During the years of the Ming Dynasty, there was a wealthy local man named Qian Sheng in Qingzhou Prefecture, Shandong Province. He had a lot of wealth and was quite a womanizer.
Qian Sheng relied on his own money to do mischief in the local area. As long as it was a woman he liked, whether she had a husband or not, he would do everything possible to get it.
Because of this hobby, Qian Sheng spent a lot of money, but he also harmed many women, and many people were filled with hatred.
Since ancient times, those who have committed adultery with women have not had a good end. Those who are as greedy and tireless as Qian Sheng may have an even worse end.
(1)
It is said that near Qian Sheng’s house, there was a couple selling sesame seeds. The husband's surname is Wu, known as the second brother Wu, and his wife is Pan. She has a peach-shaped face and is charming.
Qian Sheng usually loves to eat sesame cakes, so he took the opportunity to keep an eye on Pan and gave her the name of sesame cakes Xishi. As long as there was nothing else to do, Qian Sheng would go to Pan to get close to her on the pretext of buying sesame seed cakes, causing the family to have endless sesame seed cakes to eat every day.
Although Qian Sheng often went to flirt with him, Pan was quite upright and ignored his troubles at all, and did not let Qian Sheng succeed for a while.
Qian Sheng is a master of intrigues. When he can't do anything with his face, he will use money to clear the way at critical moments. His mantra is: Things in the world can only be beneficial to people's hearts.
Moreover, Qian Sheng knew that the weakness of a family like Wu Er was lack of money. Therefore, we use money as a breakthrough. As long as we spend more money, we are not afraid that Pan will not take the bait. This is called "It is better to beg in private than to buy openly."
One day, Qian Sheng came to Wu Er's house to buy sesame cakes to eat again, and asked Brother Wu: Wu Er, how much money can you make selling sesame cakes all year round?
Brother Wu said: As a member, if you support me often, the money I earn in a year is just enough for our young couple to fill our stomachs.
Qian Sheng asked again: Is there no profit at all after one year?
Brother Wu said: If you can have one or two taels left every year, you can keep it as a foundation, but in fact you can't save it at all.
Qian Sheng said: If someone can help you with ten or five taels of silver as capital, what do you think?
Brother Wu said: If I had that money, I would not go out to sell sesame cakes, but would open a tavern at home, selling sesame cakes and cooking at the same time. But after all, where is anyone willing to lend this money? Even if I am willing to borrow it, I am afraid that I will lose my capital and owe interest, so I might as well do this small business!
Qian Sheng said: I think you are a good person and honest. If you are willing to lend me something, I will be happy and give you twenty or thirty taels.
Brother Wu smiled and said: Yuanwai, are you kidding? Is there anything else in my house that you don’t have? If there is, just take it! Don’t look at twenty or thirty taels of silver. It’s just a drop in the bucket for you, but for us little people, we may not be able to spend it all in a lifetime.
Qian Sheng said: I really like something from your house. It doesn’t cost you anything. I just borrow it for a while and then give it back to you! If you are willing, I will give you thirty taels after the matter is completed.
Brother Wu said: Is there anything in my house that is so valuable and can be returned after use? If so, I will definitely agree. How can I ask for so much money from you?
Qian Sheng said: I'm afraid you won't agree, and even if you are willing, I'm afraid your wife may not agree. You go back and discuss it with your wife now, and I will come over with the money tomorrow to cash it out with you on the spot. After finished speaking, he left with a smile.
Brother Wu is a fool. If a smart person had thought of what was going on, he would tell his wife about it when he went back and said: I don’t know what is so valuable in my house?
Pan thought for a while and said: Just listen to his nonsense! We only have those things at home that can be returned after use, how can they be so valuable! I think he is trying to hit me! As a grown man, you should be tough outside and don't let him fool you.
After hearing this, Brother Wu smiled and said: You can't do things like being a bastard. The two of them went about their business without mentioning the matter.
One day later, Qian Sheng came to Brother Wu with a bag of silver and said: I have the money ready. I wonder if you have reached an agreement? After saying that, he pushed the white money in front of Brother Wu.
After Brother Wu saw it, he was jealous. He had long forgotten what he said to his wife, and deliberately said: Just tell me what you want, I will definitely agree.
Qian Sheng said: You are a sensible person, do you have to tell me? Think about the things in my house that I can use and that are so valuable?
Brother Wu said: I can’t guess! Apart from my wife and I, there was not even a thing worth ten taels of silver.
Qian Sheng said: As you said, it’s just something on the body, who said it’s something outside the body?
Brother Wu blushed and said: Members, please make fun of me. This kind of joke is not allowed.
Qian Sheng said: Do you think I am joking? Buy spot with cash, and the deal will be done if you wish. If you don’t want to, I won’t force you! After saying that, he was ready to put away the money.
When Brother Wu saw that he wanted to put away the money, he was reluctant to agree directly and was a little reluctant to part with the money.
Qian Sheng saw it, then took out a piece of silver, stuffed it into Brother Wu's hand, and said: You take this silver to do a demonstration first, and when you two have discussed it, the rest of the silver will also be yours.
Brother Wu did not refuse and accepted the ingot of silver. When he got home, he lied to Pan and said:
As expected, you guessed it yesterday. It turned out that Qian Sheng was really planning on you, but I sternly rejected him. He felt embarrassed, so he gave me a piece of silver as an apology.
Pan said: How can you take his money? It's okay if you don't take the money. Once you take it, it seems that you are a little happy. He will definitely not give up.
Brother Wu said: Oh, I had no idea at the moment, so I accepted it.
Qian Sheng said before he left that if he was satisfied, it would not be difficult to give him ten more ingots.
I think that if you and I work hard here for a year, we can't earn a few taels of silver. Since he is willing to spend a lot of money on you, we might as well take advantage of the trick and give him some sweeteners, make a good amount of money from him, and then change his life. This is much better than making sesame cakes from dawn to dusk.
After saying that, he put the ingot of silver on the table. Pan picked up the silver and looked at it, and said with a smile: You are a big man, but for this little money, you are willing to give up your wife to support a man?
Brother Wu said: I am reluctant to give up, but it is rare that the rich man's family is unlucky and comes to plot against us. As long as we endure the shame for a moment, we won’t have to worry about it for the rest of our lives. In today's world, laugh at the poor but not at the prostitutes . We are not a wealthy family. Don't talk about loyalty and integrity. Even if you keep your innocence, no one will build a memorial arch for you. It's better to be tacky!
Pan said: The truth is correct! But after all, it is not a glorious thing, so how can I do it?
Brother Wu said: As long as you agree, things will be easy to handle.
We prepared a table of wine and dinner at home, and I invited him to drink at home in the evening.I will quietly hide away for a while, and you will come out to accompany him for me. He will definitely tease you during the dinner, so you just wait for the opportunity to satisfy him for once.
When I come back, you will have finished your work, so you can get this money for free without anyone noticing.
Pan said: I’m just a little shy!
Brother Wu said: Now is not the time to talk about this! It’s not like you don’t know him! Besides, I asked you to drink with him, and I didn't ask you to actively seduce him. I just watched how he acted, and you just followed him.
Pan agreed without saying anything.
(2)
Brother Wu immediately went out to buy a table of wine and food, and then invited Mr. Qian and said: If Mr. Qian doesn’t mind, come to my house for a drink in the evening.
After Qian Sheng heard this, he was overjoyed and thought: It really touches people's hearts. It seems that the couple has already discussed it. After Brother Wu left, Qian Sheng danced for joy, cleaned himself up neatly, and wished he could go to the appointment early.
When he was about to go out in the evening, Qian Sheng was bumped into by a group of drinking friends, who told him that a top prostitute had just arrived nearby and they took him to drink wine.
Qian Sheng could not refuse, so he had to follow. But because he had something on his mind, Qian Sheng felt very uncomfortable at the banquet. He endured it until the second watch. Seeing that everyone had no intention of leaving the banquet, he had no choice but to run out on the pretext of going to the toilet.
Qian Sheng was afraid that he would go too late and miss the opportunity while others were sleeping and resting. But in fact, Brother Wu had already found an excuse to hide at a friend's house.
Qian Sheng came to Wu Er's house in the dark, and saw that the store door was not closed. He understood and locked the door after entering. Qian Sheng walked into the house and saw that the lights were on and the food and wine were on the table, but no one could be seen. He called several times but no one answered.
Qian Sheng was surprised. He looked around with a lamp and was frightened to death on the spot. It turned out that the ground was covered with blood and a headless woman was lying in a pool of blood.
Qian Sheng threw the lamp on the ground. He was so frightened that he ran home. After returning home, his heart was still pounding, but he never understood what was going on. It was like a dream.
Let’s talk about Wu Er’s stay at a friend’s house, and the time passed was extremely painful. After spending most of the night, he felt that Qian Sheng and his wife were done with whatever they were doing, so he just had a few drinks with him when he went back, so he said goodbye to his friends and returned home.
Arriving at the door of the house, Brother Wu only saw the door of his shop wide open, and thought: The staff is too careless when doing things outside, why don't they even close the door!
After Wu Er entered the door, he didn't hear any sound, and he didn't see any outsiders. He only found a headless female corpse on the ground. Judging from the clothes, she was his wife.
Exactly: separate the eight top Yang bones and pour down a piece of snow.
Wu Er panicked, crying and thinking: Did Qian Sheng do this? My wife already agreed, so why kill her? I promised to pay it back when I’m done with it! I will fight hard to find him!
Wu Er packed up the house, locked the door and went to find the cashier.
When Qian Sheng saw Brother Wu coming to see him, he hurriedly opened the door, but Brother Wu grabbed him and asked: Why did you kill my wife?
Qian Sheng quickly explained: Brother, when I arrived at your house, I saw that your wife had been killed on the ground. How can you say that I killed her?
Brother Wu said: If not you, who could it be?
Qian Sheng said: I really like your wife in my heart, but it’s too late to love her. How could I be willing to kill her? You have to think clearly and don’t wrongly accuse good people!
Brother Wu said: Our husband and wife were originally very good, but it was all caused by your greed! My wife has made a list. If not you, who should I look for now? You and I go to see the officials, kill people to pay for their lives, and give back my wife!
The two of them arrived at the government office noisily.
After the magistrate asked about the cause, he heard that it was a murder case and did not dare to neglect it. He sent people to Wu Er's house to examine Pan's body and found that it was indeed homicide. However, the head was never found in Wu Er's house.
Brother Wu told the county magistrate: My wife and I lived by selling sesame cakes all day long. Qian Sheng fell in love with the villain's wife. When I was not at home, he raped her on the pretext of buying sesame cakes. My wife must have refused, so he killed her.
Qian Sheng said: Master, I am a familiar customer of the couple. Yesterday Wu Er invited me to his house for a drink. I got stuck because of something, so I went a little late.
When we arrived at his home, Brother Wu was not at home, but his wife had been killed. I was afraid, so I ran home in a hurry. This incident was definitely not my fault.
The magistrate asked Wu Er: Did you really invite Qian Sheng to your house for a drink?
Wu Er hesitated and saw that the magistrate wanted to impose punishment, so he had to say that he had invited him.
The magistrate said: Since it was you who invited Qian Sheng to drink, why was he not at home that night? There must be something hidden, so let’s bring it in truthfully!
Seeing that he couldn't hide it, Brother Wu had no choice but to tell the magistrate that Qian Sheng was greedy for his wife and gave up his wife for silver.
After hearing this, the county magistrate said: It seems that Wu Er invited people to drink and abandoned his wife for adultery. Qian Sheng committed adultery, Pan resisted, Qian Sheng was angry and killed him. Qian Sheng killed someone for no reason, so he naturally wanted to kill someone to pay for it.
Qian Sheng said: Master, this villain is wronged! It is true that I am greedy for Pan's beauty, and the villain is guilty. But they did not kill her. Since they invited me to drink, Pan must be willing. Even if it is a bit reluctant, I can discuss it slowly and not kill her!
The county magistrate did not listen to his excuse because he committed adultery and insisted on convicting him of rape and murder. However, because the female corpse was headless and no murder weapon was found at the scene, it was difficult to convict him on the spot, so he sent people to search for the whereabouts of the female corpse's head.
After many inquiries, the neighbors all said that Wu Er Ge's family was honest and honest in the local area and had no enemies. Although Qian Yuanwai was greedy, most of the things he encountered were settled with money, and he would definitely not sacrifice himself for a woman.
The county magistrate also felt that this case was a bit strange, and he did not believe that it was Qian Sheng who committed the murder.
Just when the county magistrate had no clue, a neighbor came to report: According to the villain's guess, there is a person who has a major suspicion, but he is not sure.
The magistrate asked him to speak boldly, and the man said:
For more than a month, there has been a wandering monk from afar, knocking on his bangle and shouting every night, begging for alms. But since Brother Wu's wife was killed, the cry of the wandering monk has never been heard again. If he went to other places, how could it be such a coincidence?
The magistrate said: This person is indeed suspicious, but do you know where he is now?
neighbor said: I don’t know the exact location, but I guess I can’t go far.
The county magistrate quickly sent people to issue arrest warrants to hunt down the wandering monk.
But this wandering monk seemed to have disappeared, and even after several months of searching, there was no trace.Finally, while assisting in the investigation and handling of the case, traces of a wandering monk were found in the countryside more than a hundred miles away, but it was not confirmed that he was this person.
The government officer who took the lead in arresting him was relatively mature and discussed with everyone: It should be this person, but he is not sure whether he killed Pan. Why don't we try to outsmart him, maybe there will be an unexpected harvest.
They asked one of the government servants to put on women's clothing, dress up like a female ghost, and hide in a forest where the wandering monks must pass.
At night, when the wandering monk called Ye back, the disguised female ghost suddenly jumped out of the forest and shouted: Monk, give me my head back!
This call frightened the monk quite a lot. When he looked again, he saw that it was a headless woman in red. The monk panicked on the spot and said: Auntie, your head is in a cage in the blacksmith shop in the east of the city. Don't bother me.
After everyone heard this, they confirmed that You Monk was the murderer. They all jumped out and tied him up. You Monk knew that he had fallen into the trap, but it was already too late.
(3)
The wandering monk was brought to the hall. Knowing that he could no longer deny it, he had to confess: I did kill that woman.
The magistrate asked: What grudge does she have against you, but you want to kill her?
The wandering monk said: There is no enmity. Just because it was called night that night, when she passed by her house, she found that the store door was not closed. I wanted to go in and steal something, but unexpectedly I found a beautiful woman.
The villain then had lustful thoughts in his heart and went up to ask for sex, but the woman refused, so the villain killed her with a sword in anger. Then he cut off the head and walked out with the head in his hand. After walking for a while, he thought, what is the use of this head? So he threw it in the cage of the blacksmith shop in the east of the city.
At that time, he just wanted to vent his anger, but he didn’t expect that his own life would be at stake.
The magistrate sent people to the blacksmith shop in the east of the city to check, but the head was no longer in the cage. According to the blacksmith's account:
A human head was indeed found in the cage at that time, but he was afraid of being implicated if he reported it to the official, so he quietly moved the head to a big tree outside Li Si's house and hung it on it when no one was around. What happened next is unknown.
The magistrate asked someone to take the blacksmith to find Li Si. When Li Si saw the government servant coming, he did not dare to neglect it.
Hearing that the official was looking for a woman's head, Li Si knew it and couldn't hide it, so he said he had indeed found the human head hanging on the tree, but he was also afraid that the official would be harmed, so he buried the head in his back garden.
The magistrate asked Li Si: Is it still there now?
Li Si said: must still be there. At that time, I was afraid of being implicated in the future, so I made a special mark where I buried my head and planted a small dwarf tree on it.
The county magistrate was afraid that there was fraud, so he took people to check it out in person.
According to the place identified by Li Si, the magistrate had people dig down and indeed found a human head, but the head looked very old and did not look like a woman’s head at all.
The county magistrate and everyone were dumbfounded because the head was not Pan's. After an autopsy, it was found that it was a man's head.
The county magistrate found that the case was getting more and more complicated and that it happened at Li Si's home. However, a simple court was set up at Li Si's home and he wanted to hear the matter quickly.
But they turned around but couldn't find Li Si. It turned out that while everyone was digging, Li Si noticed at a glance that there was no woman's head inside, so he ran away secretly.
The magistrate asked people to arrest Li Si while interrogating Li Si's wife. She said: Five years ago, Li Si had an enemy named Sun, who was killed by Li Si and buried in the garden.
Not long after, Li Si was taken out of the home of one of his relatives. The relatives heard that there was a murder case on him and they dared not take him in, so they sent him home.
Li Si met with the magistrate and heard that his wife had confessed. He did not dare to quibble anymore and said: This head is indeed surnamed Sun. He has a grudge against the villain. Once when I was chopping firewood in the mountains, I happened to meet this villain and killed him with a hatchet.
I was afraid that someone would find him, so I took off his clothes and burned them. I cut off his head and took it home and buried it in the garden. Later, the Sun family came to search for someone and found a headless corpse in the mountains, which was difficult to identify. Now, it has been a long time, and even the Sun family has not mentioned this matter much.
The place where the head is buried is more than ten feet away from the place where the woman was buried the day before. I was afraid that I would dig it wrong so I marked it, but I didn’t expect it to be such a coincidence! If I had known this, I shouldn't even have said anything about the woman's head.
The magistrate of the county asked people to continue digging under the guidance of Li Si, and sure enough, another human head was dug out. After careful identification, it was found that it was Pan's head.
The magistrate said with a smile: One case involved two lives. What a providence!
even composed a poem on the spot:
I have never said that there is no end, so I really can’t guess that there is no end;
When it comes time to show off, one end will end up with two ends.
The magistrate then took the head and a group of people back to the yamen. He first had the murderers You Seng and Li Si beaten with fifty boards each, and were sentenced to death.
The money officer went out to commit adultery, resulting in death. When he was found guilty, the magistrate allowed him to be redeemed at a discounted price. The second brother Wu was greedy for money and sold adultery, so he was punished with thirty rods. The money officer went out and gave him ten taels of silver. The second brother Wu buried Pan.
After the Sun family heard about this, people came and took away the father's head for burial.
As for the blacksmith who removed the corpse and failed to report the fact, he was also punished with a cane of twenty pieces.
The county magistrate caused quite a sensation in the local area because he solved two murder cases at once, and was commended by his superiors.
Looking back on the whole story, it is actually very ridiculous. Poor Qian Sheng was greedy for beauty, got a lawsuit in vain, suffered a lot of panic, and even harmed a life!
Brother Wu is not a man at all, he is a typical bastard who is willing to lend his wife to others for a few cents; and Mrs. Pan is also not a stickler for integrity. If she had been stronger and refused to listen to her husband, she would not have been killed later.
As for Li Si’s punishment, it is purely a case of evil being punished.
As the saying goes: Never do anything bad in your life, and you are not afraid of ghosts knocking on the door in the middle of the night. As long as you do bad things, sooner or later you will be exposed.
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