The little princess was torn, and the demon emperor patched her up

Chapter 43: The Peddler Can Do the Job of a Police Dog

Facing Xiao Qian's questioning, Shang Bingjiu said, "I picked it up in the mountains."

"You picked it up in the mountains?"

Xiao Qian's voice was trembling with grief, and the sadness in his eyes was even deeper.

My younger sister died in a miserable way. I heard that she was skinned and dismembered by those evil people.

Qiu Ren stated in his memorial to the court that he had buried his younger sister. So it turned out that they did not bury her properly at all?
Poor little sister...

Xiao Qian closed his eyes, feeling overwhelmed with grief. "I wanted to go to Yejing with Master Shang and Miss Xiao, but I'm afraid we can't go together. After returning to the county government, please ask Master Shang to draw a map of the Julu Mountains and tell me the exact whereabouts of my younger sister's body. I want to take my younger sister home."

Shang Bingjiu looked at him.

After a moment, he retracted his gaze and pointed to the cherry field in the distance with a smile: "We're here."

Xiao Qian took a deep breath and forced himself to forget the sadness temporarily.

He recalled the files in the county government office: "Two farmhouses next to the cherry field housed Granny Liu's two sons. Across a stream and a wooden bridge was a thatched house, where Granny Liu lived."

"This thatched hut..." Yaoyao wrinkled her nose in disdain, "It's too shabby, isn't it?! She obviously has two sons, why does she still have to live in such a shabby house?"

Everyone stepped into the thatched hut. The room was very dark and the only furniture was an old bed and an old chair.

Xiao Qian touched the chair and said, "There is still a little red paint on the back of the chair. This bed and chair should have been her dowry. After the family split up, they were moved into this thatched house."

"There's still a little soup in the pot!" Xiao Baojing spotted a dark iron pot on the stove by the window and sniffed it. "Before the accident, it seemed that grandma was stewing chicken soup, but there was only vegetarian pasta in her stomach, no chicken. In other words, she didn't touch the chicken soup, but ate the buns or dumplings given by others, and then she was poisoned and died."

She rubbed her nose and pulled the wine over uncertainly: "It smells like chicken soup, peddler, can you smell it?"

Yaoyao said proudly: "Master has the most sensitive nose, he can smell it out at once!"

Being stared at expectantly by the three people in the room, Shang Bingjiu: “…”

Is that what his sense of smell is used for?
With his sharp teeth pressed against his thin lips, he said lazily, "It's chicken soup, a thick soup made from a whole old hen. It was made yesterday evening."

"Wow, you can even smell the concentration of chicken soup and when it was stewed?"

Xiao Baojing looked admiring.

If the peddler lived in her world, he could do the work of a police dog!
Shang Bingjiu stared at her unkindly, suspecting that she had no good intentions.

There are bowls and chopsticks next to the stove.

Xiao Qian's eyes were sharp as he picked up one of the soup bowls. "The soup bowl is old, and there is a "囍" character printed on the bottom of the bowl. It should also be Granny Liu's dowry. My Crown Princess once said that when ordinary women get married, most of the soup bowls they bring as dowry are in pairs, but there is only one soup bowl here. Where is the other one?"

Xiao Baojing's eyes lit up. "If it wasn't broken, then there was another one. It's very likely that Granny Liu used it to make chicken soup and gave it to someone! Granny Liu might have eaten the poisoned noodles at that person's house when she was delivering the chicken soup!"

Yaoyao said in a crisp voice: "So, the person who eats this pot of chicken soup is the murderer of mother-in-law!"

For whom would an elderly grandmother, living in this remote suburb, make chicken soup?

The answer is self-evident.

Yaoyao found an old soup bowl with the word "囍" printed on it from Granny Liu's eldest son's house.

Xiao Qian immediately ordered someone to invite the county magistrate to re-examine the case.

Xiao Baojing was eavesdropping nearby and only then did he know the details of what had happened.

It turned out that the two pairs of sons and daughters-in-law were jealous of Granny Liu's money and cherry fields, so they decided to kill her and take back all the money and cherry fields. They sent their daughters-in-law to deliberately show their goodwill, saying that they had made delicious buns and invited Granny Liu to their house for dinner.

Granny Liu hadn't eaten at her son's house for many years. She was so happy that she bought an old hen at the market, thinking of stewing it into soup for her children to nourish their bodies. She happily brought the chicken soup to her son's house.

Unexpectedly, the bun handed over by his son was mixed with a large amount of rat poison.

They dug a hole in the cherry field, intending to bury Granny Liu in it without anyone noticing and slowly cover up the matter. However, someone dug up the hole in the middle of the night and stole Granny Liu's body!

The one who stole Granny Liu's body was the cherry tree spirit.

The pink-dressed girl wiped her tears and stood by the edge of the field: "Mother-in-law... When mother-in-law married here, I couldn't transform yet. She watered and fertilized me every day and caught insects for me. She was still very young at that time, and she and her husband were very loving. Later, her husband died of illness, and her life gradually became very difficult. She could only eat one meal a day. Some people saw that she was young and wanted to arrange a matchmaking for her to remarry, but she refused because she was afraid that her stepfather would mistreat her two sons.

"I... I watched her grow old day by day, and her son and daughter-in-law wanted to separate from her. When she first got married, her dowry was a chair and a bed, painted red and beautiful! But later the red paint on the chair and bed disappeared, and they looked gray, along with the old bowls and plates with red "囍" characters printed on them when she got married. They were thrown out at the door by her son and daughter-in-law as garbage, and then she picked them up one by one and brought them back to the thatched cottage."

She recounted the story of Granny Liu's past, and most of the people present looked distressed.

Granny Liu's son and daughter-in-law knelt on the ground, crying bitterly out of shame or fear.

Xiao Qian's face was cold and solemn. "Zhang Ping'an, Zhang Fugui, you disrespect your mother and poison your loved ones. You are unworthy of being sons! I sentence you two to be beheaded in public at noon tomorrow! Ma Pei'er, Zheng Chunhua, you are wives but you don't know how to persuade your husbands. You help the tyrant to commit atrocities and are unkind and unfilial. I sentence each of you to be beaten with a stick 30 times to set an example!"

He looked around at the people around him and said, "Since ancient times, filial piety has been the most important virtue. Even animals have lambs kneeling to suckle their mothers and crows feeding their parents. How can humans be more so? If you don't care about your parents, how can you have benevolence and righteousness? I will write a memorial to the emperor. If parents fulfill their parental obligations and their children abandon their parents, they will be punished with caning or forced labor, depending on the severity of the case. Neighbors, you should supervise each other!"

Xiao Baojing looked at him adoringly.

The prince is a righteous man, and he doesn't look like someone who would team up with his sister to murder the ninth princess.

So he shouldn't know that the Fourth Princess secretly killed the Ninth Princess, right?
It was almost dusk and the setting sun was blood-red.

Xiao Baojing stood on the ridge of the field and watched the little girl in pink bury Granny Liu in the cherry field.

The little girl lay on the grave and cried: "It's all my fault. If I hadn't been so smart as to give you money, you wouldn't have died..."

Yaoyao comforted her: "It's not your fault, it's all the bad guys' fault! Here, I'll give you a red egg, don't cry!"

The little girl wiped her tears and muttered: "You are so stupid, red eggs are only eaten when there is a happy event..."

The wind blows across the land, and the stream gurgles.

Xiao Baojing vaguely saw that Granny Liu seemed to have turned into a young bride, with a red velvet flower in her temples, plump and rosy cheeks, and she was walking across the wooden bridge with a basket of cherries, happily returning to her parents' home.

She is someone else's mother, but she also has her own mother.

She is going to find her own mother.

Xiao Baojing couldn't help but think, who said there is no happy event?

...

Because Xiao Baojing and Shang Bingjiu will leave for Yejing tomorrow, and Xiao Qian will go south to Julu County, so they got together at night and had a farewell dinner in the yard.

In addition to the wine and food sent by the county magistrate, Shang Bingjiu also took out cherries and wine from Xiao Baojing's bag and placed them on the Eight Immortals Table.

"You are eating things that are offered to the gods," Xiao Baojing reminded calmly, "Offerings have their own rules and taboos. Aren't you afraid of shortening your life?"

　Thank you for the tip from Green Rain 15! Thank you for your votes, good night.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)