Discuss with you

Chapter 268 Bloodstains

"When you discovered Jia Jun was dead, who had just left your house?" Zhu Cheng asked, frowning.

“Lord Zuo Changshi,” Jia Jun’s wife replied, weeping.

"Is that really true? You're not mistaken?" Zhu Cheng questioned. In his view, how could Jia Jun's wife, a mere woman, recognize the Left Chief Secretary so clearly? Her words were naturally not very credible. "Where is the steward of the household? Has the Left Chief Secretary been seen at the door today?"

"Your Highness, I have met you..." The steward of the Jia family hurriedly stepped forward, trembling, and nodded. "Today, Chief Steward Zuo came to the door, saying that my master invited him to the study to discuss some matters, so I took him there."

When we arrived at that courtyard, he told me to leave first. I dared not delay and quickly excused myself. Then the lady returned, and I learned that the Left Chief Secretary had already left, and my master had also... also..."

He shuddered, his face turning deathly pale, and he couldn't continue speaking.

"Where is he now? Is he just hanging there?" Zhu Cheng asked.

“Yes,” Jia Jun’s wife nodded, sobbing, “My second uncle said that my husband had been perfectly normal these past few days, without any worries. There’s no reason for him to suddenly take his own life. There must be something fishy about this, so he told none of us to move his body without permission…”

Zhu Yu silently glanced at Jia Jun's two younger brothers.

This is quite interesting.

She had handled many cases of suicide attempts, whether they were genuine acts of hanging or staged by others.

It's rare to see the deceased's family members so calm and collected in their response.

In the past, most of the deceased's family members would immediately take the person off the rope upon discovering that they had hanged themselves, patting their back and patting their chest, and some would even frantically press on their chest in an attempt to save them, sometimes breaking their ribs in the process.

There wasn't a single person who immediately assumed their loved one was truly dead and that they shouldn't move them, but rather preserve the scene.

Moreover, Zhu Cheng had rushed over with them as soon as he heard that the official in charge of supervising the manufacture of weapons had died at home, and he probably hadn't quite come to his senses yet.

However, Zhu Yu had a new question.

Logically speaking, if such a thing happened in the capital, and the dead were officials from the Shuo Kingdom, the first thing to do would be to report it to the judicial officer or directly to the chief clerks. Only if they also felt that the matter was very troublesome and did not know how to handle it should they report it to the vassal king, Zhu Cheng.

How could anyone bypass the two chief clerks and the judicial officer, go straight to the bottom, and have someone tell the Prince of Shuo about this matter directly?

It was as if they were certain that the Prince of Shuo would take the news very seriously and immediately come to the scene.

"Have you called the coroner?" Zhu Cheng hadn't thought of this yet, nor did he feel anything was wrong. He just felt that what he hadn't wanted to come true had indeed been confirmed, so he was particularly upset.

"Your Highness, the coroner should be on his way by now," the guard beside him quickly replied.

Zhu Yu glanced at the study with its door half open. Lu Qing noticed her gaze and said to Zhu Cheng, "Your Highness, let's go take a look."

Zhu Cheng thought he was referring to him and Yan Daoxin, so he nodded hurriedly and waved his hand, indicating that they could come over.

He then saw Lu Qing and Zhu Yu stride towards the study where the dead man had been, stepping over the threshold and entering. He was genuinely stunned for a moment, instinctively wanting to stop them, but fortunately he remembered that Zhu Yu was dressed as a man at the moment. In the blink of an eye, the two of them had already entered Jia Jun's study.

Unable to stop him in time, Zhu Cheng could only stand there with a stern face, remaining expressionless.

However, no matter how calm he appeared on the surface, Zhu Cheng's heart was in turmoil at that moment.

It's easy to see from the details of these past few days that Lu Qing dotes on his daughter. As a father, Zhu Cheng is naturally happy to see this, but...

Knowing full well that Zhu Yu was a woman, it was rather absurd to take her into a place with corpses!
Zhu Cheng glanced over there with some worry, afraid that he would hear a scream the next second and see Zhu Yu running out of there in a panic.

If it were Zhu Ning who came today, this would definitely be the scene that would have unfolded.

That would undoubtedly expose Zhu Yu's identity, with unimaginable consequences.

However, after peering inside with a heavy heart for a while, he didn't find anything amiss. The scene he was worried about didn't happen; Zhu Yu and Lu Qing went in and never came out again.

Zhu Cheng was somewhat uneasy and wanted to go see what the two people were doing inside, but given his status as the Prince of Shuo, it was not appropriate for him to go straight in and face a corpse, so he had no choice but to give up.

On the other hand, Zhu Yu had no interest in paying attention to Zhu Cheng's thoughts.

As soon as she entered the study, she found that the room was quite spacious. Right in front of her was a shelf with a row of long swords and spears, which looked cold and intimidating, and had a murderous aura.

Behind the rack of knives and guns was a pair of feet dangling in mid-air, their black leather boots looking as if they were about to fall.

Zhu Yu looked up along the pair of feet and saw the dead official Jia Jun.

Jia Jun was only wearing an undergarment, which looked clean, but his fingertips were stained with blood. Looking further up, there were also many bloodstains on his neck and jaw where he was strangled by a rope.

It appears that before his death he had been painfully scratching his jaw and neck, so much so that he had broken his skin, and bloody skin and bits of flesh were stuffed into his fingernails.

Jia Jun's hair was a little messy, with a few stray hairs falling on both sides of his forehead, and the bun on top of his head was a little loose, but not completely loose.

Zhu Yu was about to go in for another look when Lu Qing stopped her again.

"No rush, let's see what the coroner says when he arrives," he reminded Zhu Yu.

Zhu Yu nodded. This was not Jin Kingdom after all, and Lu Qing could not easily reveal his identity. He was only pretending to be a guard by his father's side.

Before the coroner even arrived at the scene, the guards of the Prince's Mansion had already moved the body. This was indeed quite inappropriate.

So she could only suppress her doubts and examine Jia Jun's corpse from head to toe several more times. Gradually, she formed some judgments in her mind, waiting only for further confirmation.

After a while, the coroner rushed over. Hearing that the deceased was the supervisor of the Armory, he probably knew something was wrong. The coroner who came was an older man who looked quite experienced.

The coroner respectfully greeted Zhu Cheng outside before entering Jia Jun's study. Seeing Lu Qing and Zhu Yu inside, he assumed they were the prince's guards and politely bowed to them, saying, "Gentlemen, could you please help me remove this corpse?"
"I'm really too old to move it."