Chapter 1430: Striving for Death by Suicide Out of Fear of Punishment! (Seeking Subscriptions)

"This Shunzhi of yours — I've already studied your case file. Your crimes are enormous! But fortunately, those great crimes committed in Beizhili, Shandong, Shanxi, and Henan — the killing and arson that did in at least several million people — we can all pin on Dorgon. That way you can wash yourself fairly clean. Do you know who Dorgon is?"

Ji Kun, the great litigation master, sat helplessly before a "Li Zicheng version" of Shunzhi, watching the other man gnaw on a roujiamo and slurp mutton soup, while explaining the case to him. He truly was helpless — he had already retired into seclusion, and yet Emperor Zhu had dragged him out to do dirty work!

Of course, future histories would never record these dirty deeds. Ruan Dacheng, who had been in charge of compiling the national history, had already given him the inside story before his death. In the Chongzhen Collected Statutes and the Hongxing Record of Current Affairs, compiled by the Hanlin Academy, there would be appended a Biographies of the Ministers, in which Ji Kun would also be listed — written up to the standard of Bao the Clear-Skies.

In the future it would be: "In Yingtian there is a Ji the Clear-Skies, iron-faced and impartial, who tells the loyal from the treacherous!"

Yet such a Ji the Great Clear-Skies — upright in the histories, just and unbending, unafraid of the powerful — now had to go against his conscience and help the Crown Princess Ding Yuying frame bad men (bad men must not be framed either!). Ji Kun's conscience could not bear it!

He did, of course, have a conscience. Had the Crown Princess Ding Yuying not come in person to his litigation office, in the name of a commission from Ajige, he could never have taken on this hot potato.

In fact, this "Iron-Tongued Great Litigation Master" of his did not, on principle, take litigation cases, and still less would he appear in court — he was the former Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review, and the judges of the Court of Judicial Review and the various regional tribunals were all his old subordinates. How could he appear in court? If he appeared in court, would there be any judicial fairness left? So this "great litigation master" actually worked as a legal consultant, serving industry and commerce.

The Great Ming of today, because of the rapid development of industry and commerce, had already set out on the road of no return that was capitalism, and commercial legal disputes had multiplied accordingly. A market economy is necessarily a rule-of-law economy — though it cannot be entirely a rule-of-law economy, the role of law in commercial activity is, after all, growing ever greater. This had given rise to a batch of great litigation masters serving industry and commerce, and Ji Kun's litigation office served mainly industry and commerce, and did not take many criminal cases.

But now that the Crown Princess had stepped forward, Ji the Great Iron-Tongue had no choice but to come out. Whether the histories would record him as Bao the Clear-Skies or Lai Junchen — in the future it would all be one word from the Crown Princess!

Moreover, the Royal Commercial Guild was the largest client of Ji Kun's litigation office. For the sake of silver, he could not refuse to take this case!

But only after Ji Kun took it on did he realize how hot this potato was — Zhu the Third Crown Prince was far too irresponsible. He only grabbed a man to take the fall, and never bothered to train the scapegoat. The headache fell to him, the litigation master.

"I know, I know, Dorgon is E'ada!" This fake Shunzhi did know Dorgon.

Ji Kun shook his head. "Don't say Ada. It should be Ama — Imperial Ama."

"Ama? Imperial Ama? This Dorgon is a woman?" The fake Shunzhi was a little confused.

Ji Kun glanced at Xuanye and frowned. "Marquis of Extended Grace, this is your father. You are responsible for teaching him!"

Right! Whoever's father it is, that one is responsible for teaching him.

"Understood. I'll teach him properly later!" Xuanye had no choice but to hold his nose and agree. He was a filial son, after all, and naturally could not refuse Ji Kun's request — once this fake father was executed, wouldn't the real father in the northwest be safe?

Ji Kun nodded, and did not tangle further with the fake Shunzhi over the Ama-Ada question. He was a great litigation master who billed by the hour, and very expensive at that! So he had to get to matters of value.

"Everything that happened while Dorgon was alive, good or bad, push it all onto him. He was the Imperial Father Prince Regent, after all! The bad deeds were naturally all his doing."

"I understand. The bad deeds were all Ada's — no, Ama's doing. They have nothing to do with me!"

Ji Kun sighed and shook his head. "If only they all had nothing to do with you. You, alas, are still guilty! After all, you kept bouncing around for a while after Dorgon's death. In particular, in the seventh year of Hongxing you surrendered to the Great Ming, received the title of Prince Gong, and then colluded with the roving bandits to rebel — that crime can never be washed away."

"What? I was already enfeoffed as a prince and still wasn't satisfied, and even colluded with roving bandits to rebel?" The fake Shunzhi shook his head repeatedly. "How could I have been so muddled!"

Xuanye and Fuquan, the two brothers, sighed as they listened — Shunzhi truly had been muddled! A perfectly good hereditary princely house, with rank passing down unchanged through generations, had been ground down into a Marquis of Extended Grace household. This Ama was far too profligate.

"It's too late to realize you were muddled now!" Ji Kun sighed and said, "For this crime, the punishment should be death by slow slicing!"

"What? Slow slicing too?" The fake Shunzhi dropped the roujiamo in his hand to the ground.

"Don't be afraid, don't be afraid." Ji Kun did his best to console him kindly. "With me here — I am your litigation master, and I will help you think of a way. We will work together and strive to get you an intact corpse!"

An intact corpse — what fine treatment!

At the words "intact corpse," the fake Shunzhi still had no appetite. With a mournful face, he asked, "How do I keep it intact..."

Ji Kun smiled and said, "As long as you listen to me — say whatever I tell you to say — you are certain to keep your corpse intact. The law of our Great Ming stresses that resistance brings severity, confession brings leniency! So you must confess thoroughly!"

What Ji Kun said was, of course, the truth. He was a legal expert who had served as Chief Justice of the Court of Judicial Review, and the present Criminal Code of the Great Ming had been compiled under his direction. He naturally knew how to exploit loopholes in the law to secure an intact corpse for this fake Shunzhi. The specific method was: after confessing, die by suicide out of fear of punishment.

"Then — then what am I supposed to confess?" the fake Shunzhi asked. "I don't know anything! How can I confess?"

"It doesn't matter that you don't know," Ji Kun said. "I know! Listen to me. Your collusion with the roving bandits to rebel in the seventh and eighth years of Hongxing is not the main point. The main point is how many more bad deeds you did after faking your death and fleeing!"

"Right, what else did I do?" The fake Shunzhi had no idea!

Ji Kun said, "You — you acted as a go-between between the roving bandits and a minority of ill-intentioned remnants of the eastern barbarians, seeking to unite the forces of both sides against the Celestial Dynasty of the Great Ming!"

"Right, right, right. I truly deserve death, deserve death!" The fake Shunzhi's attitude was still very good.

Ji Kun continued, "Let me also tell you the contacts you liaised with on both sides. In the northeast, it was Oboi and Yue Le — just those two. Have you got that memorized?"

"Memorized. One surnamed Ao, one surnamed Yue. They're the worst scum of all!"

Ji Kun glanced again at Xuanye, and Xuanye said at once, "This marquis will certainly teach him well!"

Ji Kun nodded and continued, "On the roving-bandit side, don't bite Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, or Liu Wenxiu. Bite down on Li Laiheng and Li Jicheng. You were the one in contact with them."

The situations of Li Dingguo, Ai Nengqi, and Liu Wenxiu were different from those of Oboi and Yue Le. The main reason was that the plate of Ü-Tsang was hard to take over and offered little profit, and the armies of the three feudatories in the Snowy Land had not yet been fattened up — if they fought desperately, they would be hard to deal with. Oboi's and Yue Le's men, by contrast, were all rich men now. In recent years they had grown wealthy selling furs, timber, and eastern pearls. Few of them would be willing to follow those two into the old forests to keep resisting the Great Ming for months on end, so they could be beaten like dead tigers.

"Right, right," the fake Shunzhi said. "I kowtowed and swore brotherhood with the two surnamed Li. Li Laiheng was the eldest brother, I was the second brother, and Li Jicheng was the third."

"There was no kowtowing and swearing brotherhood!" Ji Kun cut him off at once. "Say what I tell you to say, and nothing more. That will all be court testimony! Don't say extra — the more you say, the more you lose!"

Truly an "iron-faced, impartial Ji the Clear-Skies" — he knew all too well about court testimony and how the more one says, the more one loses!

Once this fake Shunzhi finished his confession, he would then die by suicide out of fear of punishment. Once the man was dead, the testimony could never be overturned. As for material evidence, the Embroidered Uniform Guard was already preparing it. Letters in Oboi's and Yue Le's own hands, and letters in Li Laiheng's and Li Jicheng's own hands, were already being written by experts. When the time came, authentication experts from the Embroidered Uniform Guard would be arranged to verify their authenticity, so nothing would go wrong.

(End of Chapter)