Chapter 303

After Cao Hanyan finished speaking, he said no more, and Zheng Yi and Yin Suqin also fell silent. The three of them turned to look at the corpse lying on the kang, observing it closely.

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

To put it simply, Xingchi was still alive last year. If one took a short blade to Shaolin, lifted the front of their robe to kneel outside the mountain gate, placed a blood letter in front, and stabbed themselves in the chest—Xingchi would have arrived that very night, clenching his fists and clutching the blood letter to eliminate demons and defend the Dao.

Or they could have rushed straight to Shuntian, smashed their head against the gate of the Embroidered Uniform Guard yamen; perhaps some bored Lord Li would have strolled over and taken a few heads back to boost his performance record.

There were too many righteous sects in the Jianghu that needed a reputation for eliminating harm for the people. If one were to die at the gate of any major sect and call a few storytellers to spread the word in the Jianghu, they would be very happy to handle the matter for Yan Fan and earn a good reputation.

But Li Miao was right—they had no right to demand perfection from Yan Fan.

He was an old man with no money, no power, and at the end of his life. He had no ability to leave Kaifeng, let alone leave this village.

He wasn't smart, had no schemes, and didn't understand Jianghu affairs. The only thing he had was a life with few years left, and he had pushed this only bargaining chip onto the gambling table.

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

When he had prepared the poisoned tea and sat quietly waiting in the empty room, what was he thinking?

When he personally ground away a corner of the only thing Xue Bangzhu had left him and soaked it in the tea, did his memory of Xue Bangzhu also become fragmented along with it?

Tonight, when the murderer appeared before him and he reached out to lift the poisoned tea and drink it down, did he feel relief, or did he feel at peace?

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 the story to others—what emotion was supporting him?

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

Yan Fan was dead, leaving behind only a corpse bleeding from seven orifices, emitting a nauseating stench. He left behind only a piece of beeswax, and the flower within it, which had two petals ground away.

"Alright."

Li Miao spoke up, interrupting their reverie.

"The person is dead; there's no point in thinking too much about it."

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

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

"First, although the martial arts of this mastermind are decent, they aren't that high. I estimate they probably haven't even reached the Peak Realm."

Zheng Yi frowned, surprised.

"No way, he was able to kill Xue Bangzhu; at the very least, he should be a Heaven-Man, right?"

Li Miao shook his finger.

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

"First, the murderer only discovered that the matter had been leaked after we arrived at the morgue, and then turned back to find Yan Fan, which is when Yan Fan drank the poisoned tea."

"There is a question of timing here."

Li Miao said slowly.

"Brother Cao and Brother Yin arrived at the morgue at noon, while Little Yi and I arrived at night, and by the time we arrived, we had already discovered Xue Bangzhu's corpse."

"From the time Little Yi and I rushed to the morgue to the time I found this place, it was only a little over half an hour. The murderer couldn't have investigated Yan Fan and found his way here in such a short time."

"That is to say, he turned back to find Yan Fan to silence him immediately after seeing Brother Cao and Brother Yin arrive at the morgue at noon."

Cao Hanyan realized and spoke up.

"I understand the lord's meaning."

"The murderer turned back to find Yan Fan the moment he saw Brother Yin and me arrive at the morgue. But the problem is, why didn't he take action against Brother Yin and me!"

"He came here to find Yan Fan before the lord arrived, which means in his eyes, the only people approaching the truth were Brother Yin and me. Yan Fan had no ability to uncover the truth; compared to him, the murderer should have killed Brother Yin and me—but he didn't."

"He rushed over to kill Yan Fan, which instead exposed one point: he wasn't confident he could kill Brother Yin and me, so he could only preemptively cut off the possibility of us learning the truth from Yan Fan!"

Li Miao smiled and nodded.

"Correct. You two are both at the First-Rate level; even joining forces, you couldn't beat a Peak expert. Since he wasn't confident he could kill you, it means his martial arts are below the Peak level."

"He is at most a small-time thug of First-Rate level."

Cao Hanyan and Yin Suqin looked embarrassed; Li Miao's words included them as well, yet they were powerless to refute it—in front of Li Miao, what else could a First-Rate expert be but a small-time thug?

Zheng Yi frowned and said.

"But this brings up another problem: why would Xue Bangzhu die at the hands of a First-Rate expert... could it be that our previous speculation is true?"

"I don't know when it started, but her martial arts were already ruined."

"That's why her spine was worn down, why the merchant's family could push her to the ground, and why she failed to kill 'Bu Liuxing' back then."

"But why? The people from Yingzhou didn't find her, and in the forty-plus years she was in Kaifeng, no one could threaten her. What exactly ruined her martial arts?"

Li Miao said.

"It's likely the methods of Yingzhou and your Penglai. The matter of the missing corpses at the morgue is likely for this reason too."

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

Li Miao held up a second finger.

"This murderer doesn't understand the matters of Yingzhou and Penglai. He is likely just an ordinary Jianghu person."

The three did not raise any objections to this point.

Yan Fan committed suicide using the Seven-Star Begonia. If the murderer were related to Yingzhou and Penglai, he would know that this thing doesn't preserve well, and would have deduced that Yan Fan had something to preserve it.

Since the murderer left Yan Fan's corpse and the Seven-Star Begonia for Li Miao and the others, it proved he had no intention of covering up Xue Bangzhu's origins, but only wanted to cover up Xue Bangzhu herself and his own identity.

Therefore, the murderer could not be from Yingzhou or Penglai—this is a very simple deduction.

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

Li Miao said.

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

"Little Yi, take Brother Yin back to the morgue. The murderer might take advantage of our absence to clean up the traces; if you go back now, you might just catch him in the act."

"With you there, he won't be able to stir up any trouble."

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

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

"My lord, what shall we do?"

Li Miao looked at Yan Fan's corpse, rubbing his fingers as he spoke.

"I'll give you the time it takes for a stick of incense to burn; tidy up his corpse, don't let him lie here looking so unsightly. Once you're done, we'll go to another place to take a look."

Cao Hanyan asked: "Where are we going?"

Li Miao smiled.

"Did you forget? Xue Bangzhu's family was annihilated twenty years ago, and she moved to the morgue thirteen years ago. In the seven years in between, she lived at the foot of Mount Yi."

"The origin of the matter is the annihilation case from twenty years ago, and shouldn't we go take a look at what Xue Bangzhu did in the seven years following that case?"

Cao Hanyan nodded in agreement.

But suddenly he remembered one thing—it was forty or fifty li from here to the foot of Mount Yi, twice the distance from the morgue to here.

And Li Miao, clearly, would not let him walk there slowly.

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

————————

"Ugh-ugh—ugh-cough-cough-cough..."

Cao Hanyan leaned against a tree trunk, retching dryly.

He was absolutely certain that Li Miao was doing it on purpose. With his martial arts, even if he used the Ming Sect's "Flying Catkin Light Smoke Art," a light-handed movement technique, his speed would definitely not be slow. He used this violent, meteorite-landing style of travel clearly just to torment him.

However, he was actually wronging Li Miao here.

Li Miao was proficient in all martial arts and could use any technique with ease, but it wasn't that there were things he wasn't good at; movement techniques were one of them.

He had only learned the basics of most movement techniques, and he was too lazy to spend his "salary" on deducing them. The only thing he was good at was this movement technique that was as straightforward and loud as the "Hulk."

Anyway, when killing people, there was no need to worry about noise; the movement technique that could rush to the opponent's face the fastest and twist their head off was the best movement technique—at least, that's what he thought.

Although it didn't hinder his killing, the people he carried along suffered greatly. Shen Xunning and Cao Hanyan had both suffered quite a bit.

Let's return to the present.

The two had already arrived at Mount Yi.

This place was already dozens of li away from the Kaifeng Prefecture city, and there were no official roads or villages nearby; it was sparsely populated. From afar, the two spotted a wooden house at the foot of the mountain.

Cao Hanyan scanned the area, and there were no other houses within his line of sight. It stood to reason that this wooden house was Xue Bangzhu's residence before she moved to the morgue.

The two walked toward the wooden house.

The closer they got to the wooden house, the more Cao Hanyan felt that this trip would likely yield no results.

This wooden house should have been uninhabited since Xue Bangzhu left; it wasn't built with good materials, so after seven or eight years, it had rotted into a sorry state. The roof had collapsed, the window lattices were broken, the area outside the door was overgrown with weeds, and mushrooms had even grown on the walls.

Upon approaching, one could hear a rustling sound inside the house, and some small animals scrambled to escape, disappearing into the bushes.

"Even if Xue Bangzhu left any clues here back then, they've likely been dug up and carried off by wild animals."

Cao Hanyan shook his head as he walked.

Li Miao, however, smiled.

"This is a good thing."

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

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

Li Miao stepped over the fallen wooden door, waved his hand to pull away the spiderwebs blocking his path, and stepped into the house.

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

"The morgue is where the murderer hid the corpses, and it is also the last place Xue Bangzhu stayed while alive. Today, the murderer discovered you immediately, which means he has been paying attention to the situation at the morgue—leaving clues there is no different from delivering 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 from the morgue and difficult for the murderer to keep an eye on."

Li Miao squinted and scanned the room.

Like the wooden house at the morgue, this place was also empty. In the seven years since Xue Bangzhu left, the wind had brought soil into the house, weeds had crawled in from outside, covering the floor and completely erasing the traces of Xue Bangzhu's life.

Cao Hanyan stepped in, walked a circle around the wall of the wooden house, and frowned. He wouldn't give up; he squatted down, and while tapping the ground with his scabbard, he circled it again.

"My lord, there is nothing."

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

"There are no protrusions on the walls, and no hollows in the ground."

"Even if Xue Bangzhu left any objects here back then, they've likely been dug up and carried off by wild animals. We've made a wasted trip."

He was feeling inexplicably frustrated when he 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 abruptly.

He saw Li Miao walk slowly to the corner of the wall, his palm like a blade scraping the wall surface; the mud and dust on the wall fell away with a rustle, revealing the wall itself.

Li Miao beckoned.

"Come and see."

Cao Hanyan hurried over, squatted down, and looked at the spot Li Miao was pointing to, but was confused for a moment. There was indeed a mark in the corner of the wall, slightly lighter in color than the surrounding area; it must have been an impression left by something that had been placed in this corner.

But what could be seen from just this impression?

Li Miao smiled.

"You've seen Little Yi's sword; think about the length of that sword, plus the scabbard—doesn't it fit perfectly with this impression?"

"The faces and martial arts of Penglai people are all cut from the same mold; presumably, this Xue Bangzhu also used a long sword."

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

"What does this explain?"

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

"It explains two points!"

"First, when Xue Bangzhu moved here, her martial arts hadn't been completely ruined, but she wasn't confident she could kill the murderer!"

"Therefore, her martial arts and realm didn't 'suddenly disappear,' but 'gradually faded'!"

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

"That is to say, the murderer did indeed target her twenty years ago, when she moved here. She knew from that time that she would be in danger, and as her martial arts were gradually disappearing, she must have been trying to find a way to break the deadlock from that time on!"

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

"This leads to two conclusions."

"First, the murderer is likely related to the annihilation 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 come in vain!"

(End of Chapter)