A man who was over half a century in age, Yu Xianghong was the head of the puppet troupe. No one would have expected that he would be killed in his own room without anyone noticing.
By the time Su Yunkai and Ming Yue arrived, people who lived in the middle section of the villa had already gathered outside the house. After a while, Shen Wei and Yu Fenglin and the rest of their party also heard the news and came over. Upon seeing the bloody room, most people almost vomited. On the other hand, Yu Fenglin was a man who had been to battle, so he did not have a strong reaction to the scene. However, his brows were furrowed because he didn’t like the sight of blood in a clean place.
“Lord Su, what happened here?”
Su Yunkai said, “A servant knocked on my door to inform me what had happened and I rushed over here.”
The messenger said, “We are responsible for the people in this area. When we were on the night patrol, we saw that there was still a light in the troupe leader’s room. We knocked on the door and asked a few questions to check in on him, but no one answered. However, the door couldn’t be pushed open, so it was ascertained that he had not left. We felt that this was strange, so we struck open the door and found him dead inside.”
Yu Xianghong lay in a corner of the room, still in his white bedclothes, which were stained red. The blood looked like blooming flowers; the ground was covered in blood. Traces of a fight could be evidenced everywhere after glancing around at the room. However, the tables and chairs in the room were arranged very neatly and none of them had fallen down.
This was abnormal.
After observing the room, Su Yunkai only felt that this was especially suspicious.
Obviously, the fight had been very fierce, so why did the table and chair not fall down? He crouched to look around the foot of the table. If the furniture had fallen down during the fight but was later set back up by the perpetrator, there would be traces left from the movements. However, because these tables and chairs were new, as the house had just been refurbished, there was no dust and it was difficult to see what had happened.
According to past experience, the murderer must have put things back in place after the murder. Yet, why did the murderer find it necessary? It would take a substantial amount of time and trouble.
“Ming Yue.”
When they heard Su Yunkai call out a girl’s name, they saw a pretty girl leave the crowd and head straight towards the mangled corpse. Shen Wei held out his hand to stop her. “What are you, a girl, walking so close for?”
Ming Yue pulled up her sleeves and said calmly, “I’m a coroner.”
The crowd was speechless.
Yu Xianghong’s dead body was a bit terrifying. Not because his expression was ferocious, but rather because he had so many knives in his body. The flesh had been impaled multiple times and the knives penetrated to the bones. It seemed that every stab had been delivered with immense hatred. Ming Yue frowned slightly and closely examined his wounds from head to toe. As the observers watched Ming Yue, they turned increasingly pale. Those who were no longer able to stand it began to leave and those who stayed turned sickly colors.
It was then that they truly believed she was a coroner.
Su Yunkai was continually by Ming Yue’s side. Seeing that she had finished examining Yu Xianghong’s feet and was currently crouching beside him, deep in thought, Su Yunkai knew that she already had an internal map of Yu Xianghong’s situation.
“Twenty-three knives. The murderer was quick; the stabbing action of the knives were even faster. If they had been too slow, the coagulation of the blood would be different. I don’t think it took twenty-three knives to kill him. Rather, the perpetrator was venting his hatred. “
“Even if none of the twenty-three knives had hit a fatal spot, doing it so many times was definitely not an accident.”
“Mhm. What’s more is that there are no traces left on Leader Yu’s fingers. In general, if you fight, you’ll catch something from each other on your hands or nails, but Yu Xianghong did not. I think that the murderer has some martial arts skills, which was how he was able to so easily combat the troupe lead.”
A man outside the door said, “But . . . my teacher, he could do some martial arts as well.”
Su Yunkai thought for a moment and asked, “Who lives in the rooms to the left and to the right?”
A man in his early thirties walked forward. He was dressed in a long gray shirt and looked refined. It was the storyteller from the evening show. He said, “I live to the left.”
Su Yunkai thought for a moment and waited for the tenant to the right, but no one came forward. The crowd looked at each other, whispering amongst themselves, but no one knew. Su Yunkai frowned. “The person didn’t come?”
Qin Fang said, “That person must be the murderer. They must’ve escaped after they committed the crime.”
Su Yunkai said, “Mr. Shen, please check the name cards of the rooms and see who lived in the room to the right of this one.”
Shen Wei said, “I only recorded the names of the people who came here, but I don’t know where everyone stayed. I let them live where they wanted, so I didn’t arrange rooms.”
Su Yunkai knew that Shen Wei looked down upon people who relied on the arts to earn a living. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have had them stay in the lower portion of the villa. The artists had to walk a longer distance to the food hall, even after their long journey up the mountain. Furthermore, Shen Wei had separated the artists from the other guests during meals, setting up two places to dine. Su Yunkai hadn’t expected that Shen Wei looked down on artists so much that he didn’t even bother to arrange their accommodations. Judging from his attitude to the marquis, he seemed to truly be a haughty businessman.
“Does Mr. Shen have a register of those who entered the villa?”
“I do.”
Shen Wei ushered someone to quickly bring it over from his room, but because the distance from here to the upper portion of the villa was quite far, running back and forth would take a quarter of an hour and it would be a while until the servant returned.
Not long after the servant left, someone arrived very late. It was Jin Fugui. He didn’t know the details of what happened, only that someone had died. Still, he had heard who the victim was. Jin Fugui approached the doorway at a slow and leisurely pace. Just as he opened his mouth to ask a question, his eyes fell upon the bloody scene. Jin Fugui immediately turned around to vomit.
In the silence of the room, his movements were too noticeable. Even Su Yunkai took a couple of extra glances. When Su Yunkai had first met Jin Fugui, he had known that Jin Fugui was a person who was very particular about clothes. Now, in such a situation, most people were in their bedclothes. Jin Fugui, on the other hand, was still dressed neatly with a gold belt around his waist and a gold jade crown in his hair. He seemed as if he were utterly unperturbed.
Su Yunkai thought that even if the sky fell, Jin Fugui would not go out until he was all dressed up.
After the servant returned, Su Yunkai asked for a headcount. In the middle of the count, the name He Xiaofang was called, but no one answered. The name was called again before someone said, “My lord, he’s here.”
People looked over, but the person who answered was not He Xiaofang. Rather, it was a girl who lightly pushed a man standing to the side. The man looked left and right in confusion before finally reacting and raising his fist to indicate his presence.
Noting that He Xiaofang was present, the person conducting the headcount continued, but Su Yunkai raised his hand to indicate a halt and asked the girl, “He is deaf?”
The girl nodded. “We are all orphans adopted by our teacher. Since we were abandoned by our families, we all have some problems here and there. However, puppet shows only need people with good eyes and good hands, so being deaf is inconsequential.”
Su Yunkai asked, “Where did he sleep tonight?”
The girl scratched her head. “I don’t know. Tonight, our troupe came last, so we had to start performing immediately after we arrived. Once the performance ended, we were all very tired. No one had the energy to pay attention to anyone else, so we just found empty rooms to sleep in for the night. Wait a moment, my lord…”
She made hand signals with He Xiaofang. They communicated through sign language, which the others could not understand. After a while, she said, “I asked and he said that he was staying in the room to the right of our teacher.”
Su Yunkai understood and stopped the taking the headcount. So the person next door had been He Xiaofang, whose hearing was impaired. This was why no one made a noise when he asked for the person that lived in the right.
However, everyone had selected their own rooms and no one knew who lived where…
Su Yunkai wrung his eyebrows. It appeared that Yu Xianghong’s death had been out of revenge. However, how did the perpetrator know where he stayed tonight? There were hundreds of rooms in the lower residential section of the villa.
Had the murderer found this information early on? If so, what was his identity? How come he was privy to such information?
Su Yunkai slowly looked up at the storyteller, Cui Xiu, and asked, “Tonight, did you hear any movement from the troupe leader’s room?”
Cui Xiu frowned, “No. If there was, I would’ve come to take a look.” A thought suddenly popped in his head and he said in horror, “My lord, you’re not doubting me, are you?”
Su Yunkai said calmly, “Before the murder is caught, everyone is a suspect. That includes me and you. Since you stayed next door, I’m bound to ask you more questions. Although, if you had a clear conscience, you wouldn’t be afraid of such questions.”
Cui Xiu relaxed and said, “You are right. Ask away. As long as I know, I will definitely answer truthfully.”
“Great. Let me ask you—when did Yu Xianghong enter the room?”
Cui Xiu said, “I went to bed early. I really don’t know. My lord, you also know that their puppet troupe came the latest. We checked in before our performance and put all of our things away. Once the performances were finished, I came back to go to sleep. I was in such a deep slumber that I didn’t hear anything.”
Cui Xiu may as well have said nothing at all. Su Yunkai felt that the biggest suspect was Cui Xiu.
According to Cui Xiu, Yu Xianghong arrived the latest. Therefore, he would’ve surely made noise when he was putting his things away. Fighting with someone in the middle of the night would also create a commotion, right?
But Cui Xiu claimed to have not heard anything.
Shen Wei suddenly shuddered. “My lord, could it be that there is a ghost?”
The greatest taboo was to speak of ghosts deep in the mountain. At this sudden mention, the rest of the people felt chills, especially since it was the middle of the night and there was a dead person in the house.
“Otherwise, how could he have died so strangely and quietly?”
With every word he spoke, the hearts of the people present grew chillier. Shen Wei valued his life and didn’t want to stay any longer. Instead, he turned to face the Marquis of Pingxi. “Marquis, why don’t we go down the mountain and report this to the yamen? It would not do us good to continue staying here.”
Yu Fenglin nodded. “Let’s do that. However, all the people on the list must come along as well. People who do not come along will be treated as the culprits.”
In contrast, Su Yunkai felt that it would be helpful towards solving the case if they all stayed. However, he was already a member of the Ministry of Rites and could not intervene in the criminal justice affairs. Moreover, the marquis was the leader. No one would listen to Su Yunkai’s orders over those of the Marquis.
The group didn’t pack their clothes. Instead, they simply brought an outer garment and went down the mountain together, hoping to reach the yamen as soon as possible.
After walking for about a half hour, they were almost at the suspension bridge.
Suddenly, someone yelled. The whole group stopped, their hearts high-strung.
“What happened?”
A person in the front pointed. “There, there…”
Several lanterns edged forward. The light shone to reveal a small puppet stripped of its limbs. The exquisite clothes were covered with blood. The puppet was lying on the bridge like a dead baby. The sight made everyone’s hair stand on end.
For a moment, no one dared to move forward, and there was silence.
Cui Xiu was the nearest and the puppet doll was nearly within his reach. He trembled and pushed the puppet. Almost at the same moment, a hissing noise arose from somewhere.
In the dead of night, it sounded like someone cutting something off. No one was to be seen, however.
Boom!
The suspension bridge, which had just been standing, suddenly broke and fell down the bottomless cliff. The rocks rolled down clamorously along with it.
The group was alarmed. Their only way of getting down the mountain had been disconnected right before their eyes!
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A Hint of Spring 