After answering, Zhu Yan pointed to a spot about three feet and eight inches high on the bamboo closest to the pit, saying, “There’s a soil mark at that position, caused by splashing muddy water. The bamboo in Ximing Temple is yellow-grooved bamboo, which can grow one to two inches a day after rain. The splash mark directly faces the burial pit, and the mark is thicker at the bottom and thinner at the top, undoubtedly caused that day.”
After she finished speaking, Jing Lin and the Internal Affairs officers were stunned for quite a while. Some even craned their necks to look at the bamboo with the splash mark.
Shen Du let out a small snort, seemingly amused: “Chen Wen even taught you this kind of thing?”
“Master didn’t,” Zhu Yan untied the flower at her waist. “My mother loves bamboo, and my father likes to plant flowers. I’ve helped a few times.”
Shen Du showed no curiosity. In the numerous records of the Internal Affairs Bureau, apart from Zhu’s father’s hobbies, there was plenty about another father that Zhu Yan didn’t know about.
What Shen Du was interested in was why Zhu Yan would tell him this: “Doesn’t my wife dislike me?”
It had been half a day since the wedding, and this was the first time Shen Du had called her “wife.”
Although in a sarcastic tone.
He didn’t remember her.
Zhu Yan looked at the soil marks on her hands and said, as expected yet disappointedly, “I just want to solve the case quickly, catch the culprit, and put them on trial. That’s the responsibility of the Criminal Division.”
“Is that so?” Shen Du mocked, “My wife is just a ninth-rank Scribe in the Criminal Division, a mere petty official. What do you know about the responsibilities of the Criminal Division?”
His tone was flippant and careless, clearly insulting her!
Zhu Yan raised her head, those roundabout insults without dirty words were about to burst forth, but Shen Du languidly said, “Do you know why the Internal Affairs Bureau is interfering in Criminal Division matters?”
Shen Du reached out, hooked a strand of tassel from her temple, and twirled it in his hand. Using the tassel-wrapped fingertip to touch her face, he sneered, “Because this matter involves Liang’s family’s internal affairs. The Liang family’s second branch likely killed the eldest son of the main branch, but unfortunately, His Majesty wants to protect the second branch.”
“A small fish in a pond, entering rivers and oceans, staying in one corner would be fine, but coming out—do you want to be left with no bones?”
Shen Du’s fingertip lightly traced down, touching the vital blood vessel in her throat.
Killing intent.
Zhu Yan held her breath and slowly asked, “If the Liang family’s second branch committed the murder, why kill Kuang Zhanxin?”
Shen Du let go and said indifferently, “If they’re dead, they’re dead. Why ask so much? Don’t you understand what I’m saying? It’s not that the Internal Affairs Bureau wants to cover it up, but His Majesty wants to protect the Liang family’s second branch.”
His Majesty.
These two words made everything clear.
The bronze birds sing in Chang’an, and autumn crops level with the clouds. Zhu Yan knew how much dirty power struggle was hidden behind such a prosperous scene in Chang’an.
But she still felt very uncomfortable. Just for the sake of consolidating power, harming living lives, and then using power to cover everything up.
And Shen Du even said, if they’re dead, they’re dead.
“You didn’t tell me this before,” Zhu Yan clenched her fists, her body trembling under the loose festive clothes. “I know times have changed, and you’re now the Grand Commander of the Internal Affairs Bureau, but I often forget what you’re like now. I always think of you…”
As the Shen Du I met before.
Zhu Yan looked at him and said heavily, “If it was done by the Liang family’s second branch, why did they destroy Kuang Zhanxin’s face? This case is full of doubts, and it’s possible that it wasn’t done by the second branch, isn’t it?”
The act of mutilating the corpse and destroying the face usually has two possibilities: one, to destroy the appearance and increase the difficulty of official investigation, making it impossible to identify the body; two, to vent personal desires.
If it were as Shen Du said, the purpose of the second branch mutilating the corpse would only be to prevent identification. In that case, Kuang Zhanxin’s face shouldn’t have been cut to the bone, but rather burned with oil, and Liang Chenzhong’s face couldn’t have been spared either.