Chapter Sixty-Five
Qiuhe was leaving; she never received guests. There was a man in Linniang's secret chamber…
She pieced it all together, and a bold idea popped into her head.
She pinched her fingers together, and after confirming her thoughts, she patted Zhou Yanqing beside her, "I know who killed Qi Muchen."
"What?" Zhou Yanqing was still immersed in her previous words, and even the farce just now seemed frozen in his eyes. He was completely unable to react when he suddenly heard this out-of-the-top remark.
Si Yanmo didn't want to delay any longer and looked directly at Lin Niang, saying, "Lin Niang, let us see Qiu He."
"Didn't I say, she..."
“I’m not here as a guest, I’m… a shaman from Qin. She killed Qi Muchen.” Her eyes were sharp, carrying an undeniable force.
Lin Niang's heart sank. She wanted to make excuses, but then she heard a man's voice from behind the door of her room: "Lin Niang, let them in."
A dark cloud drifted in from the south, instantly shrouding the once brightly lit city of Qin'an in shadow.
The group followed Lin Niang into the side room. Behind the familiar tea table, a man dressed in a light purple dress, with exquisite features, spoke in a slightly rough male voice, "The Mo Wu divination is quite skilled, is it based on divination?"
Amidst the shocked gazes of the crowd, Si Yanmo calmly sat down opposite him, raised an eyebrow and smiled, "It's too unreliable to rely solely on divination for such matters. You told me this yourself."
"oh?"
"You killed Qi Muchen with the strings of a zither. Killing your enemy with the very thing you use most often must have felt great, right? That's why I actually heard your zither when I first came to Yunjianxuan. It was only a short piece, melodious and gentle, but when I came back the day after Qi Muchen died, the zither music was full of murderous intent, and even carried a hint of exhilaration."
Although Si Yanmo wasn't as obsessed with the zither as Zhong Zihe, she could still hear it to some extent through her exposure to it.
At first, she thought it was just a change in the musician's style, but when she thought about the timing and the fact that the murder weapon mentioned by the director might be a string, she realized that the person might be Qiu He.
The only thing she couldn't understand was that Qiu He was a woman, while the power needed to lift Qi Muchen, and the person in Lin Niang's secret room whom she had suspected, should both be men.
However, just as Wu Ziang appeared, she suddenly understood.
When Zhong Zihe first met Wu Ziang, he mistook him for a woman. If Wu Ziang hadn't spoken up, Zhong Zihe would never have known the truth.
Coincidentally, Qiuhe, a musician, never utters a word.
That woman's disguise was far too easy.
So, it's not Qiuhe who needs to leave, but...
Si Yanmo leaned forward, her sharp eyes meeting his gaze. "Qiu He, oh no, Tan Muhe, Young Master Tan, have you been pretending to be a woman for so many years just for this moment?"
Before the person in front of her could react, a folding fan fell to the ground with a "snap" behind her, drawing everyone's attention to Zhong Zihe.
The man was speechless, his eyes wide with disbelief.
Oh no, I forgot he was here!
Si Yanmo felt slightly apologetic for shattering her brother's beautiful fantasy, but unfortunately, now was not the time to comfort him.
She turned back to look at Qiu He as if nothing had happened, and said, "Now it's time to talk about Tan Muhe."
The man gave a cold laugh, his eyes filled with immeasurable sorrow. "Of course not. How could that be?"
"How can the death of just one person compensate for the lives of hundreds of people in my Tan family?" He became more and more agitated as he spoke, and stood up abruptly, veins bulging on his forehead.
Seeing this, Zhou Yanqing quickly shielded Si Yanmo behind him, ready to draw his sword at any moment.
Si Yanmo patted his hand to reassure him, then turned to Tan Muhe and said, "But I think the former King of Qin risked the same fate of having his entire family executed to save you, not so that you would live in hatred."
"Master?" Zhou Yanqing turned around in surprise, he was unaware of this matter.
It turns out that while dealing with Lin Niang outside, Si Yanmo calculated that more than ten years ago, when the Southern Emperor ordered Qin Zixiu to kill Tan Yin's family, Qin Zixiu couldn't bear to actually let a seven or eight-year-old child be burned alive.
He secretly replaced the young Tan Muhe with the corpse of a child, and instructed Tan's mother to cover the corpse's face on the altar, so that everyone would think that he had taken medicine and died in his sleep, leaving the Tan family with its only descendant.
In order to avoid being discovered, he didn't even dare to keep people by his side.
Just then, Lin Niang had just left the divination house and was planning to start her own business, so he sent the young Tan Muhe to Lin Niang and asked her to raise him as a girl from then on.
Even when going out, one should act like a woman.
Even this matter was known only to him and Lin Niang, and he didn't mention it to Mo Wenzhong, who was closest to him.
A secret that three people had kept hidden for over a decade resurfaced due to the death of an informant, and the murderer showed no remorse.
"Do I want to live in hatred? Do I want to kill? Do I want to spend my whole life on the run, pretending to be a woman?"
His eyes were bloodshot, and every word he uttered was filled with tears: "If it weren't for him, I should have grown up with my parents; if it weren't for that fortune teller, my parents and my entire Tan family should be alive and well!"
Do you understand what it feels like to hear wailing in your ears every day?
"Do you understand the feeling of watching fire after fire engulf your mother and loved ones every night?"
"Do you understand the feeling of having your enemy right in front of you, but being unable to avenge your family?"
"You don't understand, that's why you can stand here and criticize me. If this happened to you, you might not be as calm as I am!"
What if I said I understood?
Faced with the man's repeated accusations, no one present was moved. Even Zhou Yanqing showed a hint of pity on her face, but Si Yanmo remained unusually calm.
He said she didn't understand, but how could she not understand?
He witnessed his relatives being persecuted to death, while she had actually died once herself.
She didn't think she experienced less of that kind of hatred that was almost etched into her bones than Tan Muhe.
But she also knew that the one who killed her, and the one who killed Tan Yin’s family, was not just one person, but the entire Great Nan, every single commoner who would easily believe in some witch or ominous talk, a group of ordinary people.
They can kill a person, but they can't change the times.
She wouldn't seek revenge on just one person; that would be meaningless to her.
She has survived; what she needs to do is help more people survive.
Unfortunately, Tan Muhe didn't believe her. "You understand? If you understood, you wouldn't be this high and mighty shaman."
He stared into Si Yanmo's eyes, and when their gazes met, Si Yanmo felt a mockery. "Lord Wubu, do you really believe you can calculate the cause and effect of this world, and that you can communicate with Emperor Gu?"
Before Si Yanmo could reply, he turned to Zhou Yanqing, "Since you know everything, you can do whatever you want with me. But I only ask for one thing... Lin Niang... has nothing to do with this. I killed the person, she knows nothing."
Tan Muhe removed the hairpin from his head, letting his long hair fall loose. Without those fussy accessories, he actually looked somewhat masculine.
He knelt down and kowtowed three times in the direction of Lin Niang, saying, "Thank you for taking care of me all these years. I hope you will take good care of yourself in the future."
Seeing this scene, Lin Niang burst into tears. This child was someone she had raised herself, and was no different from her own.
She knew he was no scoundrel, but his obsession ran too deep.
She quickly stepped forward to help the person up, and after struggling several times, she finally managed to plead with Zhou Yanqing, "Could you..."
Before she could finish speaking, Si Yanmo, who had been silent for a long time, suddenly asked Tan Muhe, "If you were given a chance to seek revenge on that person, what are your chances of success?"
Tan Muhe naturally knew who she was talking about, but what was the point of saying all this now?
He twitched the corners of his mouth, a hint of bitterness in his expression. "If you're talking about assassination, then it's 30%. If you're talking about telling the world how the Southern Emperor's strategist is a ruthless and opportunistic person who will stop at nothing to get what he wants... then it's 80%. I lean towards the former."
He had no interest in doing those high-sounding things; all he wanted was for that person to die, to suffer the same pain his parents had endured. Even that couldn't lessen the hatred in his heart.
He thought Si Yanmo was just asking casually, and was about to leave with Zhou Yanqing after she finished speaking, but then he heard her say, "I prefer the latter."
He turned around abruptly, meeting the woman's smiling eyes, his heart filled with confusion.
He didn't understand what she meant by those words. Could she possibly help him get revenge?
"Please, everyone, step outside first. I have something I'd like to say to Young Master Tan."
Upon hearing this, Lin Niang and Wu Zi'ang were puzzled, but they were about to leave. When they passed Zhong Zihe, who was still in shock at discovering that the "goddess" was a man, the two of them decisively grabbed him and carried him out.
For a moment, only Tan Muhe, Si Yanmo, and Zhou Yanqing remained in the room.
The three of them sat down together, and Zhou Yanqing said, "I think I can listen, right?"
Si Yanmo raised an eyebrow: "I have no objection."
Both of their gazes were focused on Tan Muhe, and he could only smile and say, "I don't think I have the right to have any opinions."
Since that's the case, there's no need to beat around the bush any longer. Si Yanmo spoke first: "Where is that zither?"
Mentioning the zither, Tan Muhe's eyes instantly sharpened. "What do you know?"
"all."
At first, Si Yanmo thought that the Tan Yin family was just a wrongful case, that the fortune teller had miscalculated their fate, and that the Southern Emperor believed it and really wanted to slaughter their family, which led to this tragedy.
But when she heard Tan Muhe say, "Do you really believe you can calculate the cause and effect of this world, and that you can communicate with Di Gu?" she keenly sensed that things were not so simple.
Perhaps, Tan Muhe has a new truth here.
Perhaps they are just like themselves.
She looked at his birth chart.
Indeed, the origin of everything was nothing more than an ancient zither that Emperor Qi of the South bestowed upon the Tan family a hundred years ago.
It caught the eye of that man, and when he couldn't have it, he falsely accused the Tan Yin family of bad luck.
Hundreds of lives were lost because of selfish desires, turning into wronged souls.
How can such a person be worthy of continuing to sit in the position of fortune teller?
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