The lights dimmed to silence.

Candlelight illuminated the bloody pig’s head on the ground, both terrifying and eerie.

Even though Shen Fengying considered himself well-traveled and experienced, at this moment he was somewhat unable to recover his composure.

A pig’s head?

Shouldn’t there be a human head in the package? How did it become a pig’s head?

He vigorously rubbed his eyes, trying hard to make out the scene before him, but no matter how he looked, that head with unremoved bristles and fat ears was still far from resembling a human head.

It was indeed just a pig’s head.

Xia Rongrong stared at the pig’s head in the package, looking bewildered at Lu Tong: “Lu… Lu Tong, why did you put a pig’s head here?”

This was also what Shen Fengying wanted to ask at the moment.

Setting aside whether anyone was killed or not, having a bloody pig’s head wrapped in white cloth under one’s sleeping bed was something no normal young lady should be capable of doing.

Lu Tong smiled slightly, her tone carrying a subtle hint of mockery.

“What, the law stipulates that killing people is a crime, but killing livestock is also forbidden?”

Shen Fengying choked, immediately realizing he had been mocked by this woman. He instantly put on a fierce expression: “Enough idle talk. This official asks you, why did you place a pig’s head under your bed?”

Lu Tong was about to answer when suddenly voices of the constables came from outside: “Sir, we’ve dug it up! We’ve dug up what was underground!”

Du Changqing was startled.

There really was something?

The relief he had felt upon seeing the pig’s head immediately tightened into anxiety again. Unable to care about anything else, Du Changqing gritted his teeth, hurriedly lifted his robe hem and ran outside.

Shen Fengying also couldn’t be bothered to interrogate Lu Tong. Taking three steps in two, he left the room and went to check under the tree.

The remaining Bai Shouyi’s eyes flickered, and he followed the others out of the room. Left at the end were Lu Tong and Pei Yunying alone.

One was the suspect, one was the commander. His watching her was quite understandable.

Lu Tong still held the lamp in her hand. The dim lamplight made her already beautiful features appear even more gentle, though it dispersed the expression in her eyes.

Pei Yunying walked beside her shoulder to shoulder, speaking flatly: “What’s under the tree?”

Lu Tong’s movements paused slightly.

She looked up, meeting his inquiring gaze, and smiled gently.

“Why doesn’t the commander go see for himself?”

Having said this, she ignored him and walked toward the courtyard carrying the lamp.

In the courtyard under the plum tree, the constables were gathered in a circle. In the center of the small courtyard lay a cloth bag, already opened to reveal half a bloody carcass inside.

White and fat, with four legs and a tail.

Even though half the body had been split open from the chest cavity, under the moonlight it could still be seen clearly—this was a pig… no, half a pig.

“A pig?”

Xia Rongrong stood frozen in astonishment.

Du Changqing’s originally tense heart also fell back halfway, and suspicion gradually arose from the bottom of his heart again. He looked at Lu Tong and asked doubtfully: “Doctor Lu, does this pig have a grudge against you?”

First a pig’s head, then a pig’s body—one hidden under the bed, one buried in the courtyard. What was Lu Tong doing?

Shen Fengying was overwhelmed with confusion and had a belly full of questions to ask. Just then, commotion arose from the medical hall entrance outside, as if someone was trying to force their way in. The constables brought a man into the courtyard and said to Shen Fengying: “Sir, this person wants to see you.”

The newcomer was a sturdy man with a martial and robust build. Even in autumn, he wore only a white cloth short tunic, revealing his powerful physique. As soon as he entered the courtyard, he said: “Doctor Lu, I just heard from the neighbors that you were visited by officials. I thought it might be about the pork, so I wanted to come help explain.”

“Pork?” Shen Fengying frowned and looked him over: “Who are you?”

The man scratched his head, revealing a somewhat honest smile: “This commoner sells pork at Dai’s Meat Shop by the temple entrance, Dai Sanlang.”

“Dai Sanlang?” Someone among the constables spoke up in surprise: “Is that the famous ‘Pork Pan An’ from a while back?”

Dai Sanlang’s smile became somewhat embarrassed: “That’s me.”

Shen Fengying looked displeasedly at the constable who had just spoken, then turned to Dai Sanlang: “Dai Sanlang, what business do you have with this official?”

Dai Sanlang was about to answer when he caught sight of the half pig carcass dug up in the courtyard. He paused for a moment before speaking: “So it’s already been dug up.”

He looked at Shen Fengying, his tone becoming solemn: “Sir, this half pig in Doctor Lu’s medical hall was sold to her by me.”

Dai Sanlang… sold it to her?

Shen Fengying was stunned.

At this moment, Yin Zheng, who had been silent all along, suddenly sighed and looked at Lu Tong: “Miss, why keep hiding it? Why not just explain everything clearly?”

Du Changqing turned back: “Explain what?”

Lu Tong lowered her head slightly. When she raised it again, her gaze had returned to calm.

She sighed: “Very well. Originally I didn’t plan to speak of this matter, but now that the misunderstanding is growing larger, without explaining clearly there’s no way to resolve it properly. It’s better to speak openly.”

She walked to the tree and handed the lamp in her hand to Yin Zheng, her gaze falling on the bloody pig carcass in the courtyard.

“A few days ago, I planned to make a new medicine. This new medicine required very special materials and catalysts: half a bowl of blood from a freshly dead pig, pig heart, lungs, intestines, and stomach stored in wet mud for three days, and rotting pig head meat.”

“I knew these materials weren’t hard to find, but the medical hall is after all a place for practicing medicine and selling drugs. If people saw fresh blood, it would inevitably cause panic. Moreover, when others buy medicine, they mostly only see the final product. If they happened to see certain inappropriate medicinal materials, it would affect their mood when taking the medicine.”

Under the night sky, her voice was clear, soft, and pleasant, unhurried as she spoke.

“It was precisely because I worried about this that I went to Dai’s Meat Shop to find and buy a live pig. I also took advantage of the night when no one was around to drag the pig back and bury it under the tree. That pig head meat I also deliberately wrapped well and placed under the bed. It hadn’t yet reached the point of rotting, so opening it now would be useless.”

“I did this originally to avoid panic, never expecting to be seen by others, much less expecting it would cause such absurd suspicion.” She smiled and glanced at Xia Rongrong, her tone meaningful.

Everyone suddenly understood.

So it was for making new medicine.

This wasn’t impossible. They often heard that researching new medicines always involved strange and unusual materials—insects, fingernails, hair, stones could all be used as medicine. To say it was rotting pig meat wasn’t really anything unusual.

Dai Sanlang quickly said upon seeing this: “That’s exactly right. Doctor Lu came to drag away the pig just last night. I was thinking she was so thin and frail, so I specially picked a pig that wasn’t too fat for her. I even collected that bowl of pig blood for her. If you gentlemen don’t believe it, you can go look at my shop. The other half of that pig is still unsold in my shop—put them together, and you can still piece together one or two chunks!”

With both human and physical evidence present, trying to pin a murder charge on Lu Tong would truly be forcing the impossible.

Shen Fengying’s expression was somewhat ugly. After all this commotion for half the night, deploying so many men and horses, the result was finding half a rotten pig?

Bah! He had even shown off in front of Pei Yunying, and now he’d become a laughingstock!

Thinking of this, Shen Fengying glared fiercely at Bai Shouyi who had made the accusation. If this person hadn’t sworn so confidently when making the accusation, why would he have made such a fool of himself!

Bai Shouyi’s expression was somewhat stiff, and this stiffness was caught by Xia Rongrong beside him.

Xia Rongrong bit her lip.

She had originally been afraid, thinking that tonight Lu Tong would be taken away by the officials, and then she would have to bear Du Changqing’s anger. But perhaps because Bai Shouyi was there to share the anger, her fear wasn’t so genuine.

But under the plum tree in the courtyard, what was dug up was half a dead pig.

How could it be a pig?

Clearly last night, she had pressed her eyes tightly against the window crack. In the quiet autumn wind, she heard Lu Tong talking with her maid, and among the mumbled words, the two characters “corpse” were particularly clear.

That night Lu Tong’s white cloak was stained with mottled bloodstains under the lamplight. That cloak had now become the cloth wrapping the pig’s head, with bloodstains much more and deeper than that night, almost completely soaking the cloth so the white color could no longer be seen.

No, something was wrong!

Xia Rongrong suddenly froze.

Dai Sanlang said he had killed that pig last night, but Lu Tong’s cloak being bloodstained had happened the night before!

She was lying!

Xia Rongrong’s eyes lit up. She grabbed Du Changqing’s sleeve, pointing at the person before them, her voice trembling with excitement.

“She’s lying! I saw her return from outside with bloody clothes the night before, not last night. This isn’t the same incident at all! She deliberately confused your vision. She really did kill someone!”

Shen Fengying was somewhat suspicious, but Lu Tong remained composed, looking at Xia Rongrong and speaking calmly: “Whether Miss Xia was dreaming or saw wrongly, you keep insisting I killed someone. Now under the tree is pork, under the bed is a pig’s head. If you can search out other bloody clothes, that would be fine… but with just words from your mouth, I’m afraid you can’t convict me.”

“Or perhaps… Miss Xia has some dissatisfaction with me?”

Xia Rongrong was stumped.

Where was her evidence? All the evidence had already been erased by Lu Tong. That bloody garment had either been changed by her or long since soaked through with pig’s blood, making nothing distinguishable.

Seeing that even Bai Shouyi was looking at her with increasingly suspicious eyes, Xia Rongrong felt both angry and anxious, feeling extremely wronged.

Her intuition told her that Lu Tong before her had definitely killed someone. This seemingly cold and gentle female doctor would reveal a kind of coldness in the deep of night that others could hardly glimpse, just like that night when she poisoned that innocent rabbit—

The rabbit!

Xia Rongrong’s expression shook. Regardless of everyone present, she urgently shouted: “I’m not lying, you’re the one lying. You’re not some life-saving doctor at all. I saw with my own eyes you poison a rabbit. I remember very clearly—that little rabbit had a circle of black fur around its eyes, very cute and lively, but you fed it poison in the kitchen—”

“A rabbit?”

Lu Tong looked at her questioningly, then paused and slowly walked to a corner of the courtyard.

In the corner sat a large bamboo basket, inside which a pile of fluffy bundles were crowded together. Lu Tong looked, then reached in to pull one out and held it in her arms.

“Is it this one?”

Xia Rongrong was stunned.

The rabbit had black circles around its eyes, lying docilely and gently in her arms. A patch of autumn light swept over the old wall. In the vast cold of the capital, the woman stood in the flickering lamplight, autumn wind lifting her plain silk skirt hem, osmanthus fragrance in her hair—like a mountain pool, like the moon in a cold pond, like Chang’e in the moon.

She spoke calmly, with a smile.

“What nonsense is Miss Xia saying? This rabbit is perfectly fine right here.”

Xia Rongrong showed shock and couldn’t help but step back two paces.

How was this possible?

How could this be possible?

She had clearly seen with her own eyes that rabbit bleeding from all seven orifices and dying, so how could it appear here perfectly unharmed?

But Xia Rongrong could see clearly that this was indeed that rabbit. After Du Changqing bought the rabbits back, it was she and Xiangcao who fed them. This rabbit with black circles around both eyes was the most interesting looking, and she liked it very much, often holding and playing with it.

It was only after that night in the kitchen when she witnessed Lu Tong poisoning the rabbit that Xia Rongrong became afraid and left the feeding to Xiangcao.

She looked at Xiangcao, who also looked bewildered, obviously not having noticed when this extra rabbit had appeared.

When had she put it in?

Xia Rongrong looked up at Lu Tong, and in an instant, coldness penetrated to her bones.

Had Lu Tong bought an identical rabbit? Then when had she started preparing? Could it be that everything in the medical hall tonight was entirely within her control?

Shen Fengying was already tired of this drama of open and covert struggles. Seeing that tonight he probably couldn’t extract any meaningful merit, he felt both bored and humiliated, and even transferred his anger to the accuser Bai Shouyi.

He suppressed his dissatisfaction with Bai Shouyi and walked before Pei Yunying, speaking somewhat sheepishly.

“It seems tonight was a misunderstanding. This subordinate is at fault for not investigating clearly before rashly searching someone’s home, delaying Commander Pei’s special trip to the medical hall to deliver the warrant. This subordinate feels deeply ashamed.”

Pei Yunying smiled indifferently.

“No delay. The bureau had nothing going on tonight. Thanks to Commander Shen, tonight’s twists and turns also relieved the boredom. Besides, it wasn’t entirely without gain.” He glanced at the woman standing in the courtyard. She had hidden herself in the shadows under the eaves again, making her emotions hard to discern.

Shen Fengying breathed a sigh of relief. As long as this commander wasn’t angry, that was good.

Yin Zheng smiled and stepped forward: “It’s all because we didn’t handle things well that caused this series of misunderstandings. You gentlemen were all thinking of our safety, which is why you were so cautious and responsible. Troubling you gentlemen to make this trip for nothing—that’s our fault.” She tucked a purse into a constable’s hand. “It’s too late now, and the tea shops on West Street are all closed. Take this to go have some tea at South City—consider it our small token of appreciation.”

Shen Fengying’s gaze moved, and he couldn’t help but look at Yin Zheng a few more times. If nothing else about this medical hall, the maid was quite sensible.

He called to his subordinates: “Let’s go back.” Just as he was about to leave, another constable came running in hurriedly from outside.

“Sir… Sir…”

“What now?”

“An unidentified male corpse was discovered at the foot of Wangchun Mountain.”

“Eh?” Shen Fengying stopped in his tracks.

This was truly cursed. Usually there was nothing happening—the military constables were all a bunch of good-for-nothings just eating and waiting to die. Tonight was quite lively though. What, had they suddenly awakened and decided to work hard and show their skills?

He said: “When did he die? Has the coroner gone to look?”

“Just heading to Wangchun Mountain. The brothers who went sent back word that the person used a stone to pierce his own throat. It looks like suicide, but…”

“Stop hemming and hawing. But what?”

The constable glanced at Pei Yunying nearby, looking somewhat troubled.

Pei Yunying turned his head: “What is it?”

The constable gritted his teeth: “But on that unidentified male corpse, they found a purse embroidered with the name of Palace Guard Duan Xiaoyan.”

A Palace Guard?

Shen Fengying was startled. How did this get connected to the Palace Command again?

“Ah,” came a woman’s exclamation from behind. “So it was someone from the Palace Command?”

Pei Yunying’s smile faded completely, and he looked coldly toward her.

Lu Tong walked forward a few steps, crossing beyond the dim lamplight under the eaves, her beautiful and harmless face fully revealed.

“No wonder Commander Pei was so anxious to come to the medical hall to arrest someone.”

Moonlight fell on her, illuminating that snow-white face like jade. She looked up at him slightly, clearly with a surprised tone, but the smile at the corner of her lips was mocking and challenging.

“So it turns out…”

“The thief is crying ‘catch the thief.'”

Six-Barrel: Come on! Let’s hurt each other!!

Little Pei: ???? Who exactly is the one crying thief to catch the thief???