During the reign of Renzong in the Ming Dynasty , there was a young man named Hu Lancheng in Hongdu. He and his wife Caixia had just married not long ago.
But as time went by, the couple had more and more conflicts. Every night, the neighbors could always hear the quarrels between the two, and Hu Lancheng beat and scolded his wife.
Until this day, the villagers saw two missing persons notices on the bulletin board. One is looking for the lost maid, and the other is looking for the missing wife. The two have different identities, but the rewards are exactly the same, so they attract a lot of people to watch. The missing person notice for the wife was posted by Hu Lancheng. When he returned home a few days ago, he suddenly found that his wife was missing and the family's money was gone. It was probably Caixia who had run away from home. For this reason, he posted a missing person notice.
At this moment, Caixia's father, Hu Lancheng's father-in-law, Zhou Laohan, passed by and saw the missing person notice posted by his son-in-law. But when he saw that the reward money was the same as that of a maid, Old Man Zhou became furious. He had long heard that his son-in-law beat and scolded his daughter, but he did not want to interfere in their family affairs because of his face. Now that his daughter had run away from home, he couldn't bear it anymore, so he went to Hu Lancheng to argue with her.
Unexpectedly, Hu Lancheng didn't take it seriously at all and smiled playfully in front of Old Man Zhou, which completely angered Old Man Zhou. He immediately filed a complaint, accusing his son-in-law of beating his daughter every day, causing her death, and abandoning her body in the wilderness. He also pretended that Caixia was missing to confuse the public.
After hearing the news, Hu Lancheng was not to be outdone and immediately wrote a complaint and sent it to the county government. Not only did he sue his father-in-law for framed him, but he also sued his wife for having an affair with another person, stealing the family's belongings and running away with the adulterer. He was concerned about his face and did not reveal the truth. He only claimed that Caixia ran away from home.
In the county government office, the two of them had a quarrel. The Hongdu County Magistrate's surname was Liu. After reading the complaint and looking at the two people arguing, he couldn't help but feel a little angry. He slapped the case, told the two of them to be quiet, and sent someone to investigate Caixia's whereabouts, making sure to find this person. But three months passed in the blink of an eye, and there was no progress in the case. At this juncture, a police officer rushed into the county office and said that a female body was found in an abandoned well outside the city.
As soon as these words came out, County Magistrate Liu, Hu Lancheng and Old Man Zhou looked at each other and rushed to the scene immediately. When the three of them arrived, the body had already been fished out. It was indeed a female body, but unfortunately it was highly decomposed and could no longer be identified. Unexpectedly, when Old Man Zhou saw the body, he rushed towards her in tears, identified her as his daughter, and pointed at Hu Lancheng and cursed: "You beast, you killed your wife and dumped her body in the well. People and gods are outraged. I hope you will make the decision for the common people!"
Hu Lancheng's prejudice He quickly cried out for injustice, stepped forward to observe for himself, and then said: "Sir, this corpse is not my wife Caixia!"
After that, Hu Lancheng said that the corpse was completely different from Caixia in terms of body shape, feet and hands, etc. But now, Magistrate Liu has lost his patience. Moreover, Old Man Zhou has personally identified the body, so the case can basically be solved. Hu Lan originally pleaded not guilty, but was beaten into a trap and was eventually sentenced to hanging and executed next year.
I thought the case was finally settled, but a few days later, the inspector came to arrest the prisoner. When he was looking through the case file, he saw this case and discovered many doubts. For example, if Hu Lancheng really killed his wife Caixia, why would he bother to register a missing person notice and stir up controversy? Secondly, after seeing the body, old man Zhou could recognize it as his daughter at a glance, which is really suspicious. In addition, after the case was over, the handling of the female body was not very satisfactory.
Logically speaking, since the body was Caixia, it should be buried by Old Man Zhou, but he was unwilling to pay and even left the body at the county government office. was very helpless and had no choice but to bury the body in a mass grave in the back mountain.Being able to redress his daughter's grievance, but unwilling to deal with her daughter's funeral, shows that Old Man Zhou knew in his heart that the body was not his daughter's at all.
It seems that this magistrate of Liu County has sentenced a faint case. The governor immediately wrote about the matter and decided to reopen the case. Although the governor's official rank is not high, he can patrol hunting on behalf of the emperor, and his status can be imagined. Although Magistrate Liu was dissatisfied, he had to agree.
Soon, the governor led people to dig up Caixia's body and brought it back to the county government. The governor asked Hu Lancheng to identify her, and after checking with them, they found that the body was that of another lost maid, not Caixia. Only now did Mr. Zhou admit that he deliberately admitted that the body belonged to his daughter in order to teach his son-in-law a lesson. As for Caixia's whereabouts, he did not know.
Hu Lancheng took the opportunity to complain, saying that his wife had been having an affair with a neighbor, a merchant named Zhao, and the two often had private meetings behind his back. Hu Lancheng loved his wife and did not report the incident to the official. He just hoped that his wife could cut off contact with Merchant Zhao, but Caixia never could do it, so she was beaten and scolded by Hu Lancheng. When he returned home that day, he found that his belongings were missing and his neighbor, Merchant Zhao, was also missing. Only then did he realize that the two had eloped.
If this is the case, the clues to this case will be lost again. Just when the governor was helpless, a policeman claimed to have discovered traces of Caixia.
The police officer claimed that yesterday a friend from a neighboring village invited him to be a guest, and the two went to a nearby brothel to drink wine. Both of them chose a girl, but when the girl walked in front of the policeman, he was stunned. That person was the missing Caixia.
After hearing this, the governor immediately led people to arrest him. Fortunately, Caixia's adulterer Zhao Merchant was also there, and both of them were arrested.
It turns out that after Caixia eloped with Merchant Zhao, all the money she had with her was quickly spent. In order to make more money and let the two of them live freely in the future, Caixia decided to enter a brothel without prostitution. Merchant Zhao did not stop her. The two relied on the money earned by Caixia to temporarily live in the brothel and changed their names, thus evading the government's arrest.
When the truth came out, the governor felt very ridiculous. In the end, Merchant Zhao was sentenced to one hundred years of imprisonment for seducing another man's wife and turning her into a prostitute, which was no different from trafficking. Caixia's affair was logically Hu Lancheng's family affair, so she was naturally handed over to him. Hu Lancheng's treatment, whether to divorce his wife or sell her to others, all depends on his own ideas. Old man Zhou fabricated the truth and framed a good person, but fortunately he did not cause Hu Lancheng's death. He was exempted from the death penalty but could not escape from the living crime. He was sentenced to one hundred years of cane punishment and three years in prison.
After this incident, Hu Lancheng said that Caixia would not repent and divorced her wife to marry another. Caixia knew she had no shame in staying in her hometown, so she packed her bags and left. No one knew where she went.
