Censor Tie had always been famous for speaking frankly and remonstrating without fear.
In the past, whenever a censor was punished for something he had said, Censor Tie would spare no effort to rescue him.
So why was he treating Ren Shuquan like this?
Logically speaking, even if he wouldn’t do it for the monk’s sake, he ought to do it for the Buddha’s.
Censor Tie was so furious that smoke practically seemed to pour from all seven orifices. He hopped forward, snatched the statue of Confucius from Ren Shuquan’s hands, carefully straightened it, and respectfully handed it to the Director of the Imperial Academy standing nearby.
Then he turned around and smack!
Another slap landed on Ren Shuquan’s face.
The first slap had swollen his left cheek.
Now his right cheek swelled up as well.
The result was rather pitiful-looking.
Nearby, Chang An couldn’t help letting out an ill-timed laugh.
He wasn’t doing it on purpose.
But for some reason, it was simply too funny.
He genuinely couldn’t hold it in.
Covering his face, Ren Shuquan cursed Censor Tie a hundred times over in his heart.
What was this bald old fool trying to do?
Had he gotten so old that his brain stopped working?
He was here seeking justice for his uncle!
All the other civil officials in the capital knew that perfectly well, and every one of them had been deliberately looking the other way.
After all, everyone believed that since Ren Zhong had been willing to die to expose the Lu family, the Lu family must truly have collaborated with the enemy and betrayed the country.
Otherwise, why had Lu Ting disappeared and remained missing until now?
How else could those secret letters be explained?
Not to mention the testimony of Lu Ting’s most trusted deputy commander.
The evidence was supposedly ironclad.
That was why Ren Zhong had remonstrated unto death.
Scholars valued their colleagues, examination peers, and fellow provincials above all else.
Many of Ren Zhong’s fellow examination graduates had quietly opened doors for the Ren family.
Otherwise, Ren Shuquan could never have gotten out of the Imperial Academy.
Nor could he have seized Confucius’s statue from the temple.
Censor Tie was a member of the civil bureaucracy too.
More than that, he was one of the most famous censors in the realm.
If he wasn’t standing with the Ren family, then what exactly did he mean by this?
Unable to endure it any longer, Ren Shuquan demanded: “My uncle couldn’t obtain justice even through death. What’s wrong with me speaking up for him? Why did you hit me, Censor Tie?!”
Qi Zhen spat.
Hit you?
Getting slapped is nothing.
It’s a pity he didn’t kick you to death!
Old Marquis Qi, meanwhile, had fallen silent.
He simply stared intently ahead.
The common people also recognized Censor Tie. Seeing him suddenly strike Ren Shuquan, they were all bewildered.
No one understood what was going on.
Censor Tie’s voice boomed like a bell as he pointed at Ren Shuquan and roared:
“You prattle endlessly about benevolence and morality, yet your belly is full of filth and depravity! A scum like you dares enter the Confucian Temple and lay hands on the Sage’s sacred image? What sort of thing are you?!”
There was a reason people said a censor’s tongue could talk a living man to death.
Censor Tie’s words truly seemed dipped in poison.
Everyone was stunned.
Ren Shuquan’s face turned bright red, but he was also utterly confused.
What had he done?
Why was the old man cursing him like this?
Everyone had a limit to their patience.
Ren Shuquan finally snapped back: “Censor Tie, you’d better have evidence for such accusations! How can you slander someone’s reputation out of thin air?! By speaking this way, what are you saying about my uncle? Do you look down on the traditions of our Ren family?!”
Well, there was something to that.
After all, judging from Ren Zhong, the Ren family’s character was plain to see.
Someone nearby couldn’t help trying to smooth things over.
“Censor Tie, he’s only hot-blooded because of his youth. He didn’t mean to disrespect Sage Confucius…”
“This isn’t merely disrespecting Confucius!” Censor Tie laughed disdainfully. Then he swept his gaze across the surrounding crowd and shouted, “They’re deceiving the entire world!”
He pointed at the crowd and demanded: “Tell me this, what exactly qualifies Ren Zhong to be remembered as a minister for the ages?! When your Ren family was writing books to glorify him, how did you even manage to keep a straight face?!”
Huh?!
The crowd erupted.
The Imperial Academy students immediately began whispering among themselves.
Wasn’t Ren Zhong exactly as described in the books?
A poor child who never forgot his roots after achieving success and who carried the welfare of the world on his shoulders?
Judging from Censor Tie’s tone, that wasn’t the case at all?
Ren Shuquan frowned.
“Censor Tie, justice lives in the hearts of the people. Merits and faults will be judged by history. My uncle was naturally such a man!”
“Pah! Shameless thing!” Censor Tie unleashed the full force of his wrath.
“When Ren Zhong served as magistrate in Quannan County, he forcibly uprooted the rice crops that people depended on for survival and ordered the fields replanted entirely with navel oranges to be offered as tribute! The local people were forced to buy grain from neighboring counties at exorbitant prices and suffered miserably!”
The crowd exploded in shock.
Qi Zhen swallowed hard and instinctively glanced at Qi Yuan.
Yuan Jie’er is incredible!
Qi Yuan, meanwhile, merely looked toward Lai Chenglong and gave a slight nod.
Xie Ying took in all their reactions and instantly understood everything.
Censor Tie grew angrier and angrier as he continued: “That shameless b*stard even forced the common people to present him with a ‘Ten-Thousand-People Umbrella’ before he left office! And he had the nerve to accept it!”
Ren Shuquan’s face alternated between white and green.
He had never imagined that Censor Tie knew so much.
And was exposing it all in public.
Yet Censor Tie still wasn’t finished.
“That’s not even the worst of it! While serving in office, he discovered that two officials had taken concubines. He berated them for being licentious and immoral and forced the women to become nuns!”
Then he sneered.
“And afterward, he took those same women, already ordained, as his own concubines!”
“…?!”
Everyone’s eyes widened.
A perfectly synchronized chorus of astonishment swept through the crowd.
Now that was a master move.
You could do something like that?!
Remarkable!
Ren Shuquan looked ready to collapse.
Meanwhile, the students who had been desperately protecting him moments ago unconsciously edged farther away.
Panting from rage, Censor Tie pointed at him and shouted: “You, his nephew, don’t tell me you knew nothing about these things! And yet you still have the nerve to claim he’s a minister for the ages? Have you no shame whatsoever?!”
Ren Shuquan’s face flushed crimson.
“Even if that’s true, one matter is separate from another! My uncle may have made mistakes, but when he impeached the Lu family, he acted entirely out of public duty! What was wrong with that?!”
“Public duty?” Censor Tie looked at him with utter contempt.
“That uncle of yours didn’t even possess basic humanity. And you think he had a sense of public duty?!”
Then he turned to the crowd and shouted: “Twelve years ago, Ren Zhong arranged a childhood betrothal for his seven-year-old daughter. The boy she was promised to died when he was eight. Ren Zhong then ignored his wife’s desperate objections, starved his own daughter to death, and conducted a ghost marriage for her!”
“A man like that barely qualifies as human. How could he possibly have any public spirit?!”
If everything before had merely been appetizers, this was the main course.
The entire crowd fell silent.
No one could believe what they had just heard.
Old Marquis Qi and Qi Zhen exchanged another look with Qi Yuan.
At last, they truly understood what it meant to raise someone into the clouds, only to drag them straight down into hell.
The greater Ren Zhong’s reputation had become, the more thoroughly ruined it would be from this day forward.
A minister for the ages?
Starting today, Ren Zhong could kneel beside Qin Hui at West Lake.
What a magnificent drama this had turned out to be.
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