Surviving in the General's Mansion - Chapter 109

Madam Wang and Wang Wenshan watched helplessly as the fire grew larger and the flames reached the roof beams.

In the end, even the servants throwing water on it accomplished nothing.

“Madam! Madam, several servants from our household were found unconscious beside the paths!” a servant reported.

Madam Wang waved a feeble hand. There was no need to trouble her with such trivial matters now.

“Madam! In the side room… there is also an official.”

“The side room?”

Madam Wang felt as though she had caught hold of something.

“Yes. That official drank too much and only just woke up. He said a maid led him to the side room to rest,” the other servant reported nervously.

He did not dare mention that the official had also muttered about dreaming of the First Prince of Tujue.

Madam Wang was naturally familiar with such methods. After all, she had just used them herself and failed.

Only then did she understand the strange attitude of the Xiao mother and daughter.

From the look of things, however, the plot had not succeeded. Those two were members of the current Minister of Revenue’s family…

“Someone actually dared do such a thing at my Wang Family’s housewarming banquet?”

Then she remembered the servant’s mention of a maid and frowned.

“Where is Cailan? Has anyone seen Cailan?”

No one answered.

Before long, the steward came running over in a panic.

“Madam! Cailan was found drowned in the pond!”

Another wave of chaos followed.

Wang Wenshan and Madam Wang followed the steward to the pond.

When Wang Wenshan saw Cailan’s body, he turned his head slightly away and said impatiently, “How unlucky! Hurry, take it away. Find some barren hill and bury her!”

Madam Wang saw the strangulation marks around Cailan’s neck and understood that someone had silenced her.

Even so, she remained furious. She kicked the corpse.

What an ungrateful traitor! How dare she help someone else carry out a scheme?

After the kick, Madam Wang suddenly remembered something and ran all the way back to the main courtyard. Wang Wenshan had no idea why his wife had abruptly fled.

Once inside her room, Madam Wang first opened the wardrobe. Seeing that only the two outfits she had already spotted on other people were missing, she hurried to inspect the jewelry box on her dressing table.

She counted every piece carefully and finally relaxed when she found nothing gone.

Sitting there, she considered the matter for a moment. Since tonight’s scheme had failed, she could not keep the fifty thousand taels, whether judged by sentiment or reason.

With a sigh, she rose and went to the bed, pulling out the exquisite little box hidden beneath her pillow.

Every night before going to sleep, she opened it to admire the fifty thousand taels.

But when she opened it this time, the box was completely empty.

“Where are the banknotes? Where did my banknotes go?”

Madam Wang’s thoughts fell into chaos.

Who? Who had entered her room?

So many people had come to the residence today!

Was it Cang Chuli?

Or the young lady of the Xiao Family wearing her clothes?

Or perhaps the person who had bribed Cailan to frame Miss Xiao?

Those banknotes had been given to her by Minister Chen’s wife to purchase the position of Cang Chuli’s wife!

She could not explain where the money had come from, so she did not dare report the theft to the authorities.

What was she supposed to do?

Madam Wang even began to suspect she had put the box in the wrong place. She tore the entire bed apart searching for it.

When the Wang Family had moved south, they had sold everything they could and departed with eighty thousand taels.

That was no small sum. Many families would never see so much money in their entire lives.

But Wang Wenshan had no head for managing money. He prided himself on being a provincial graduate and loved nothing more than posing as a man of refined taste. One day he would buy a painting by a famous master; the next, he would commission someone to purchase a fine Duan inkstone.

Business had also been difficult in the south over the past few years, and the shops they purchased there had hardly made any profit.

After bribes and ordinary expenses, the original eighty thousand taels had dwindled to a mere twenty thousand.

That was one reason she and Wang Wenshan had wanted to return to the capital. If they stayed any longer, their expenditures would likely exceed their income.

Thus, when Madam Wang saw the fifty thousand taels in banknotes offered by Madam Chen, she had been unable to tear herself away.

At the time, she had thought money was wonderfully easy to earn in the capital—especially if the matter bore even the slightest connection to Cang Chuli.

Now the task had failed and the money was gone!

Where could she possibly find another fifty thousand taels to repay the Chen Family?

—

“Didn’t you go to the Wang Family’s banquet? What happened? Did they not feed you?” Uncle Zhao asked in confusion when he saw each of them return holding a Hu flatbread.

Privately, he wondered whether the Wang Family had truly fallen so far during the years they had been away.

“Uncle Zhao! You have no idea what the Wang Family did today!”

Mo Bai hurried forward and began recounting everything that had happened.

Cang Chuli returned directly to Tingtao Pavilion. Xia Heng glanced after him, told Chuqing to wait for her in the courtyard, then headed toward Doctor Lin’s territory while gnawing on her Hu flatbread.

“General, here are the banknotes.”

Mo Qing followed his master into the main courtyard and handed over the fifty-thousand-tael note.

Cang Chuli placed it on the table.

“This should give them a headache for a while.

“But I did not expect someone else to plot against Xiao Yaqing tonight.”

“General, you do not think Madam Wang was responsible?” Mo Qing asked in confusion.

“She only just returned to the capital. Would she truly have the courage to plot against two people at once?

“One incident could still be dismissed as an accident. Two at the same time would make it obviously deliberate.

“Therefore, whoever plotted against Xiao Yaqing is not familiar with the Wang Family and did not know what they had planned for tonight.”

Mo Qing nodded, thoroughly convinced.

“Then who do you think it was, General?”

Several figures flashed rapidly through Cang Chuli’s mind before he turned and sat down.

“It seems someone is about to suffer a headache.”

Mo Qing only half understood.

At that moment, there was a knock at the door. Mo Qing stepped forward and opened it.

Doctor Lin entered carrying his medicine chest, his face still grim even when he saw Cang Chuli.

“Take off your clothes.”

Mo Qing quietly closed the door.

“Why have you come?” Cang Chuli asked as he undressed.

Doctor Lin was usually mild-tempered and rarely spoke. Today, however, he had been driven to genuine fury.

“Hmph!

“If I didn’t come, you certainly wouldn’t come to see me!

“Most likely, you would slap on some medicine, have the Two Mos wrap it up for you, and call it done. Am I right?”

One of the Two Mos stood nearby, not daring to utter a sound.

If anyone in the General’s Mansion wished to argue with Doctor Lin, he had better never fall ill.

Doctor Lin had served in the army under the Old Marquis. Only when age caught up with him had he retired and been given a place in the mansion.

From that day on, the General’s Mansion pharmacy might run out of any medicine in the world except coptis root.

As Doctor Lin put it, coptis cleared heat and toxins, dispelled dampness, and reduced swelling. It could be used both internally and externally.

In other words, if someone lacked the sense to offend Doctor Lin, he could start by drinking a decoction of coptis root for a few days.

“The wound had finally started to close, and now you have split it open again. You truly are capable, aren’t you?

“You came back wounded from the north and hid it from this old man. Then you were injured in the exact same place again and only told me because you could no longer conceal it.

“You have ignored every single instruction I gave you. Are you determined to ruin your body until you die? Are you?”

The angrier Doctor Lin became, the more heated his words grew. He slapped Cang Chuli’s other shoulder, and before long, a red handprint appeared there.

Cang Chuli pressed his lips together and remained silent.

Doctor Lin cleaned the wound and applied fresh medicine. Then he wiped his hands, moved in front of Cang Chuli, and raised one index finger.

“First, starting tomorrow, I will come every day to inspect this wound. Do not even think of driving this old man away!

“If you refuse to let me inspect it for so much as one day, I will sleep outside the door of Tingtao Pavilion!

“Second, I will prescribe three doses of medicine for now. After that, I will decide what comes next based on how the wound recovers!”

Cang Chuli had just opened his mouth when that finger pressed directly against his lips.

“Just tell me whether the General’s Mansion of Northern Pacification still has room for this old man!

“If it does not, I will leave this instant!”

In the height of his fury, Doctor Lin suddenly remembered a phrase he had once heard from that girl Xia and blurted it out.

“Then you’ll lose me forever!”

After Doctor Lin left, Cang Chuli and Mo Qing stared at each other.

After a long silence, Cang Chuli dragged a hand over his face.

“Send word to the Chen residence. Tell them that if they have so much money, they might as well give it directly to me.

“On your way back, tell Xia Heng that she is forbidden from tattling to the household physician ever again.

“And she is not allowed to teach other people nonsense!”