Broken Jade - Chapter 89

Chapter 89

Every place she had touched seemed to prickle with a spreading numbness. Wei Heng’s throat bobbed, and he gave an unnatural cough. “Thank you.”

Sheng Zhaoning lowered her head as a blush slowly crept up behind her ears.

Their gazes drifted everywhere but toward each other. The rims of their ears burned, and neither of them dared to touch the other again.

Just then, a guard came to report.

“Crown Prince, the grain has all been distributed.”

The delicate atmosphere shattered.

Wei Heng lowered his eyes, concealing the emotion in them. When he looked up again, his gaze had returned to clarity.

“Good.”

He glanced at Sheng Zhaoning, then quickly looked away, an unfamiliar feeling crawling through his chest.

“Everyone has worked truly hard during this time. Disaster relief is a long-term undertaking, not something accomplished in a single day. Today’s work is finished. All of you should go back and rest first. We will discuss the remaining matters later.”

Hearing this, the guard was deeply grateful.

After more than a month of rushing about and exhausting labor, everyone had long since reached the end of their strength. Today, they had only managed to finish distributing the grain by sheer willpower. At this point, they truly had no energy left to discuss any so-called important matters.

Now that the Crown Prince was showing such consideration for his subordinates, the guard did not refuse. He simply bowed deeply and said, “Thank you, Your Highness!”

Then he turned and withdrew.

Wei Heng and Sheng Zhaoning each composed themselves, and neither crossed that line again.

The prefectural office had already arranged lodging for everyone. The group settled down at the official posthouse in Jizhou.

Sheng Zhaoning returned to her room, wiped herself clean from head to toe, and changed into fresh clothes. Only then did she feel her whole body loosen, as if even the fatigue of these past days had faded somewhat.

She lay on the bed. By rights, she should have fallen into a deep sleep, yet for some reason, she was not the least bit tired.

A face kept surfacing in her mind, beyond her control.

The more she tried to force it down, the clearer that face became.

Her thoughts in turmoil, Sheng Zhaoning lay awake for a long time. At last, she let out a long sigh and sat up.

She raised a hand to her chest, and beneath her palm came the fierce beat of her heart.

This feeling was not unfamiliar. Having loved someone for so many years without any result, she knew all too well what this strange sensation in her heart meant.

But… how could she allow it?

She was not a good person.

She was not worthy of someone so upright and radiant, someone clean down to the bone.

Besides, there were too many things she could not let go of.

If one day her identity was exposed and she was condemned by all, what would she do then?

Sheng Zhaoning did not dare think about it. She had long since lost the courage to like someone again.

So she could only be ruthless and force herself to erase that faint flutter from her heart, pretending it had never appeared at all.

The bright moon shone over the vast official posthouse.

Two hearts beat restlessly through a sleepless night.

The grain escorted from Capital City was distributed continuously to the people below.

The disaster situation in Jizhou was soon relieved.

During these days, Wei Heng personally handled every matter, and he had grown much thinner and more haggard.

Sheng Zhaoning was busy contacting the worst-hit areas in the other two prefectures. She sent over the first batch of grain and funds ahead of time, assigning the people who had followed them from Capital City to escort it personally.

The horrors described in the memorials submitted before the emperor had been witnessed by her and Wei Heng with their own eyes along the way.

Starving corpses stretched for miles. Bodies lay everywhere.

Mothers fed their infants with blood. Grass had no roots left, and trees had been stripped of bark.

Some corpses were already incomplete, while thick meat broth simmered in pots…

Logically speaking, ever since the beginning of spring this year, the imperial court had already been preparing for disaster relief. Batch after batch of supplies and grain had been transported down. How, then, had the disaster become so severe?

The sordid truth needed little guessing. Someone must have embezzled the imperial court’s disaster relief funds, leaving the calamity unresolved as delay piled upon delay, until it finally erupted into today’s catastrophe.

“Where is Shen Tongshu?”

Inside the prefectural office, Wei Heng sat upright at the head of the hall and questioned the prefect.

Jizhou governed eight counties, and Shen Tongshu was the magistrate of Pinghe County.

If he had not been so lawlessly greedy that the people joined together to report him, alarming a censor who happened to be passing through, word of Jizhou’s disaster might never have reached the capital at all.

And a mere county magistrate, naturally, could not have wrought such harm on his own.

That was why, while still in the capital, Wei Heng had stopped the execution order issued by the court. He wanted to personally interrogate this so-called magistrate of Pinghe County and dig out the people behind him.

Sheng Zhaoning sat in a chair to the side, her gaze sweeping over the hall. She caught only the prefect’s expression: a flicker of panic, quickly forced back into composure.

“Reporting to the Crown Prince, the criminal Shen Tongshu has already been imprisoned in the prefectural jail.”

Wei Heng’s brows drew together slightly. “Bring him here.”

The prefect stood below the dais. At those words, he hesitated for a moment before answering, “Yes.”

Sheng Zhaoning watched several bailiffs head toward the prison. She faintly sensed something unusual in the air, but for the moment, she could not put her finger on it.

Wei Heng had clearly seen through her thoughts as well. He leaned halfway toward her, turned his head, and said in a low voice, “There is likely something strange about this matter.”

Sheng Zhaoning lowered her eyes in thought for a moment, then said to him, “From the time news of Jizhou reached the capital until Your Highness arrived in person, nearly two months have passed. If Shen Tongshu’s crimes are true, there must be someone directing him from behind the scenes.”

After thinking it over, she added, “Now Shen Tongshu has confessed and submitted to the law. He has been locked up to await execution. Logically speaking, the people behind him should be terrified that delay will bring trouble and worried that he will implicate them. Why would they simply leave him alive for two whole months, right up until the Crown Prince arrived here, without silencing him?”

Wei Heng looked at her with appreciation in his eyes. “That is precisely what makes this strange. In my view, it is not that the mastermind does not want to kill him, but that they cannot.”

“Cannot kill him?” Sheng Zhaoning asked, raising a brow.

Wei Heng nodded.

“We have yet to see Shen Tongshu, so everything is still unknown. When he arrives, ask whatever you wish. There is no need to stand on ceremony with me.”

Sheng Zhaoning’s fingertip twitched. She lowered her lashes and nodded. “All right.”

After roughly the time it took half an incense stick to burn, several bailiffs finally escorted in a man so thin he barely looked human.

Sheng Zhaoning looked him over from head to toe.

She only felt that this man seemed entirely unlike the image of a corrupt official.

He appeared to be around thirty years old, tall and gaunt, with sunken cheeks, dark shadows under his eyes, and lips drained of all color. Dry cracks split and peeled across them. His entire body had wasted away until only a frame of bones remained.

No matter how one looked at him, he seemed like a frail, impoverished scholar. How could he be the shockingly greedy corrupt official described in the memorial?

Wei Heng looked at the man being held on the floor, his gaze grave.

“You are Shen Tongshu?” he asked.

The prefect seated to the side saw Shen Tongshu hanging his head lifelessly and hurriedly barked, “Impudent! The Crown Prince is asking you a question. Answer truthfully at once!”

Only after those words fell did Shen Tongshu move.

He lifted his head, his eyes seeming somewhat dazed.

“Crown… Prince?” His voice was so dry and hoarse it hardly sounded human.

Wei Heng frowned as he looked at him. Shen Tongshu struggled to kneel properly, then bent down deeply and knocked his forehead to the ground.

“This guilty official, Shen Tongshu, pays respects to the Crown Prince.”