"Continue. Do not stop unless I say so." Chóng Fēi ordered Lìngxiāo, his tone back to calm as he returned to writing.
Lìngxiāo nodded once, properly looking back at the scroll. He cleared his throat, his smile a little tight. "Allow me to have a look on the monologue for explaining."
Chóng Fēi nodded without looking, almost too focused and waiting.
Lìngxiāo first looked at the author name: Yàn Xī.
An unknown name. But as if held a lot of things. He wouldn't let this name slip away easily.
'I would search for him too..'
Then back to the main scroll. He looked at the texts. There were three parts here:
· The evidence.
· The summary.
· The chapter teasers for the novella itself.
Lìngxiāo's smile darkened already by the list. Half amazed and half annoyed, he had no words to describe.
'How strange. They have started their business with this case, which was probably not even investigated more than just collecting reports from Féng Xiānsheng and the maids..'
'They cannot find anything from common people either..I was not social.'
'They wrote a novella on it too? What did they even find to write while most of it was between us? Possibly made up..'
His eyes thoughtfully went over Chóng Fēi again.
'He was not too close from childhood either. Has he really..shared things which already had nothing more than regular things a child does with another..?'
First, reading by himself into his mind to understand whatever was written:
"A child raised under the town's most powerful clan—Yùn Chóng—nothing more than a mute caretaker's only son. He had no roots nor a future more than following his zhù fù's footsteps. Many servants have reported that the child looked calm from outside, but he had already grown the bad habit of stealing things whatever he liked, drawn to problematic places like the haunted lakes, temples, and sometimes found to talk with himself and then—"
'What?'
Lìngxiāo paused reading sharply. His grip tightened over the scroll.
'I used to talk by myself..?'
'As much as I remember..I did not have my abilities unlocked to see curses back then to do so like today.'
'It looks this way because common people cannot see them when I do not use mind connection with them—for my deep-loop memory problem which makes me..too raw and aggressive out of the trauma and unbearable pain of my head since childhood.'
'About childhood..I sometimes used to talk while looking at the trees where little baby birds used to cry.'
'Sometimes even I and Fēi Gōngzǐ would feed them when their mǔqīn did not come to feed. I used to stand below with the food mix and..Gōngzǐ would climb to the tree out of his usual wildness and feed them..'
'Perhaps they did not see or mention that I was talking to him..not any gûi or illusions.'
'It was him who sometimes played double roles after being too inspired by any story book when I was not there to be part of his play, busy with zhù fù..'
Everything felt not funny yet wrong.
He didn't know if he should laugh hard or think again about actually saving them—or let those elders die and just save the youngers who were being shipped by them. Even being raised under them would be another crime.
He took a deep breath.
'What are you thinking about? It is not you. It is the dark self of you trying to take control. Focus on the task..'
He didn't read more.
Skipping the whole evidence and the chapter teasers. He wanted to see how those people had even come to such a successful business idea in literature instead of doing something which actually saves them from being 'resist' to the outsiders. So he would read later.
But he also knew how the rest could be:
His father found dead in the small bloody hut, and that cruel knife at his hands like an alive proof.
But nobody later found him after the kidnapping—he was saved by his uncle.
They might have messed up stories here too to create a compelling story. Maybe even Chóng Fēi didn't know the actual story behind it because of so much wrong news and being little.
"What if I say..those evidences still do not prove the child as a murderer?" Lìngxiāo stated.
He kept adding, finding more flaws in it. "There are lackings here without any medical reports from a famous official like Làncǎi or Zhān Yùn. If they stated him as ill..it was acceptable because they were true to their words. According to the time, the town was not cursed at all to not be able to escape from here."
Then he held up the whole scroll and raised it in front of him. "The journalists or authors here were also not professional—just common people who hyped the news and evolved the touch of literature."
Everyone tilted their heads, fingers under chins or lips, staring, staring at each other with wide, questioning eyes like they had hit too deep into the matter.
Chóng Fēi paused like someone had pulled his soul from behind. His eyes were firm but unfocused on the papers—it at least looked like.
But he still said nothing, while Lìngxiāo expected him to ask something back with his usual sharpness.
"Impossible."
"Just because the authors or journalists were not marked by the Zhèng clan does not mean the evidence is fake."
"The evidence was collected from even Féng Xiānsheng. Why would he lie for only a man and his child who was nothing more than a caretaker's son?"
"Even Fēi Gōngzǐ stated it when he was younger."
A few of them stated back firmly.
Of course they would say that. His next lines to say were also forming in his head. But he needed to be unaware of whatever happened, as if he was just guessing to question. He parted his mouth to say—
"Oh please." Chóng Fēi cut in with a hollow huff of a chuckle, like he was insulted. His eyes hollow and dark, making them look at him again.
"Do. NOT..involve me here." He reminded, the way his lips wrapped around the words showed the dry bitterness in them.
"Remember my age back then. Have you all even understood my language to do so? You all do not take my today's words seriously, and you take the ones when I was a naive child? Just voice it that you all are not going to use the thing inside your skull." He added, now his chin under his palm, not meeting Lìngxiāo's gaze.
People rolled their eyes but couldn't deny that the matter was actually that way. They kept quiet again, but they were now at the breaking point with this exposure. Their jaws so tight that Lìngxiāo feared he would hear bone-cracking sounds too quickly.
"I did not tell you to stop yet..." Chóng Fēi reminded like any teacher with a last note of hum, getting back his brush to write.
Lìngxiāo pressed his lips together before exhaling, raised his chin higher than before and continued, his tone soft and professional again as he calmed down from his earlier emotional wave. "This is just one case. There are a lot more which have no proper proofs—but the children..? Their lives have been ruined because of this misbelief and fake news. Some are on their way this year to be killed for a reason they cannot even remember. Have you thought how many parents' chests have gone hollow by having their children stolen from their arms..?"
Everyone was silent once more. This time it was softer at a few corners. Some were thinking about it again.
"What about those who have actually committed the crime intentionally? Would they not become bigger killers in the future if we stop the execution?" One of them asked, the man's own voice had a fatherly heaviness and affection, like he exactly understood what Lìngxiāo meant.
Other people's eyes were on the man. Chóng Fēi listened while his expression was also unreadable but softer, the brush behind his ear like a hairpin.
Lìngxiāo's smile softened.
'At least someone is trying to understand my point, even if it is not directly.'
He leaned over the table a little, his hairpins making soft tinkling sounds. "People hide when they fear the next result which is about to come, even if unexpected waves crash over them."
He paused before adding from the bottom of his heart. "They cling to avoidance, thinking it would save them. So if we show them mercy, they would realize their mistake and understand us back."
"We have no orphanage developed here. Nor is this town at peace. How can we even shift them to something better more than the underground prison where they get everything until the execution..?" Another man asked, crossing his arms.
"There are many cases outside Yùn Xi. Clans like the Làn clan or other smaller peace-protector clans have taken those kinds of children with spiritual powers as bloodline-less disciples or have sent them to Hàngwō clan's orphanage organizations." Lìngxiāo replied with a touch of determination, possibilities already coming into his mind. "I can slowly shift them there with the help of the Hàngwō clan."
"And how? If passing through this cursed town was that easy, we would have left this town by now."
"Why only children? Does our life have no value?"
"What benefits do we have by saving them? In the end, they will not bother to appreciate any of our sacrifice."
More men asked—who were parents too—also seeming not to like the way Lìngxiāo mentioned the Hàngwō clan. Their tone was bitter, like Lìngxiāo was being unfair to them.
Lìngxiāo paused.
Some people here seemed to have no heart at all.
Asking strange questions he had known the answers to since the time he had learned how to protect the world where he needed it the most.