All rivers and mountains are safe

Just after the beginning of winter, the temperature dropped a lot.

There was sleet all night yesterday, but there was no snow in the morning, but the ground was wet and muddy, and the surrounding was wet and cold.

Shen Ming'an came out of the Guangyi Hall where the earth dragon was burning. The temperature difference between the inside and outside of the hall was so great that he shivered from the cold. He thought about the child in his belly, and went back to the hall to get the cloak and the stove.

When he came out again, he saw Liu Heyu holding a food box, hesitantly standing outside the hall.

Shen Mingan was taken aback for a moment, but before he made a sound, Liu Heyu spoke first: "Sir, are you going out?"

Shen Mingan nodded, "Go to Dali Temple."

"Are you in a hurry, sir? I, I made some medicinal food." Liu Heyu was a little shy, "I don't know how it tastes when I make it for the first time, but the medicinal materials are all high-quality. Do you want to drink some before leaving?"

Shen Mingan looked at the sky, fearing that it would rain and snow again in a while, so he said warmly, "I'll take it for a while and drink it on the road."

"This medicated diet will be effective only if you drink it in order. How about I go with my husband."

Liu Heyu carried the food box and helped him into the carriage together, Shen Mingan couldn't bear to accept his kindness, so he followed him.

Precious herbs such as Codonopsis pilosula and Cordyceps were added to the medicated diet. The smell of the medicine was covered by the taste of the food itself, with a little bit of bitterness. Shen Mingan drank some on the way, and his body became much warmer.

Shen Ming'an and Wei Boran had a good relationship, and used to go to Dali Temple to listen to cases. After returning from Yizhou, because of pregnancy, he hadn't been here for more than half a year, but the guards at the gate still had an impression of him.

After the guard went in to report, Wei Boran trotted out from the inside, put down the hem of his official uniform at the door, shook the snow on his body, frowned, and said, "Why don't you call me alone if you want to come here today?" Come and tell me in advance, does the emperor know that you are here, and he is relieved in such a cold day?"

Shen Mingan frowned and coughed a few times, "He doesn't know."

Wei Boran knew more or less about the affairs between Shen Mingan and Lu Ciheng. Before Shen Mingan was granted a marriage, Wei Boran discovered the clue by Lu Ciheng's abnormal reaction at the gate of Qinghe Gate.

Not to mention the friendship between the two for more than ten years, as long as he asked about these things, Shen Mingan would definitely not hide them.

When Wei Boran first found out that he was pregnant, he was shocked, but as long as he thought carefully, he could calculate the time of his pregnancy, and his relationship with Lu Ciheng was self-evident.

Even though he knew that Shen Mingan was willing, Wei Boran was still aggrieved by him. Lu Ciheng came to the throne, but Shen Mingan was hidden by him like a treasure in a golden house. Now that the child is about to be born, Shen Mingan's current identity is still somewhat unclear, only Very few people around him knew that he was pregnant with Lu Ciheng's child.

So yesterday when the courtiers mentioned the issue of Lu Ciheng's harem being vacant, Wei Boran wanted to add fuel to the flames, but he was not sure what Shen Mingan was thinking, so he sighed. Bring Shen Mingan inside, "Let's go in first."

Shen Mingan was wrapped in a large navy blue cloak, stood in the wind for a long time, his face was extremely pale, and after he entered, he began to cough uncontrollably, he took some hot tea from Wei Boran's hand and drank a few times with something on his mind He opened his mouth, and after his cough subsided a bit, he directly explained the purpose of his visit, "Can you still find the case file of Ding Chounian's Jiangzhou Shen family in Dali Temple?"

Wei Boran was taken aback, "The case of your parents?"

"Yeah." Shen Mingan's eyes fell on the teacup filled with mist, and he nodded slowly, "I always feel a little strange, and I've been thinking about it for the past few days, so I wanted to come to Dali Temple to see what happened back then. case file."

"This case was almost 20 years ago. The file cabinet was in disrepair for a long time the year before last. The tiles fell and collapsed, and then it was repaired again. The files inside have been rearranged. I'm not sure if I can still find it now." .” Wei Boran counted the time, “It’s still early, I’ll accompany you to find it.”

"Thank you."

Wei Boran smiled and said, "There's no need to say thank you between you and me."

The file cabinet is on the east side of Dali Temple. No one sets foot in it on weekdays. The wooden shelves are covered with dust, and the files are neatly arranged according to the year.

Every year, countless large and small cases occur in various places. Only serious and unsolved cases will be reported to Dali Temple by local governments, where they will be kept as a record.

Over time, there are countless files left in the file cabinet. The case of the Shen family can be regarded as a serious case. In the year of Ding Chou, there were no cases in other places as shocking as this one, but at that time The Jiangzhou government had already closed the case when it was reported, and the Shen family caught fire after being silenced. No witnesses could be found, so Shen Mingan could only pin his hopes on the case files and physical evidence.

The time interval was too long, and the files were not easy to find. There were very few files on the wooden shelf in Ding Chounian, and several people searched all over but couldn't find them. Finally, they found them on the innermost wooden shelf in the pavilion.

The case files on the wooden shelf at the innermost side are from various years, and they were randomly piled up in one place, and many of them have already become damp.

Shen Mingan opened the file again, still feeling so depressed that he couldn't breathe.

As a serious case, the initial overview of the case file, confession statement, trial process, etc. in the file are fairly complete.

But the whole thing is full of doubts. First, the shopkeeper of the pharmacy died suddenly without warning after hastily pleading guilty. Secondly, the middleman entrusted by the shopkeeper of the pharmacy, that is, the helper in the pharmacy. After a while, they were all captured when the government was suppressing bandits, and they confessed to their crimes, but Shen Ming'an clearly remembered that they spoke with a foreign accent, how could they be native bandits.

Unexpectedly, there was no physical evidence left in the dossier, only a few pieces of paper that showed the appearance of the evidence, and the drawings were not very detailed. One picture showed the murder weapon used in the crime - a long gun Machete.

It looked similar to what Shen Mingan remembered. The handle of the knife was made of wood, engraved with complicated patterns, and inlaid with silver ornaments. The blade was shiny, about two or three fingers wide, and became narrow and curved at the tip. very long.

Shen Ming'an carefully compared the confession letter and the picture of the evidence, and the more he looked at it, the more suspicious he felt.

He handed the thing in his hand to Wei Boran, and pointed to the testimony on it, "The drawing on the evidence map clearly shows a long machete, but the bandit's confession here says that he used a short knife when killing people."

Wei Boran took the two pieces of paper over to read, and the one that Shen Mingan pointed out was clearly written "At the instigation of the shopkeeper of the pharmacy, a short knife was used to cut the throat and open the abdomen when killing someone, and set fire to destroy the corpse when leaving. "

There are red fingerprints on the bottom.

There were about six or seven bandits who pleaded guilty, and they all said this, but it seemed more like a collusion.

The murder weapon on the confession statement was not consistent with the picture on the evidence map. No one brought up such a big doubt when the Shen family tried the case, so the case was closed in a hurry.

Even Wei Boran was puzzled, and after thinking for a while, he said to him: "After the files from various places are reported to Dali Temple, pending cases will be tried again, and serious cases will also be proofread and reviewed. Logically speaking, if the case is suspicious, it should be let Jiangzhou The government will retry."

He paused, "But I look at the above time. Before the case was reported to Dali Temple, these people had already pleaded guilty and then were interrogated and executed. Even if the officials in charge of proofreading and review at Dali Temple found suspicious points in the file, if they did not People have objections, and the higher-ups didn’t say to retrial, he thinks it’s better to have one more thing than one less thing, and it’s possible to conceal it and not report it.”