The court lackeys of the eight-hour workday

Chapter 303 Clues
After Cao Hanyan finished speaking, she fell silent, as did Zheng Yi and Yin Suqin. All three turned to look at the corpse lying on the kang (a heated brick bed), examining it closely.

To be fair, if Yanfan's situation were in the hands of 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. He went to Shaolin with a short knife, knelt outside the mountain gate with his robes billowing, placed the blood-written letter in front of him, and stabbed himself in the chest—that very night, Xingchi would arrive with his fists clenched and the blood-written letter in his hand to eliminate the demon and protect the righteous path.

Or he could go straight to Shuntian, smash his head against the gate of the Embroidered Uniform Guard's office, and perhaps some bored Lord Li would stroll over, take a few heads back to boost his performance.

There are too many prestigious sects in the martial arts world that need a reputation for eliminating evil for the people. Just pick a big sect and kill yourself in front of it, call a few storytellers to spread the word in the martial arts world, and they will be happy to do this for Yanfan and gain a good reputation.

But Li Miao is right—they have no right to demand perfection from Yan Fan.

He was a penniless, powerless, and frail old man. He had no ability to leave Kaifeng, or even leave his village.

He wasn't particularly clever, nor did he have any schemes or knowledge of the ways of the world. All he had was a life that he only had a few years left to live, and he put that last bit of his life on the gambling table.

The Seven Star Begonia only has seven petals. He used this almost foolish method to gamble that someone would be able to uncover the truth for him, a useless person, in these seven attempts.

What was he thinking as he prepared the poisoned tea and sat quietly in the empty room waiting?

When he personally ground off a corner of the only thing Xue Bangzhu left him and soaked it in tea, did his memory of Xue Bangzhu also become somewhat diminished?
When the murderer came to him tonight, and he reached out and drank the poisoned tea in one gulp, did he feel relieved or at peace?

Five years ago, he sold his ancestral property and moved to this village. Dragging his nearly dead body through the streets and alleys, he tried to move his toothless mouth and tell the story to others with a smile. What emotions were supporting him?
The three had too many questions they wanted to ask, but now there was no one left to answer them.

Yanfan was dead, leaving behind only a corpse bleeding from all seven orifices, emitting a nauseating stench. Only a piece of amber remained, along with the flower inside, two petals of which had been ground away.

"All right."

Li Miao interrupted their reverie with her voice.

"The person is dead, there's no point in thinking about it anymore."

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

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

"Firstly, although the mastermind's martial arts skills are not bad, they are not that high. I estimate that they are probably not even at the top level."

Zheng Yi frowned and asked in surprise.

"No way, he was able to kill Xue Bangzhu, he must be at least a Celestial Being, right?"

Li Miao shook his finger.

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

"First of all, the murderer was us. After we arrived at the mortuary, we discovered that our plan had been leaked. We then turned around and found Yanfan, who then drank the poisoned tea."

"There is a time factor involved."

Li Miao said slowly.

“Cao and Yin arrived at the mortuary at noon, while Xiao Yi and I arrived in the evening. By the time we arrived, Xue Bangzhu’s body had already been discovered.”

“From the time Xiaoyi and I arrived at the mortuary to the time I found this place, it was only a little over half an hour. It’s impossible for the murderer to have found Yanfan and come to us in such a short time.”

"In other words, after he saw Cao and Yin arrive at the mortuary at noon, he immediately turned around and came to find Yanfan to silence him."

Cao Hanyan suddenly spoke up.

"I understand what you mean, sir."

"The murderer saw Brother Yin and me arrive at the mortuary and immediately turned to Yanfan. But here's the question: why didn't he attack Brother Yin and me?"

“He came here to find Yanfan before the adults arrived, which means that in his eyes, the only people who are close to the truth are me and Brother Yin. Yanfan does not have the ability to uncover the truth. Compared to him, the murderer should have killed me and Brother Yin more—but he did not do so.”

"His hasty arrival to kill Yanfan actually revealed something: he wasn't confident he could kill me and Brother Yin, so he had to nip the possibility of us learning the truth from Yanfan in the bud!"

Li Miao smiled and nodded.

“That’s right. Both of you are top-tier, but even if you join forces, you can’t beat a master. Since he’s not confident in killing you, it means his martial arts are below the master level.”

"At best, he's a first-rate nobody."

Cao Hanyan and Yin Suqin looked embarrassed. Li Miao's words had implicated them as well, but they were powerless to refute him—in front of Li Miao, what else could a top-notch expert be but a nobody?

Zheng Yi frowned and said.

"But that raises another question: why would Xue Bangzhu die at the hands of a top-tier person... Could it be that our previous speculation was true?"

"I don't know when it started, but her martial arts skills have been ruined."

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

"But why is that? The people of Yingzhou couldn't find her, and no one could threaten her during her forty-odd years in Kaifeng. What exactly crippled her martial arts?"

Li Miao said.

"It's probably another trick by Yingzhou and your Penglai. The disappearance of the body from the mortuary is probably for the same reason."

"Let's put this matter aside for now. Yanfan has left us with a second clue."

Li Miao raised his second finger.

"This murderer knows nothing about Yingzhou and Penglai. He is probably just an ordinary martial arts practitioner."

None of the three raised any objection to this.

Yan Fan committed suicide using the Seven Star Begonia. If the murderer is connected to Yingzhou and Penglai, they would know that this thing is not durable and thus deduce that Yan Fan had something to preserve it.

Since the murderer left Yan Fan's body and the Seven Star Begonia to Li Miao and the others, it proves that he did not intend to conceal Xue Bangzhu's origins. Rather, he only wanted to conceal Xue Bangzhu himself and his own identity.

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

"However, there are no further clues."

Li Miao said.

"The advantage is that now that we know the killer's strength, you won't need to stay by my side all the time. We can split up and investigate."

"Xiao Yizi, take Yin Xiaozi back to the mortuary. The murderer might try to clean up the traces while we're away. If you go back now, you might be able to catch him red-handed."

"With you here, he won't be able to cause any trouble."

Zheng Yi nodded, reached out and grabbed Yin Suqin by the collar. Before he could speak, she slipped out of the room and headed towards the mortuary.

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

"Sir, what should we do?"

Li Miao looked at Yan Fan's corpse and said, twirling his fingers.

"I'll give you the time it takes for an incense stick to burn to clean up his body. Don't let him lie here looking so unsightly. Once you're done, we'll go take a look at another place."

Cao Hanyan asked, "Where are we going?"

Li Miao smiled.

“You forgot? Xue Bangzhu’s family was wiped out twenty years ago, and she moved to the mortuary thirteen years ago. For the seven years in between, she lived at the foot of Yishan Mountain.”

“The origin of this matter is the massacre of a family twenty years ago. Shouldn’t we take a look at what Xue Bangzhu did in the seven years following the massacre?” Cao Hanyan nodded in agreement.

But then he suddenly remembered something—it was forty or fifty li from here to the foot of Yishan Mountain, twice the distance from the mortuary to here.

Li Miao, however, clearly wouldn't let him leisurely walk there.

Recalling her screams along the way and the vomiting that followed her landing, Cao Hanyan's face gradually turned pale.

--------

"Ugh—Ugh cough cough cough..."

Cao Hanyan leaned against the tree trunk and gagged.

He was absolutely certain that Li Miao was doing it on purpose. With his martial arts skills, even using the Ming Cult's "Flying Willow and Light Smoke Technique," a light and agile movement technique, his speed wouldn't be slow at all. His method of traveling with the ferocity of a meteorite impact was clearly intended to torment himself.

However, he wronged Li Miao.

Li Miao is proficient in all kinds of martial arts and can master any kind of martial art with ease, but there are things he is not good at, such as lightness skill.

He only scratched the surface of most light-body techniques, and he was too lazy to spend his "salary" on studying them. His only specialty was this kind of light-body technique that was as straightforward and loud as the "Hulk's".

Anyway, when killing someone, there's no need to be careful about making noise. The best lightness skill is the one that can get to the other person the fastest and twist their head off—that's what he thought anyway.

Although it didn't stop him from killing, those he carried on his journey suffered terribly. Shen Xun Ning and Cao Han Yan both suffered greatly from it.

Now, let's get back to the present.

The two have already arrived at Yishan.

This place was dozens of miles away from Kaifeng, and there were no official roads or villages around, so it was sparsely populated. The two of them could see a wooden house at the foot of the mountain in the distance.

Cao Hanyan glanced around, but there were no other houses in sight. She figured this wooden house must have been Xue Bangzhu's residence before he moved to the mortuary.

The two walked towards the wooden house.

The closer Cao Hanyan got to the cabin, the more she felt that this trip would probably yield no results.

This wooden house has probably been uninhabited since Xue Bangzhu's time. It wasn't built with any good materials, and within seven or eight years it had rotted away beyond recognition. The roof had collapsed, the window frames were broken, weeds grew all over the door, and mushrooms had even sprouted on the walls.

Upon closer inspection, rustling sounds could be heard from inside the house, as 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 her head as she walked.

Li Miao laughed.

"That's a good thing."

"What you can think of, the killer can think of too. If this place is intact and looks like it could hold clues, wouldn't the killer have come here to search it beforehand?"

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

Li Miao stepped onto the fallen wooden door, swung his hand to remove the cobwebs blocking his way, and entered the house.

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

“The mortuary is where the murderer hid the body, and it was also the last place Xue Bangzhu stayed before his death. The fact that the murderer discovered you immediately today means that he has been paying attention to the situation at the mortuary—leaving clues there is no different from handing them to the murderer.”

“If I were Xue Bangzhu, I would leave behind clues in this place far from the mortuary, a place the murderer would have no way to reach, clues that only those who know Penglai can discover.”

Li Miao squinted as he scanned the room.

Like the wooden house in the mortuary, this place is now empty. In the seven years since Xue Bangzhu left, the wind has brought soil into the house, and weeds have climbed in from outside, covering the ground and completely erasing any trace of Xue Bangzhu's life.

Cao Hanyan stepped inside, walked around the wall of the wooden house, and frowned. Undeterred, he squatted down again, tapping the ground with his scabbard as he circled the house once more.

"Sir, there is nothing here."

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

"There are no protrusions on the wall, and no cavities underground."

"Even if Xue Bangzhu left something behind back then, it was probably dug up and carried away by wild animals. We've made a wasted trip."

He was feeling utterly dejected when he heard Li Miao say with a smile.

"Do not."

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

Cao Hanyan suddenly looked up.

Li Miao walked slowly to the corner of the wall and scraped the wall with his palm like a knife. The plaster on the wall fell off in a flurry, revealing the wall itself.

Li Miao waved.

"Come and see."

Cao Hanyan quickly walked over, squatted down, and looked at the place Li Miao was pointing to, but she was puzzled. There was indeed a mark in the corner of the wall, which was slightly lighter in color than the other places. It was probably a mark left by something that had been placed in the corner before.

But what can you tell from this mark alone?

Li Miao smiled.

"You've seen Xiaoyizi's sword. Think about the length of that sword, plus the scabbard, isn't it just right to fit into this mark?"

"The faces and martial arts of the people of Penglai are all cut from the same mold, so Xue Bangzhu must also be using a longsword."

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

"What does this mean?"

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

"Two points to clarify!"

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

Therefore, her martial arts skills and level of mastery did not 'suddenly disappear,' but rather 'gradually decline'!

"Secondly, Xue Bangzhu felt threatened from that time onwards, which is why she always kept weapons by her bedside so she could use them at any time!"

"In other words, the murderer did indeed target Xue Bangzhu twenty years ago when she moved here. She knew she was in danger from that time, and her martial arts skills were gradually disappearing, so she must have been trying to find a way out of this predicament since then!"

Cao Hanyan stood up, took a few steps excitedly, and turned to Li Miao to say something.

"This leads to two conclusions."

"First, the murderer is most likely connected to the Xue Bangzhu family massacre case twenty years ago!"

"Secondly, since Xue Bangzhu knew she might be in danger, there's a high probability she left clues here!"

"My lord, our trip was worthwhile!"

(End of this chapter)