The court lackeys of the eight-hour workday

Chapter 299 Corpse
Yin Suqin was known for her foul mouth because of her love of storytelling, and now that she was talking about ghosts and monsters, she got so into the story that she temporarily regained some of her former charm.

After he finished speaking, he suddenly realized who was opposite him, and immediately shut his mouth, took a step back, and fell silent.

Li Miao didn't look at him, but instead twirled her fingers and pondered silently.

The two were talking about Xue Bangzhu...

How to put it? It's a bit like shooting the arrow first and then drawing the target.

First, regarding appearance, if it's just a matter of similar eyebrows and eyes, there are thousands of people in the entire Kaifeng Prefecture who could be identified as similar, so it's hardly evidence. And the things the two people said later aren't exactly airtight either.

First, there's the notorious thief who wiped out her entire family back then. Such people rarely appear in public and are most likely to die silently. To say that Xue Bangzhu is a hidden master based solely on this is actually a bit far-fetched.

Even disregarding that point, the events at the mortuary are still somewhat illogical. If Xue Bangzhu were a skilled fighter, he would still have considerable strength even at sixty or seventy years old. How could he have been knocked unconscious by a few commoners?
Furthermore, Yingzhou has been relentlessly hunting down the people of Penglai, and ten years ago they even killed Zheng Yi's mother. Logically, these Penglai people should be the least willing to attract attention. Yet Xue Bangzhu has made such a fuss that even the storyteller knows about it. Isn't he afraid that the people of Yingzhou will come knocking on his door?

Moreover, the latter half of the story was obtained from a storyteller, and its authenticity remains to be verified.

Cao Hanyan and Yin Suqin weren't fools; they would have noticed this. They must have been forced into this "three-day" deadline and had no choice but to bite the bullet and come to Li Miao to report.

Thinking of this, Li Miao glanced at the two of them with a half-smile. Sweat immediately beaded on their foreheads, and awkward, ingratiating smiles appeared on their faces.

"never mind."

"Since we're just killing time anyway, we should go and see what's going on with Xue Bangzhu, no matter what his background is."

Li Miao stood up and handed the papers the two women had given him to the two maids: "I don't need you to serve me here anymore. Go and give these things to your prefect, and check if there is any record of this merchant's disappearance in the criminal case files."

The two maids were sent by the prefect of Kaifeng to serve Li Miao, so they immediately nodded in agreement and turned to leave.

Li Miao's finger imprinted on the plain zither.

"Don't just sit around, go and scout out the mortuary."

Yin Suqin's face paled. She gritted her teeth and turned to leave, but Cao Hanyan grabbed her, and the two struggled for a few moments. Cao Hanyan turned to Li Miao and pleaded.

"Lord Li, he really just drank too much and misspoke... It's not like it's going to kill him! If it really comes to this—I'll go with him!"

Li Miao laughed as soon as he heard that.

These two were still preoccupied with the finger Li Miao had pointed at them, and coupled with the previously mentioned three-day deadline, they assumed they only had three days to live. Now that Li Miao had sent Yin Suqin away, they thought he was going to leave her to fend for herself.

Both women were quite loyal. Yin Suqin turned and left, afraid of implicating Cao Hanyan. Cao Hanyan, however, grabbed Yin Suqin and pleaded with Li Miao, even considering dying with Yin Suqin.

Li Miao watched them tear at each other for a long time with a half-smile, until the two realized something was wrong and stopped, then he smiled and said.

"When did I say you were going to die in three days?"

They were both stunned.

After a long pause, Yin Suqin finally spoke with a mournful face.

"Lord Li, senior, ancestor... please give me a straight answer, do you want my life or not..."

"How many days do I have left to live... Please let me die knowing the truth, okay?"

Amidst Yin Suqin's pleas, Li Miao returned to the house without looking back.

A mischievous smile peeked out from under the door.

Then the door slammed shut.

--------

That evening.

The mortuary was abandoned.

Yin Suqin and Cao Hanyan were poking at the campfire, lost in thought, when suddenly Yin Suqin let out a long sigh: "Alas—"

"Brother Cao, I'm sorry."

Cao Hanyan shook her head.

“‘Friends are so earnest and concerned,’ I knew long ago that Brother Yin had this bad habit, but I couldn’t dissuade him. Instead, I kept leading you into conversation. It’s only right that Lord Li reprimanded me.”

"Let's put that aside for now—what do we do next?"

Yin Suqin smiled wryly.

"do not know."

"We arrived here at noon and have already searched the entire mortuary. We've dug up every loose patch of soil. Where are there any ghosts or monsters?"

Yin Suqin looked around.

This mortuary was just a haphazardly erected dilapidated shed, far from the main road, and had been abandoned for several years, so it was already on the verge of collapse.

In the center were several long tables, which must have been used to store corpses. They were covered with a thick layer of dust, and underneath the dust were some corpse oil and bloodstains, also a thick layer.

The doors had been removed, and a draft blew through the room, causing everything that could sway to creak and groan. Flames danced wildly on the walls.

In this atmosphere, even a timid person could come in and sleep for one night without needing to prepare a chamber pot—they could just wash their pants when they got home the next day.

The two sat there until midnight, but didn't see a single ghost.

The two were already out of options, which was why they used Xue Bangzhu's matter to get by. Now, the longer they sat there, the more anxious they became—given Li Miao's methods, if there was nothing here, who knew what kind of suffering they would have to endure later?

After pondering for a while, Cao Hanyan was the first to stand up.

“Brother Yin, you are injured and it is inconvenient for you to move around. Please sit for a while, and I will go to the back of the mortuary to take a look.”

After saying that, he turned around and walked out of the shed.

Behind the shed was a dilapidated thatched hut, which should have been Xue Bangzhu's residence back then. Even the roof was gone. Cao Hanyan, carrying a knife, stepped inside.

He looked around.

He had been to this house during the day. The things inside had long been taken away, leaving only a bare earthen bed made of stones and mud, with some rotten hay on it.

It's clear at a glance.

As for the only place that hadn't been disturbed—Cao Hanyan thought for a moment, then with a clang, she drew her sword and plunged it into the earthen bed with a hiss.

As soon as the knife went in, Cao Hanyan frowned.

"Not enough?"

The earthen bed was about a foot high, and his long knife was about two feet long. It went in all the way to the root, but it didn't even touch the bottom.

Cao Hanyan pulled out her knife and scraped away the weeds on the earthen bed. She then inserted the knife back in and shook it, making a cut in it.

As soon as the opening was made, a stench wafted out, smelling as if someone had stuck their hand into Cao Hanyan's skull through his nostril and slapped his head hard across the face, forcing him to stumble back several steps and swallow hard.

Despite the disgust, Cao Hanyan's face lit up with a hint of joy—this smell was the stench of a corpse.

He found the right person.

Cao Hanyan took out a tinderbox from her bosom, lit it, and threw it in through the opening.

In his opinion, Xue Bangzhu, who had been sought out by Li Miao, must be no ordinary person. There must be a secret passage down there, hiding something extraordinary.

He threw a tinderbox in, firstly to test if he could breathe the air below, and secondly to see how deep it was.

Unexpectedly, as soon as the tinderbox went in, there was a "hiss" sound.

It was destroyed.

He didn't even have time to go closer and take a look. It seemed that the cavity under the earthen bed wasn't very deep.

Cao Hanyan frowned, then drew her sword and slashed horizontally!

With a "whoosh," the long knife sliced ​​through the earthen bed as easily as cutting tofu, plunging into one side and exiting the other.

Cao Hanyan stepped forward and slapped the edge of the "lid" he had carved out. With a bang, the earthen bed was lifted up, revealing the contents inside.

"Brother Cao! What's wrong—ugh!"

Yin Suqin ran over upon hearing the noise, but was immediately pushed back by the stench as soon as she entered. It took her a while to catch her breath before she came in, covering her nose, and looked at Cao Hanyan.

Cao Hanyan was standing by the earthen bed, neither speaking nor moving.

Yin Suqin followed his gaze and felt a chill run down her spine: "Brother Cao, what is this!"

After the earthen bed was lifted, a cavity was revealed underneath. It wasn't large, just a two or three-foot-long, sloping hole extending downwards from the ground. It was rectangular, wider at the top than at the bottom, with the bottom measuring only about a foot square.

Within this small square foot of space, a skeleton was crammed in.

The space was so small that even a toddler couldn't lie down, yet the skeleton was clearly the size of an adult—the head was folded back, only the severed neck was visible, and the limbs were twisted and knotted around the chest. The waist was completely folded in half, the entire body crammed inside.

At the bottom, a pool of black water had accumulated, mixed with filthy substances extracted from the corpse. When the moonlight shone on it, it reflected a nauseating oily sheen.

The extinguished tinderbox floated on the black water.

In Da Shuo, aside from those who had witnessed witchcraft, few martial artists had ever seen such a cruel and bizarre scene. Cao Hanyan held back her words, while Yin Suqin was already cursing loudly.

"What the hell is this?!"

"What the hell is this?! What grudge could they possibly have! They killed him, so why are they treating his body like this?! What kind of monster is Xue Bangzhu?!"

Before he could finish speaking, a lazy voice suddenly came from outside.

"It was too early to criticize."

The two recognized Li Miao's voice and quickly bowed to step aside.

Li Miao strode in, walked to the mass grave, glanced inside, and let out a cold laugh. Zheng Yi followed him in, her brows furrowed as she was overwhelmed by the stench.

Yin Suqin hesitated for a moment, then asked timidly.

"Sir, what did you mean by 'it was too early to scold'?"

Li Miao pointed, and Zheng Yi took out a stack of papers from her bosom and handed them to Yin Suqin.

"These are case files sent by the prefect of Kaifeng."

"This prefect is meticulous. Knowing that I wanted to investigate Xue Bangzhu, he organized all the case files related to her and even sent them over along with the old yamen runners who handled the case back then."

Li Miao looked at the corpse and said.

"The first page records the disappearance of the merchants. It matches what you two said. There is also a piece of information that you did not find out—that night, a passerby passed by the mortuary and faintly smelled blood."

Yin Suqin suddenly looked up.

"Then, sir, this Xue Bangzhu is indeed—"

Li Miao waved his hand.

"Look at page two."

Yin Suqin quickly looked down to look. The second page recorded a massacre that had occurred in the neighboring prefecture, with extremely detailed information, spanning several hundred words.

Before he could finish reading, Cao Hanyan pointed to the last sentence of the record: "Brother Yin, look here."

Yin Suqin glanced at it and saw that the last sentence was written in the tone of an official handling the case. It was only one sentence: "The method of this case seems to be the same as the case of the massacre of the family in Qianyue, Kaifeng Prefecture. It should be the work of one person."

The date is written below: the eighth day of the ninth month of the fourth year of Jiajing.

Yin Suqin turned back to the first page, which recorded the date of the massacre of Xue Bangzhu's family—August 12th, the fourth year of Jiajing.

Yin Suqin's eyes widened.

"This 'Bu Liu Xing' didn't die back then!"

Li Miao nodded.

"At least during the few days that Xue Bangzhu disappeared, he was still alive. He even had the mind to wipe out another family the following month before finally disappearing completely."

Yin Suqin remained silent.

Since "Bu Liuxing" is still alive, there is no basis for the claim that Xue Bangzhu knows martial arts.

But he was still puzzled, so he asked.

"Then, where did Xue Bangzhu go after disappearing for two or three days and then running back with blood on her feet? What is her background, and how can we explain what happened at the mortuary?"

Li Miao did not answer, but pointed to the stack of case files.

"Page three."

Yin Suqin hurriedly went to see.

This third page contains the testimonies of the surviving servants of Xue Bangzhufu's household, as well as the testimonies of the neighbors.

After Xue Bangzhu disappeared, the yamen suspected that Xue Bangzhu had conspired with outsiders to murder her husband and then fled. Although the matter was eventually dropped, the confession was extremely detailed.

Yin Suqin glanced at it from top to bottom, but still didn't understand. The information recorded there was no different from what he had heard from others, and he didn't know what Li Miao wanted him to see.

It was Cao Hanyan, who was standing to the side, who spoke up.

"Brother Yin, look at the servant's confession."

“What we found out was that Xue Bangzhu returned as usual, and after completing the ritual, he moved to the outskirts of the city. But what is written here is that Xue Bangzhu returned silent, as if he was too sad to speak.”

"And here, the people who handled the case back then made a detailed record of Xue Bangzhu's appearance, including even the length of her limbs and the thickness of her waist, probably because they were afraid she would disappear again."

Li Miao raised an eyebrow, turned to look at Cao Hanyan, and smiled, "You're quite clever, and your martial arts foundation is solid too. So, how about it, interested in working for me?"

Cao Hanyan fell silent for a moment.

Li Miao waved his hand dismissively, smiling as he looked at Yin Suqin, who was still deep in thought.

"So, did you figure it out?"

Yin Suqin shook her head.

Li Miao smiled and pointed at him.

"You're far inferior to your friend. All you do is talk the talk. I don't know what makes you think you can be compared to Xiao Anzi."

"Look at the arm lengths and other numbers recorded here, and try to reconstruct her size in your mind—doesn't it look somewhat familiar?"

Li Miao looked calmly at the pile of corpses in the pit, which were piled up beyond recognition, and said with his hands behind his back.

"You ask where Xue Bangzhu went during the days after she discovered her family was wiped out? I don't know. But I know exactly where she is now."

Under Yin Suqin's astonished gaze, Li Miao pointed to the corpse in the pit.

"Isn't Xue Bangzhu lying right in front of you?"

(End of this chapter)