Chapter 4: Empty House

Arriving in front of the door, Pei Ye knocked lightly on the beast ring. Only then did he remember to look down at his image, which couldn't help but make him smile. But there were many times when he was more disheveled when practicing boxing back then, so it didn't matter if he was laughed at by Uncle Lin.

After smiling, he raised his head and waited quietly, but time passed minute by minute, and for a long time, no one came to answer the door.

Uncle Lin liked to do everything himself, so there were no servants like gatekeepers or grooms in the house, but given the sharpness of his five senses, he should have been able to hear it.

Pei Ye knocked a few more times. Seeing that there was still no response, he simply jumped up, nimbly flipped over the courtyard wall, and arrived in front of Lin Lin's bedroom, only to see a candle flame shining through the heavy rain.

Uncle Lin wasn't asleep? Then why didn't he come to answer the door?

Pei Ye frowned and walked over. The bedroom door was open toward the outside. Pei Ye knocked lightly on the door frame: "Uncle Lin?"

However, there was no response in the room. Pei Ye poked his head in and saw that it was empty.

His eyebrows furrowed even more. Pei Ye walked into the room and saw the quilt turned back. The candle before the bed was lit. Lowering his head, he saw that the shoes before the bed hadn't been worn either.

But tilting his head, the sword hanging at the head of the bed only had a scabbard left.

His heart tightened. Pei Ye looked around with a solemn expression and found that the fire stone was placed very far away. The candle flame before the bed was clearly lit by Lin Lin using his Qi.

Pei Ye could almost imagine the scene of him waking up suddenly, flicking his finger to light the fire, and then drawing his sword and rushing out.

What was so urgent?

This question had just surfaced in his mind when an answer that made his heart skip a beat blurted out: "Lin Jue!"

Lin Lin lost his wife in his early years and only had one daughter, whom he cherished very much. The girl was named Lin Jue, about the same age as Pei Ye, quite gentle and lively, but her left arm was congenitally disabled. Where the hand should have been, there was only a lump of flesh, which was very heartbreaking.

He also remembered Lin Lin saying that if Lin Jue didn't have the disability, she would also be a very good martial arts seedling.

Now that he thought of this possibility, Pei Ye couldn't care about the etiquette between men and women. He flew to Lin Jue's room, but his heart sank—Lin Jue's door was also open toward the outside, and there was no candle lit in the room.

Pei Ye lit the candle in the room. The room was empty. The girl's quilt was turned back, and her shoes were still placed before the bed.

Lin Lin might have heard some evil sound in the middle of the night and grabbed his sword to get up and check, but would a seventeen-year-old girl who was weak and sickly be awakened by a terrifying sound in her sleep and lift the quilt to find out?

So the root cause was here with Lin Jue. She went out for some reason, and Lin Lin, with his sharp five senses, heard that something was wrong, so he got up to rescue his daughter.

Then why did Lin Jue push the door and go out wearing only her undergarments and barefoot?

A sense of familiarity immediately rushed into his mind. Pei Ye lowered his head. Wasn't this the same as... himself?

A chill climbed up his spine to the top of his head. Pei Ye shivered.

What exactly was going on?

Pei Ye wanted to find Old Xiangzi to ask in detail and wanted to study the origin of the fire symbol on his forehead, but the Lin family's fate was uncertain, and he had no time to attend to other things at this moment. Pei Ye ran back to Lin Lin's room, turned out a sword, and felt the heavy weight in his hand, which made him feel a bit more secure. Pei Ye tried his best to identify the blurred traces and pursued the two's tracks.

Lin Jue's footprints only extended a very short distance outside the door, and then the ground turned into a man's boot prints. Clearly, she had been abducted. This place was still four or five zhang away from the courtyard wall, but this man carried Lin Jue and jumped up from the flat ground, leaping over the courtyard wall in one step. Following that were Lin Lin's footprints.

Pei Ye also flipped over the courtyard wall, but outside the wall was a field. At this moment, the water was flowing turbulently, the soil was soft and sunken, and there were crops blocking his vision, so following the tracks was too difficult.

Although Pei Ye was anxious in his heart, he still tried to calm down and think carefully: Since Lin Jue and he were sleepwalking in the same way, was the destination they went to the same? He had just left the north gate of the city at that time. Maybe Lin Jue was also heading north.

Following this general direction, he searched for traces bit by bit. After a long time, he finally found a path heading north. Pei Ye followed the tracks. After leaving the field, it was a river beach. The footprints were much clearer here. Looking at the traces, both of them had flown across the river. Pei Ye didn't have this skill, so he bent down and waded across the water.

After crossing the river, it was a flat field. The traces became more and more obvious, but a phenomenon that made Pei Ye feel uneasy in his heart also became prominent: the abductor carried a person but still had an even stride, seeming to have plenty of energy left. And Lin Lin, concerned for his beloved daughter, could be seen to be urgent in his footprints, but even after trying his best to catch up, he was still being thrown further and further away.

Pei Ye had no Qi, so he could only run in the rainy field with the muscle strength of his legs, and he didn't know how much slower he was than the two.

Finally, near the Mao hour, the rain weakened, and the chickens had already started crowing. Pei Ye arrived at a forest, and the traces disappeared here.

The forest was silent, and there was no sound of fighting. A faint smell of blood entered his nostrils.

Pei Ye pressed the sword hilt and walked in slowly.

The forest was not large, so it didn't leave Pei Ye much time to prepare. A bloody corpse came into view.

It was Lin Lin.

The scene was already empty.

Pei Ye arrived beside the corpse. A scabbard-less steel sword fell to the side. It was the one Lin Lin often wore. There was no blood on the blade.

That face that was majestic without anger was already pale and distorted, looking a bit unfamiliar. His eyes were red and bulging, and there were two tear stains on his cheeks. The remaining expression looked like anxiety, anger, and disbelief, but more of it was pain.

Pei Ye stood silently before this face for a few breaths, pursed his lips, and looked down.

Lin Lin was wearing white sleeping clothes, which had been dyed red by blood. On his arms, chest, abdomen, and legs, there were a total of nine claw marks. Some were cuts, some were stabs. The fatal point was the neck, where two huge bloody holes remained.

Pei Ye slowly squatted down to examine these wounds.

The claws and teeth of wolves and leopards were not so sharp, nor were they so long. Tiger teeth could leave this bite mark, but they were also not used to fighting with claws. These wild beasts all pressed down on their prey and bit them to death in one bite, not leaving so many claw marks, and there were no hairs left behind.

More importantly, even if five tigers came, they wouldn't be Uncle Lin's opponent.

Perhaps... there were no wild beasts at all. There were some strange weapons in the world that were in the shape of sharp claws and could be worn on the hands.

But Pei Ye quickly denied this guess, not only because of the real bite marks on the neck, but also because of the claw prints on the ground that were hard to distinguish.

Pei Ye's face was solemn as he pushed aside Lin Lin's clothes. On his chest and abdomen, a palm print that had already turned black was exposed, half of which had been cut open by claw marks.

Pei Ye's face changed. He pressed the palm print lightly, and the bones and flesh underneath were as soft as mud.

Uncle Lin was hit by this palm first before encountering the wild beast. This palm broke four of his ribs, and his internal organs were almost completely shattered. At this time, if he really faced a fierce tiger, he was afraid he would have no strength to fight.

A very thick and vicious palm.

But what really made Pei Ye's heart sink was the position hit by this palm—right in the center of the abdomen, neither biased nor leaning. Apart from this, there were no other man-made wounds on the entire corpse. ===== CHAPTER 5 =====