Chapter 88 A Corpse-Hiding Method Worthy of Her Talent
The private room fell silent for a moment.
After a long while, Ren Jing let out a soft laugh, and tears welled up in her eyes.
She stood up, cupped her hands in a respectful bow to Li Jin, and said, "This humble servant will go and identify..."
After saying that, he took two steps back, covered his mouth, and brushed past Zhou Zheng.
Li Jin sat there, watching her back, and gave Zhou Zheng a look: "Tell her to identify it from a distance."
Zhou Zheng nodded, lowered the crystal beaded curtain, and turned to follow.
Inside the room, Li Jin waved her fan and looked at Jin Shu's face: "You asked too directly. You'll alert them."
Jin Shu paused for a moment, then asked in surprise, "Is it really her?"
"It's just speculation. Whether it's motive or method, she's the prime suspect." After saying that, Li Jin glanced at her face and asked, "What do you think?"
Seeing his smiling face, Jin Shu hesitated for a moment, then pulled out the bindings and said rudely as she tied them, "I don't care about anything, I just want the deceased to talk."
She took two steps forward, and as she lifted the beaded curtain, she turned around and looked at Li Jin's face: "Those who are alive are not my concern. Since Your Highness already knows the situation, my opinion is not important."
She trusted Li Jin, and believed in his character and abilities.
Even to her, it seemed utterly unbelievable that a woman could hide two corpses in a hidden compartment on the stage.
However, the so-called truth is the only thing left after peeling back the layers of the impossible and separating truth from falsehood.
A corpse is dead, a person is alive.
What she needs to do now is to find the key information from the limited clues that can corroborate Li Jin's judgment.
This ensures that the killer hiding in the shadows will always be one step behind Li Jin in his next move.
Jin Shu's gentle smile, reflected in Li Jin's eyes, felt like a hand gently pinching his heart.
He watched her leave, then stared at the small table in front of him. He took a deep breath and rubbed his forehead.
Trusting someone too much is not a good thing.
What if one day...
Thinking of this, he closed his fan, looked up at the golden sunlight outside the window, and couldn't quite describe the feeling in his heart.
In the center of the stage, another corpse on the partition, along with the wooden plank beneath it, was presented to Jin Shu.
She knelt there, looking at the man's dead body, and gently laid his body flat. She pressed her hand on the lividity beside the victim's body; the bluish-purple scars showed no fading or indentation.
Jin Shu examined his joints and neck carefully several times before finally fixing her gaze on his ferocious face.
“The deceased, Liu Mingze, 26 years old, was a leading actress at Shuangji Theater.” Jin Shu raised her hand and pried open his eyelids. “His corneas were completely cloudy, the skin on his hands and feet was not completely peeled off, his body was bluish-black and bloodless, rigor mortis had completely subsided, and he was extremely soft. It is estimated that he died about three days ago.”
Then, she raised her hand, clamped the victim's jaw, opened his lips, and leaned in to smell him.
This smell… After a moment of contemplation, Jin Shu seemed to have confirmed something before calmly saying, “There is white foam in the victim’s mouth, and black blood is oozing from the corners of his eyes, nostrils, and even his ears. Based on the condition of the body, the preliminary judgment is that it is also arsenic poisoning.”
After saying that, she stood up and looked at Zhou Zheng: "I'll trouble you to make the arrangements, Lord Zhou. This one also needs to be taken back."
Two different corpses, yet they gave Jin Shu the same question.
How they managed to ingest arsenic.
Arsenic trioxide, in Jin Shu's memory, was an odorless and tasteless chemical substance, slightly soluble in water, and 60 milligrams could be fatal. Yet, it was also a life-saving medicine; if used properly, it could save lives.
However, in the present-day Great Wei, in a feudal dynasty with extremely low levels of science and technology and a very low level of chemistry, it would be impossible to extract pure arsenic.
This also determines that it is impossible for it to be colorless and odorless.
Jin Shu stood there, her fingertips gently caressing her chin.
She carefully recalled all the characteristics and properties of arsenic, and was quite certain that it would have a bitter and astringent taste when ingested. In addition, since it could not be purified, it was likely to contain a large amount of sulfides. If she actually ingested it...
Just thinking about it made her frown even more. Would anyone really be willing to eat such a thing?
After listening to one melodramatic story after another, with each side accusing the other, Li Jin lifted the beaded curtain in the private room and looked at Jin Shu standing alone in the center of the stage, her figure filled with melancholy.
The bodies of the two victims had already been transported away, while she now seemed trapped in a huge maze, her expression solemn.
Li Jin turned around and instructed the manager, "From now on, no one is allowed to enter or leave the main hall of this theater. You must all stay together, and no one is allowed to act alone."
The shopkeeper was taken aback, his face showing difficulty: "Your Highness, if you keep failing to catch up with my small business..."
"It'll only take two days." Li Jin's smile deepened. "Shopkeeper, don't worry."
Seeing his confident expression, the shopkeeper bowed and replied, "Yes."
Li Jin walked down from the stage, looked at Jin Shu, and waited until all the members of the opera troupe behind him had left before asking with a smile, "Have you figured out how the body was brought in?"
Jin Shu was taken aback.
"Come with me, I'll tell you." Li Jin smiled and turned to walk towards the second-floor corridor.
"It's actually very simple," he said as he walked. "If you stand up on such a thin partition, it will definitely collapse. But if you lie down on it, it's a different story."
He stopped directly opposite the hinge, pointed to it, and said, "Lie down and go in from there."
If the person in front of him wasn't Li Jin, Jin Shu would have immediately told him he was overthinking things.
The hinge is a meter long, but it looks like it's only 60 centimeters high. A living person carrying a corpse lying in this place must be living in a dream.
"What if it's just a corpse?" Li Jin narrowed his eyes slightly. "What if there's only a corpse, and you went in through this place?"
Jin Shu paused.
“There are two beams inside. The lower one is perpendicular to the corridor we are standing in now, while the higher one is horizontal.” He lowered his voice and whispered mysteriously to Jin Shu, “And there are traces of rope on the higher one.”
The opening of the hinge, the plank beneath the corpse, the clean beam...
Jin Shu was stunned for a moment, then hurriedly ran downstairs, stood under the stage, looked up at Li Jin's smiling gaze looking down at her.
In utter astonishment, she drew a straight line between Li Jin, He Ye, and the two dark, gaping mouths in her eyes.
At this moment, Jin Shu's face was filled with shock.
She pursed her lips, tilted her head back, and exclaimed sincerely to Li Jin, "Really? Isn't that a bit too bold?!"
The man standing on the corridor tapped his palm with the handle of his fan: "It is indeed very bold, but that is precisely why it matches her talent."
A ladder served as the path for transporting the corpses, and a wooden plank became the bed for transporting them. With just a rope that went around the beam, anyone could stand on the second-floor corridor and easily move the two corpses to the mezzanine.
Compared to stepping in standing up, going in lying down is both faster and more stable.
"She just didn't expect that the shopkeeper would later remove the partition, so this position is not as secure as she planned."
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