Chapter 353: Opening the Port (20)

Squire Xie spent last night at his own outer residence.

Turning back the clock to early this morning — when the night-soil collector making his rounds found the gate of the Xie Family outer residence ajar, the hired hand Lao Li dead in the gatehouse, and even more dead in the front courtyard, he immediately reported it to the authorities.

When Constable Cao from the yamen led a group of yamen runners and the coroner into the compound, he discovered that in this two-courtyard residence, corpses could be seen at every stretch of the path.

These corpses fell into two kinds: one kind was men in black with masked faces, the other was armed-escort-agency guards wearing ordinary short jackets — three corpses on each side.

From the scene one could clearly make out what had happened the night before: the black-clad killers stormed the residence, and along the way fought a fierce battle with the guards. After paying the price of three lives, the killers finally succeeded in finishing off the bodyguards, then found Squire Xie in the inner quarters and killed him inside the room.

Following the trail of bloodstains, daggers, and corpses all the way, Constable Cao of the County Yamen reached the inner quarters and spotted Squire Xie sprawled on the floor at a single glance.

Squire Xie had died from massive blood loss after someone stabbed a dagger into his back. His corpse lay at the threshold, head facing the door, with a pool of blood and crawling marks beneath him; one could tell that Squire Xie had gone through a stretch of struggling and effort before dying.

Aside from the maidservant in the side room, there was another dead person in the chamber — the concubine Hengxiang. This young and beautiful woman had died on the bed canopy. Beside her corpse were not only scattered bloodstains, but also disheveled jewelry and gold and silver ingots.

The scene was simple and clear: after the killers burst in, they split into two paths — one went to kill the maidservant, the other first used a knife to kill Hengxiang, then the killer plunged a dagger into the back of Old Master Xie, who had already crawled off the bed. While Old Master Xie struggled to crawl toward the door, the killer also raced against time to search the jewelry box at the bedside and made off with some of the valuables inside.

Yet all the deductions above no longer mattered, because the most crucial evidence lay right beside Squire Xie's hand: on the smooth green-brick floor, the blood-written characters "Killer: Deng Hu" had already made the murderer clear for all to see.

Just then, the people outside handling the corpses also reported another piece of information: the dead men with masked faces were all Deng Hu's underlings. In fact, those several men and the yamen runners were old acquaintances, so the moment the black cloths were pulled off, they were recognized.

By this point, the facts of the case seemed to have come fully to light.

The only thing that left Constable Cao somewhat puzzled was this: when he canvassed the surrounding neighbors, he found that no one had heard shouts of killing the night before. Strictly speaking, though, this point meant nothing — perhaps the fight had ended very quickly? Cases that unfold in utter silence were many; when something happens in the middle of the night, you cannot demand that soundly sleeping neighbors must have heard something.

While Constable Cao was visiting the neighboring residences, the County Yamen's coroner, Bian Jing, had already laid all the corpses out in the front courtyard and begun stripping and examining them one by one.

Bian Jing was not old, fair and clean-cut, looking to be only in his twenties. Born into a family of coroners, Bian Jing had followed his father to crime scenes since childhood, so he handled today's scene with practiced ease.

Before long, Bian Jing, his mouth and nose covered with white gauze, discovered a point of concern — on the three dead armed escorts, besides blade wounds, there were also inconspicuous wounds at the brow and the heart. Picking up an iron probe, the next moment Bian Jing quickly dug out lead balls from the wounds.

Seeing these several lead balls, Bian Jing, with his experience, immediately deduced the truth: these several lead balls were the real instruments that had killed the bodyguards. Then a moving picture surfaced in his mind: a killer carrying a Three-Eye Blunderbuss first fired the lead balls into the armed escorts' bodies, then drew a knife and stabbed the dead men several times.

When the picture in his mind reached this point, it suddenly jammed, then rewound: "No! A Three-Eye Blunderbuss isn't this accurate. Besides, even if it were accurate, why go to all this extra trouble?"

As a man of the Public Gate, Bian Jing had never been equipped with things like Three-Eye Blunderbusses or Bird Blunderbusses, but he had always played around with them. So he knew perfectly well: never mind the dead of night — even in broad daylight, a Three-Eye Blunderbuss could absolutely never shoot this accurately, every shot hitting the brow and the left chest.

Thinking this, he lifted his head and surveyed the environment of the front courtyard. His observations confirmed his thoughts: in ancient times, to prevent fires, all candles and lamps had to be extinguished at night. Within Bian Jing's line of sight, the front courtyard clearly bore no traces of lanterns, which indicated that everything that happened the night before had unfolded suddenly in the dark.

Next, Bian Jing grew even more baffled: even if an expert had used a Three-Eye Blunderbuss to instantly kill the opponents, why then add knife wounds? For killers so ruthless and precise, were the extra knife wounds not superfluous?

Thinking this, he lowered his head and examined the knife wounds on the bodyguards once more. The facts again proved him right: several of the knife wounds were clearly slashed on carelessly and haphazardly, bearing no resemblance whatsoever to the steadiness, precision, and ruthlessness of the lead balls.

... In Bian Jing's private experience, whenever he encountered this kind of situation, it proved that there was a hidden story behind the case, or some detail he had not yet discovered.

"The scene doesn't add up?" Standing quietly before the corpses laid out in one row, Bian Jing shut his eyes. The scene of a killer raising a Three-Eye Blunderbuss and killing people in the darkness replayed over and over in his mind, yet something always failed to match, so his mental film jammed halfway through: "Could it be they were trying to cover something up?"

Suddenly, Bian Jing opened his eyes. A spark of dawning insight made him feel he had grasped something, but the thought was like being separated by a layer of paper — he could not get to the heart of it.

Swiftly crouching down, Bian Jing used his fingers to feel inside the gunshot wounds on the corpses, then he slowly walked a circle around the spots where the several bodyguards had first been discovered.

"They must have been lying concealed here." As he walked, Bian Jing sought out every place where the bodyguards had been posted in concealment during the night, then he extended his arm, mimicking the motion of a killer raising a blunderbuss.

"Absolutely no reason for adding knife wounds!" When he discovered a patch of brown blood in the flower bed, his heart began to pound uncontrollably and fiercely.

This China rose flower bed was right in the center of the courtyard, not large in area, just enough for one person to hide inside. The bloodstains in the middle of the flower bed indicated that one of the bodyguards had been shot right here.

Yet the reality was this: that bodyguard had died outside the flower bed, and beside him lay a killer's corpse, its body covered in blade wounds, as if the fighting had been very fierce.

"Why drag a man out of the flower bed to add knife wounds? What are they trying to conceal?" At this moment, Bian Jing was ten thousand percent certain — the bodyguard had first been shot in the brow, then dragged out of the flower bed to fake the scene. So he stepped into the middle of the flower bed, faced the direction of the courtyard gate, slowly crouched down, and shut his eyes once more.

The silent film in his mind began playing once again: in the black night, a cluster of dark figures walked in from the direction of the courtyard gate. Under the starlight, the foremost man raised his hand and fired from over ten meters away. From the only exposed part of the bodyguard in the flower bed — his brow — a spray of blood burst forth, and he collapsed at the sound.

Next, this group of ghostly dark figures dragged the bodyguard out of the flower bed, then they drew their knives, slashed the bodyguard and one of the dark figures who had come with them several times, tossed aside the corpses, and swaggered off...

"No, no! If he was killed with a single shot, why kill one of their own to put on a show?"

Bian Jing's mental film once again could not play on from here: the logic did not hold. Yet the very next moment, he suddenly leapt up from the flower bed: "The killers were someone else entirely! The Da Hang men were framed!"

In that moment, the scales fell from Bian Jing's eyes. Even without shutting his eyes, he now saw scene after scene fly rapidly before him: after the black-clad men shot the bodyguards dead, they quickly carried in from outside the gate three Da Hang men who had been gagged, their hands bound, still ceaselessly struggling.

To conceal that bizarre marksmanship, and even more to create the false impression that both sides had fought and killed each other, the killers hacked all the Da Hang men to death and dumped them together with the bodyguards.

... These people were old hands. To keep the victims' wounds from revealing any flaws, they had not begrudged the effort of transporting the Da Hang men "alive" to the scene... killing them on the spot while the blood was still warm.

Having guessed the truth, Bian Jing was now drenched in sweat from head to toe. At the same time, an immense sense of dread enveloped him — even though it was broad daylight, Bian Jing felt his hair stand on end.

Immediately after, he strode rapidly toward the corpses: all of the above was mere conjecture — he needed evidence.

Yet when Bian Jing pulled open the black clothes on the several Da Hang men and took a look, he was dumbfounded — there were no binding marks whatsoever on these men's wrists or ankles.

"Could it be I guessed wrong?" At this moment, Bian Jing sank back into perplexity: five veteran Da Hang thugs, all able-bodied, robust men — if their hands and feet were not bound, how had those several killers, in the black of night and utter silence, escorted them here and then meekly and obediently done them to death?

"Probably used knockout drugs." Bian Jing could not help but sigh at this thought: even if knockout drugs had been used, he had no way of testing for them. So up to this point, even though he was utterly convinced of his own judgment, Bian Jing, unable to produce solid evidence, had no way of reporting the true facts to the constable.

Bian Jing came from a family of coroners; he knew all too well how fatuous and dark the yamen of the present day were. This kind of evidence-lacking "story" — the moment he laid it out for the constable, he would be stirring up trouble: would the constable investigate or not?

Since there were killers of such vast Divine Power behind this, the waters were surely very deep. If the constable investigated and kicked an Iron Plate, he would turn around and deal with Bian Jing. If the constable did not investigate, perhaps he had long since taken silver from the mysterious killers — the moment Bian Jing laid this bare, it would be a path to his own death.

... And so Bian Jing, deeply versed in these intricacies, could only secretly suppress the doubts in his heart and report the facts of the case according to the normal routine — until he had ironclad proof.

In other words, the case he ultimately reported to Constable Cao was the surface-level situation that everyone could see: that Da Hang men had stormed in and killed the people.

Ten lives lost in the city in one go — and the key point was that Squire Xie was dead. That was no longer something a constable could decide on his own; the County Magistrate received the specific information at the first moment.

This era had no such thing as confidentiality regulations. Never mind the County Yamen — even the Imperial City leaked like a sieve. So as the information spread, everyone who should know and everyone who should not know all came to know.

The Xie Family immediately erupted in an uproar. Though not of the Gentry, the Xies were the kind of wealthy family with vast resources and great influence. Now that Squire Xie had been murdered by villains, his uncles and brothers, along with several grown sons who served as Shopkeepers at the branches, were naturally relentless and demanded that the authorities deliver justice.