After extensive inquiries, Hall Master Ying finally located the burial site of the Lin family.

At the time, the neighbors had taken the convenient path and dug a large pit on a nearby hillside, burying all eight members of the Lin family together in a single grave.

The pit had been filled in afterward, but unevenly, leaving the ground lumpy and uneven. So before the party had even come close, they had already recognized which mound of earth belonged to the Lin family.

“The Lin family didn’t have very good relations with their neighbors either — must have rubbed plenty of people the wrong way.” Hall Master Ying’s shoe crunched on the hard, dry ground. “Not a single friendly neighbor among the lot. Otherwise they wouldn’t have just dug a hole and shoved them in. The least they could do is set up a grave marker, or a headstone. Look at this — buried like this, just an abandoned grave with restless spirits.”

No sooner had he spoken of abandoned graves and restless spirits than a chill wind suddenly swept past, hugging the ground as it blew, sending cold down the back and raising goosebumps across the skin.

Yan Qing had briefly wiped her hands and face earlier and was reasonably clean, but her cloak was soiled and disheveled. She seemed not to notice, her mind entirely occupied by the image of the Lin family burning in the great fire.

“Hall Master Ying.” Dihuai, having heard this, could not help saying: “The whole family is dead. Let’s not talk ill of them, shall we?”

Hall Master Ying quickly said: “I also feel sorry for them.”

The neighbor who was leading the way overheard and quickly added: “The Lin family really did have a strange character — they almost never set foot outside the gate.”

Dihuai asked: “Then what was their source of income?”

“They say it was money left behind by their eldest son — enough to live comfortably for a lifetime.”

“Did you ever see their eldest son?”

The neighbor said: “I’ve seen him. He worked in the society — appeared and vanished like a dragon showing its head but not its tail. He died over a decade ago — they say his body was found in the wilderness, gnawed unrecognizable by wild beasts by the time it was discovered.”

Long Yunxiao listened, then turned around. “Do you know how he died?”

“Working in a society — fighting and killing was normal. I think he was hunted down by enemies.”

“Did he marry and have children?”

“Never heard of it.” The neighbor thought for a moment. “We neighbors never saw much of their eldest son, let alone knew anything about him. And after he died, the family rarely went outside and kept to themselves, so we only know the barest scraps about them — and those might not even be accurate.”

The neighbor spoke, then suddenly pointed ahead: “Right there — there’s a crooked-neck tree. I remember it very clearly.”

“How many of you came to bury them at the time?”

“I don’t remember exactly — quite a few, maybe over ten.”

“Start digging.” Long Yunxiao glanced at Hall Master Ying. Hall Master Ying nodded.

Several men divided up the tools and began digging.

In the middle of winter the soil was frozen solid and hard to dig through, but fortunately these men were all strong and vigorous. After digging roughly half a meter down, the lower soil layer gradually loosened and became easier to work with.

“I’ve hit something.” The neighbor said with some excitement. “Hard — should be bone.”

Everyone worked together again to clear more soil outward, and as the mound outside grew larger, the buried objects gradually began to emerge from the soil layer.

“The smell is unbearable. What is that?” The neighbor could not help covering his nose, threw down his spade, and ran out to retch.

Long Yunxiao jumped down into the pit and sure enough saw several corpses stacked inside. The bodies had been charred to a carbon-like state — some large, some small — lying piled on top of one another.

He saw Yan Qing about to climb in and quickly crossed over the bodies to go and help her down.

The pit reeked terribly — the smell of charring mixed with the stench of decay, intertwined in a way that made one nearly retch.

Long Yunxiao found even this smell hard to bear, but watching Yan Qing crouch there without so much as a twitch of her brow, he could only feel deep admiration for her.

Long Yunxiao recalled that he was wearing gloves, so he took them out of his pocket and handed them over: “These will have to do for now.”

“Very well.” Yan Qing took them and put them on. They were leather gloves and fortunately quite soft, fitting snugly to the hands to allow ease of movement — the only downside being that they were a little large.

“Long Yunxiao, please help move these bodies up.” Yan Qing said. “They’re all stacked together and can’t be examined this way.”

Long Yunxiao listened and at once directed the men to lift the bodies out one by one onto the ground.

The bodies were laid out in a row. Yan Qing counted — eight in total, six adults and two children. Not one more, not one less.

According to the neighbor, these eight bodies included the Lin family’s old patriarch and matriarch, his second son’s family of four, and his daughter and her husband.

The neighbor said: “This whole Lin family lived together in one compound and almost had no contact with outsiders. Only the son-in-law made a trip to Huxi Town once a week to buy medicine. Oh yes — the old patriarch had a heart ailment and needed regular medication.”

“Their eldest son was the one killed in the night. So the whole family became especially cautious afterward — I suppose they were frightened.” The neighbor explained: “When the bodies were first found, they were said to be completely unrecognizable. Terrifying.”

While the neighbor explained, Yan Qing crouched before the several bodies.

The bodies had been almost entirely charred to carbon blocks. Aside from the two underage children who could be identified at a glance, the adults had all burned beyond recognition, and it was impossible at a glance to determine who was who.

Yan Qing stopped before one relatively large body. The body was curled in a fetal position, the posture highly unusual.

“Why haven’t these bodies turned to bones?” Hall Master Ying asked curiously from the side. “I see most of the buried bodies I’ve come across have turned to bone.”

Yan Qing moved her hands along the body from top to bottom, examining it, while answering Hall Master Ying’s question: “If this were a body exposed to open air, three months ago would still have been autumn — at that time it would take only five to six weeks to become a skeleton. But these bodies were all buried in soil after death, and that would take approximately three to four years for complete skeletonization.”

Hall Master Ying looked at Yan Qing in astonishment. He had not expected that this seemingly gentle and fragile woman, when confronted with a ground full of corpses, would not even furrow her brow — and when it came to examining the bodies, she did not even blink.

Hall Master Ying thought to himself: no wonder their boss had taken a fancy to this woman. Just this composure and fearlessness alone was a match for their boss.

“Miss Yan truly knows a great deal.” Hall Master Ying could not help but express a note of admiration.

“Long Yunxiao, do you have a knife?” Yan Qing seemed to have found something. Her brow had drawn tightly together, and her expression was growing gradually more grave.

“Yes.” Long Yunxiao produced a folding knife, opened it, and handed it over.

Yan Qing used the knife to scrape away the hard, charred material on the deceased’s neck, gradually exposing the flesh underneath. Due to the effect of the soil, the flesh was in a state of partial decay. When the knife cut through it, a sharp and acrid smell arose. Long Yunxiao, standing nearby, caught the nauseating smell clearly.

Long Yunxiao watched as Yan Qing examined every single body from start to finish without a word, then crouched in place and stared into space.

“Well — were the Lin family burned to death?”

Yan Qing shook her head. “Every body has a fatal wound at the neck. The killer used a sharp implement to sever the deceased’s arteries, causing death from excessive blood loss. All eight bodies — every single one — was killed with a single blow.”

“A slit throat — a single blow to kill?” Long Yunxiao could not help saying. “This kind of technique is not something an ordinary person could accomplish.”

“You’re right.” Yan Qing slowly stood up. “One person may be possible, but all eight people dying in exactly the same manner, and the wound edges on all the deceased are very clean and precise — a sharp blade passing through leaving a long, narrow, deep wound — this shows the killer’s technique was highly professional. It resembles…”

“A professional assassin.”

Yan Qing and Long Yunxiao spoke almost in unison.

Yan Qing nodded: “Judging from the method of killing, the perpetrator was absolutely a habitual killer.”

What she did not say was that the moment she saw these wounds, the first thing that flashed through her mind was the extermination cases of the Chen and Xu families.

“From the wounds, the deceased was left-handed.”

“A left-handed killer?” Long Yunxiao said.

The perpetrator of the Chen and Xu family exterminations was also left-handed. The same killing method, the same left-handedness — Yan Qing could not help connecting this case to the Chen and Xu family exterminations.

Yet the locations of these three cases had no obvious connection to one another. The Lin family barely stepped outside their gate — they should have had no contact with the Chen and Xu families, who were far away in Shun Cheng and Mosquito Hill County.

Moreover, when the Chen and Xu households were wiped out, the scenes had not been burned. But the Lin family had been burned clean to nothing.

If it was the same perpetrator, there were two possible interpretations: first, the perpetrators were not the same person; second, if it truly was the same person, then the killer had some reason to be discreet in this case — he did not want the cause of death of the Lin family to be publicly announced.

Yan Qing’s brow furrowed deeply. From the wounds alone, she could not confirm whether the killer was the same person. Moreover, the bodies had been burned too severely for her to determine whether anyone’s back was missing a patch of skin.

“What now?” Long Yunxiao looked up at her.

Yan Qing said: “For now we can only confirm that the Lin family were murdered. The killer slew all eight members of the Lin family before setting fire to the bodies.”

She frowned, feeling at a loss before the spread of charred bodies. From these remains she could only determine the cause of death but could find no other clues.

If she could not find leads through the bodies, then even having found the Lin family was of little use — she still had no leads whatsoever regarding whether Lin Zhi had any connection to Qian Lan.

Thinking this, she crouched down again and carefully re-examined every single body. She was convinced that there must still be some hidden clue within them — she simply had not found it yet.

When she came to examine one particular body — larger in build than the others, the outline suggesting a male — her hand moved repeatedly back and forth over the body’s right foot. Because of her sudden silence, Long Yunxiao instinctively asked: “Is there a problem?”