Chapter 123: Investigation

Pei Ye flipped off the horse's back and leaped into the woods.

Behind him came the angry shouts of several public officials.

"What are you doing?!" Several officials chased after him, but didn't draw their swords for a moment, because the skill the young man showed when rushing in just now made them feel dazzled.

"Sorry, but I know the deceased," Pei Ye turned his head, "Let me take a look at the scene."

The head constable walked over at this time, frowning: "Who are you?"

Pei Ye told the truth and showed the martial competition document and Officer Bai's recommendation letter to him. After reading them one by one, the head constable's face relaxed a bit: "So it's young hero Pei. How does young hero Pei know the deceased?"

"We stayed at the inn in town together."

The head constable nodded: "Good—Zhao Xin, follow young hero Pei to take a look, and record everything you find."

A young official holding a writing book next to him immediately raised his head: "Eh!"

Pei Ye took the document back from the head constable and put it back in the saddlebag, his eyes already firmly fixed on the corpse.

He walked over slowly, lowered his head, and for a moment, it was as if he had returned to that dense forest in the early morning of the fourth day of the eighth month.

The same man, the same posture of leaning against a tree and dying, the same eyes wide open in death.

But it was just an illusion after all; this was not the deep mountains where calling to heaven brought no response, and this corpse was not that miserable, with only a piercing wound on the shoulder and a fatal wound on the throat.

Chengjiang Hong's warm eyes were open, but there was no surprise or anger in them, no expression at all, just dull, completely dull.

Pei Ye moved his gaze away from the head and went up the tree, stopping at about the height of his own chest. There was a sword hole piercing through the tree trunk, and the edge of the hole was slightly stained with blood.

This hole matched the wound on Chengjiang Hong's shoulder; clearly, he was first nailed here by the enemy's sword, and after the opponent's sword was pulled out, he collapsed down.

But there was something tricky here: the shoulder being pierced was not a fatal wound and would only temporarily restrict Chengjiang Hong. After the opponent pulled out this sword, he should have immediately countered, so how could he collapse along the tree?

Was the sword that cut the throat too fast, or was Chengjiang Hong already unable to resist before the sword was pulled out? Did the opponent use another weapon to cut the throat before pulling out the sword?

"It's the heart and spirit," the black cat suddenly said.

"What?"

"His heart and spirit were destroyed; the sword that cut the throat was just a supplement to the flesh."

Pei Ye understood; the opponent first nailed Chengjiang Hong, then destroyed his heart and spirit, and finally pulled out the sword to cut the throat.

Understanding this, Pei Ye lowered his head to look again, this time his gaze falling on the iron sword in the left hand.

This hand was gripping the middle of the sword scabbard, with the scabbard and hilt connected together.

He had used that 【Marrying Branches to Attend the Banquet】, and this time it must have been a full-force blow filled with True Qi, but there was no blood on the blade.

The hilt did not leave the scabbard again, representing this was his last move, which was that after this move, the opponent nailed him to the tree.

Pei Ye lowered his head to look at the direction of the sword—straight ahead, without any trace of being deflected.

The opponent hit his right shoulder, his left hand could still continue to strike with the sword, but the result was that the opponent's sword pierced his shoulder, while this "longer" sword of his didn't touch the opponent.

Pei Ye tried hard to restore the situation at that time, but had no clue for a while.

This had nothing to do with the gap in martial arts; even if the opponent's martial arts were higher, they could unload this sword with a flick of a finger, but that still required a flick, right? This sword had no trace of being interfered with at all; the opponent simply didn't care about this sword.

As for dodging, the sword was already stuck in Chengjiang Hong's shoulder, how could the person dodge?

Even if he dodged this stab sideways, Chengjiang Hong could still wave, could still chop—in short, as long as the opponent was still holding the sword hilt, the person must be within Chengjiang Hong's attack range.

Why didn't Chengjiang Hong try to continue attacking?

Unless he was facing a helpless situation—continuing to strike had no meaning.

Pei Ye suddenly thought of the Heart-Slicing Glaze; if it were this kind of flying sword, the enemy could indeed not need to get close, and the person nailed could indeed despairingly stop striking.

But he quickly abandoned this thought. For one thing, attributing problems to the sword master of a famous sword was like not solving the problem at all; famous swords and strange arts were universal answers, and one could rely on them whenever encountering things one couldn't understand, but countless strange things happened in the world every day, and there were only so many famous swords and strange arts.

They really couldn't be that busy.

For another, if it were a flying sword, Chengjiang Hong wouldn't need to try to strike with this sword at all. Because at least when striking this sword, he believed he had a chance to hit the enemy, which meant the enemy was indeed in front of him at the time.

Pei Ye frowned and pondered for a while, temporarily not finding the answer.

Suddenly, a subtle reflection on the ground at the edge of his field of vision flashed with the movement of the sun.

Pei Ye immediately stood up, walked over, and picked up a thin needle the length of a middle finger and the thickness of a chopstick.

Hidden weapon.

He immediately stood up and looked around, and then found five more thin needles on the surrounding tree trunks and ground in turn, and the constables also found two. A total of eight thin needles, their landing points formed a roughly circular shape.

Pei Ye wrapped these thin needles in cloth and weighed them in his hand; they seemed to have been fired from Chengjiang Hong's direction. He walked to Chengjiang Hong's corpse to check carefully, and sure enough,

Squatting down to think for a moment, he suddenly had a flash of inspiration, turned around, and picked up that iron sword again.

Unsheathing the sword, he held it upright and looked down at the hilt—a hollow cavity.

The seal at the top of the hilt was gone.

Pei Ye placed these eight fine needles in one by one; they fit perfectly, leaving only a gap for one more.

It was a clever mechanism. The hilt, which was a circle thicker, seemed at first glance to be designed to fit the owner's broad palm, but only when the fight reached its peak would one realize it was meant to join with the scabbard. And only when one reached the desperate, life-or-death stage could an enemy see its true, final appearance.

This was Chengjiang Hong's trump card for a life-or-death struggle. If the last needle truly couldn't be found nearby, it might have been left on the killer.

Pei Ye told all these deductions to the constable recording nearby. The constable nodded rapidly as he wrote—before Pei Ye arrived, he had been examining this small notebook for a long time, having only written three or five lines, but now, in just this short while, he had already turned two pages.

Pei Ye walked over to the officers, who were still rummaging through Chengjiang Hong's pack. Seeing him approach, the head constable looked up and said, "Little brother, could you describe your acquaintance with the deceased in more detail?"

"We, actually, were just chance acquaintances. Just last night at the inn, we met someone—"

Pei Ye's throat suddenly constricted. The memories of last night surged up, and at the same time, the pack spread out on the ground came into clear view.

A cold chill suddenly spread from the bottom of his heart up to his throat.

Pei Ye pursed his lips and said in a hoarse voice, "In this pack, isn't there a small porcelain bottle?"

"What small porcelain bottle?"

"."

There was no evidence, nor was there a complete chain of deduction.

But that hair-raising thought still surged up uncontrollably.

—In their duel last night, did they choose the winner, or the dead?

(End of Chapter)