Old Accounts of the Noble Clans

On the day Pei Lingyi was to be married, the Court of Judicial Review surrounded the Duke of Anguo's residence.

The northwestern army had uncovered four thousand shi of moldy grain. All three warehouse receipts bore the old seal of the Pei family, and the grain had been stored at Yongfeng Warehouse, one of the properties in her dowry. Her father had been taken into custody, her clan was in a panic, and the bridal sedan chair waiting outside the Xie family's gate still had not been brought in.

Her fiance, Xie Huaizhang, slipped into her courtyard and said the Xie family could save her relatives if she handed over the Pei family seal and entered the household as a concubine for the time being.

Pei Lingyi refused.

She burned the marriage contract, then opened the thirty-six chests of her dowry herself and invited the Court of Judicial Review to begin its investigation with her belongings.

A missing old ledger, a family seal that had been forged for years, and several dowry shops that seemed to have no connection to one another gradually revealed a grain route hidden in Chang'an. Xiao Jibai, a junior official of the Court of Judicial Review who helped her investigate, also found traces of the old Xiao family case from twelve years ago.

What Pei Lingyi never expected was that on the rainy night three years earlier, when military grain had been brought into Yongfeng Warehouse, her father, whom she had desperately wanted to save, had also been there.