The group walked into the small alley. Luo Chengye’s narrow house was squeezed between two large courtyards, just like his awkward life caught between the lawful and criminal worlds. Although he had gone legitimate and once conscientiously fulfilled his duties as constable chief, because of his unclean bandit origins, he could never integrate into mainstream society. Moreover, his position as constable chief had attracted many grudges from the martial world, preventing him from returning to that life—truly caught between a rock and a hard place, with no good options either way.

The courtyard had been sprinkled with a thick layer of dry sand to cover bloodstains, like an execution ground. Wei Xun said that Bao Lang had personally executed an incompetent constable in this courtyard, destroying all the original footprint traces, making it impossible to see the original state.

The main gate bore official seals, and just as Bao Zhu was worrying about this, she saw Wei Xun step forward and gently stroke the seal with his palm. Using some unknown technique, by the second pass, the seal peeled off completely intact without the slightest damage. Shisan Lang carefully caught it and set it aside, planning to reattach it when they were ready to leave.

Wei Xun had merely demonstrated a small skill, but Bao Zhu was dumbfounded. Having witnessed the techniques of a professional master thief firsthand, she thought that these supposedly foolproof traditional security measures were like nothing to such a martial world thief. No wonder he had been able to dig her out even when she was buried deep in a tomb’s underground chamber.

Before opening the door, Wei Xun handed Bao Zhu a clean handkerchief and several soap beans, saying, “Stuff the soap beans in your nose and cover your face with the handkerchief. The smell inside is heavy—without this, you won’t be able to stay.”

Bao Zhu obediently did as instructed, and only then did Wei Xun push open the door, light a candle with a fire starter, and lead her inside.

The bloodstains on the floor and walls of the crime scene had dried, losing their bright red color and turning dark brown. But just thinking that a person had died horribly here several days ago—not only beheaded but with all internal organs removed—was still chilling.

Bao Zhu didn’t dare look closely at the blood pool on the floor that vaguely retained a human shape. She looked around, quickly scanning the entire room. Thinking that this was what the idiom “home with four bare walls” actually looked like, she couldn’t help murmuring quietly, “This house is way too small—it doesn’t even have separate main and side rooms. How does he not have a single piece of furniture? Is a constable chief’s salary really that meager?”

Wei Xun said with a grin, “Looks like it wasn’t even enough to make the devil turn the millstone, right?”

Remembering her earlier words about eating the sovereign’s salary and being loyal to the sovereign’s affairs, Bao Zhu felt somewhat embarrassed and snorted coldly, “Without official rank, naturally the income is meager.”

But Wei Xun said, “A constable chief’s income doesn’t come from salary—it all comes from daily extortion and taking bribes. When handling cases, everyone who passes through his hands, guilty or innocent, has to pay money to buy their life. His money was lost gambling.”

While teasing Bao Zhu with conversation, he carefully examined the pattern of bloodstains, mentally reconstructing the scene before reaching a conclusion: “It really does look like internal strife over unequal division of loot. Luo Chengye and the killer knew each other.”

Bao Zhu wondered how he could discern the situation first when they had entered together. Half-believing, she asked, “How can you tell?”

Wei Xun pointed to the blood traces on the ground, saying, “Look at the direction of the blood spatter. The bleeding point was very low, parallel to the ground—the victim was stabbed while sitting on the ground. There’s a broken jar nearby. Though the liquid inside has dried, you can still smell it was wine. Two people sitting face to face on the ground with wine nearby—only acquaintances would be in such a position.”

Wei Xun called Shisan Lang into the house, had him sit in the victim’s position, then sat opposite him playing the killer to demonstrate for Bao Zhu: “Two people drinking together, one suddenly attacks, half-kneeling on one knee to thrust the weapon. At such close distance, the other had no way to dodge. As long as he had enough strength, he could control the victim with one hand on the shoulder and stab through with the other.”

As he spoke, he formed a claw with one hand, firmly gripping Shisan Lang’s shoulder, while the other hand mimed holding a weapon for a thrust, then dodged to the side: “When pulling it out, dodge aside so the blood sprays on the wall without dirtying the clothes. This was an experienced hand.”

Watching his fierce and agile movements, and seeing that the pattern of residual blood on the wall indeed matched his reconstruction, Bao Zhu felt both amazed and silently muttered to herself: I can see you’re an experienced hand too.

Wei Xun continued, “But this method requires surprise attack using a weapon within easy reach. If you had to seize the opponent’s weapon before killing, you couldn’t be so composed—at the very least, the opponent wouldn’t just sit there and let themselves be killed. I heard Luo Chengye was stabbed to death with his own four-sided iron mace. Either the killer could complete both seizing the weapon and murder in an instant, or Luo Chengye was willing to lend his weapon for the other person to examine, giving them the opportunity to strike.”

Bao Zhu couldn’t figure it out either, saying, “Wu Zhiyuan and the others speculated that the killer had deep hatred for Luo Chengye, which is why they disemboweled him, pulled out his internal organs to desecrate the body, and even hung the intestines from the roof beam to disgust people. After all, that one strike was fatal—there was really no need to further humiliate the corpse. If there was such deep hatred, how could they sit face to face drinking calmly together?”

“Pulled out intestines and hung them from the beam?” Wei Xun repeated this sentence in a low voice, looked up at the ceiling inside the house, and after brief consideration, leaped up with a bound.

The house itself was built quite high, and in the dim light of deep night, when Wei Xun leaped up, he seemed to disappear into the darkness. Bao Zhu craned her neck and waited for quite a while before seeing him light a candle on the beam and peer down, beckoning to Shisan Lang:

“Shisan, you come up too.”

The little novice immediately looked distressed, saying, “Senior Brother knows perfectly well my lightness skills aren’t great. Are you trying to embarrass me in front of Jiu Niang?”

Wei Xun laughed, “I’ll give you a hand—with a little boost you can make it up.” He untied the belt from his waist and let it hang down from the beam like a rope. Encouraged by this assistance, Shisan Lang finally leaped up forcefully, grabbed one end of the belt, used it for leverage midway, and successfully flew up to the beam.

Watching the two martial brothers demonstrate, Bao Zhu exclaimed “Ah!” and suddenly understood somewhat.

Could it be that the disembowelment and hanging of the corpse’s intestines from the beam wasn’t due to hatred, but served a specific purpose?!

Moments later, Wei Xun and Shisan Lang jumped down from the beam one after another. Wei Xun said, “This house is narrow and has no furniture or corners to hide in. If desperately wanting to hide, the only option is to go up to the beam. But that killer’s lightness skills were mediocre—he couldn’t make it up in one try and needed something to grab for leverage. There are footprint traces in the dust on the beam that look like they were left several days ago. The seemingly bizarre and bloody disembowelment was just to disguise his need to use a rope to climb up and hide on the beam.”

Bao Zhu said excitedly, “I heard that when the person who discovered Luo Chengye’s body first came, he saw him still alive. After the time it takes to burn an incense stick, when he came back to knock on the door again, there was only the headless corpse left.”

Wei Xun said, “In that rush, the killer didn’t have time to escape and should still have been in the house. To prevent the person knocking from discovering him, he desperately thought of this bloody method—even disemboweling and extracting intestines just to hide. It seems he was very afraid of being seen.”

Bao Zhu said, “Having committed murder, of course he’d be afraid of being seen.”

Wei Xun shook his head and handed her something tiny, saying, “Not necessarily because of the murder.”

Bao Zhu saw he had handed her a four-inch-long hair. Examining it in her hand, this hair was different from ordinary people’s—it was curly and wavy, possibly head hair or beard hair. She had already heard about the origin of Luo Chengye’s nickname “Lion Dog” and knew he had a head and face full of curly, fluffy hair and beard. She was startled: “Did this also fall from the roof beam?!”

Wei Xun nodded, “It seems the person who died might not have been Luo Chengye himself.” He looked again at the blood spatters in the room and said, “If he used his own four-sided iron mace to ambush and kill someone, it would be both handy and wouldn’t risk the danger of failing to seize a weapon—that would make sense.”

Bao Zhu shook her head, “That’s not right. Wu Zhiyuan said Luo Chengye had a python tattoo on his arm—that’s not something that can be faked after death.”

Shisan Lang said, “Jiu Niang doesn’t know—in the martial world, if people are accomplices from the same gang, they might very well have identical tattoos. Years ago, Second Senior Brother also suggested we all get matching ones, but everyone wanted different designs. The various senior brothers and sisters argued about it and never reached an agreement.”

Wei Xun curled his lip, “I wouldn’t want some stupid design on my body that can’t be washed off.”

Shisan Lang said, “I actually thought Third Senior Sister’s proposal to embroider a full Vaishravana on the back was quite imposing.”

Wei Xun mocked, “Listen to that shrew—when you grow up, will Vaishravana grow taller with you or get fatter with you? Stretched this way and that, wouldn’t it just blur?”

These two martial brothers were actually discussing tattoo designs in a house where someone had died. Bao Zhu’s thoughts were tangled, and she had to speak up to stop them: “You two shut up and rest for a bit. Wei Xun, do you mean Luo Chengye himself is actually still alive?!”

Wei Xun blinked and said, “Based on these clues, he was very likely hiding up on the beam at the time. Anyway, the head that could definitively identify the body has already been cut off and taken away—the corpse could be claimed to be anyone’s.”

Bao Zhu said, “Luo Chengye’s head was found a few days ago—it was thrown into Lianhua Temple’s kitchen and deep-fried. That’s another extremely bizarre matter. If extracting intestines was just for convenience in hiding due to desperation, then what was the point of deep-frying the human head?”

Hearing this, Shisan Lang’s face wrinkled up as he said, “I heard about this too. The monk in charge of meals who discovered the head was so frightened he went mad, and the oil pot used for cooking vegetarian meals in that kitchen couldn’t be used anymore.”

After thinking for a moment, Wei Xun said, “I can’t fathom the killer’s thoughts, so I’ll just speak from my own experience. In such hot weather, carrying a human head around for three to five days would definitely cause it to rot and stink. The smell of decay is extremely hard to mask—probably when it really couldn’t be hidden anymore, it was thrown into hot oil and fried. This could both eliminate the odor and completely destroy the facial features—killing two birds with one stone.”

Bao Zhu said, “But they also found Luo Chengye’s curly hair on the pot lid.”

Wei Xun laughed, “Now that’s showing a guilty conscience. I wasn’t that certain before, but now I can say Luo Chengye is ninety percent likely still alive.”