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Chapter 275 Canvas
“That makes sense!” Zhu Cheng nodded, then suddenly realized that Zhu Yu had mentioned incense earlier. “What incense smelled on Pang Yutang just now? I didn’t notice that.”

This further proves that the Right Chief Secretary did indeed have connections with the Pang family.

“When my father was not at home, the head of the Pang family came to visit three times. Such persistent requests to see him were unprecedented.”

"However, from this we can roughly estimate when that unfortunate Jia Jun died," Zhu Yu said.

Zhu Cheng had just seen his personal guards quietly following the coroner, and he could roughly guess that something was amiss with what the coroner was saying. Now, after connecting the dots, he completely understood: "So Jia Jun was hidden in an ice cellar or something after he died? Pang Yutang was certain that I was at home, so he could have someone retrieve Jia Jun's body in advance!"

I said, "Why is he sitting there talking about this and that, never leaving? I've never seen him and his sister talk so much before. Turns out, he was just stalling until someone came to report, so he could prove that he'd been in our house the whole time and had nothing to do with this!"

Zhu Yu smiled and said, "If you ask me, I'd rather call it a guilty conscience."

If it were the Right Chief Secretary who died today, the head of the Pang family might really need to consider how to avoid suspicion. But it just so happens that the one who died was the Director of the Weapons Bureau, who had no apparent connection with him, and the one who was tricked into taking the blame was the Left Chief Secretary, who had no connection with him at all.

Even if the head of the Pang family doesn't come to our house today, Father has no reason to pin this on him and forcibly associate him with it.

But he was actually feeling guilty and insisted on using this method to clear his name, which backfired.

While Zhu Cheng and his daughter Zhu Yu were talking, Lu Qing looked up at the roof beam where the rope was hanging, lost in thought. After Zhu Cheng and the others finished speaking, he asked, "I wonder if my father-in-law has anyone with excellent lightness skills who can go up to this roof beam to take a look?"

Zhu Cheng looked at the guards behind him.

The guards were all tall and sturdy, though not quite as tall as Fu Wen. Some were even more robust than Fu Wen, and each gave the impression of being strong, muscular, and thick-waisted.

However, those who practice martial arts are often the more robust and tall they are, and the stronger they are, the heavier they become, which may make them less agile in terms of lightness skills.

Upon hearing Lu Qing's question, the guards exchanged glances, then met Zhu Cheng's gaze, and immediately looked ashamed.

Before Zhu Cheng could even ask a question, he was immediately furious when he saw their expressions. But then he thought back to the past. He had never cared about people who were thin and skilled in martial arts. He thought that such people were not respectable, unable to lift a broadsword or wield a spear, and were simply useless.

That's why the guards in the mansion all catered to his preferences and grew into big, muscular men.

Lu Qing sighed, not intending to trouble Zhu Cheng. He leaped up, lightly touched the weapon rack with his toes, and used the momentum to jump high into the air, seemingly effortlessly leaping onto the high roof beam.

Lu Qing stood steadily on the beam and carefully looked at the beams on both sides.

The roof beams were very high, and it's estimated that the Jia family didn't usually have anyone with such excellent light-footed skills, so a thick layer of dust had accumulated on them.

Aside from the dust around the rope being rubbed away by the rope, there were only two spots on either side of the roof beam, just like the area around the rope, where there was no dust, revealing the original texture of the wood. Lu Qing carefully moved over, examined it closely, and then gently jumped down from the high roof beam, landing steadily on the ground. He patted his hands to brush away the dust that had settled on him.

“Besides the rope that hung Jia Jun, there should have been other ropes used to secure things on both sides, but they were torn off,” he told Zhu Yu. “There are also hemp ropes on one of the roof beams that were caught on splinters.”

"Just now Wen Qiming said that when he came in, there was a very large painting hanging in the room, stretching from top to bottom." Zhu Yu looked up and said, "I was wondering when Shuodi had such great ability to make such a large piece of paper."

If there are still hemp threads stuck to the wooden beams where splinters have been, then my doubts are resolved.

The reason why the hemp rope could be snagged by the splinter when it was loosened and slipped off is that the thing originally hanging on it must have had some weight, so when it was pulled down, the hemp rope would drag and scrape against the splinter.

It's true that it's hard to find such a large sheet of drawing paper in Shuodi, but it's not difficult to find such a large piece of cloth.

The cloth was heavy, and when the hemp rope was loosened, it would fall from above at a relatively fast speed. The rope caught on the splinter, and in an instant, it pulled out the hemp thread.

She turned to the guard beside her and said, "Go quickly and have someone search the Jia family's house to see if they can find such a large painting. If they can't find it after searching, look for a stove that has been used for a fire and see if they can find any fragments that were not completely burned out."

Or it could be cut into many pieces and hidden away.

In short, that thing was so big, and there wasn't enough time to get rid of it between Wen Qiming's departure and our arrival; it would have attracted too much attention. We had no choice but to hide it at home using every possible method.

"Yes! I'll take men to find her right away!" The guard was someone who followed Zhu Cheng, so he knew Zhu Yu's identity. In the past, he hadn't had much opportunity to get in touch with the second young lady of the family. He only knew that she had married far away to Jin Kingdom and become a princess. This time when she returned, her words and actions were indeed different from others, which made the guards feel convinced.

However, he was Zhu Cheng's bodyguard after all, and in his haste, he agreed to Zhu Yu's request, then quickly looked at Zhu Cheng.

Zhu Cheng nodded, and the guard hurriedly left the study to send men to search with him.

"So how exactly did Jia Jun die?" Only now did Zhu Cheng finally remember to ask a crucial question.

“Poison,” Zhu Yu told Zhu Cheng, “a rare poison, just as rare as the Three Longevity Ointments.”

Upon hearing her mention "Sanwei Shouyuan Gao" (a traditional Chinese medicine), Zhu Cheng's expression hardened. Even though he was mentally prepared, his heart sank instantly.

After so many years of interdependence, unless it had reached a point of no return, he still didn't want to see the two families end up like this.

However, all signs and increasing evidence have made it impossible for him to continue running away.

Zhu Cheng sighed deeply, looked up at his second daughter who was both familiar and unfamiliar, and at the son-in-law of the carefree prince who he could not understand at all, and felt a little more bewildered.