The moment Zhou Yuan approached He Si, he recognized that the person in front of him was not Chunhong - Chunhong did not have such clean eyes!
Chunhong's eyes were alienated and cold after a lifetime of travel, and they were calculated to please and resent people's hearts. She would not look at him with such pure eyes. He didn't know the origin of this person, why she wanted to pretend to be Chunhong, and he didn't know where Chunhong was, whether she was alive or dead, but he understood what this person wanted him to do.
He clenched his hands, slowly loosened them, and slowly knelt on the ground: "I killed Lianxiang!"
Shen Chongming was good at observing people's hearts, so he naturally saw these changes in He Si, so he turned his attention to Chun Hong again. This maid always gave him an inexplicable feeling of familiarity.
He Si admitted that he killed Lianxiang, and his motive was that Lianxiang hurt his beloved. As for who his beloved was, he never said it clearly. He just raised his hand and pointed at the dry well under the locust tree.
Last night, Zhou Yuan heard Chunhong and He Si mention the dry well, saying that they wanted to fish out a body in the well. I thought I would see the body today, but what I didn't expect to see was the lotus scent hanging on the tree.
Seeing He Si pointing at the dry well, she was the first to walk over.
Shen Chongming hesitated a little and reached the well next.
He Hongyi looked uneasy, and he and the county magistrate Li Zhun showed humility to each other, and it took a while before they arrived at the well.
The wellhead was covered with a thick iron plate, which was tied with a chain. The iron plate seemed to be just big enough to fit into the dry well. Brushing away the fallen leaves and dust, I saw a strange pattern. If you look closely, it turns out to be a talisman.
Shen Chongming frowned, and Zhou Yu'an's voice sounded next to his ears.
"The iron plate is used to suppress corpses, and the talisman on the iron plate is also the talisman to suppress corpses. There are dead souls under this well!"
"How did you know this was for killing corpses?"
"I read it in miscellaneous books."
"The girls in Chunfeng Tower also read miscellaneous books?"
"Only the girls from Chunfeng Tower read miscellaneous books!" Zhou Yu'an rolled his eyes at Shen Chongming: "Every lady has learned the Four Books and Five Classics, that's it."
"What a sharp mouth!"
"Thank you for the compliment, little master!" Zhou Yu'an pulled the chain and said, "This manhole cover was tightly sealed, but I don't know who pushed it open."
Zhou Yu'an squatted and looked into the well. He saw the well water gurgling up a few times, and then something red came out. She looked and looked, and finally saw clearly that it was a red embroidered shoe, small, floating on the water like a crescent moon.
"There is water in the well, perhaps because of the rain last night. There is an embroidered shoe floating on the water, about four inches long. The owner of this embroidered shoe must be a person with small feet." Zhou Yu'an said and took a few steps back: "I would like to ask you, sir, to take this Manhole cover pushed open.”
Shen Chongming glanced at Zhou Yuan and followed her example, taking half a step back.
Two government officials stepped forward and worked together to push the manhole cover away.
A body turned white by soaking lay lying beside the well mouth. County magistrates Li Zhun and Shen Chongming squatted aside to examine it carefully, and behind them stood He Hongyi and Zhou Yu'an.
Li Zhun raised his head and said, "Zu Zuo said that this man was strangled to death by a rope before his body sank to the bottom of the well."
Shen Chongming touched the clothes of the deceased and asked He Hongyi: "Is she the aunt in the mansion?"
He Hongyi turned pale, looked at the corpse and muttered to himself, but no one heard what he said clearly. At this moment, a breeze blew by, and there was a faint cry. He Hongyi was shocked and turned around, only to see a beautiful woman crying towards him under the abandoned house not far away.
"Xiu...Xiu Ying?"
"Who is Xiu Ying? Is she the deceased in the well?" Zhou Yu'an asked in confusion.
"Xiu Ying is my master's beloved." He Si got up from the ground: "I didn't expect that she still maintained the same appearance as she did when she was alive after being soaked in the water for so many years."
"Since he was the one he loved, why was his body buried at the bottom of the well?" Zhou Yu'an carefully examined the traces on the body of the deceased: "When did Xiu Ying die?"
"More than ten years ago!" He Si sneered: "That winter was very cold, and the plum blossoms in the backyard were blooming very well. The maids in the mansion often came to the backyard to pick plum blossoms on their backs. Beside the well, they found a very small plum blossom. The footprints seemed to have been stepped on accidentally.”
The moss beside the well is very intact and there are no traces of being stepped on. The maids were curious, so they looked into the well and saw Xiu Ying drowning in the well. As you can see, Xiu Ying did not commit suicide, but was strangled and thrown into a well. She was originally an outsider and came from a humble background. No matter how favored she was by her master, she was still a woman of no standing. "
"Since it was a homicide, why didn't anyone report it to the official?" Li Zhun stood up: "The He family doesn't take the Fuyang County Government seriously."
"It's not that I don't want to, but I can't, because the person who killed Xiu Ying was the wife that I was marrying." He Si said in a surprising way: "More than ten years ago, the master was not the master he is today. He needed to rely on his wife and his own Father-in-law and mother-in-law. Compared with Madam, Xiu Ying's death can be fooled."
"You just said that the backyard was haunted when Madam was here, and it was Xiu Ying who was haunted?" Zhou Yu'an pointed to the ghost-repelling charm carved on the iron plate.
He Si seemed not to have heard anything and said to himself: "Whether it's troubled times or prosperous times, the lives of poor people like us are the least valuable. The master said that Xiu Ying committed suicide, so the matter is over. A few days later, Jing Jing Bloody footprints appeared on the side, and the maid next to the lady died. She was lying on the edge of the well, her head hanging in the well, and half of her face was scratched to pieces. Someone recognized that the shoes on the maid's feet were not hers, but It’s Xiuying’s.”
"Since this Xiu Ying was harmed by Madam, why should we take revenge on a maid? Every injustice has its owner, and every debt has its owner. If it were me, I would go to Madam."
"Perhaps she admitted her mistake!" He Si said: "As the New Year approaches, my wife ordered a batch of winter clothes and gave one of the unsuitable ones to her maid. The maid was innocent and died for her master."
He Hongyi and Mrs. He didn't believe in these stories about ghosts and gods, but things kept happening in the house, so they invited experts to come and seal Xiu Ying and the young men and maids who died tragically in the well.
More than ten years later, the He family's house became larger and larger, with more and more servants. Fewer and fewer people remembered that incident. Just when everyone had forgotten about this backyard, the young lady of the He family, Feng Lin, Taking advantage of the darkness, he threw a maid in.
The maid was accidentally beaten to death by her, and she was He Si's sweetheart.
The truth of the case is now revealed!
Out of resentment, Lian Xiang used dragon lychees instead of lychees to make soup for Feng Lin. Feng Lin was poisoned and had hallucinations, and stabbed her husband He Bingtian to death as an evil ghost. He Si held a grudge against Feng Lin's master and servant because of the death of the maid, but he was a servant and could not avenge his beloved. Last night was a rare opportunity.
He was the housekeeper of He Mansion. He knew about He Hongyi's behavior and knew that Feng Lin would not survive, so he set his target on Lian Xiang, who had escaped. It's a pity that his cleverness was mistaken for him, and his murder of Lianxiang was exposed.
