I Am A Husband Curser, And You Are A Wife Curser. - Chapter 25

Chapter 25: Forgery

Having eaten his fill, Yang Tongchuan prepared to leave. Before they went, his sister-in-law specially made a separate batch of lard residue pancakes for Xiang Xi, stuffing them exceptionally full.

“Take these back for tonight. If you like them, I’ll have your brother bring some over every few days,” she said.

“Sister-in-law, there’s no need,” Xiang Xi replied. He knew his brother and sister-in-law worked hard for every penny and didn’t want them to go to such expense.

“Don’t be polite with me. Without your husband, we wouldn’t have been able to rent such a prime stall.” The sister-in-law understood the situation perfectly. Being newcomers, the fact that no one dared to harass them was entirely due to having a relative like Yang Tongchuan in the yamen.

That evening, Mother Yang had Yanzi boil a pot of corn porridge and mixed two cold side dishes. The whole family enjoyed a wonderful meal with the lard residue pancakes. The savory aroma of the pancakes filled the entire Yang household, making the dog, Zhenlaifu, pace back and forth in the courtyard with longing.

As the weather grew hotter, Xiang Xi entered the “bitter summer” phase, finding it hard to sleep at night due to the heat. Coupled with Yang Tongchuan’s high internal “fire,” Xiang Xi would start sweating the moment his husband got close. Consequently, Yang Tongchuan had to stick to the very edge of the bed, fanning Xiang Xi while coaxing him to sleep.

Summer brought an abundance of melons and fruits, but Xiang Xi didn’t dare eat too much for fear of an upset stomach. His eldest sister-in-law, Mingle, had recently eaten too much watermelon chilled in well water; she spent the night nauseous and vomiting. Because her period was late, she briefly thought she was pregnant, only for the doctor to reveal it was just a chill from the cold fruit—a total false alarm. Shamed by the blunder, Mingle stayed cooped up in her room for two days before showing her face again.

Mother Yang, on the other hand, seemed to have accepted the reality that her eldest son’s branch might struggle to conceive and didn’t show any particular disappointment.

One day, a peculiar thief was brought into the yamen. He had been caught red-handed by a homeowner and turned over to the authorities. When Yang Tongchuan followed the clues to investigate the thief’s home, he discovered something far more serious.

In the house of a petty crook, he found numerous works of calligraphy by famous masters. Hilariously, there were three or four copies of the exact same piece. Yang Tongchuan didn’t know much about calligraphy, but he knew a thing or two about forgery. He brought the fakes back to the yamen and handed them over to Head Constable Wang to report to the County Magistrate. A small job had suddenly turned into a major case.

The thief himself was ignorant of the value. He had stolen the items from a haystack behind the gate of a warehouse at the docks. He had been wandering around late at night to avoid the curfew patrol and ducked into the docks to hide. There, he saw a man surreptitiously hiding something in the haystack. Thinking it was a dock worker stealing goods from the warehouse, he waited for the man to leave and then snatched the hidden items. When he got home and saw they were just scrolls and paintings, he deemed them worthless and tossed them aside, planning to use them as kindling for his stove.

Even under repeated interrogation, no further useful information could be squeezed out of him.

“Paintings and calligraphy like these can’t be sold in a small place like ours; they must be intended for the capital or the big cities in the south,” Constable Wang noted after consulting a local art shop owner. These were high-quality forgeries—good enough to fool wealthy parvenus.

“Since they were stolen from the docks, everyone will have to work hard for the next few days. We’ll stake out the dock warehouses in shifts at night. We must catch the person behind this forgery,” Wang assigned the tasks.

Yang Tongchuan had to stake out the docks with two other constables. After a sleepless night, he returned home covered in mosquito bites, his eyelids swollen shut from the stings. Xiang Xi applied anti-itch ointment to every single spot; by the time he was done, Yang Tongchuan smelled entirely of peppermint.

After persisting for half a month, just as the men were losing hope, Yang Tongchuan finally caught a suspicious man lurking in the area.

Under interrogation, the man was revealed to be a scholar named Zhao. Although in his thirties, he had been a tongsheng (a candidate who passed the entry-level exams) in his youth. Scholar Zhao wasn’t great at his studies, but he had excellent handwriting and a passion for poetry. He usually made a living by transcribing books.

Last year, a former classmate introduced him to a way to support his family: ghostwriting for wealthy students. These lazy sons of rich families paid Zhao a small fee to do their homework. Eventually, the ruse was discovered by their teachers, and that source of income dried up. Just as Zhao thought he was finished, someone approached him and paid him to copy a piece of calligraphy.

Zhao agreed without much thought. The client was satisfied with his work and offered him a regular deal. On the sixth of every month, someone would drop off pieces to be copied at Zhao’s door and signal with three cat meows. Zhao would then bring the items inside. On the last day of the month, Zhao would drop the finished forgeries off at the designated haystack.

“How were the wages settled?” Yang Tongchuan asked, noting that Zhao didn’t look like a man who was making much money.

“The wages? They were withheld and left at his door whenever the next job was assigned,” the interrogator said, taking a sip of tea. “This Zhao fellow is just unlucky. He’d only done it a few times when he ran into that petty thief. He had no idea the items in the haystack were gone. He just wondered why he hadn’t been paid in so long, so he snuck back to the warehouse to see if he could bump into the contact to ask for his money. Instead, we caught him.”

“Then doesn’t the lead go cold again?” Yang Tongchuan didn’t want all that hard work to be for nothing.

“Not necessarily. Constable Wang has already taken men to the docks. Since this happened near the warehouses, it’s definitely connected to the people there. I’m going to rest for a bit; once the Constable brings more people back, there will be plenty more to interrogate.”

Hearing this, Yang Tongchuan couldn’t help but feel that the docks were cursed this year—it was one trouble after another.

When he arrived home that evening, Yang Tongchuan found guests in the house. It was Xiang Qiang (Xiang Xi’s brother) and Uncle Chen, the dock manager. Uncle Chen had been kind to the Xiang family, so when he desperately sought out Xiang Qiang to ask for an introduction today, Xiang Qiang couldn’t bring himself to refuse and had to bring him to the Yang house.

The rest of the family cleared out of the main hall, leaving it to Uncle Chen and Yang Tongchuan.

“Constable Yang, I just wanted to ask, what kind of case is this?” Uncle Chen began. “Constable Wang suddenly sealed one of our warehouses today and arrested all the guards. Our employer sent me to find out if those blind fools did something wrong or offended someone.”

As he spoke, Uncle Chen slid a silk pouch toward Yang Tongchuan. It was light—not the weight of silver coins. From the feel of it, it was likely a bank note.

Yang Tongchuan wasn’t a fool. He knew exactly what could be said and what had to be kept secret.