tallest building

Chapter 237 The truth is revealed

As soon as Gong Chang'an said this, the crowd immediately quieted down, and the shopkeeper stopped crying.

His words were very clear: this insect truly recognizes the aura of a thief. It doesn't necessarily mean that whoever has the lost item is the thief.

It can only recognize the person who actually stole the goods, so the person who moved the stolen goods also cannot escape.

The waiter wiped his face and said, "If that's the case, then that's great."

“But if you are the real culprit, then the insects won’t go after anyone else,” Gong Chang’an said. “So you must tell the truth.”

“I’m telling the truth. I’ve been wronged. The shopkeeper and the clerk can testify for me. I never went into the shop,” the clerk said, sticking out his neck.

“That’s right, that’s right, he definitely didn’t come in,” the shopkeeper testified.

“In that case, you must all remember who was in the shop when the beads were stolen. Just call out those people separately.” Gong Chang’an further reduced the number of people.

There were about twenty people in the shop at the time, and each employee had their own customers to look after, so they wouldn't make a mistake.

After the twenty-odd people stepped forward, Gong Chang'an said, "I'll give them one last chance. Whoever stole the beads should come forward and confess as soon as possible. Suo Zhen will definitely find the real culprit. It's already unavoidable to be embarrassed. Do you really want to risk your life?"

A gust of autumn wind blew by, scattering a few yellow leaves.

Everyone felt a chill.

With a thud, someone knelt down.

"It was me! I was blinded by greed!" The person who knelt on the ground covered his face and wept bitterly.

It was none other than the guy who had been whipped by that barbarian girl earlier.

"What? Feng Liu! It's you! You've been a regular at the shop for a long time, how could you do something like this?!" The shopkeeper was so angry he jumped up and down.

"Shopkeeper, I'm not human!" Feng Liu covered his face with his hands and refused to take them away. "I'm not human! I'm really desperate... My father owes gambling debts... He's going to... He's going to sell my twelve-year-old sister to... to some dirty place... I can't... I can't..."

"Oh dear! You must have done something terrible in your past life to end up with such a father." The shopkeeper went up and punched Feng Liu a few times, but his heartache outweighed his anger.

Feng Liu's father was a gambler, and the shopkeeper and employees all knew about it. But Feng Liu was a filial son and never spoke ill of his father.

So the people in the shop didn't know the truth about how outrageous his father was or how unbearable things were at home.

It was through Feng Liu's words that I learned that his father owed the gambling den more than two hundred taels of silver and was actually thinking of selling his own daughter to a brothel to pay off his gambling debts.

Feng Liu was just a shop assistant; he simply couldn't afford those two hundred taels of silver.

As the saying goes, poverty breeds cunning, and seeing the cabinet full of gold and silver jewelry, he couldn't help but have thieving thoughts.

If he wanted to steal from his own comrades, he needed someone to take the blame, so he chose these two barbarian women.

They were foreigners, so they must have been unfamiliar with the capital city and had plenty of money. They would have accepted the loss if they had suffered a loss.

Even if they can't find anything on them, they can still falsely claim that they handed the stolen goods over to their accomplices outside the store and that the stolen goods have already been taken away.

If things get complicated, they'll probably just pay to avoid further trouble and settle things peacefully. The shop, having received compensation, won't pursue the matter any further, since the string of beads isn't some rare treasure, worth at most three hundred taels of silver.

Unexpectedly, this barbarian girl, though young, was surprisingly tough.

Not only did she deny stealing, she also whipped herself, making it impossible for her to escape for the time being.

Feng Liu originally planned to hide the items when he had a spare moment, and then resell them after things had calmed down.

However, they found it difficult to escape, and then Gong Chang'an and others happened to come and help them.

Gong Chang'an's brightly colored bee actually managed to find the thief.

It is also extremely poisonous; one bite can kill a person.

Feng Liu was naturally terrified, and took advantage of the chaos to secretly stuff the string of beads into the arms of the silk shop assistant, thinking that he could escape unscathed.

But then Gong Chang'an said that the insect could detect the smell of thieves, not just the smell of objects, and he knew that he couldn't escape no matter what.

"Even if you were forced into what happened before and there were reasons for it, when you transferred the stolen goods later, didn't you think that the guy might lose his life because of your framing?" Gong Chang'an didn't have much sympathy for Feng Liu.

“I…I know I shouldn’t have done that, but I was trying to protect myself…” Feng Liu lowered his head, his clothes were torn by the whip, and the tattered cloth shivered in the autumn wind, just like his current predicament.

"Zhuolahan!" A call with a heavy accent cut through the crowd, followed by a burly foreign youth rushing over.

"Brother!" The barbarian girl laughed, jumped up and hugged the boy's neck. "You're too late! You missed the show."

Then she started talking to the boy in a foreign language, using a combination of words and gestures, clearly describing what had just happened.

"You're the shopkeeper?" After hearing his sister's words, the young man strode up to the shopkeeper and lifted him up with one hand. "You dare to falsely accuse my sister and even search her body?!"

"No, no... this foreign... young master... this is all a misunderstanding, a misunderstanding..." The shopkeeper was so frightened that he couldn't speak coherently. Although the other party was not old, he was burly and taller than him by two heads.

Looking at his attire—a string of large turquoise and yellow jade beads, a blood jade thumb ring, and a gold-inlaid knife—he was followed by several burly men carrying knives, clearly indicating he was someone of considerable importance.

The shopkeeper, with a forced smile, kept begging for mercy. The young man snorted and released his grip, causing the shopkeeper to fall to the ground.

"You guys, take care of the business here." With a wave of his hand, the boy's burly companions came over and blocked the shop door.

For the next few days, they didn't go anywhere. As long as the store was open, they would stand in front of it and see who would dare to come in and buy anything.

“And you thief,” the boy lifted Feng Liu up again with one hand, “if we were on the grasslands, we’d cut your heart out and see if it had black hair. This isn’t the grasslands, but I still won’t let you go. Mr. Jia, you’re Han Chinese, so this man is your responsibility.”

He was accompanied by a middle-aged man who looked Han Chinese, wearing a bamboo-green robe, and was thin and refined.

"Yes, yes, I will take him to the authorities later," Mr. Jia replied.

"You're a good person." The young man finally stood before Gong Chang'an. "You protected my sister, so you're my friend now. This is for you!"

As he spoke, the young man took off his gold-inlaid sword and slammed it heavily onto Gong Chang'an's hand.