Chapter 267

After Cao Hanyan finished speaking, he didn't speak again, and Zheng Yi and Yin Suqin also fell silent. The three of them turned to look at the corpse lying on the kang, watching it carefully.

In all fairness, if Yan Fan's encounter had happened to any one of the three, they would have had countless better ways to break the situation.

To put it simply, Xing Chi was still alive last year. If one took a short knife to Shaolin, lifted the front of their robe and knelt outside the mountain gate, placed a blood letter in front, and stabbed themselves in the chest—Xing Chi would have arrived that night, clenching his fists and carrying the blood letter to eliminate demons and defend the way.

Or they could have rushed directly to Shuntian and smashed their head to death at the gate of the Embroidered Uniform Guard Yamen, perhaps some Lord Li who was bored would have wandered over, taken a few heads back to boost his performance.

There were too many famous righteous sects in the Wu Lin that needed a name for eliminating harm for the people. If one just chose any big sect's gate to die at, and called a few storytellers to spread the matter in the Wu Lin, they would all be very happy to handle this matter for Yan Fan and win a good reputation.

But, Li Miao was right—they had no right to be demanding of Yan Fan.

He was an old man with no money, no power, and at the end of his life. He didn't have the ability to walk out of Kaifeng, or even the ability to walk out of this village.

He wasn't considered smart, didn't have any schemes, and didn't understand Wu Lin affairs. The only thing he had was a life that didn't have many years left, and he pushed this only bargaining chip onto the gambling table.

The Seven-Star Begonia only had seven petals, and he used this method that could almost be called dull, betting that within these seven times, someone would be able to dig out the truth for a useless person like him.

When he brewed the poisonous tea and sat quietly in the empty room waiting, what was he thinking?

When he personally ground off a corner of the only thing Xue Bangzhu left him and soaked it in the tea, did his memory of Xue Bangzhu also become incomplete?

When the murderer came before him tonight and he raised the poisonous tea and drank it in one gulp, did he feel relief, or did he feel satisfied?

Five years ago, when he sold his ancestral property, moved into this village, dragged his dying body through the streets, and tried his best to stir his toothless mouth to smile and tell others this story, what kind of emotion was supporting him?

The three had too many questions they wanted to say, but now there was no one left who could answer.

Yan Fan was already dead, leaving behind only a corpse bleeding from the seven orifices, emitting a nauseating stench. Leaving behind only a piece of beeswax, and the flower inside with two petals ground away.

"Alright."

Li Miao spoke up to interrupt their reverie.

"People are already dead, there's no point in thinking too much."

He walked around the room with his hands behind his back, saying as he walked.

"Although Yan Fan is already dead, he still left us some clues."

"First, although the mastermind's Wu Gong is not bad, it's not that high, I estimate it probably isn't even at the peak level."

Zheng Yi frowned and said in surprise.

"No way, he was able to kill Xue Bangzhu, at least he should be a heavenly being, right?"

Li Miao shook his finger.

"No, let's put Xue Bangzhu's matter aside for now."

"First, the murderer only found out the matter was leaked after we arrived at the righteous cemetery, and then turned back to find Yan Fan, and only then did Yan Fan drink the poisonous tea."

"There is a timing issue here."

Li Miao said slowly.

"Kid Cao and Kid Yin arrived at the righteous cemetery at noon, and I and Xiao Yizi only arrived at night, and when we arrived, we already discovered Xue Bangzhu's corpse."

"From the time I and Xiao Yizi rushed to the righteous cemetery to the time I found this place, it was only a little over half an hour. The murderer couldn't have found Yan Fan and come to the door in such a short time."

"Which means, he turned back to find Yan Fan to silence him immediately after seeing Kid Cao and Kid Yin arrive at the righteous cemetery at noon."

Cao Hanyan suddenly realized and said.

"I understand the lord's meaning."

"The murderer saw me and Brother Yin arrive at the righteous cemetery, and turned back to find Yan Fan. But there is a problem here, why didn't he act against me and Brother Yin!"

"He came here to find Yan Fan before the lord arrived, which means in his eyes, the only people approaching the truth were me and Brother Yin. Yan Fan didn't have the ability to discover the truth, compared to him, the murderer should have killed me and Brother Yin—but he didn't act."

"He rushed over to kill Yan Fan, but instead exposed one point, that is, he wasn't sure he could kill me and Brother Yin, and could only cut off the possibility of us learning the truth from Yan Fan in advance!"

Li Miao nodded with a smile.

"That's right, you two are both at the first-class level, and even if you join forces, you can't beat a peak expert. Since he wasn't sure he could kill you, it means his Wu Gong is below the peak level."

"He is at most a first-class little punk."

Cao Hanyan and Yin Suqin's expressions were awkward, Li Miao's words included them as well, but they were powerless to refute—in front of Li Miao, what else could a first-class expert be but a little punk.

Zheng Yi frowned and said.

"But this brings up another problem, why would Xue Bangzhu die at the hands of a first-class person... could it be that our previous speculation is true?"

"I don't know when it started, but her Wu Gong was already ruined."

"So her spine was worn down, so the merchant's family could push her to the ground, so she couldn't kill 'Bu Liuxing' back then."

"But why is this? People from Yingzhou didn't find her, and no one in these forty-some years in Kaifeng could threaten her, what exactly ruined her Wu Gong?"

Li Miao said.

"It's probably the means of Yingzhou and your Penglai. The matter of the missing corpse in the righteous cemetery is probably also for this reason."

"Let's put this matter aside for now, Yan Fan also left us a second clue."

Li Miao held up a second finger.

"This murderer doesn't understand the affairs of Yingzhou and Penglai. He is probably just an ordinary Wu Lin person."

The three of them didn't raise any objections to this point.

Yan Fan committed suicide using the Seven-Star Begonia. If the murderer was related to Yingzhou and Penglai, he would know that this thing was not easy to preserve, and thus infer that Yan Fan had something to preserve this thing.

Since the murderer left Yan Fan's corpse and the Seven-Star Begonia to Li Miao and the others, it proved that he didn't have the idea of covering up Xue Bangzhu's origin. But only wanted to cover up Xue Bangzhu herself and his own identity.

So the murderer wouldn't be from Yingzhou or Penglai—this is a very simple deduction.

"However, other than this, there are no more clues."

Li Miao said.

"The benefit is that we know the murderer's strength, so you don't need to stay by my side all the time, you can split into two groups to investigate."

"Xiao Yizi, you take Kid Yin back to the righteous cemetery. The murderer might take advantage of our absence to clean up the traces, if you go back now, you might be able to catch him in the act."

"With you there, he won't be able to make any waves."

Zheng Yi nodded, reached out and grabbed Yin Suqin's collar, and without waiting for him to speak, flashed out of the room and rushed toward the righteous cemetery.

Cao Hanyan walked to Li Miao's side and said in a low voice.

"My lord, then what do we do?"

Li Miao looked at Yan Fan's corpse and said while twisting his fingers.

"Give you a stick of incense time, tidy up his corpse, don't let him lie here looking so ugly. After tidying up, let's go to another place to take a look."

Cao Hanyan asked: "Where are we going?"

Li Miao laughed.

"Did you forget? Xue Bangzhu's family was wiped out twenty years ago, she moved to the righteous cemetery thirteen years ago, in the seven years in between, she lived at the foot of Yishan."

"The origin of the matter is the family extermination case twenty years ago, and what Xue Bangzhu did in the seven years after the family extermination case, shouldn't we go and take a look?"

Cao Hanyan nodded in agreement.

But suddenly he remembered one thing—it was forty or fifty miles from here to the foot of Yishan, twice the distance from the righteous cemetery to here.

And Li Miao, obviously wouldn't let him walk there slowly.

Remembering his screams along the way just now, and the dizzying vomiting after landing, Cao Hanyan's face gradually turned pale.

————————

"Ugh, vomit—ugh, cough, cough, cough..."

Cao Hanyan leaned against a tree trunk, retching.

He was absolutely certain that Li Miao did it on purpose. With his Wu Gong, even if he used the light-footed skill like the Ming Cult's "Flying Willow Light Smoke Skill," the speed would definitely not be slow. He used this violent way of traveling like a meteorite landing, obviously just to torment himself.

However, he was wronging Li Miao here.

Li Miao was proficient in all kinds of martial arts and could use all kinds of martial arts at will, but it wasn't that there was nothing he wasn't good at, and light-footed skill was one of them.

He had only learned the basics of most light-footed skills, and he was too lazy to spend his "salary" on deducing light-footed skills. The only thing he was good at was this light-footed skill that was as straightforward and noisy as the "Hulk."

Anyway, when killing people, there was no need to pay attention to noise, the light-footed skill that could rush to the other party's front the fastest and twist their head off was the best light-footed skill—anyway, that's what he thought.

Although it didn't delay his killing, the people he carried on his journey suffered a lot. Shen Xunni and Cao Hanyan had both suffered quite a bit.

Let's get back to the present.

The two had already rushed to Yishan.

This place was already dozens of miles away from Kaifeng Prefecture, and there were no official roads or villages around, and it was sparsely populated. The two saw a wooden house at the foot of the mountain from afar.

Cao Hanyan scanned left and right, and there were no more houses within his sight. It was likely that this wooden house was Xue Bangzhu's residence before she moved to the righteous cemetery.

The two walked toward the wooden house.

The closer they got to the wooden house, the more Cao Hanyan felt that this trip probably wouldn't yield any harvest.

This wooden house shouldn't have been lived in since Xue Bangzhu, and it wasn't built with good materials, so it had rotted into a mess in seven or eight years, the roof had collapsed, the window lattices were broken, the outside of the door was full of weeds, and even mushrooms had grown on the walls.

After getting closer, one could still hear a rustling sound in the house, and some small animals scrambled out and disappeared into the bushes.

"Even if Xue Bangzhu left any clues here back then, they have probably been dug out and carried away by wild animals."

Cao Hanyan shook his head as he walked.

Li Miao laughed.

"This is a good thing."

"What you can think of, the murderer can also think of. If this place was intact, and it looked like clues could be found, wouldn't the murderer have come over to search it in advance?"

"The more unlikely it is to have clues, the more careless the murderer will be, and the more likely they are to leave something behind."

Li Miao stepped on the wooden door lying on the ground, waved his hand to pull away the spider webs blocking his front, and stepped into the house.

"The murderer has had several more years than us, this is his advantage. But he also has a disadvantage—he doesn't know about Penglai and Yingzhou."

"The righteous cemetery is where the murderer hid the corpse, and it is also the last place Xue Bangzhu stayed before she died. Today the murderer discovered you at the first moment, which means he has been paying attention to the situation in the righteous cemetery—leaving clues there is no different from sending them to the murderer's face."

"If I were Xue Bangzhu, I would leave clues that only those who understand Penglai could discover in this place far away from the righteous cemetery, where the murderer could hardly take care of."

Li Miao squinted and scanned the room.

Like the wooden house in the righteous cemetery, this place was already empty. In the seven years since Xue Bangzhu left, the wind had brought mud into the house, weeds had crawled in from outside, covering the ground, completely erasing the traces of Xue Bangzhu's life.

Cao Hanyan stepped in, walked around the wall of the wooden house, but frowned. He didn't give up, squatted down, and while knocking on the ground with his scabbard, walked around again.

"My lord, there is nothing."

Cao Hanyan stood up and shook his head at Li Miao.

"There are no protrusions on the wall, and there are no holes in the ground."

"Even if Xue Bangzhu left any items back then, they have probably been dug out and carried away by wild animals. We made a wasted trip."

He was inexplicably dejected, but heard Li Miao say with a smile.

"No."

"Xue Bangzhu left behind quite a few things, it's just that you can't see them."

Cao Hanyan looked up suddenly.

He saw Li Miao walk slowly to the corner of the wall, put his palms together like a knife and scrape the wall, and the mud and dust on the wall fell down, revealing the wall body.

Li Miao beckoned.

"Come and see."

Cao Hanyan walked over quickly, squatted down and looked at the place Li Miao pointed to, but was confused for a moment. There was indeed a trace in the corner of the wall, the color was slightly lighter than other places, it was likely the mark left by something that had been placed in this corner before.

But what could be seen from this mark alone?

Li Miao laughed.

"You have also seen Xiao Yizi's sword, think about the length of that sword, plus the scabbard, is it just right to fit this mark?"

"The faces and Wu Gong of Penglai people are all carved from the same mold, presumably this Xue Bangzhu also used a long sword."

"According to the space and layout in this room, this place should be the head of the bed. Which means Xue Bangzhu always kept her long sword at the head of the bed, within her reach."

"What does this explain?"

Cao Hanyan pondered for a moment, then looked up suddenly and said.

"It explains two points!"

"First, when Xue Bangzhu moved here, her Wu Gong hadn't been completely ruined, but she wasn't sure she could kill the murderer!"

"So, her Wu Gong and realm didn't 'suddenly disappear', but 'gradually faded'!"

"Second, Xue Bangzhu felt threatened from that time on, so she always kept her weapon at the head of her bed, ready to be used at any time!"

"Which means, the murderer indeed targeted her twenty years ago, when Xue Bangzhu moved here. She knew she would be in danger from that time on, and her Wu Gong was gradually disappearing, so she must have been trying to find a way to break the situation from that time on!"

Cao Hanyan stood up, walked a few steps excitedly, turned to Li Miao and said.

"This can deduce two conclusions."

"First, the murderer is eight out of ten related to the family extermination case of Xue Bangzhu's husband's family twenty years ago!"

"Second, since Xue Bangzhu knew she might be in danger, the possibility of her leaving clues here is very high!"

"My lord, we didn't make a wasted trip!"