meant to be kept with the utmost care. To lose them, give them away, or let them be damaged is nothing short of lèse-majesté. Sending the goods from the Dadu Bai family to the clan branch for safekeeping was a reasonable arrangement—but if Bai Qiyun has turned His Majesty's gifts into his own private property, that alone warrants execution! And if those items cannot be recovered, I will have no choice but to submit a memorial to the throne. I beg Your Highness will forgive my bluntness on that point."
"No—!"
At those words, the strength drained from the clan chief's wife's legs. Could her son's life truly be at stake? She had smuggled quite a number of rare treasures to her own family over the years—and her younger brother was not a man who would ever give anything back.
The remaining clansmen, hearing all this, were thunderstruck, and descended upon the clan chief with their accusations. Sharp-tongued recriminations—some bordering on the vulgar—filled the air.
Then Bai Jinchi sneered once more.
"Not long ago, Bai Qiyun came to our Dadu Bai family asking for money, and we scraped together every asset we had and handed over more than four hundred thousand taels of silver to the clan branch. Don't tell me he swallowed that too? Because that vast sum—hundreds of thousands of taels—has vanished without a trace, and not a soul knows where it went!"
At that, the fury of the clan branch boiled over. Their treatment of the clan chief's household turned rougher by the moment, and they disgorged every grievance they had long nursed, cursing without restraint.
The courtyard before the ancestral shrine churned with uproar, and the clansmen's emotions climbed ever higher. Night had settled in completely; a chill wind rose, and a fine drizzle began to fall. But the wrath of the Bai clan burned like flame, showing no sign of dying down.