Chapter 9 Chapter 9

Forty-eight lives, just for twelve pieces of blood jade!

Vicious, cruel, insidious and despicable are not enough to describe the moral bottom line of these people.

Ling Suye led the young man back to the front hall. As soon as they came in, they could still smell a hint of incense and candles. It seemed that this was a real City God Temple.

"Someone's coming, someone's coming."

"There are footsteps."

"Is it a human or a ghost?"

"There are no ghosts in this world. Don't be afraid. With so many of us here, the ghosts will be scared away by all the yang energy."

They talked among themselves to give themselves courage.

Ling Suye thought for a moment, then found a corner, spread out his blanket, and decided to rest for a while. He had already walked around the entire City God Temple and was familiar with the route.

Next, we just have to wait for the demon realm to spread over.

The young man followed Ling Suye and did whatever Ling Suye did without any hesitation.

But when he found that Ling Suye had actually laid down, he was a little stuck: "Sir, you...you..."

Ling Suye was nourishing his spirit and said, "Sleep."

"good."

Ling Suye didn't sleep deeply. His head was full of heavy things, and he had to think of ways to break the deadlock.

He now believed that anyone who felt scared and wanted to escape would be thrown into the demon realm by the people behind the scenes guarding outside.

The same treatment as the person who just walked in.

So, he has no way out now.

·

At three quarters past midnight, Ling Suye felt a slight fluctuation, and he immediately perked up - this was the demon realm slowly spreading.

Once the demon realm covers them all, a massacre will probably begin.

If Ling Suye was still a demon catcher, he would naturally not be afraid of this kind of demon domain, but since his cultivation was completely destroyed, he had to be extremely vigilant and act with caution.

The demon domain spread over Ling Suye's body like water waves. When it covered the young man beside him, Ling Suye noticed that the demon domain actually retreated a little, but the next moment, it still covered the young man.

"It seems that his grandfather does have connections with these monsters." Ling Suye thought.

But when a person dies, it is like a light going out, and the emotions of demons are limited.

Ling Suye pushed the boy awake and put his index finger in front of his lips before he could speak.

The young man looked at the scene in front of him and thought he was dreaming. Wasn't he blind?

Ling Suye pulled him to a corner, behind the altar, and said, "This is in the demon realm. Everything is illusory. It's because your consciousness has entered the demon realm that you can see."

As he spoke, Ling Suye raised his hand and took down a brass candlestick. "Look, your image can't be reflected on the candlestick."

The boy was stunned: "I can't see myself, but can I see others?"

Ling Suye nodded: "Yes."

"Mr. Wuming, you, you..." The young man kept saying "you" for a long time without saying a word.

Ling Suye made a gesture of silence again and blew out the candle.

At this moment, the two heard footsteps coming from outside, which were chaotic and complicated, as if there were many people.

At the same time, after the candle went out and the smell of incense oil filled Ling Suye's nostrils.

"Sir, twelve people died in the City God Temple. There are two bodies in the main hall, a boy and a girl. The boy is about five years old, and the girl is ten. There is also a middle-aged man lying nearby. There are traces of demonic burns on his chest, but he is still breathing."

The governor was furious: "Why don't you go and save him while he's still breathing? You come and ask me if I'm a doctor! Why don't you go and call the accompanying doctor and use all the precious herbs to save him!"

"Yes, yes, sir."

"He's the only survivor, the only person in this massacre who has seen the murderer's face. We must make him speak!"

"Yes, I will arrange for a doctor right away."

Ling Suye thought that this demon domain did not start the massacre right away.

Instead, the governor and others appeared...

Could it be that he wanted to recreate the investigation process for them?

Ling Suye thought so, and when the footsteps outside became smaller, he quietly crawled out from under the altar.

The boy also followed his example and came out with him.

Ling Suye went forward to check the dead body lying on the ground. It was indeed a little boy and a little girl. Both children were young, but there were three to five bloody holes on their chests. They were already dead.

The middle-aged man lying next to him still had his chest rising and falling, but the amplitude was very weak.

The young man knelt over, took a closer look at the middle-aged man, and said, "Sir, he is my grandfather... No, he looks a lot like my grandfather."

"Maybe, he is your grandfather when he was young." Ling Suye checked the situation and heard footsteps again. This time, he and the boy hid behind a pillar.

The people who came were three yamen runners and two doctors who were driven by them.

"Human life is at stake. We were forced to do this and are sorry for the offense," the bailiff said. "The prefect has said that this man must be saved, no matter what."

"Hey, you're so badly injured. We'll do our best. Please rest assured, Your Excellency."

Ling Suye glanced at the silver bracelet on the girl's wrist and thought that the murderer was probably not here to rob her.

Although the silver is small, it is worth some money.

While the doctor's back was turned, Ling Suye took the young man out of the window. The two of them dodged the yamen runners and the coroner and ran towards the backyard.

At this time, Ling Suye truly realized that the Demon Realm was presenting to him what happened thirty years ago.

These halls and temples must have been renovated not long ago. They are magnificent and bustling with people. They are completely different from the rotten and dilapidated smell of yesterday.

There were two dead bodies in the backyard. The prefect also came here and arranged for a coroner to perform an autopsy.

Someone reported to the prefect, "Sir, except for the one large and two small ones in front, the ten dead men behind are all from the Yong'an Escort Agency. It is said that their employer this time is from the capital, and they want to escort a whole piece of high-quality jade.

This piece of jade was transported down from the sacred mountain. On the first day, the people from Yong'an Escort Agency rested in the back hall of the City God Temple.

Normally, no one should have known this news, but unfortunately, it leaked out at this time, and a group of robbers came to steal the jade. All ten people from the Yong'an Escort Agency were killed. But the most bizarre thing was that these robbers did not take the jade away with them. Instead, they chopped it up and crushed it, until it is now reduced to rubble.

Ling Suye quietly raised his head and looked at the jade chips held in the palm of the yamen runner's hand in the distance.

He thought to himself, this must not have been chopped and crushed, but there must be a demon at work. Otherwise, even a pepper mill driven by a mule would take three days to grind it this finely.

It took only two hours from the time of the crime to dawn, and the robbers had no time to do such delicate work.

The prefect is not yet the old and frail man he will be thirty years from now. He works in a hurry and never calls himself "this official".

"Don't you have any brains? It's already turned into fine powder, how can it be ground into powder? I gave you a piece of jade, and you grind it into this fine powder!" The prefect pointed at the man's forehead and cursed, saying, "Let's go and continue to watch the scene behind."

After they left, Ling Suye went to check on the condition of the deceased.

One of the men had a beard and his injuries looked a bit strange.

The three men in the hall had been wounded in the chest, but this man was wounded in the head. Furthermore, the person who had attacked him must have harbored a deep hatred, as he had actually slashed from the top of his skull to his jaw. A deep, bone-deep wound began at the top of his head and cut across his entire face, ultimately splitting this already ferocious-looking face in two.

The man next to him died in the same way as the two dead people in the hall. Both of them had about five knife wounds on their chests, the kind that were stabbed directly through, and blood was flowing all over the ground.

Ling Suye raised his head and glanced at the gate of the City God Temple. He didn't hear any crying for the time being, which meant that the prefect had not yet allowed the families of the escort agency to come and recognize their relatives.

Following the prefect's steps inside, there were no gods or Buddhas enshrined in the hall on the left, so these people seemed to be resting here.

This is also where the dead are most concentrated.

After the prefect left, Ling Suye found one of the five dead bodies here with the same wound as the one he had just seen in the inner courtyard.

A cut that started from the top of the skull and meandered down was so deep that the bone was visible.

The most direct conclusion we can draw now is that the two big men were probably injured by the same person, while the others were injured by someone else.

However, there were so many strong men in the escort agency, why did they only kill these two?

What exactly did they do?

Ling Suye thought that he was reviewing the scene of thirty years ago on the premise of knowing the result of the prefect's judgment. Therefore, he had already come to the conclusion that there were 'twelve dead' and 'the murderer was still at large'.

but……

Think about it from another perspective.

What if the fight between the robbers and the people from the escort agency was not a one-sided crushing defeat?

There are so many strong men in the escort agency, and there is no guarantee that some of them are skilled in martial arts and can fight against the robbers.

Ling Suye's idea was not groundless. When the Ling family was wiped out, his parents fought hard at the beginning and killed many men in black.

It’s a pity that the enemy was numerous and we were few, which led to our defeat.

Ling Suye couldn't help but have a bold guess - what if, in addition to the two children mentioned above, there were robbers among the ten dead people in the "escort agency"?

Just as Ling Suye finished seeing the tragic state of the last deceased, the prefect had already summoned the families of the escort agency staff.

But only three family members came.

A charming woman threw herself on the man with a scar on his head in the inner courtyard, crying bitterly.

"How could you be so miserable? How could you be so miserable? How could you be so cruel as to abandon us mother and daughter and leave?"

The yamen runner introduced: "This is the proprietress of Yong'an Escort Agency, and the other two are the wives of Wang Dahu and Chen Ya."

The governor frowned and said, "Let them go and identify the person first. Don't be so harsh on the girl. They are all pitiful people."

"yes."

The governor then asked, "By the way, why are there only these three? Aren't there ten?"

The proprietress replied, "Your Excellency, you don't know that our Yong'an Escort Agency is the most loyal escort agency in Chuzhou City. My husband often takes in homeless people, teaches them martial arts, and helps them make a living within the agency. Most of these people are ferocious-looking and have no land, so it's difficult for them to find wives. That's why no one comes."

The prefect sighed and said, "Gao Yi, the shopkeeper of Yong'an, go and identify the deceased."

Not long after, the proprietress and the other two women returned and concluded, "Besides our three husbands, there are four others we can name, but the remaining three...seem to be new arrivals, and we can't recognize them for now."

The prefect obviously also thought of what Ling Suye was thinking.

He visibly hesitated for a moment, then called on his advisor to register the men the woman had identified one by one. He instructed, "Focus on investigating the identities of the other three."

"Yes, sir."

Ling Suye listened to the woman's description and found that the man who aroused his suspicion was not known!

In other words, this person is very likely a robber.

But there has to be evidence.

At this point, Ling Suye could guess the general outline of how the prefect would handle the situation later.

Regardless of whether the names of the three people were found out, in the end they were treated as members of the Yong'an Escort Agency.

Ling Suye thought that if the clues stopped here, there must be other clues that he had not discovered.

He stopped following the prefect and turned back to look at the dead man with his head chopped off in the hall on the left.

When the boy saw Mr. Ling running over in a hurry, he immediately caught up with him. He was sensible and did not shout.

Ling Suye returned to the hall, walked straight towards the dead man, squatted down, and stripped the dead man's clothes.

The knife wounds on his chest were the same as those on the others, five in number, and the width and sharpness of the blade matched.

But Ling Suye still felt something was wrong.

He looked at the dead man's wounds over and over again, and even asked the boy to help turn the dead man over.

When he turned over, all he saw was a blood-stained shirt, and it was completely unrecognizable from its original appearance.

Ling Suye took great pains to slowly peel off the medical student, but the knife wound he saw was very consistent with the incision, just like the knife wound on the body of the escort agency boss, both of them were injured by the same person.

Could it be that he was really wrong?

Is this person from the escort agency?

Suddenly, Ling Suye discovered that there was an obvious knife wound under the wound on the man's head.

In other words, this man has a scarface?

The knife wound on his head was just to cover the original wound on his cheek!

Ling Suye suddenly felt as if he had been enlightened, and a series of different ideas kept flashing through his mind.

His hypothesis was that the scarred man was a robber, but he was accidentally injured by the escort agency. Seeing that he was beyond saving, and with pilgrims starting to come in, they could easily discover the situation. Therefore, the robbers immediately decided to abandon him.

But there was such an obvious scar on his face. If it was left there, the prefect would definitely send people to trace the robber.

Therefore, he could only be cut on the head to cover the scar.

In this way, when the prefect comes to investigate the case, he will not notice such an obvious scarred face.

It would not work to just kill him, as that would be too abrupt, so he also killed the manager of the escort agency.

As for why there were originally ten people in the escort agency, but now there is one more person with a scar on his face, leaving ten people left, it must be because - there is a traitor in the escort agency.

Otherwise, why was such a big thing as the Shenshan Jade discovered at the very beginning of its transportation?

This is totally unacceptable.

Very good, logical loop.

But these are just Ling Suye's guesses. He must have evidence, otherwise he won't be able to get the prefect to focus on the investigation.

Ling Suye thought that now, the only evidence was to find out that the fatal wound on Scarface was actually done by someone from the escort agency!