Li Si suddenly stood up without a word and walked out the door. Wu Wen and Xiao Ning didn’t know what Li Si was going to do and quickly followed out. Li Si walked straight to Lao Sitou’s large stone chamber, reached out to push open the door and enter, walked close to the stone table, looked at the two black boxes. Li Si yanked off the black cloth covering completely, turned his head to the two people behind him: “If he left three puppets for the sake of one face, then the two wooden boxes he left must also have their purpose.”
Only then did Wu Wen and Xiao Ning understand Li Si’s actions. They looked at the black boxes before them and nodded. Li Si looked through everything in the two black boxes once again, his brow tightly furrowed: “But what exactly does he want to use the black boxes to tell us?”
Wu Wen behind Li Si suddenly said: “Catcher, I remember at ‘Youlai Inn,’ its windows were tightly closed. But the windows in this box seem to have a crack showing!”
“Windows?” Li Si immediately looked. Between the two seemingly tightly closed windows was indeed a slightly opened small crack. Li Si used the small knife in his hand to slowly pry open the small crack. The tightly closed windows were also opened, and on the back of the windows something was lightly stuck!
Li Si carefully scraped down the stuck item with the small knife, placed it before his eyes, and looked carefully—it was actually a blue-green bird feather.
“This is… a feather?” Wu Wen couldn’t figure it out and asked.
Li Si’s gaze fixed tightly on the blue-green feather, murmuring: “Could it be…” Li Si’s words were spoken softly in his heart, not said aloud.
Xiao Ning on the side said: “If it’s windows, then the second wooden box also has a window!” As Xiao Ning spoke, he pointed at the carriage inside the wooden box.
Li Si said: “Well said!” Li Si used the small knife to gently pry open the tightly closed window on the carriage. This time, on each of the carriage’s two window doors was lightly stuck a small piece of blue-green bird feather. Li Si placed the three pieces of blue-green bird feathers together: “This is what the murderer left for us.”
“Bird feathers—what does the murderer mean by leaving these feathers? What do they represent?” Wu Wen tilted his head.
“They represent death!” Wu Wen was startled again. Looking back, at some unknown time, Lao Sitou had already stood behind the three people. Lao Sitou looked at the three, saying lightly: “I remember, in Miao Territory there’s a mysterious religion. They preach that humanity’s initial life began with the proud birds soaring in the sky, and individually fallen bird feathers represent the beginning of the soul, which is the end of life—death!”
Wu Wen said with some understanding: “Three feathers, three dead people. One feather represents one person’s death. Right, that’s exactly the meaning!”
Lao Sitou looked at the three people and suddenly said: “Perhaps not just three pieces.”
“Not just three pieces?” Wu Wen looked at Lao Sitou: “Lao Sitou, could there be other bird feathers?”
Lao Sitou shook his head slightly. With a grave face: “I haven’t seen bird feathers, but I discovered another very interesting thing in Lou Ao’s blood—this.” Lao Sitou took out a black cloth pouch. On both sides was a small silver piece. On the silver piece, several threads barely visible to the naked eye were fixed with black glue clay. Lao Sitou used his specially made thin iron hook to hook up these threads, saying to Li Si: “These threads were discovered by me in Lou Ao’s blood. They didn’t appear in the corpse’s organs or internal organs earlier, so it seems the threads flowed along with the blood. However, strangely, I still haven’t figured out what these thin threads are so far. They themselves are extremely tough yet soft, not like ordinary blade threads. I still need to think more about it. So for now I won’t hand this over to you yet.”
After Lao Sitou finished speaking, without waiting for Li Si’s response, he turned and walked toward the depths of the stone chamber. The three of them were stunned. Wu Wen said: “Why is this Lao Sitou always so strange?”
Li Si smiled: “If you only stayed with dead people all day, you’d become like him too.” After Li Si finished speaking, he followed Lao Sitou toward the depths of the stone chamber. Wu Wen shrugged and also followed with Xiao Ning.
At dusk, the several constables Li Si had left at Budong Manor returned. Their faces all carried an expression of fear, tensely looking at each other. Li Si quickly asked: “Did something happen at Budong Manor?”
One of the constables said: “In reply to the catcher, it seems something happened, but it also seems nothing happened.”
“What kind of talk is this?” Wu Wen on the side heard inexplicably and pressed: “Explain the matter clearly.”
“Yes.” The lead constable thought and said: “Actually, Budong Manor has been calm and peaceful since Catcher Li left, nothing appears to have happened, but it’s just, it’s too quiet. We brothers all felt there wasn’t even a trace of human life left. What’s stranger is…”
“Is what?”
“There’s a faint smell of blood floating out from Budong Manor. However, only I smelled it—they didn’t smell it. I felt things were still not right, so I came back first to report to the catcher.”
Li Si had no time to consider. He brought the yamen’s constables to Budong Manor. It was sunset, and the remaining shadow of the evening glow happened to fall on the manor, like an irreversible fall. Wu Wen stepped forward to push the door.
Budong Manor’s main gate suddenly creaked and slowly opened inward by itself, revealing a small crack. Li Si glimpsed inside the door—a pool of black blood stains was painted at the gatehouse position. He was the first to rush inside the gate.
The black blood had congealed. Li Si looked at the black blood. The blood traces started from inside the gatehouse, dripping and flowing down a trail of black blood marks. Li Si followed the black blood trail all the way to outside the manor’s great hall. Looking again, Li Si was startled.
Black blood spread in all eight directions, extending toward every corner of the manor. Li Si held his breath and suddenly spoke: “Something’s wrong. Besides the bloody smell in the air, there’s another smell—is it fire?”
As soon as Li Si’s words fell, black smoke rose from various parts of the manor. The black smoke rapidly ascended, accompanied by people’s cries for help and screams. Wu Wen quickly called other constables to fight the fire, but when water fetched from the manor was poured on the burning flames, instead of being extinguished, the flames climbed even higher. Li Si looked at the flames in surprise and saw black flame seedlings vaguely rising in the flames. He shook his head: “This is definitely not ordinary fire. I’m afraid ordinary fire-fighting methods won’t work.”
“Then what do we do?” Xiao Ning looked at the increasingly higher flames, saying worriedly.
Li Si’s gaze focused, saying word by word: “We can only find the arsonist. He should at least have a way to extinguish this evil fire.”
“But who exactly is the arsonist?”
Li Si said nothing, stepping into the black fog-shrouded manor. In a short time, the entire manor had been enveloped by the huge black smoke and fog rising up. The group walking in the black fog felt difficulty breathing. Several young constables were already unable to move. Li Si left most people as backup, only bringing Xiao Ning and Wu Wen to break into the manor’s rear courtyard.
Li Si and the others wound past the small spring and grove, stopping before a bamboo cottage. Wu Wen looked at the bamboo cottage, blurting out: “Lou Tianming’s bamboo cottage?”
The bamboo cottage door was pushed open—there was no one inside. Wu Wen said doubtfully: “Where’s Lou Tianming? Did he escape?”
Li Si didn’t answer. He looked sideways at the bluebird painting that Lou Tianming always sat gazing at while playing the zither—the huge bluebird with spread wings, the lonely wandering soul, the peerlessly beautiful woman, and the shadow in the corner. An idea gradually became clear in Li Si’s mind. Wu Wen and Xiao Ning searched the bamboo cottage front and back but found no clues. Just at this moment, a refreshing zither melody slowly drifted from not far away, like a purifying melody flowing into the weary hearts of the world. Li Si felt somewhat dazed, but he collected his thoughts and hurried out of the bamboo cottage with the two.
The zither melody was extraordinarily soothing, like a beautiful woman’s mirror grooming—one glance enchanting, but looking again it was for the passage of years.
As the zither melody drew nearer, Li Si had already discovered the zither sound came from the most central location of the rear courtyard. As they approached, the spreading and converging black blood traces on the ground became increasingly numerous. Li Si’s gaze couldn’t help but focus. He abruptly stopped his steps, turned and leaped, vaulting onto the roof of a nearby residence. Looking down, he saw the nearby black blood traces from far to near, from scattered to formed, actually seemed to condense into a flying bird’s wing. Looking farther away, although he couldn’t see it all, in Li Si’s heart a bizarre pattern had already formed—the huge Budong Manor had been painted by someone using black blood marks into a massive painting. The black blood burned blue-green—the painting was precisely a huge bluebird with spread wings.
Li Si’s heart was urgent. The zither sound suddenly stopped, but Li Si and the others had already found their way here. This was a seemingly simple hall, located in a remote place, hidden behind Lou Ao’s magnificent and huge connected wing rooms. If not for the zither sound bringing them here, Li Si probably wouldn’t have found it so easily.
Li Si pushed open the door and entered. What surprised several people was that this hall with its shabby exterior actually enshrined the spirit tablets of successive Lou family masters. At the very top was Lou Budong, arranged in order downward, with Lou Ao at the very end. Wu Wen looked at the empty hall, shook his head, and asked in surprise: “Strange, we clearly heard the zither sound coming from inside here—how come we don’t see anyone?”
Xiao Ning was also puzzled, coming over to say: “Could we have heard wrong?”
Li Si said nothing, walking directly around the tablets behind, saying: “All the tablets are stained with dust. It seems the Lou family doesn’t often come here to worship their ancestors. Only Lou Budong’s tablet is clean and dust-free—isn’t this strange?” Li Si rotated Lou Budong’s tablet. With a creaking sound, a black hole suddenly split open before the tablet cabinet—a dark secret passage extended downward.