Palace Coup 15
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She turned her gaze toward the estate overseer and the tenant farmers, her expression both encouraging and resolute.
The farmer did not stop his wife. With a bitter smile, he said, “You have suffered by following me. I have been a useless man all my life—how could I let you, a woman, stand up for us at a time like this?”
Then he himself dropped to his knees and struck his head against the ground three times.
His eyes were bloodshot, and his voice was hoarse. “I beg the young lady to render us justice.”
The sudden kowtowing caught her completely off guard. It was a habit rooted deep in his bones, and correcting it would take time. With a sigh, she helped him to his feet once more and said gently, “Do not be afraid. Today, I will protect you all. Come with me.”
The people around them followed silently as the great crowd made its way toward the threshing ground.
“This is bad! Master, those wretched peasants have actually dared to go to the young lady and lodge a complaint. They are all gathered together now!”
Madam Cao flung open the curtain in a panic and shouted at Cao Youxin, who was still fast asleep.
“Master! Wake up, wake up! If you do not get up this instant, the whole estate will be turned upside down!”
Cao Youxin had been sleeping soundly when the thunderous interruption jolted him upright.
“What did you say?”
Madam Cao launched into a tearful account of everything that had happened.
He stared in astonishment. “The young lady went to the fields? And stayed there for half a day?”
What could a noble young lady possibly want in the fields? To watch those mud-legged peasants transplanting rice?
“Is this really the time to worry about that? If you do not go now, something truly disastrous may happen.”
Cao Youxin put on his shoes and socks with unhurried composure. “What is there to fear? I have been master of this estate for twenty years. She is merely a young lady who eloped with a man. Go and fetch the account books.”
He picked his teeth and sauntered toward the fields.
For a moment, the scene before him left him stunned.
Not a single tenant farmer was working in the fields. Instead, they were gathered in great clusters on the threshing ground, busily boiling meat and roasting white flour cakes.
His mind filled with questions. He was very much inclined to ask where all this food had come from.
But before that, he wanted to see what sort of spectacle this was supposed to be.
Such a shallow attempt at winning favor. He sneered inwardly. As expected of a noble young lady—she actually believed that a little food would be enough to buy people’s loyalty.
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During years of famine, the wealthy families in the city handed out gruel and grain, and these wretched peasants had never been shy about eating or taking their share. Yet who among them had ever truly been grateful? All they did was complain that the gruel was too thin and the grain too meager.
One of the farmers noticed Cao Youxin’s arrival. The news passed from one person to ten, and people exchanged wary glances. Before long, the lively scene fell silent.
“The meat over here is ready. Come and share it.”
Xie Miaoxuan paid no attention to Cao Youxin. She continued distributing the meat to the farmers, who waited with bowls fashioned from lotus leaves.
Cao Youxin watched for a while. Seeing that she treated him as though he did not exist, he arranged a smile on his face and approached her on his own.
“Young lady.” He cupped his hands and bowed, then pointed toward the grain piled on the ground, still waiting to be put into the cooking pots. “You need only leave such matters to me. Let me handle the distribution of this grain—I am accustomed to doing this sort of work. The sun is terribly fierce today. Why not return to the courtyard and rest?”
Xie Miaoxuan smacked his outstretched hand away with her ladle.
“Cao, you pig of an overseer, you arrived at just the right moment. I was about to ask whether you brought the account books.”
“I brought them, I brought them.”
“Bring them here.”
She handed the task of distributing the meat to Big Ox, then opened the account books and began to examine them.
The accounts were neat and beautifully prepared. Their balance, however, was either in the red or exactly even.
Xie Miaoxuan tapped the corner of a page, the edge of her lips curling upward. “Overseer Cao, these accounts are certainly immaculate.”
Cao Youxin smiled and nodded. “They ought to be. It is my duty.”
The faint smile at Xie Miaoxuan’s lips took on the mischievous air of a child who had just thought of an amusing game.
“There is one thing I find rather curious. Of the dozens of estates around the capital, why is it that the tenants of my Xie estate live the hardest lives, even though this estate possesses the second-largest acreage of fertile land in the entire capital region? Why is our annual yield so low?”
“Young lady, you do not know the true condition of the other estates around the capital. Rumors and hearsay cannot be trusted. These figures are as accurate as they can be. I am familiar with the overseers of the surrounding estates as well. If you do not believe me, I can summon them all here to explain the matter themselves. Everyone’s accounts are like this.”
He seized the nearest tenant farmer and dragged him forward.
“Speak! Was it you who spouted nonsense to the young lady and incited her against me?”
A vicious light flashed in his eyes. The farmer he had seized shuddered in terror, and the piece of meat he had just received slipped from his hand and landed on the ground with a wet slap.
“It wasn’t me! It wasn’t me!”
Cao Youxin released his grip on the man’s collar. The farmer hurriedly picked up the meat as though it were a priceless treasure, dusted it off, then retreated to one side and wolfed it down, as if afraid someone would snatch it from him the very next moment.
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A dark glint passed through Xie Miaoxuan’s eyes, but she made no outward response.
“Who, exactly, has slandered me? Step forward and confront me.” Cao Youxin swept his gaze around the crowd. Wherever his cold, intimidating eyes passed, every head bowed lower.
“Young lady, you see? They were all spouting nonsense. You listened to rumors and tarnished my good name.”
Watching his performance, Xie Miaoxuan narrowed her eyes and interrupted his borrowed authority in a tone that was neither warm nor cold.
“Enough. I believe I told you this morning that I have no taste for watching grand dramas.”
She clapped her hands twice.
“Bring it in.”
“Yes!”
A dozen or so sturdy household retainers came through the crowd, each carrying two enormous sacks over his shoulders. They reached the center of the grounds and dropped more than twenty sacks of grain, each weighing a hundred jin, onto the ground with a series of heavy thuds.
“Young lady, these are the grain we found in the cellar. There are nearly a thousand more sacks like them inside, and there are more than ten cellars of this kind.”
Cao Youxin studied the sacks carefully before realization dawned.
This was the grain he had previously moved from the main residence into the cellars. Then the grain she had distributed to everyone…
It was all his.
Xie Miaoxuan watched his green eyes begin to glow with a sinister light. She flung the account book onto the ground, strode over, and slit open one of the grain sacks with a dagger. Scooping up a handful of rice, she said in a low, icy voice, “This is all new rice. Cao Youxin, perhaps you would be so kind as to tell me where these ten thousand dan of grain came from?”
New rice had been harvested no more than a year earlier. Even assuming a yield of only eighty jin per mu, after deducting losses and the portion retained by the tenant farmers, the remainder would come to roughly ten thousand dan.
After a moment’s thought, Xie Miaoxuan understood.
Why was there only new rice and not a single grain of old rice? The old rice had most likely all been sold by him. Before the coming turmoil, this was the last year of good weather and abundant harvests. Grain was not yet scarce enough to command the exorbitant prices of later years. He was probably waiting for the market to rise before selling, but had not yet found the opportunity.
And now she had caught him red-handed.
“Ah!”
Cao Youxin’s face had darkened the instant he saw the new rice. The murderous gleam in his eyes as he looked at Xie Miaoxuan could scarcely be concealed.
She had secretly sent people to investigate and search the estate!
His gaze shifted several times, but in the end he forced down the evil fire burning within him and replied in a deliberately evasive tone, “I was born and raised here. The three elders of the village watched me grow up, and we share a certain bond. This year’s grain has been difficult to sell, and they had nowhere to store it. Knowing that I had cellars suitable for grain storage, they begged me to keep it here for a time. So I must ask the young lady not to mistake this grain for your own.”
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