“Did you hear? A flower-picking bandit has come to the city. Not only does he assault women, but he also kills them!”
“Yes, yes, I know. My neighbor’s sister’s close friend’s niece was the first to die. Her body was thrown in Fengbo Forest on Fengbo Mountain. I heard she died horribly, with marks all over her body and her clothes disheveled!”
“Two are already dead! Now every family in the city with daughters refuses visitors at their doors and closes their gates while the sun is still bright. Women throughout the city dare not go out on the streets. Even old Lady Li across from me who sells sugar cakes joined the commotion and closed her shop, making me unable to eat hot cakes. Bah! That old woman is fifty-eight years old! Even if someone came to pick flowers, they’d find her like frost on donkey dung – disgusting!”
“You’re wrong to say that. Didn’t you hear the second victim was also nearly forty?”
“Though she was older, I heard that lady was also a renowned beauty far and wide!”
“I heard from my nephew who works at the county office that while the several cases are all somewhat different, there’s one thing – white plum petals were found at every scene.”
“In this weather, where would white plum blossoms come from?”
“Never mind white plums or blood plums, protecting your own daughters is what matters. Don’t count on those good-for-nothing officials who just eat and don’t work – so many people, and they haven’t caught even a mouse hair!”
“My family has no daughters, and neither does yours. How about we brothers go to Supporting Spring Tower today? I heard a new star courtesan arrived – tsk tsk, that beauty…”
Groups of people discussed in twos and threes, passing by the patrol officers’ troops as if they didn’t see them. A bunch of grown men heard themselves being criticized to their faces without even moving an eyebrow.
Tie Ci stood at the front and raised an eyebrow.
Half a month had passed since they discovered that female corpse at the forest edge. At that time, Old Liu had been tripped by the corpse and met those staring eyes directly. A man who had dealt with corpses all his life – whether from catching cold in the middle of the night or from old age – was actually scared out of his wits and didn’t come to his senses for quite a while. After recovering, he wanted to call people to drag the corpse back, but Tie Ci stopped him.
She had heard her master speak of the importance of protecting crime scenes. She immediately pulled Old Liu away and carefully examined the corpse’s position, posture, condition, and nearby traces and footprints, making detailed records.
At that time, the corpse lay face up with no wounds on the body and no blood around it. The perpetrator didn’t know to cover traces – many broken branches and dead wood were trampled around, and half a footprint remained in the mud on one side. Grass was flattened on one side with drag marks and scrape traces.
From this, Tie Ci concluded this was not the primary crime scene. The woman was killed elsewhere and dragged here. Following the traces forward, they lost the trail halfway – as if the person had flown away.
When the female corpse was brought back for examination, they discovered her virginity was still intact, but her lower body was in disarray. She was covered in finger marks and bruises, having died horribly – suffocated by scalding gray-black stones stuffed down her throat.
In her fingernails, Tie Ci found half a white plum petal.
What left Tie Ci stunned for a long time was that this victim was the girl who had stuffed a handkerchief into her hand on the street on her first day in town.
She still remembered how bold that girl had been that day. While everyone else was still stealing glances, she had already stepped forward once. After stuffing the handkerchief, she immediately became shy, covering her face and running away with soft cries like a singing creature performing a solo act.
That handkerchief was snow-white raw silk with a half-bloomed peach blossom embroidered at the corner.
Like the deep red blood at her lips now.
Who hasn’t experienced young love, and who could predict such a tragic fate?
Old Liu managed to perform the autopsy and write the coroner’s report before falling ill. Tie Ci sent word to his family and, as the soon-to-be temporary patrol inspector and acting coroner, began daily patrol and pursuit work. Initially, those patrol soldiers were very half-hearted in their work, simply and crudely setting up a checkpoint at the city gate and questioning passing civilians and merchants. They didn’t avoid revealing case details in their conversations, and their questioning wasn’t based on Tie Ci’s guidelines but was an excuse for extortion and bribery, causing panic throughout the city with no results for days. After Tie Ci discovered this, she immediately removed the checkpoint.
Cutting off people’s source of income is like killing their parents. The soldiers protested with passive resistance and work slowdowns. Tie Ci wasn’t in a hurry – anyone who claimed headaches or fever and wouldn’t work was sent home to rest. After they happily went home, she took their roster, crossed out their names, reported them to the county office as resignees, and simultaneously applied to recruit a new batch of officers. After receiving approval, she didn’t select new people but instead called a meeting with those who remained, asking if they were willing to take the salaries of those who had gone home, naturally also doing the work those people had abandoned.
How could anyone refuse? The patrol office was already overstaffed and redundant. Now with half the people gone, there wasn’t much more work, but they could earn an extra salary – why not?
The patrol office continued operating normally. Those who had gone home waited long without anyone asking them to return. When they inquired, they found they had already been dismissed. Now everyone was anxious and rushed to the office to check the roster, only to find resignation letters with their signatures and seals. Black words on white paper, clear as day.
Forgery expert Chi Xue indicated: Thanks for asking. Mere fake signatures are nothing. I just copied a painting by the Saint of Painting – “Clouds and Mist” – and Scholar Xiao bought it for ten thousand gold.
Among the officers were many with connections, mostly through the county magistrate’s channels. Several did go cry to the county magistrate and county governor. Tie Ci waited for the county magistrate to have a heart-to-heart with her, ready with ways to handle it, but somehow the county magistrate seemed too busy and never came to ask Tie Ci about it.
As for the county governor, he was daily immersed in wine. In the half month since Tie Ci’s arrival, she had seen him only three times and spoken five sentences with him. These five sentences were: “Young Master Mao has come from afar, and we failed in our reception – please forgive us. Everything in this county office is fairly convenient, and our County Magistrate Wei is especially steady. I’m sure he can arrange things properly for you. Please make yourself at home.”
When he said this, Tie Ci stared hard at him, seeing he still had plaster on his nose but had clearly forgotten the perpetrator.
The second sentence came three days later: “Good morning, Young Master Li.”
Great, now he had forgotten even more completely.
Tie Ci blinked hard, trying to awaken his memory: “Look at me, look at me.”
The county governor stared at her for a long time, then suddenly realized with an “oh.” Tie Ci thought he finally remembered! But she saw him give a refined bow and say: “How embarrassing, this brother mistook you for someone else. Young Master Wang, why haven’t you gone to school yet?”
Tie Ci: “…”
In the end, her trust was misplaced.
The third sentence came that evening when they met again on the street. Tie Ci was leading patrol officers on rounds when she encountered the drunk county governor, who said: “Has Old Liu retired? Young man, you look very familiar. Aren’t you surnamed Zhang?”
Tie Ci: “…”
Could this be a fool?
The last two sentences were unremarkable. Tie Ci had given up trying to save his memory. Both sentences were: “Good morning. Farewell.”
After half a month here, she had come to understand the local situation. Simply put, local strongmen had trapped the parent official of this place. The county magistrate from a local prominent family had money, power, and years of deep-rooted influence, while the simple scholarly county governor from a poor background who had passed the imperial examinations couldn’t resist such an invisible web. After repeated setbacks, he became disheartened and simply delegated power, daily immersing himself in wine.
So in Ziyang County, everyone knew only the county magistrate, not that there was a county governor.
Tie Ci didn’t plan to meddle in other affairs. If she couldn’t help him up, why should she exert effort to pull him along?
The virtuous occupy their positions; the incapable abandon them.
She was worried enough about this murder case without having resolved it.
It was said that Ziyang, this small county, had no murder cases for ten years. How was it that as soon as she arrived, murder cases came too?
The first case still had no leads when the second case suddenly occurred on a stormy night. The victim was a woman nearly forty years old whose family sold tofu. She got up in the middle of the night to grind tofu and went into the city overnight to sell it, then died in the dim dawn light.
When found, her clothes were still half-undone with no wounds, but her whole body was stiff and cold as if frozen.
Even though she was dead, one could still see she had been quite beautiful.
She was dumped in a small alley east of the city. When residents pushed their door and couldn’t open it, they used force and heard a thud like a heavy object falling. Looking in the dim morning light, they were terrified.
When Tie Ci rushed over, this time was even better – the scene had already been trampled to a mess by onlooking civilians. She only found one fingerprint on the moss on the wall.
The crowd’s footprints had also covered cart wheel tracks, making it impossible to determine whether the corpse had been brought by cart or died right there.
The white plum blossom was found by Tie Ci in the trampled tofu – among the few remaining white pieces of tofu was a white plum blossom that only Tie Ci could notice.
The appearance of plum blossoms twice wasn’t as the people rumored – deliberately left by the killer. Therefore, it was an important clue for solving the case.
But with all the plum blossoms in the city long since withered, this obvious clue was useless.
This happened two days ago. Old Liu, feeling somewhat better, got up to perform another autopsy while teaching her. This time the victim had also been violated, but the cause of death was freezing.
In March weather, even if nights were somewhat cold, it absolutely couldn’t freeze someone to death.
Tie Ci ordered people to inquire whether there were ice houses in the city. They replied that there were none officially, but almost every wealthy household in the city had one.
Tie Ci was currently leading people to inquire at each household. Having just walked out of one family’s main gate, she suddenly heard the sound of flapping wings overhead.
Looking up, she saw iron wings spread a full half-zhang wide, blocking the sunlight above her head. The clear, piercing cry of an eagle scattered the floating clouds, making everyone on the street look up.
Tie Ci blinked, unable to hide her surprise.
How could such a magnificent Hai Dongqing suddenly appear in this small city’s busy market?
The Hai Dongqing circled directly above her head like a dark cloud, lingering for a long time. Tie Ci vaguely felt something was wrong and shaded her eyes with her hand for a careful look, just seeing the great bird flick its tail feathers.
She quickly dodged.
A black mass fell from the sky.
It landed right on Shen Mi, who was walking toward her intending to ask something.
Shen Mi: “…”
Alas and alack, woe is me – bird droppings from heaven.
Seeing its shit-strike had failed, the Hai Dongqing let out an angry cry, suddenly soared high, and disappeared into the clouds.
This left Tie Ci staring inexplicably at that line of clouds, unable to figure out what kind of greeting method this was.
This bird appeared suddenly and disappeared swiftly. She couldn’t fly up to catch it, so she could only let it go. But Hai Dongqing were incomparably rare – ordinary people couldn’t hunt them, let alone command them. Seeing such a bird here now, Tie Ci had a vaguely bad premonition.
Turning to see the smelly Shen Mi with a bitter smile, Tie Ci rarely felt somewhat apologetic and told him to quickly return to the county office to change clothes and wash. Shen Mi agreed and had just taken a few steps when his expression suddenly changed dramatically.