Everything in the east chamber was exactly as it had been on the day of the incident. Although it had been thoroughly searched, the searchers had always remembered they were in the imperial palace and had made every effort to restore everything to its original state afterward.
But in this identical environment lay a young woman whose face was now completely unrecognizable. She wore a yellow robe, her hair loosely arranged in a Liuxian style, with plain silk shoes on her feet, exactly as on the day she disappeared.
However, her entire body’s skin had rotted and turned black, oozing pus and blood. It was impossible to make out her original features – no one could tell from this corpse what kind of peach-blossom beauty she had once possessed.
Huang Zixia gazed at her silently, for an instant flashing back to that day, with the gorgeous artificial crystal flower at her temple, her face and the flower’s beauty reflecting each other.
But it was only a moment’s daze before she pressed her lips together and walked to the bed where the corpse lay.
Zhou Ziqin pulled up a chair to sit by the bed, then took out a pair of extremely thin and soft leather gloves from his person and put them on before leaning down to first cup her face for a close examination.
Even Huang Zixia, who was used to seeing corpses, couldn’t bear to suddenly face such a pus-and-blood-covered, swollen, and blurred face. She turned her head away and asked, “Didn’t you say you didn’t bring any tools? When did you bring these gloves?”
“This morning when I left home. Hearing there was a murder in the street, seemingly by poison, I quickly brought them along. Didn’t think I wouldn’t use them then, but they’re needed now.” Zhou Ziqin instructed her with a serious face as he leaned down to examine the corpse’s seven apertures, then pried open the mouth to check the tongue and teeth inside. “When examining a poisoned corpse, especially with such a deadly poison, if you accidentally scratch the skin during the examination and the poisoned blood seeps in, you’ll be in immediate trouble, so gloves are necessary.”
Huang Zixia didn’t want to hear these things and only asked, “Since the deceased is wearing Wang Ruo’s clothes, do the age and build match?”
“The deceased is about sixteen or seventeen years old, with a slim, tall build, around five feet seven inches. Such height is quite rare among women, so it matches. Are there any moles, birthmarks, or birthmarks on Wang Ruo’s body?”
“Let me think…” she tried hard to recall her previous interactions with Wang Ruo, “No moles or birthmarks, but I think there was a small freckle on her right wrist, can you check if it’s there?”
Zhou Ziqin rolled up her right sleeve, looked, and said dejectedly, “The skin is so black you can’t see anything at all. Forget freckles, even moles probably couldn’t be seen.”
“Mm.” Huang Zixia looked at the swollen, purplish-black hands, somewhat sadly remembering when she first met Wang Ruo in the carriage, those delicate, beautiful jade hands that had shown from her sleeves. The sight of these unbearable hands before her now made her chest tighten slightly. “These hands… how did they become so swollen? Her hands used to be so delicate and beautiful that everyone would envy them.”
“Delicate?” Zhou Ziqin held up the corpse’s giant palm, feeling from the palm to each finger, and said, “That’s impossible. Her hand bones are among the larger ones I’ve examined in female corpses. Even before, they couldn’t have been considered delicate.”
Huang Zixia made a surprised “eh” sound and looked at those horrifically swollen, purple-black hands, then elbowed Zhou Ziqin’s shoulder, saying, “Give me the gloves.”
Zhou Ziqin looked at her puzzled and asked, “What for?”
She said nothing, just raised her chin and narrowed her eyes. Zhou Ziqin immediately obediently took off the gloves and gave them to her.
Though they were soft leather close-fitting gloves, men’s gloves were still larger, and they were a bit loose when Huang Zixia put them on. She didn’t mind this though, and through the gloves gripped the female corpse’s hand, then compared it through the gloves with her hand – swelling could only expand horizontally, and fingers wouldn’t lengthen much, but the other’s fingers were longer than her own hands that Chen Niangniang had once called suitable for playing the qin.
Zhou Ziqin said beside her, “See, though you’re a man, I guess you must have been castrated very young, so your hands are a bit smaller than hers.”
“What does castration have to do with hand size?” Huang Zixia thought to herself, then through the gloves felt her own bones, then felt the other’s skeletal structure. Though it was hard to feel the bones because of the swollen flesh, she pressed down hard inch by inch until she finally felt something hard, confirming Zhou Ziqin’s statement – these hand bones were definitely not delicate.
Zhou Ziqin nervously said beside her, “Chonggu, don’t press too hard. The skin is already rotting, it won’t be good if you press it to pieces…”
Huang Zixia quickly relaxed her fingers while turning to check if she had broken or crushed anything in her palm. Fortunately, only a small break appeared at the base of the palm, and there happened to be a thin layer of white loose skin there – though she had broken it, there was no bleeding.
“That should be a thin callus, so it doesn’t matter if it’s broken. Besides, her whole body’s skin is already rotting, no one will care about a broken callus.” Zhou Ziqin said while carefully examining where the callus was located. Seeing it was at the base of the palm below the little finger, he couldn’t help but frown slightly, “How strange, in all my years, this is the first time I’ve examined a corpse with calluses in this location.”
“Yes, logically speaking, the force-bearing part of people’s hands is at the tiger’s mouth. The outer edge of the palm should be the least likely place for calluses to form.” Huang Zixia observed more carefully and saw similar hardened skin on the fingertips of the middle three fingers of the left hand and the right thumb. She pondered for a long while, mimicking various postures like writing, embroidering, washing, and pounding clothes, but couldn’t reach any conclusions.
Zhou Ziqin put away the gloves she had taken off and said, “Besides this, there’s nothing noteworthy. This woman must have come from a good background – her hair and teeth are very lustrous, and there seem to be no signs of heavy labor on her body. Now she appears in Yongchun Hall wearing Wang Ruo’s clothes, with an unrecognizable face – if we say she’s not Wang Ruo, we don’t seem to have strong evidence…”
Huang Zixia said decisively, “To avoid alerting anyone, record it in the autopsy book first, but don’t reveal it directly – just state the cause of death.”
The two opened the door and went to the outer hall to meet those waiting.
Zhou Ziqin bowed to everyone, then holding his autopsy record, only briefly said: “Examination complete: deceased female, height five feet seven inches, face unrecognizable, skin black and swollen throughout, body covered in pus and blood. The deceased has a complete set of teeth, lustrous hair reaching to ankles, no external injuries, and death appears due to poisoning.”
Wang Lin sighed repeatedly, saying, “How hateful, too hateful! I never imagined my niece would meet such an unnatural death within the heavily guarded palace…”
Behind him, Wang Ruo’s two brothers who had rushed from Langya to attend the wedding all showed grief-stricken faces. The elder one asked, “What was my sister’s cause of death…?”
“Undoubtedly poison arrow wood,” Zhou Ziqin answered.
“Poison arrow wood…” None had heard this name except Wang Yun, who asked, “Is that the poison the southern barbarians call ‘sealed by blood at first sight’?”
“Yes, it’s rarely seen in the capital.” Several people had died from this poison last night too. Zhou Ziqin looked at Huang Zixia, and seeing she showed no sign of wanting to explain to them, closed his mouth and said no more.
Before long, the Empress Wang herself came. She looked through the window at the female corpse on the bed, then immediately turned away, with Changling hurrying to support her before she fell to the ground. She staggered away covering her face, without saying a word.
Changqing led the palace staff to handle the remains, everyone in silence. The Wang family’s carriage carried away the coffin, and Li Shubai stood at the palace gate, watching them disappear into the distance.
Zhou Ziqin rushed to Cui Chunzhan’s carriage. Huang Zixia pulled over the prepared horse intending to mount it, but Li Shubai gave her a look through the carriage window, so she had to withdraw her foot from the stirrup and board the carriage, sitting as usual on the low stool.
The carriages headed toward Yongjia District.
Li Shubai didn’t look at her the whole way, only lightly touching the crystal vase containing the fish, causing the small red fish inside to chase his finger constantly, waving its gauze-like tail.
“I heard the autopsy results, but what wasn’t said?”
Huang Zixia sat on the low stool with her chin in her hand watching the small fish, saying, “It was indeed death by poison arrow wood, time of death was last night, but unlike those beggars, her throat swelling wasn’t as severe as her external appearance, so her fatal poison wasn’t ingested with food but should have been from an external wound – if Zhou Ziqin could dissect the body, this point could be more certain.”
“If it was an external wound, where was it?”
“This is another strange point – though the whole body was rotting and swollen, there were no traces of weapon injuries on her body. From the pattern of skin discoloration, the most likely determination is that the poison spread upward from the right hand before reaching the whole body.”
“Right hand.” Li Shubai pondered, “Can poison arrow wood kill just by touching the skin?”
“No, so how the victim was poisoned remains a mystery.”
Li Shubai’s gaze moved from the small fish to her face, suddenly asking, “Before, when your parents died and you fled from Shu in male dress… did no one along the way suspect you weren’t male?”
Chin resting in hand watching the small fish, Huang Zixia was puzzled, not understanding why he suddenly brought this up: “No, since childhood I often dressed as a male following father to investigate cases, seeing all sorts of people. Though the journey fleeing was difficult, it was startling but not dangerous.”
He didn’t respond to her confused expression, only gazed at her appearance. The young woman in crimson eunuch’s clothing, kneeling on the low stool, right hand supporting her chin as she watched him, those eyes clear and transparent like morning dew in a lotus heart. As the carriage jolted, her eyelashes would occasionally flutter, and that dew-like gaze seemed to shimmer like a lotus swaying slightly in the wind, instantly flowing with radiance.
His tightly pressed lips unconsciously lifted slightly at that moment.
Huang Zixia puzzledly touched her face, still hesitating, but he had already turned away. He didn’t correct her overly girlish posture, only asking, “Besides this, were there any other marks on the corpse? For instance – was that body Wang Ruo’s?”
Huang Zixia was slightly surprised: “Your Highness hasn’t seen the remains, yet thinks this too?”
“I believe everything has a reason. To deliberately use poison arrow wood to make the corpse so unbearable to look at, completely unrecognizable – there must be something they’re trying to hide.”
“Your Highness guesses correctly. That body is not Wang Ruo’s, because though the flesh is hard to identify, bones cannot be faked, and that body’s hand bones were much larger than Wang Ruo’s.” Huang Zixia said, raising her right hand and turning her palm to look at it before her face. “There’s another thing I can’t figure out, which is the distribution of calluses on the female corpse’s hands – on the fingertips of the middle three fingers of the left hand, the right thumb, and the edge of the right palm, here-” she gestured with her hand, showing Li Shubai, “Below the little finger, this patch of palm edge had a layer of thin callus. Though it might not be visible normally, the skin there was slightly harder compared to other areas.”
“Actions that frequently use this area are indeed rare.” Li Shubai spread his own long, fair hands, then made a fist, mimicking the motion thoughtfully.
Huang Zixia asked, “Does Your Highness have any clues?”
“Just now I seemed to feel a motion flash before me, but can’t recall it in haste.” He frowned as he spoke, then simply released his hand and said, “For this case, the biggest point currently should be the two words ‘invisible,’ right?”
Huang Zixia nodded and said, “The sudden appearance and disappearance of that man in Xianyou Temple, Wang Ruo vanishing before our eyes under heavy guard, even the nonexistent wound on that female corpse’s hand – they’re all invisible, unseen mysteries.”
“Sometimes, it’s just like magic tricks – it’s only because they’re done from an angle common people wouldn’t expect. Though it’s a simple little trick, observers can’t wrap their minds around it, so they can’t discover the truth. And another possibility…” Li Shubai said as he picked up the crystal cup from the small table and held it up to the carriage window.
In the light filtering through the curtains from outside, the clear, transparent crystal cup and water instantly lost their shape. For a moment, Huang Zixia only saw a small red fish seemingly floating in mid-air above Li Shubai’s palm, like an illusion in the sunlight.
“The other possibility is that it’s right before our eyes, but because of angle and perception, we lose our judgment and think it doesn’t exist.”