DCPRT Chapter 56

The destination of the money used as the dowry had become quite clear — it was the three-story book pavilion standing before them, purchased by Prince Yan at great expense.

At that moment, everyone cast meaningful glances toward You Yuyi, who stood in front of the book pavilion. The fact that he had pawned his own wife’s dowry to build his reputation made him utterly contemptible in their eyes.

Even in ordinary households, any man with a shred of decency would never touch his wife’s dowry after she had crossed the threshold — it was the very foundation of a woman’s livelihood for the rest of her life. Yet Prince Yan, a member of the imperial family, apparently knew nothing of this?

In an instant, everyone present was filled with disdain and contempt for him. Under such scrutiny, You Yuyi’s body began to tremble involuntarily — he felt as though he had been stripped bare and thrown into the street for public display.

“I said long ago that Prince Yan was a man of poor character. Now that he has gone so far as to privately pawn his wife’s dowry, he has truly become a disgrace to us all.”

“Brother Zhou is right. To think we should study in a book pavilion bought with money from pawning a woman’s dowry — it would be an insult to our integrity!”

“Anyone who could bring themselves to study in this pavilion must be cut from the same cloth!”

Debate erupted all around without pause. Even the scholars who had previously spoken in Prince Yan’s defense covered their faces and slipped away in embarrassment. His earlier affair with the Li family’s daughter — the pregnancy before marriage — could still be dismissed as youthful indiscretion, but pawning his own wife’s dowry to purchase a book pavilion was a failure of private virtue, the kind that invited public contempt.

You Yuyi watched the woman still scuffling with Li Yuan, and his heart made clear to him that someone had deliberately set a trap for him.

Who would carry pawnshop receipts on their person when going out? With so many men present, why would a lone woman choose this particular spot to step down from her carriage? Every detail of this had been aimed squarely at him.

Huo Xiling, standing by the window of the building across the street, allowed a smile to cross his face. It was indeed a trap — any discerning eye could see it plainly. Yet You Yuyi had had no choice but to walk into it. Had You Yuyi not pawned the dowry first, how could anyone have laid this trap at all?

You Yusui glanced at Huo Xiling beside him and thought to himself: No wonder he had managed to bring every street ruffian in the entire capital of Chang’an to heel, making them all willing to call him Brother Huo.

At that moment, in front of the book pavilion, Li Yuan had already torn the ornamental hairpiece from the woman’s head. The woman, her hair now loose and disheveled, shrieked and cursed. “Has this world no law left in it? Don’t think the Li family is the only one who can strut about Chang’an — don’t imagine we have no one backing us!”

With that, the woman flung the receipt in her hand at Li Yuan’s face, then turned back to the carriage and urged the coachman to drive away at once — she was going to report everything to her master.

With a sharp cry, the whip cracked down, and the carriage surged through the crowd at a gallop, forcing everyone to scatter out of its path.

At the same moment, You Yuyi’s trusted aide quietly slipped away from the scene, following after the woman’s carriage.

You Yusui leaned over to look down from the upper floor, caught a glimpse of the direction in which the carriage had departed, and could not help but ask, “Where are they going?”

“Your Highness is welcome to guess. If you guess correctly, I’ll give you a reward.” Huo Xiling said with a smile.

You Yusui reached out and gently pinched Huo Xiling’s chin. “What if I get it wrong — shall I give you the reward instead?”

The moment Huo Xiling thought of the kind of reward You Yusui might give him, his face instantly flushed red.

“Don’t worry. This time I’ll be gentle — I won’t cut your lips.” You Yusui said softly.

Down below, Li Yuan watched the woman leave. He looked down at the Li family hairpiece and the receipt in his hands, then glanced at the palpably awkward atmosphere around him, and suddenly remembered that he had come here to make trouble for Prince Yan.

Prince Yan’s household had secretly pawned Princess Yan’s dowry — and Princess Yan was a daughter of the Li family. As a member of the Li family, he naturally had every right to demand an explanation from Prince Yan.

And so Li Yuan immediately pressed his considerable physical advantage and shouldered his way through the crowd until he stood directly before Prince Yan.

“Your Highness, Prince Yan, you had better explain to me properly — why has the dowry my Li family prepared for our young miss upon her marriage ended up in a pawnshop!” Li Yuan’s face was heavy with flesh, his expression ferocious.

This time, Li Yuan had also grown smarter — he did not strike You Yuyi, but instead used his two-hundred-jin frame to grab hold of You Yuyi and refuse to let him leave.

Seeing this, You Yuyi was both shocked and furious. He wanted to call his guards to drive Li Yuan away, but Li Yuan had also brought a considerable number of Li family servants, and with so many scholars looking on, if the matter was not resolved clearly today, he feared he would never be able to show his face in public again.

“How would this prince know why something belonging to your Li family ended up in a pawnshop?” You Yuyi snapped.

Li Yuan held up the high-quality jadeite hairpiece in his hand and said, “Just this one set of jewelry alone would not have been enough to buy this building on Zhuque Street — what else of my niece’s dowry did you pawn!”

Li Yuan might have been a wastrel, but he knew the value of the hairpiece in his hand and the price of a good shop on Zhuque Avenue — it was plain that this one set of jewelry would not have covered the cost.

“What nonsense are you talking about? When have I ever pawned my Princess’s dowry!” — Indeed, You Yuyi was making excuses.

Li Yuan then produced the receipt the woman had thrown at his face. “It is written here in black and white that it was a servant of your Prince Yan’s household who pawned these items — can this document be forged!”

“If a servant in the household secretly took items out to pawn behind their master’s back, am I to bear the blame for that?” You Yuyi shouted, and then attempted to pull his arm free from Li Yuan’s grip — but Li Yuan’s hold was so ironclad that struggling risked tearing his own clothes apart.

“Whether it was your servant who secretly took them — why don’t we simply ask the shopkeeper of Yunji Pawnshop?” Li Yuan called out loudly.

“Li Da, go fetch the shopkeeper of Yunji Pawnshop and have him bring the complete records of everything pawned by Prince Yan’s household!”

“Li Si, go back to the Li estate and ask my cousin-in-law for the dowry inventory — I want to see exactly what else from the dowry Prince Yan has pawned!”

Li Yuan now stood firmly on the side of reason, and his whole manner was considerably more forceful than before. Then he fixed Prince Yan with a glare and said, “Your Highness Prince Yan had better not think of running. If you dare to run, my Li family will not hesitate to bring this matter before His Majesty!”

Li Yuan’s voice was so loud that You Yusui, sitting in the tea house across the street, could hear every word with perfect clarity.

“Pfft.” You Yusui could not help but laugh.

His Father Emperor would not care in the slightest whether his imperial brother had pawned the Li family daughter’s dowry. He only ever cared about why anyone would say that his calligraphy was ugly.

“Your Highness, some water.” Huo Xiling, seated across from You Yusui, gently dabbed away the tea that had spilled from the corner of You Yusui’s mouth with a handkerchief.

“This really is quite a fine piece of theater.” You Yusui could not help but sigh.

Before long, the Li family servants brought the shopkeeper of Yunji Pawnshop over, and the Li family servant who had gone for the dowry inventory returned with Li Xiyue’s dowry list as well.

The moment the shopkeeper of Yunji Pawnshop found himself face to face with the Li family’s young master and Prince Yan, he immediately felt that he, a mere pawnshop shopkeeper, had landed in terrible misfortune — he could not afford to offend either party.

“Your Highness Prince Yan, Young Master Li — might I ask how my humble establishment has managed to offend you?” the shopkeeper of Yunji Pawnshop asked, his heart hammering with anxiety.

“I am asking you — apart from this set of imperial-grade green jadeite hairpieces, what else did the people from Prince Yan’s household pawn with you?” Li Yuan demanded, glaring at the shopkeeper.

The shopkeeper hastily produced his records. “It’s all here, all of it right here.”

Li Yuan snatched the records from the shopkeeper’s hands and began matching them one by one against the dowry inventory he held.

The items pawned by Prince Yan’s household included a peacock pearl-and-kingfisher gold hairpin, a kingfisher-inlaid pearl grand hairpin, gold-and-eastern-pearl earrings, a red coral bracelet, and more — all of them women’s jewelry, and every single item matched perfectly with the entries on Li Xiyue’s dowry inventory.

The onlookers below were left utterly stupefied. So many items — it would have taken a large chest just to carry them all. Had no one found it suspicious when a servant of Prince Yan’s household walked out the door carrying a great chest?

Li Yuan held the dowry inventory in one hand and the pawnshop records in the other, and addressed the crowd below. “I know my reputation is not good, and some may not take my word for it — so now everyone can see for themselves whether the items on the dowry inventory match exactly what was pawned by Prince Yan’s household!”

“Heavens — they are an exact match!”

“They must have pawned everything from an entire trousseau chest.”

“To think Prince Yan was this sort of man. And to think I once believed him to be a gentleman.”

You Yuyi listened to the commentary below and his face turned deathly pale — he found himself unable to produce a single word in his own defense.

Over on his side, Li Yuan erupted into a fresh outburst, wailing. “How dare Prince Yan’s household pawn my niece’s dowry behind her back! What kind of life is she living in that household!”

“Yes — I heard Princess Yan has been ill for a long time now,” a bystander said.

“She suffered a miscarriage the moment she arrived and has been too ill to be seen by anyone since — who knows what is going on inside Prince Yan’s household?”

“Could it be they intend for Princess Yan to die of illness, so the Prince can take a new consort?”

“How would you know that?”

“I merely heard it from someone. There are noble families who, when displeased with a wife or daughter-in-law, arrange for her to fall gravely ill — forbidden from going out or seeing anyone — until a few months or a year later they announce that she has died from her illness. And no one who tries to investigate can find any evidence.”

“Can such things really happen?”

“What is there that those great noble clans cannot do, with all the filth they hide behind closed doors?”

“Silence! Silence!” You Yuyi shouted, his eyes red.

Every hidden thought in his heart seemed to have been laid bare, spread out in the sunlight in all its ugly wretchedness for anyone to pick apart.

In that moment, You Yuyi experienced a collapse unlike anything he had known before. He wanted to slaughter every last one of them!

“Your Highness, calm yourself!” A Menke grabbed hold of You Yuyi. “You cannot kill anyone — has Your Highness forgotten? His Majesty has granted these scholars of humble birth the fullest measure of his protection.”

No crime committed — nobles could not kill them at will. Should You Yuyi rashly kill even one scholar of common birth, his prospects for succession to the throne would be finished.

“What is this prince to do?” You Yuyi was at a complete loss.

“Go to the palace,” the Menke said.

The three-way balance of power could not be disrupted yet — His Majesty would certainly find a way to shield Prince Yan.

“You dare slander this prince — this prince is going to the palace this very moment to ask Father Emperor to render judgment!” With that, You Yuyi ordered his guards to part the crowd, and he strode away without a backward glance.

Li Yuan froze. His heart wavered slightly with uncertainty, and he turned to his servants. “Quickly — go find my great uncle and the Grand Princess. Ask them what should be done!”

At that moment, You Yusui also rose from his seat. “Let us go. The next act can only be watched from within the palace.”

He hoped that when his Father Emperor learned that the scholars of common birth had called his calligraphy terribly ugly, he would not fly into such a rage as to ruin the whole affair.

You Fengyun, who was in Xuande Hall attending to state affairs, let out a sneeze — and then heard An Hai announce, “Your Majesty, Prince Yan requests an audience.”