092 The Secret Behind the Outrageous Streak

Chapter Title: 092 The Secret Behind Her Excessive Temper

Shi Bilian froze at first, then flung aside her teacup and reached out as though to strike Fang Rulai. Fang Rulai moved faster than she did, slapping one hand against a spot on the carriage wall behind her. With a sharp click, a cicada-wing-thin throwing knife sprang out and hurtled straight toward Shi Bilian’s face.

It was too close, too fast, too unexpected. Shi Bilian could only barely dodge the fatal point in time; the blade skimmed past her brow.

A thin line of blood burst with a hiss onto the white curtain beside them.

White as snow, red as blood, shocking to the eye.

Cold sweat broke out all over Shi Bilian’s body. She truly had meant to kill her. If her own reflexes had not been fairly quick, that knife would have struck dead center in her forehead.

Fang Rulai smiled faintly. Did she think that when she acted in self-defense, she would still be so saintly as to spare the enemy’s life?

Hanxia’s voice came in time from beyond the curtain. “Master?”

Shi Bilian’s nerves tightened instinctively. If the woman across from her called someone in again, then her life...

Fang Rulai saw the fear in her eyes, but only said, “It’s fine. Go rest. I imagine Miss Shi is too tired to lift a hand anymore.”

“Yes.” Hanxia answered and withdrew.

Fang Rulai poured another bowl of tea and handed it over. “I don’t mind if you try again.”

As though she truly believed that because she had no martial skill, she could easily be subdued.

But this time Shi Bilian did not take the tea. Instead, she dropped to her knees with a thud. “Please, miss, save Stone Family Village!”

“Hey, don’t kneel. I’m not a savior, and I’m not capable of that.”

“You really found out that our village was using its own people to pose as bandits and highwaymen?”

“It wasn’t me who found out; it was that fool Guan who told me just now.” Fang Rulai used Guan Shiyin as a shield. The matter of her own abilities remained an untouchable taboo.

“If you already know, why ask me?”

“To be frank, I only know the outline. The particulars, the causes and consequences, are too long ago to trace.”

“I can tell you every detail truthfully.”

“On the condition that I promise to save Stone Family Village?”

“Yes.”

“Then don’t say it.” Fang Rulai leaned lazily against the cushion. “I was only unable to sleep and happened to grow a little curious about your village’s secrets. It’s not as though I must know.”

“You’re not worried that these secrets might become a future threat to the salt route, a hidden danger?”

“You think your village has that kind of power?” Fang Rulai’s gaze swept over the blood at her brow. “The reason I haven’t exposed you is that you haven’t yet affected the overall situation of the salt route. You’re not worth the government sending troops over such a small matter. But once you make even the slightest move, hm hm...”

She put on a show of threat, hoping Shi Bilian would be unable to bear it and reveal everything on her own.

But Shi Bilian was not one to be easily intimidated.

She lowered her head in silence for a moment, then looked up. “What if that movement could indirectly affect the Second Prince’s great cause?”

What?

Fang Rulai sat up abruptly. She hadn’t heard a single word from that sword about anything involving the royal family.

“You think my village secretly stealing from itself is about what?” Shi Bilian asked again.

Fang Rulai was about to answer when Shi Bilian cut her off.

“To secretly smuggle out the salt the salt farmers had stolen from the saltworks and resell it for a little money? In the beginning, yes, that was exactly it. The salt route was immensely profitable. Anyone tied to it, whether the Zhao family, the Zhou family, or the Yan family, all made fortunes and grew richer by the year. Only our Stone Family Village—our annual commission for being salt farmers was always limited, and in the end we never managed to let the people in the village live as carefree and well-fed a life as the people in the city.”

Fang Rulai focused her mind. This was what she had heard from the sword. What came next ought to be the part she had not heard—the real point.

Yet Shi Bilian stopped speaking.

“Unless the miss agrees to my request, I would rather die than speak the key part that follows.”

“You!” Fang Rulai was a little angry too. She hated nothing more in life than someone who only said half of what they meant. Did they not know that kind of thing could suffocate a person?

Fang Rulai expressed her strong displeasure. “Fine. Don’t say it! Let me see whether I can find it out!”

Shi Bilian’s answer came swiftly. “You won’t be able to! Fewer than three people in Stone Family Village know about this. Every one of them learned the inner story through letters carried by homing pigeons; they never met and never spoke, and every letter was burned after reading. Tell me, in that case, what can the miss possibly find out?”

So that was it.

Only then did Fang Rulai understand why she had sensed nothing further from the sword. And this cautious, meticulous mode of communication only made the people behind it all the more intriguing, even stirring in her a strange intuition that it might have something to do with the crown prince.

“Fine. I’ll take the job. Speak.”

She made the decision for two reasons: first, this matter really did concern the salt route; second, this seemed like a huge affair, with all the air of a world-shaking conspiracy, and yet this young lady before her should have been seeking an opportunity to ask Guan Shiyin for help, should she not? Instead, she had chosen her—a powerless, penniless nobody with no martial skill worth speaking of. Why?

At those words, Shi Bilian actually burst into tears of joy. She bowed her head again and again. “Thank you, miss. Thank you!”

“Stop, stop!” Fang Rulai was utterly at a loss with the ancients’ habit of kneeling and bowing at every turn. She truly feared shortening her own lifespan. “Instead of wasting time kneeling, you’d be better off explaining quickly how to save the people in your village!”

“Yes, the miss is right.” Shi Bilian wiped away her tears, and her voice turned serious. “More than twenty years ago, someone came to Stone Family Village. He said we should sell all the salt we had secretly stolen to him alone, and at a high price. The village head at the time was already somewhat powerless over the fact that we kept pretending to be bandits and robbing our own salt, then having to smuggle it out in secret. Because he feared the other families on the salt route would notice, and feared being caught by the authorities, the salt we sold was never dared to be priced too high. Since someone had come to our door and offered to buy at a high price, of course the village head would not refuse.”

Fang Rulai said flatly, “You were trapped.”

“Yes. Within a year, that man changed. First he began demanding that our salt farmers secretly smuggle out more and more salt. Later, he demanded that we secretly add poison to the meals of the Zhao family—poison that would steadily weaken the body.”

“So you were also one of the reasons the Zhao family started declining nearly twenty years ago, and why their people began falling ill and dying!” Fang Rulai suddenly thought of the Stone Family Village village head, who had seemed so honest and plain. So what role had he played in all this?

Shi Bilian defended herself. “We were not willing. That man used our past theft from within as blackmail, saying that if we did not do as he said, he would report us to the authorities. By then, the lives of our whole village might very well...”

“And so you had no choice but to keep listening to him and keep doing what he told you? Hm, that is understandable enough. So how is it that you now have the courage to try to turn things around?”

“Because the salt route has changed hands!” Shi Bilian repeated exactly the words the village head had written for her to read before she left. “We did not dare reveal the truth before because we had no one behind us. The salt route, though vast in scale, was a private affair among commoners. And among the major players, none could truly stand up for Stone Family Village. But now it is different. The Zhao family has fallen, the salt route has become official salt, and the Second Prince has become Stone Family Village’s potential backer! To avoid being wiped out without a trace like the Zhao family, my village is willing to take this risk and gamble.”

Shi Bilian straightened her kneeling posture and bowed deeply once more. “Thank you, miss, for agreeing to save Stone Family Village!”

“Wait.” Fang Rulai’s eyes were unreadable. “Were those words just now yours? Or did someone else teach them to you?”

“Uh, the village head brother taught me before I left.”

“He taught you face-to-face?”

That was impossible. She had not heard that on the sword.

“No, he wrote them on a sheet of paper and handed it to me in person. Why? Is something wrong?”

Fang Rulai’s brows furrowed into a knot. It was not wrong—it was too right. The Stone village head, who gave people such an impression of honesty and simplicity, was actually extremely thorough in his methods. The causes and consequences were clear and orderly, and even the way he passed on messages was so careful and guarded. Could it be that he had merely grown so used to danger after being controlled for so long that he developed this constant sense of crisis?

Shi Bilian was very sensitive. Otherwise, the village head would not have chosen her from among so many people in the village to bear this responsibility.

The moment Fang Rulai hesitated, Shi Bilian immediately sensed that something was off. “You don’t suspect that our village head is the inside man for the one behind all this, do you? Impossible! The village head’s own father was poisoned and crippled precisely because he once tried to break free from that person’s control. If anyone in Stone Family Village could not possibly be that person’s inside man, it would only be the village head brother.”

“Then why did he teach you those words in writing instead of speaking them aloud?”

That was the most suspicious point. A person’s methods of doing things usually carry a kind of inertia that even they themselves do not easily notice.

“That’s because we were afraid the person behind this would notice before we found a backer, and we all felt this method was truly the best way to keep it secret, so we... anyway, it can’t possibly be that village head brother has something hidden.”

That made sense, too.

Fang Rulai asked next, “Then how much information do you have about the person behind all this?”

“None.”

“None? Think again. Even if you never met or spoke, you did use homing pigeons. What kind of pigeons were they? What did the handwriting on the letters look like? How did you know whether the letters were destroyed after reading or not? You never paid attention to any of that?”

“We paid attention to all of it, but found nothing. The pigeons were ordinary pigeons. Their colors varied, their sizes varied, and after delivering a message they would die within the time it takes to burn one stick of incense. Even if we wanted to follow the pigeons’ flight back to their origin, that was impossible. The handwriting changed every time, and even the ink changed. We investigated the methods, investigated the source of the ink, but there was nothing to trace. As for whether we would be noticed if we did not destroy the letter immediately after reading it, we tested that too—the village head brother’s father tested it personally. The result was that he was crippled, and to this day cannot speak or move.”

Fang Rulai’s confusion deepened. “Someone who hides himself so perfectly, using every possible means just to obtain the little bit of private salt you can smuggle out of the saltworks?”

Then, compared with the resources he spent hiding himself, wouldn’t that person be taking a loss? Could those private salt shipments be worth more than that?

“Absolutely not.” Shi Bilian added, “If it were only for money, then after the Zhao family fell from power he would have sent word telling us to seize control of the salt route’s authority. Wouldn’t that position make more money? Yet he has not appeared to this day.”

“Then why did your village head join the scramble for the salt route token?”

“The village head joined the effort to seize the salt route token for two reasons: first, the head of the Zhou family earnestly invited him to help boost their momentum; second, we also thought that since there had been no news, we might as well take the initiative and strike. If we could get the entire salt route into our hands, maybe we could find a new way to break free from control.”

“And then? Would that person behind it all simply let you act on your own?”

“There was no then. That person behind it all never appeared again after the Zhao family lost power and the county magistrate was destroyed.”

“Oh, I see. You suspect that the person behind it all is opposed to the Second Prince’s faction. The Second Prince’s forces now control Ping City, so if that person no longer appears, does that mean he belongs to the crown prince’s side?”

Shi Bilian kept her mouth shut and bowed her head again. She was only an ordinary commoner. It was one thing to secretly doubt someone from the royal family in her heart, but if she said it aloud, she would not escape the word death.

After a long silence, Fang Rulai asked again, “Why didn’t you say all this earlier? Why not tell Magistrate Mu Zhijin? Why didn’t you tell Guan Shiyin just now, when your life was hanging by a thread?”

“We only confirmed that up to now, that person has not appeared. As for whether he will appear in the future, we truly do not dare be certain. We did not dare to seek out Master Mu, and we did not dare seek out Young Master Guan, because the two of them are simply too conspicuous. With one careless move, they might draw that person’s attention.” But seeking out this bald young lady was different. They were both women, both riding in the same carriage, chatting idly, and with guards outside, no one would be able to get close.

“The village head brother said that the miss is extraordinarily clever. If you are willing to act, you will surely save Stone Family Village from the fire and the water.”

“Hey, don’t rush to flatter me. Let’s talk about the serious matter first.” Fang Rulai leaned a little closer. “Your people have lived with the enemy for nearly twenty years and still couldn’t dig up a damn thing. How exactly am I supposed to save you? And let me make this clear: our journey back to Capital Sheng cannot be changed!”

If the other side was thinking of having her return to investigate, that would absolutely not happen.

“No, the miss’s journey need not be changed. My younger brother and I kept watch at the back gate all night for the sake of riding out of the city in the miss’s carriage. First, only after confirming that the miss would not go back could we ask for your help. Second, even if nothing could be uncovered, my brother and I could seize the chance to use the miss’s hand to escape control first.”

Fang Rulai suddenly felt displeased. By this logic, had she and Guan Shiyin just been used as a shield without knowing it? No wonder this little girl and her younger brother had gone so far as to draw swords, weep, make a scene, and threaten to hang themselves. So they had actually had such a brilliant, multi-purpose plan all along.

“To tell the truth, over the years, apart from the village head’s father trying to break free, everyone in Stone Family Village has attempted to escape. But only one person succeeded.”

Fang Rulai’s eyes lit up. “Your aunt in Capital Sheng!”

“Yes, the miss is indeed clever...”

“Enough, get to the point!”

“My aunt fled Ping City by mixing in with a group of human traffickers...”

Fang Rulai interrupted again. “Even if she wasn’t discovered then, with that so-called invincible temperament of the person behind all this, wouldn’t he have discovered and silenced her afterward?”

“The village head brother said that it should have been because he could not find the chance to kill and silence her.”

“Oh?”

“My aunt is the favored second wife of a great household in Capital Sheng!”

“How great a household? Large enough to stand against the person you suspect is tied to the crown prince’s forces?”

“The Guan family of Capital Sheng!”

This chapter is a little bit of a trap. It was the result of binge-watching and rewatching Legend of Dance and Music twice before the brain-hole possessed by Shunanda in me got stimulated into overdrive...

Heh, the suspense flavor is a bit stronger here...

Here, I must sincerely thank Chaojin Lugui for the reminder! I had originally planned to write this pair of siblings as blackhearted, but after Daffodil’s reminder, I felt that would be a bit too cliché...

So I temporarily changed to another plan...

Heh, I just won’t tell you the result~

Ahem, from today on, please call me Shunnanye! Laughing skyward!

This book was first released by,