Chapter 25

Pushing the unreliable and baseless rewards to the side to gather dust, Xu Qing finally looked at the only useful thing in his hand: a True Word Pill.

The so-called True Word Pill, as the name implies, is a pill that can make people tell the truth.

This strange pill came from the hands of Zhu Youshi, the third-generation beggar of a beggar family in Jinmen.

Zhu Youshi originally had no name or surname. He wandered as a child and halfway through, he recognized a beggar as his foster father, who gave him the surname Zhu. From then on, he inherited the family business and started begging with an ancestral broken bowl.

To say that begging also has its ways, you must have an elder to lead you, know how to walk the streets and alleys, where the gatherings are on the first and fifteenth of the month, which families are kind-hearted, when the kind people in the mansions will come out to give alms, and where you can't go, and where the people are fierce—these are all things to learn.

Once you know the territory you are in like the back of your hand, you don't have to worry about three meals a day, and you can even beg for extra money to buy a pot of wine and a few taels of meat to live a carefree life.

Zhu Youshi had been guided by his father, this gold-medal lecturer, since he was a child, and at a young age, he was already far ahead on the road of begging. There was no place in all of Jinmen that he didn't know or wasn't familiar with!

On this day, the careful Zhu Youshi went out to beg as usual, but found that the Jinmen Prefecture had suddenly changed its appearance for some reason.

He looked at the familiar yet strange streets and markets, and after careful consideration, he finally found the reason for the abnormality.

It turned out that the number of beggars on the streets of Jinmen Prefecture had decreased by more than half. No wonder he always felt that the streets in front of him were out of place with him.

Zhu Youshi was puzzled, and even his food didn't taste very good. Whenever he had free time, he would wonder, where did everyone go to make a fortune?

Could it be that in this Jinmen, there were hidden begging spots he didn't know about, and everyone had gone begging in groups?

Just like that, Zhu Youshi didn't think about tea or food until that night, when a masked bandit put a knife to his neck, he finally understood the truth behind the mysterious disappearance of the Jinmen beggars.

The masked bandit had a long upper body and short lower body, and when he spoke, he had a distinct Jinmen accent. Zhu Youshi knew who it was at a glance.

"Brother Cai Jiu, you don't work in the government office, why did you come to trouble me?"

The masked man saw that his identity was exposed, so he simply took off his mask and said bluntly: "Since you know my identity, you should know that I came to find you because you have committed a crime!"

"What crime can a beggar like me commit? Is it a crime to beg for food?"

As soon as Zhu Youshi finished speaking, he saw Cai Jiu nod.

"Consider yourself enlightened; begging in the territory of Jinmen is a crime!"

Zhu Youshi widened his eyes upon hearing this and patted his own face to confirm if he was still living in a dream.

"Brother Cai Jiu, don't joke. I've been a beggar in Jinmen for forty years, and I've never heard of this..."

"Never heard of it? Then you've heard of it now! To tell you the truth, our Jinmen is the most prosperous and flourishing territory of the Great Yong Dynasty. You coming here to beg is smearing the face of the current Emperor and smearing the face of the Crown Prince who is coming to inspect."

"For the sake of our old acquaintance, I'll give you one night. If you're sensible, leave Jinmen immediately!"

In the abandoned house, Zhu Youshi said anxiously: "I was picked up by my father, and I've been begging in Jinmen since I was a child. My foster father was also a beggar. If I leave Jinmen, how do you expect me to live! Brother Cai Jiu, don't forget that two years ago, you fell under the Water Gate Bridge and almost drowned, and it was I who jumped down to pull you up..."

"You can't return kindness with enmity!"

Cai Jiu had originally intended to put away his knife and leave, but upon hearing this, his face suddenly darkened.

"Don't bring up old history with me. If I let you go, where would the Prefect's face go? Do I still want my job? I'll say this today: if you don't leave, don't blame me for not remembering old feelings if I see you tomorrow."

After saying this, Cai Jiu spat on the ground and turned to leave the abandoned house.

By the next day, Cai Jiu came to that dilapidated hut again. Before he even entered the door, he saw a hemp rope hanging from the beam, and someone was putting a noose around their neck.

Who else could it be but Zhu Youshi?

Zhu Youshi heard the movement and turned to look at Cai Jiu. He suddenly had a desire to live, but when he saw the other party suddenly stop and refuse to take another step forward, he gave up completely.

Thus, a beggar family that had lasted for three generations had its inheritance severed.

Xu Qing looked at the True Word Pill in his hand and didn't know what to say for a moment.

You could say that Cai Jiu didn't remember old feelings, but he at least spoke heart-to-heart with Zhu Youshi, clarified the truth, and gave the other party a chance to leave.

But if you say he remembered old feelings, Cai Jiu could watch his former savior be forced to hang himself without being willing to take a step forward, which could be called cold-blooded to the extreme.

It is truly hard to fathom the human heart. Who would have thought that those in power wearing red clothes and black uniforms were the real culprits who killed these beggars?

However, the purpose was merely to rectify the atmosphere of Jinmen and do a face-saving project to welcome the Crown Prince's inspection.

Connecting the clues obtained from the liberation tonight, Xu Qing thought for a moment and understood the connections.

In the world today, the Longping Emperor is over eighty, and even the Crown Prince is sixty-three, over sixty years old.

At this critical moment, as long as the Longping Emperor doesn't catch his breath one day, this old Crown Prince will be the new Son of Heaven.

"Wait! The rebels of the Heavenly Heart Sect also came to Jinmen a few days ago. Why would it happen to be at the moment when the current Crown Prince is coming to inspect?"

Xu Qing felt that he had inadvertently discovered an invisible large net, which contained countless big secrets.

Having just liberated the corpse workers in the C-grade courtyard, he turned his target to the A and B courtyards.

Now, besides obtaining rewards from the *Scripture of Liberating People*, Xu Qing had a new motivation: to see if he could eat his fill of tonight's secrets and get the whole picture!

At the fifth watch, the night watchman was beating his gong, shouting the old tune of "go to bed early and get up early, take care of your health." Xu Qing, who had been tossing and turning in the workshop for most of the night, finished his work with lingering interest.

Rushing and hurrying, he finally liberated the corpse workers in several courtyards. Although he didn't get to taste any more big secrets, there were plenty of small ones.

Things like a eunuch molesting his daughter-in-law or a brother-in-law raiding his sister-in-law at night were just appetizers.

If he hadn't liberated so many people from all walks of life, how would Xu Qing have known that the Prefect had unspeakable hidden troubles, or that the daughter of the Baisha County Magistrate was actually a "tofu-grinding holy body" who loved to dress as a man and go to brothels to chat all night with the good girls there?

We don't know what they were chatting about, but Xu Qing got this news from a helper at a flower house.

That helper had bumped into something he shouldn't have seen, and even more shouldn't have used this matter to blackmail the Magistrate's daughter for money, so he deserved this disaster.

You say, you, the young lady let you watch that for free, and you weren't satisfied; why did you go back to ask for money?

Even a freeloader isn't as capable as you!

The reward from that helper was also quite interesting: it was a volume of "Spring Palace Pictures of a Hundred Beauties."

And this picture was not an ordinary static picture. As long as you watched it with focus, those beautiful figures in the picture who were generous with their charms would become soul-devouring.

But once you really had desires and became focused, the figures in the Hundred Beauties Picture would instantly turn into terrifying, soul-reaping ghosts with gaunt faces, sticking to the surface of the picture, as if they wanted to break through the scroll and harm people's lives!

When Xu Qing saw this, he was caught off guard and almost threw the scroll in his hand out over the wall.

How was this spiritual food for the mind? This was clearly a terrifying thing. It was fortunate that his psychological quality was strong; if it had been a man with less courage, he would probably have become a "patient" like the Jinmen Prefect from then on and would never be able to raise any desire in this regard again.

(End of chapter)