The Lucky Farmgirl
Chapter 554 - 543: Third Interrogation

Chapter 554: Chapter 543: Third Interrogation

Xiao Erlang was dragged into the hall, and as soon as the cloth was removed from his mouth, he immediately shouted, "Brother, you are framing me! It was clearly you who made me do it, and now you are pushing all the blame onto me..."

He was terribly frightened, his mind still full of the talk of exile from the night before with Bai Shan. So today, as soon as he was brought before the court, he bit the bullet and insisted he was mad, and shoved all the household responsibilities clean away. Who knew that his elder brother would instead shove everything onto him?

Seeing that County Magistrate Tang was looking at him with suspicion, he was afraid that he would be sentenced directly if he spoke too late, and hurriedly defended himself, "Your Honor, Your Honor, what my elder brother said isn’t true. The Yan Family’s vegetable plot wasn’t tilled by just me, our whole family did it..."

County Magistrate Tang sneered, "You put on ghost scares, and frightened people, all this just to till a vegetable plot on Yan Family’s land? Do you take this court for fools? Officers, drag Xiao Erlang out and give him ten hard strikes..."

"Yes!" The bailiffs approached to drag him away.

Xiao Erlang, terrified, shouted in panic, "No, no, it’s not just for the sake of tilling the land—we, we wanted to buy the Yu Family’s house..."

As Xiao Family’s husband and wife were dragged into the yard and knelt down, they heard their second son’s words from inside the hall, and instantly their vision went dark. They tried to struggle and make a sound but were pressed down by a bailiff’s plank, only managing to emit a muffled groan.

Other than a part of the audience gathered outside the yard who took notice of them, the tense and anxious Xiao Dalang siblings inside the hall did not hear their voices.

Xiao Erlang confessed that all of this was the idea of their parents and elder brother. After all, more than two years ago, he was still young, just a teenager, and didn’t understand things like making money, let alone tilling and planting in the Yan Family’s field.

Seeing Two spill everything cleanly, Dalang was enraged. The brothers started a back-and-forth argument, and County Magistrate Tang above added fuel to the fire. In less than forty-five minutes, they revealed everything they knew.

The onlookers outside the courtyard were stunned and amazed at what they heard.

In fact, the Xiao Family originally didn’t harbor such elaborate intentions. It all began with the flood three years ago.

To be precise, two years and ten months ago, the Xiao Family’s storage room was made of mud. After enduring half a month of torrential rains, it collapsed.

What the Xiao Family didn’t expect was the Yan Family’s surrounding wall also collapsed, leaving a large hole.

That was the Yan Family’s back garden, which was a bit secluded and rarely visited by anyone. During that time, Yizhou was struck by severe floods, and everyone from the Yan Family except Governor Yan had fled Yizhou, so no one repaired the hole—it might not even have been discovered.

Following the floods, countless refugees emerged. After the refugees, angels came to aid the disaster. Then Governor Yan was arrested, and after half a year of trials, the entire Yan Family was executed. A series of events unfolded, and with everything happening, nobody noticed the large, crumbled hole at the Yan residence.

Meanwhile, the Xiao Family had already rebuilt their storage room with mud and grass and casually collected quite a few bricks and stones that had fallen from the Yan residence.

Bricks and stones weren’t cheap.

In order to avoid detection by the Yan Family, they used mud mixed with grass to make brick prototypes and roughly repaired the collapsed corner.

It just had to not look like a hole from a distance.

But when rebuilding their storage room, either to claim a bit more land or with other intentions, they didn’t reconstruct the room’s rear wall. Instead, they used the repaired surrounding wall as their own house wall.

Later on, when the Yan residence was seized, Xiao Erlang secretly pushed a few large bricks aside and sneaked over. He pilfered a few porcelain items, a few basins, and a couple of mosquito nets from the Yan Family...

These items weren’t of much value to officials, so they weren’t fully confiscated during the seizure. Occasionally, members of the Xiao Family would go over to search and take items handy.

One time, Xiao Erlang even found a gold nugget under a table. Well, that’s what Xiao Dalang said.

Beyond these items, there were lotus pods in the Yan Family’s lotus pond and various fruits in the garden. Xiao Erlang was still a young man, frequently treasure-hunting and picking lotus pods and fruit to eat.

As they had more items than they could consume, the Xiao Family began to sell them in the market and discovered they could make quite a profit.

The Xiao Family then grew tempted, considering the Yan Family’s garden as their own backyard.

Not long after, an auction was held to sell the Yan family’s house. Having just tasted the sweetness of profit, the Xiao Family was reluctant to let go. It just happened that a middleman came to view the house leading some people. Xiao Dalang, who was picking lotus pods at the time, hid and made some noise, which scared those people away.

From then on, the Xiao Family took it upon themselves to scare people at night by visiting the Yan residence, crying out to spread rumors and scare away potential buyers.

As their boldness grew, Xiao Family’s parents took a fancy to the garden plot in the Yan Family’s backyard, deeming the soil enriched by the flowers. They uprooted the flowers and planted vegetables instead.

And the plot was even closer to the walls of the Yu Family’s property; the Xiao Family made more noise, which could be heard from the Yu residence.

Living in the Yu Family’s property were mainly young scholars who were bold themselves. Curious about the noise, they couldn’t resist investigating.

Fearing being discovered, the Xiao Family decided to continue their ghost ruse, dressing the lean Xiao Erlang in a hemp robe to pose as a female ghost, which successfully scared away the Yu Family’s tenants.

Eventually, the Xiao Family set their sights on the Yu Family’s house, wanting to buy it. After all, they had two sons; if they could purchase it, one could be given to Xiao Erlang.

Moreover, with houses door-to-door, them becoming one large household couldn’t be more perfect.

They schemed perfectly yet were hampered by the Yu Family’s high asking price. Even though the area was purportedly haunted and the Yu Family lowered it a bit, it still pained the Xiao Family to spend such an amount.

So the Xiao Family didn’t buy but kept scaring away the Yu Family’s tenants. No tenant could last long—usually three months at most, a little over one month at least, and they would be frightened away.

The Yu Family’s rent and sale price kept dropping, but never to the Xiao Family’s expectation, so they never made the purchase.

Though they didn’t buy the house, the Yu Family’s property had been empty for half a year, and as they couldn’t actually move in, there was little impact on the Xiao Family. Hence, they stopped pretending to be ghosts, merely mentioning to neighbors from time to time that they seemed to have heard the cries of ghosts again the night before.

Living closest to the Yan Family’s residence, no one doubted their words, so the rumors of haunting persisted.

They thought that after a couple more years, with the Yu residence remaining unrented and them not living in it, the owner would eventually lower the price and sell to them. But half a year later, people moved into the Yu Family’s property again?

After watching for a few days and confirming that the new tenants were also scholars, Xiao Erlang took action the night before last.

Every time he played a ghost, he first entered the Yan Family from their own storage room, then crawled out to the alley through a hole in the Yan Family’s wall. That way, even if someone was watching in secret, they would assume he was coming from the Yan Family’s residence and not suspect a Xiao Family member.