Chapter 15 The Murderer

Sure enough, within a moment, someone came in.

Wen Youqing was quick-witted and quick-handed. He immediately put the knife to the man's neck and restrained him firmly in front of the window.

The man's palm also pressed against Wen Youqing's throat, with such great force that Wen Youqing, a half-baked man, felt that he would die in his hands at any time.

Just as Wen Youqing was about to strike first, in just a moment, the person's soft but incredible voice came from above his head: "Mrs. Shen."

Wen Youqing frowned and subconsciously pushed the knife forward, cutting the man's neck.

Cui Junji immediately pinched Wen Youqing's nerves, snatched the dagger from her hand, and pulled off his mask.

After the mask was removed, Wen Youqing recognized Cui Junji. She said coldly, "Are you here to kill him?"

"It seems that I..." Before Cui Junji could show his confident expression, Wen Youqing had already climbed out the window and left, too lazy to listen to him.

Cui Junji looked around the room again. The corpse had a wound on its throat. It looked like he couldn't get anything out of it. It was too late. Cui Junji clenched his fists in hatred, but there was nothing he could do.

After thinking for a moment, and with no conflict of interest, Cui Junji stabbed the corpse in the heart again and swept out the candle with a sword.

Shen Zijie, who had just finished a couple of mouthfuls of food, was called over. Wen Youqing knew what was going on, but she feigned ignorance and went with him. "I'll go with you," Wen Youqing said without hesitation.

Shen Zijie knew he couldn't persuade her, so he held out his hand for her to help him pick up his shoes, saying, "There are still many things in the yamen that need help. I'm afraid I'll have to trouble you, Madam, in a while."

When they arrived at the scene, the house had already collapsed in half. Wen Youqing breathed a sigh of relief, but hurriedly directed people to put out the fire.

Cui Junji was also there. He bowed and said, "Wang Shouren locked himself in the house and set himself on fire. Fortunately, no one else was hurt."

When talking about these "other people", Cui Junji glanced at Wen Youqing and said, "Mrs. Shen is here too."

Shen Zijie picked up a bucket of water and said, "The fire hasn't been put out yet. Let's put it out first." He rushed forward without finishing his words.

Among the people who came and went to save the dead, only two people with their own thoughts were left. Cui Junji smiled warmly as always: "Mrs. Shen, we meet again."

Wen Youqing really didn't even want to pretend in front of Cui Junji. After all, they were going to kill someone, so he would definitely not give her up.

Wen Youqing simply rolled his eyes and said to the servants in the distance, "Hey, the two of you, follow me to the government office to take inventory of the things so that we can carry them over later."

"Cruel and vulgar." Cui Junji looked at Wen Youqing's back with disgust in his heart, waved his hand and ordered his servants to run into the fire scene to put out the fire.

Deep in the backyard of the Wang residence, a secluded courtyard caught her attention. The gate was closed, but a faint yellow light shone from inside.

An idea, or rather an almost obsessive intuition, seized her: something was not right, something was not right, perhaps there were more secrets hidden that could not be seen.

The courtyard was silent, the only sound being the rustle of the wind through the withered branches of the old locust tree. The window of the main room was open, but Madam Wang, who had not been seen for several days, lay hunched over, motionless, like a frozen paper figurine, staring intently at the fire outside.

Wen Youqing walked into the house. Mrs. Wang was sitting in front of a huge, half-human-high pottery jar, the glaze of which shone dimly in the dim light.

"Madam Wang, why are you here?" Wen Youqing asked softly.

"Where is the fire?" Mrs. Wang did not answer, but just asked this.

"...the study in the main courtyard."

Suddenly, Mrs. Wang's shoulders began to shake violently, and suppressed sobs came out intermittently from the depths of her throat, but were then blocked tightly, turning into a suffocating sob.

Wen Youqing's gaze passed the trembling figure and reached the bottomless earthenware jar. The water within was a strange, murky yellowish hue. Beneath the surface lay a dense layer of something. A closer look in the dim light—it was rice grains! A shallow layer of rice grains, sunk to the bottom, resembled a corpse submerged in the water.

An indescribable chill suddenly gripped Wen Youqing's spine. She had seen the moldy rice at Mr. Wu's house, stale, black and red, with a choking smell of dust.

But the rice in this jar...they are in the turbid dark yellow water, and they are definitely not moldy!

She could no longer hold back, and in a flash, she pushed the door open and walked in. The wooden door creaked softly, sounding particularly harsh in the dead silence of the house. "What is this!"

Mrs. Wang's entire body trembled violently, as if struck by a whip. She whipped her head around. Her face was shattered by despair, pale as paper, her eyes red and swollen. Tears mixed with dust had carved two muddy furrows across her face. When she saw Wen Youqing, her eyes first erupted in immense sorrow, then quickly gave way to a deeper, almost numb silence.

"You...you..." Mrs. Wang's throat gurgled and she couldn't utter a complete sentence. She just subconsciously used her body to block the dye vat.

Wen Youqing ignored her, her gaze like a cold iron spike, fixed on the strange rice grains in the jar. She took a few steps forward, ignoring Madam Wang's feeble attempts to stop her, and leaned over the jar's mouth. There was no smell, but she could see the shell of the yellow gardenia.

She stretched out her finger, reached into the cold liquid, and fished out the yellow gardenia. It was just a simple dye, and there was even very little yellow gardenia. The yellow color was very light, and it looked like it had been used many times.

Dyed! These rice are good rice that has been dyed!

An extremely terrifying thought, as chilling as an icicle, instantly pierced Wen Youqing's mind. She stood up abruptly, her eyes like lightning sweeping over the traces of movement on the ground.

There was indeed a secret cabinet on the ground. She pried it open immediately. Under several scattered old account books was a thread-bound book with a dark blue cover. On the cover were a few words written in ink - "City South Granary Record".

The granary in the south of the city! Isn’t that the source of the moldy rice?

Her heart pounded wildly in her chest, pounding against her eardrums like a drum. Wen Youqing grabbed the file, her fingers trembling slightly with a profound, ominous premonition. She flipped through it quickly, the yellowed pages rustling against her fingertips.

The writing was densely packed with tiny, tiny characters, recording the date, warehouse number, and the amount of rice in and out. The first few pages were normal, but halfway through, the handwriting suddenly became sloppy and rapid, with ink splattering, as if the writer's heart was surging with turbulent waves:

"…On the Bingxu day, the warehouse at Feng was checked. New rice had been deposited, and the account book recorded 1,000 dan. After an on-site inventory check, the total was over 850 dan. Another 150 dan of aged rice was also deposited, and the total was 63 liang, which was recorded in the account book."

"On the day of Ding Hai... thirty-four was recorded."

“…”

Turning the pages one by one, Wen Youqing understood that Wang Shouren purchased 'new rice' at a price far below the market price, and then bought old rice to mix it in in order to make huge profits.

But it's already beneficial, wouldn't it be even better to make it traceless? Why dye old rice specifically?

"...Rice prices have skyrocketed recently, and the servant Liu San acted suspiciously. Upon questioning, I discovered that moldy rice is already in the city. He's completely unscrupulous..."

The last few pages of the file were written with such force that they seemed to show through the paper, expressing an irrepressible anger and urgency:

"...But the case involves a wide range of people...I'm afraid there are connections within the government office...Now that we've found a key witness, we need to suppress it. The matter of Empress Hehe is urgent, and we must not make any mistakes..."

The record stops abruptly.

The blank space on the last half page was like a gaping, silent, mocking maw. Wen Youqing's fingertips pressed firmly against the wet ink, while the blood she had wiped off seemed to burn on her other hand, burning so hard that she couldn't lift it.

"You are all crazy, crazy! This is cannibalism, cannibalism..." Mrs. Wang finally made a broken voice, and tears burst out like a dam breaking. She was already crazy, and now she was even more incoherent. The huge grief and fear almost suffocated her.

"boom!"

It was as if a silent thunderclap exploded from the heavens, striking Wen Youqing directly on the top of her head! The entire world instantly twisted, shattered, and collapsed before her eyes!

Wang Shouren's astonished face before his death, with a hint of an expression that she didn't want to delve into at the time, now appeared in front of her very clearly - that was not the fear of a corrupt official being exposed, it was the despair of an honest official who was shouldering a secret, was about to get to the truth but failed, and suddenly encountered a catastrophic disaster!

He wasn't a corrupt official! He was the only one trying to find a way out of this darkness! And what did I...what did I do?

"I killed the wrong person..." The voice was hoarse and tuneless, like it came from a dry well that had been dry for a thousand years. A cold, rusty smell suddenly rushed up her throat. She stumbled back, her back banging hard against the cold wall, barely keeping herself from slipping.

The killer's hand burned her, and it felt like a cold, poisonous snake, tightly wrapped around her fingers. She flung her hand away, but the invisible bloody coils clung to her, unable to escape.

A huge feeling of nausea surged over her. She bent over and began to retch, but she could not vomit anything. Only the bitterness of bile burned her throat.

Her vision began to blur and spin. The blood splattered in the study, the fine rice floating in the jar, the wet ink on the file, Mrs. Wang's face, torn by despair, Ah Lu's bones... All the images swirled and overlapped frantically, ultimately transforming into a blinding, overwhelming scarlet! The crimson drowned her rationality, drowned out her pride in her "righteousness," leaving only a cold truth: she hadn't avenged Ah Lu, and had killed a good official.