Chapter 300: The Mastermind Behind the Scenes
The young waiter didn’t look very old and because of the kick Bai Ruozhu gave him, his voice sounded a bit strange when he spoke.
"Sir, I... I am Wang Xi, seventeen years old. I work as a waiter at Yunpinxuan."
Yunpinxuan was a small tea house in town, which did quite good business.
"Who instructed you to frame Bai Zepei? Speak quickly, or you’ll be put to torture." Officer Li was already very angry at this point. It didn’t take long for someone to conspire against Bai Zepei. Could this have been pre-arranged?
Bai Ruozhu quietly observed Officer Li’s expression from the stand, and seeing his genuine anger, she confirmed that Wang Xi was not her brother’s arrangement. She then regretted not kicking him a few more times. So she looked at Wang Xi with a very resentful gaze, filled with ruthlessness. Wang Xi felt a chill throughout his body, involuntarily shivering and subconsciously closing his legs tighter.
Originally, Wang Xi didn’t want to expose Bai Yibo, but being stared at by Bai Ruozhu like this, he was really scared. Bai Ruozhu’s kick had left a deep psychological shadow on him. He believed that if she kicked him again like this, a certain part of him would definitely explode.
"It was Bai Yibo who asked me to do it. I... I owe him twenty taels of silver in gambling debts. He said if I didn’t do as he asked, he would go to my house and demand money, forcing my parents to sell our land and houses, I really had no other choice." He began to cry as he spoke, "Earlier this year, he came for a tea, and said we could chat together, then tricked me into going to the casino. I was young and reckless, that’s how I lost twenty taels of silver."
Bai Ruozhu’s family all showed contempt. Obviously Bai Yibo was taking advantage of Wang Xi, who’s only seventeen and still a child, he tricked him like this. Doesn’t he fear retribution?
"Then today, I went to watch the excitement, and saw him being arrested. At first I thought he wouldn’t be able to come after me for the gambling debt later, but he took the opportunity of the crowd getting excited to call me over, telling me that he gave the IOU to his wife, and if he didn’t order otherwise, his wife would definitely come to my house to collect the debt when she runs out of money for his rescue. He said that as long as I obediently did one last thing for him, we would be even."
Wang Xi shrank his neck, "That’s when he secretly slipped me a folded piece of paper and told me to hide it in Bai Zepei’s house. I can’t read, so I didn’t open it and look."
"You don’t know what it was, yet you were daredevil enough to help him harm others? Aren’t you afraid of committing a major crime?" Officer Li stared at him and asked.
"I am afraid, but my father is sick. If his wife comes to demand money now, my father would surely be scared to death, I..." Wang Xi cried even harder as he spoke.
Officer Li knocked the courtroom wooden block to signal quiet, and then asked, "From what you’ve indicated, he asked you to do more than this one thing. Were there others rules?"
Wang Xi hesitated a bit, Bai Ruozhu’s cold eyes swept over him again, Wang Xi shivered all over, then said, "He once had me make an osmanthus cake with croton powder and asked me to give it to a child, and then told the child to tell a waiter to send it to Bai Zepei’s room."
The people suddenly realized, Bai Zehao’s face turned red with rage, "So it was you guys who played the trick back then! You didn’t want my second brother to take the exam, but it turned out my second brother was lucky enough not to eat it, and it ended up causing me to have diarrhea for the whole day!"
"Sir, I really didn’t want to do bad things for him. I was always trying hard to make money to pay him back. I’ve almost paid back five taels of silver by now." Wang Xi wiped his face as he spoke, his tears and snot spread all over it.
Officer Li asked the recorder on the side to bring the recorded confession for him to look at, then let Wang Xi sign it. It was temporarily taken as evidence of confession in court.
"Alright, put him in prison to wait for the imperial envoy to judge. And yes, keep him separate from Bai Yibo to prevent Bai Yibo from making any further attempts behind the scenes." Officer Li gave instructions to the officer standing by.
"Yes sir, I’ll get on it right away." The officer replied, took Wang Xi away, and threw him directly into prison.
Officer Li sighed as he looked at the Bai family in the courtyard, and said, "You guys should go back and rest. The official will deal with the rest of the matter."
Everyone thanked Officer Li and left the government office back to the west courtyard.
Meanwhile, Bai Ruozhu went to see Yu Hongxiu. Dengdeng was about to get hungry and if he cried, Yu Hongxiu wouldn’t be able to handle it. Bai Yihong and Lin Ping’Er thanked the teacher profusely. The teacher just waved his hands and said, "These are the things I should do as a teacher."
Bai Ruozhu went to Yu Hongxiu, picked up Dengdeng and was about to return to the west courtyard to feed him, but Yu Hongxiu stopped her and said, "Just feed him here. When he’s done, leave him with me. You must be too busy for all this."
"You just recovered from your injury, and you shouldn’t work too hard. How could we always bother you this way?" Bai Ruozhu shook her head and said.
"How could this be a bother? Don’t you see that I have a maid in my room? The maid is the one who really takes care of the baby, I just watch. Besides, it’s said that if a woman sees a lot of little boys when she’s pregnant, she can also give birth to a boy in the future." As she said this, Yu Hongxiu laughed, "I’m not being sexist, it’s just that my husband is not young anymore, and he’s looking forward to having a son to carry on the family line."
Bai Ruozhu, hearing her say this, felt too embarrassed to refuse. She said gratefully, "Thank you, Sister Hongxiu." Yu Hongxiu was considering her, afraid that she had been working too hard these past few days.
"Silly girl, do we sisters need to be so polite with each other? I’m so happy to take care of Dengdeng." Yu Hongxiu chided her and said.
After Bai Ruozhu fed Dengdeng and he fell asleep again, Bai Ruozhu put him down and left. She touched her son’s hair, and thought to herself that she would not be able to spend much time with him in the next few days, and would have to neglect him.
When she returned to the west courtyard, Bai Ruozhu found out that Fang Guizhi was also injured. Xiaosi then said, "Sister Guizhi is awesome, she beat up that man with firewood."
Bai Ruozhu sighed and called the two of them over, examined their pulses one by one and applied ointment to their wounds, then she finally felt relieved.
"Ruozhu, I can’t leave the courtyard and I can’t help with anything, so I’ll take care of the housework and the meals at home. You guys only need to worry about the things outside, I’ll handle the housework." Fang Guizhi had lost her previous desolation and seemed to have become much stronger. It seemed as though Wang Xi’s intrusion had brought about a significant change in her.
Bai Ruozhu nodded and patted her hand, "I’m sorry to trouble you.
"We are family, your brother is my brother too. Doing these things is not a burden, it’s my duty." Fang Guizhi said earnestly.
Bai Ruozhu looked at her for a moment, does she really just think of Bai Zepei as her brother? Or is it just her own overthinking?
She didn’t have time to think more about Fang Guizhi, Bai Ruozhu gave her mother a calming pill, asked her to take it and go to sleep. The medicine quickly took effect and Lin Ping’Er fell into a deep sleep.
"Don’t bother mom. She needs to rest and recuperate after all that happened today. Wake her up for dinner later." Bai Ruozhu instructed.
Then she turned to look at Bai Zehao and said, "Big brother, we have to go to Mountain Village, you have to tell the Wan Family personally that the wedding will be postponed."