By now, Zhang Huai understood what was going on. Feeling a surge of anger, he waved his hand to stop his father from speaking and asked in a deep voice, "What exactly is going on here? Please explain in detail, officers, so we can decide what to do. The rumors have been growing wilder lately, and my father and I have been extremely unsettled. We were just about to invite the families of Scholar Zhao and Scholar Liu to go to Huzhou Prefecture with us to investigate. Judging by what you said, is there some hidden truth to all this?"
Sweat poured down the faces of the two officers. They originally thought that since these were country folks, they could just kowtow a few times and get away with it. Who would have thought that Scholar Zhang's older brother would be so hard to fool? It seemed they had no choice but to confess honestly and beg for Old Mr. Zhang's forgiveness—he seemed much easier to talk to.
