"Maybe he didn't tell his family because he was afraid you'd worry," Zu An thought to himself, "that's exactly right."
The woman looked puzzled, clearly recalling her past interactions with her husband.
Zu An originally wanted to ask if Shen Zhou had left any last words or anything, but he felt that asking would be too abrupt, so he changed his words and said, "By the way, sister-in-law, because Brother Shen's case has not been solved, I want to see if there are any new clues to bring the murderer to justice, so as to avenge Brother Shen."
"I wonder if Brother Shen behaved anything unusual on the day my sister-in-law last saw him?"
The two had just chatted for a while, and the other party had given her money and brought gifts, so the woman's doubts had long been dispelled. Upon hearing this, she replied, "It seems there's nothing unusual."
Just as Zu'an was feeling disappointed, he suddenly heard the woman say, "There's something I'm not sure if it counts."
“Even the smallest thing might contain clues.” Zuan was overjoyed and hurriedly asked.
The woman fell into recollection: "That day, the child's father didn't say anything to me, but he seemed to be preoccupied. He even played with Tiger for a long time. You know, he never takes care of children normally. I suppose he had a premonition before he died, which is why he did that."
As she spoke, she couldn't help but wipe away her tears again.
The two comforted him for a while, just then Tiger charged over, brandishing his short sword and chanting incoherently. Zu'an took the opportunity to grab him and ask him what his father had said to him that day.
"I don't remember very well..." Tiger scratched his head and thought for a while before saying, "I don't think he said anything, just that he played war games with me."
Zuan asked for some more details, but unfortunately it was just the most ordinary pretend game, without any secret codes or anything like that.
At this moment, Pei Mianman also spoke up: "Sister-in-law, can we take a look at Brother Shen's room? Maybe there will be clues he left behind inside."
She was extremely beautiful, and her peach blossom eyes naturally smiled, giving people an inexplicable sense of friendliness. During the time I chatted with that woman, I kept calling her "sister-in-law" this and "sister-in-law" that, and the other woman had long since grown fond of her.
"Of course!" the woman couldn't help but exclaim, pulling her hand. "You're so beautiful, young lady!"
Pei Mianman felt a little embarrassed and hurriedly went with Zu An to check on Chen Zhou's room.
Unfortunately, after searching the room for a long time, the two found nothing of value, only some very ordinary daily necessities.
"By the way, the government officials came once before and confiscated a lot of his work-related items, saying it was standard procedure and they needed to take them back for investigation," the woman said from the side.
Zu An thought to himself, "No wonder there are so few things in the room." He asked, "Does sister-in-law know the official's name?"
"It's that Lord Gong," the woman replied.
"Oh?" Zuan raised an eyebrow, seemingly lost in thought.
The two chatted with the mother and son for a while before getting up to leave. On the way back, Pei Mianman finally couldn't help but ask, "Aren't you going to check on the families of the other two? Why did you come directly to the Shen Zhou family?"
“There’s no need to go to the other two,” Zu’an explained. “I’ve already analyzed Cheng Ba before. The probability of him being able to fake it so flawlessly is extremely small. The same goes for Yu Li. He had his power drained by the Thick-Eyebrowed Taoist. I can vouch for that myself. Although he became a dried corpse and his face changed drastically, as a family member, it’s impossible for him not to recognize him. So, there’s no problem with either of their identities.”
"On the contrary, although Shen Zhou was indeed burned to death, his face was disfigured, so it cannot be proven that it was him who died. I noticed that there was something unusual about the leg bone of that charred corpse, and the wound had already healed, obviously an old injury he suffered before his death. So I came here specifically to ask his wife, and she told me that Shen Zhou had never broken a leg before."
"Obviously, that charred corpse was not Shen Zhou himself, but someone used someone with a similar build to impersonate him. However, despite their best efforts, they made a mistake. They never expected that the person they chose had a broken leg, which revealed the flaw."
"So Shen Zhou is the person you're looking for who went to the capital to deliver the message?" Pei Mianman asked, somewhat puzzled. "But why would he travel all the way to the capital to deliver the message? Wouldn't it have been enough to notify his superior, Gong Pan, or Madam Yu?"
“There are two possibilities. First, he simply couldn’t contact those two people at the time; second…” Zu An paused, his expression quite complicated, “He didn’t trust those two people.”
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