Ever since the incident at the Defender Duke Residence three years ago, Xue Yao had not heard anyone address him like this—
Young Master Yan Yun.
This form of address was both familiar and strange.
It was like a rusted key, suddenly inserted into the keyhole of memory, producing a rough yet distinct sound as it turned.
In an instant, it dragged him back to the past.
At that time, the Defender Duke Residence held immense power. As the youngest son, he could not be dispatched to the frontier, and could only gather day after day at Baxian Tower with other youths of the capital, composing poetry and writing prose. As time went on, he made a name for himself, and everyone in the capital came to call him Young Master Yan Yun.
The first time he met Lu Dantao was there. Back then, in order to inquire about Pei Di’s whereabouts, she came straight up to him and asked, “Third Young Master Xue, do you know where Brother Pei is?”
After being teased by others, she still forced herself to maintain her composure and explained: Pei Di had always been at odds with him. If Pei Di’s whereabouts were unknown, then he would certainly know.
Timid and apprehensive, as if she feared even the slightest contact with men like them, yet because she had no choice but to stand up for her lover, she charged straight into the wolves’ den.
Compared to the Lu Dantao standing before him now, she was like a completely different person.
Xue Yao’s gaze swept over her deliberately profound expression, as well as the clothes she wore with the left and right lapels reversed.
Then, recalling her earlier unruly behavior, he found himself at a loss for words for a moment.
Could memory loss really cause such a drastic change in a person?
Or was this her true nature all along? Then was Pei Di unable to see it, or simply able to tolerate it?
“Ahem, ahem.”
From above his head came the sound of Lu Dantao deliberately clearing her throat.
Xue Yao snapped back to his senses. He endured it again and again, truly unwilling to face another scene like the one just now where things had spiraled out of control.
He could only toss aside the branch in his hand, slowly stand up, his voice slightly cold. “Then, Miss Lu, please explain who this person really is.”
“Eh, no need to be so anxious.” Lu Dantao ignored his sudden coldness, raised her left hand slightly, adjusting it to just the right angle. Putting on airs, she deliberately drew out her tone as she slowly asked,
“First, tell me, is this corpse male or female?”
Xue Yao: ……
He lowered his gaze and glanced at the corpse, which was clearly that of an adult man. “This person is male.”
“Mm.” Lu Dantao lifted her hand to stroke her chin. “Then, is this person missing an arm?”
Xue Yao’s gaze followed to the empty left arm, then shifted back to Lu Dantao. He saw her slightly raising her chin, gazing into the distance, her brows faintly furrowed as if deep in thought, yet also as if she already had everything under control.
His face remained expressionless. A wave of speechlessness passed through his mind, yet he still cooperated and answered, “Obviously.”
“How long has the deceased been dead? Can you tell?”
“Around seven days.”
“In that case, it all matches.”
Lu Dantao turned her head back and nodded at the unusually cooperative Xue Yao, signaling her approval.
After that, her gaze swept symbolically and extremely quickly over the male corpse on the ground. Her left hand moved toward her trouser pocket—
There was no pocket.
Lu Dantao’s gaze froze for a moment. She had no choice but to settle for the next best thing and place her hand on her waist.
Her right index finger pointed forward, her brows slightly furrowed, her small face tense and serious as she enunciated each word:
“The cunning frog keeps touching your belly.”
“The truth is only one.”
She deliberately paused for two seconds. Only after Xue Yao cast a probing look at her did she leisurely deliver her concluding statement:
“This person should be an important figure within some organization of the imperial court, for example…”
Lu Dantao hesitated for a moment. In Detective Di Renjie, it was the Inner Guard, so here it would be—
“The Eagle Guard,” she said.
Xue Yao was momentarily stunned. Ignoring the phrase he could not understand, he focused all his attention on her conclusion:
“How did you arrive at that judgment?”
“Very simple.”
Lu Dantao raised her index finger, first tapping the center of her forehead, then extending it between the two of them, giving it a slight shake:
“First, this place is deep in the wilderness. Along the way, the grass was taller than us. Why would an ordinary person come here?”
“Second.”
She raised two fingers, forming a “two.” “The deceased is male. Although we can’t tell what he looked like, judging from his clothing alone, he doesn’t resemble an ordinary hunter who came into the mountains to hunt.”
“And also.” She raised three fingers.
“When you poked his stomach just now, I saw it clearly. There were several large wounds on his abdomen. The killer had already stabbed him to death. After killing him, they could have simply dumped the body in the wilderness. After some time, it would either decompose or be eaten by wild beasts, and that would be the end of it.”
“So why go through the trouble of cutting off one of his arms? Severing an arm won’t kill a person. It must have been to destroy some kind of mark on his arm.”
Lu Dantao shook her head as she spoke. “So, based on all of the above, it is enough to conclude that my earlier deduction is reasonable and well-founded.”
She raised her index finger and pointed forward slightly, speaking in a lowered voice, “I guess the course of the case might have been like this—”
“Pei Di.”
“As the Commander of the Eagle Guard, he had long been dissatisfied with the emperor. So in secret, he trained private troops and colluded with the northern barbarians, taking advantage of the Eagle Guard’s authority to act conveniently. In these deep mountains, he established an independent kingdom.”
“He was just waiting for the right moment to lead his troops south and take the dog emperor’s head.”
“Who would have thought that this conspiracy would be discovered by some fellow. Amid chaos and coincidence, this important figure of the Eagle Guard, that is, this deceased man, was killed. Then something was tied to the body, and the corpse was thrown into the river!”
Lu Dantao finished her speech with rising and falling intonation, feeling her mind suddenly become completely clear.
It all connected. Everything connected.
Although she had not managed to save the male lead, a Long Aotian-type protagonist would not die, so he must still be alive. Perhaps he was hiding somewhere in these mountains, quietly developing his strength.
And he must have, while secretly building up his power, discovered Pei Di’s secret, then charged in alone and stole Pei Di’s “crystal.”
After that, he relied on Pei Di’s resources to begin assembling his own power.
It had to be like this. There was no mistake.
That way, it all lined up with her analysis.
Then she still had a chance. A chance to make a huge fortune!
Did she still need to put up with Xue Yao’s awful temper?
No need!
Heh heh.
After listening to her analysis, Xue Yao felt both speechless and surprised.
What left him speechless was that her first two points were merely a repetition of the obvious, yet she could still put on such a profound and unfathomable air.
What surprised him was that her final deduction was actually supported by logic and evidence, and even sounded quite reasonable.
The wounds on the corpse’s waist and abdomen proved that he must be connected to the military. At present, the Eagle Guard held immense power across the court, and naturally, the authority over weapon manufacturing rested in their hands.
As for a mark, there indeed was a flying eagle pattern on the left arm of the Eagle Guard.
‘He had only learned this by overhearing it while imprisoned in a dungeon back then.’
But then, where had she learned of this, and where had she acquired such a method of deduction?
He clearly remembered that Lu Dantao had been infatuated with Pei Di, and had even once been stopped by the Jingzhao Prefect. However, because the man doted on his daughter too much, he eventually compromised and began paving the way for Pei Di. When questioned by his colleagues, he replied that his daughter was delicate, and he was unwilling for her to worry about making a living, only hoping to find a live-in son-in-law who could take good care of her for a lifetime.
At that time, Pei Di had still been the most insignificant illegitimate son in the marquis residence.
This past had only been uncovered by Xue Yao later, after he had turned against the Defender Duke Residence.
He looked at Lu Dantao. “Where did you learn this method of deduction?”
Did the Jingzhao Prefect really teach such skills?
Lu Dantao looked at him with a strange expression. “What does my family do? Jingzhao Prefect.”
‘That’s basically the capital’s chief of public security. Solving cases? That’s professional-level talent.’
Xue Yao gave an “oh.” “So your father once taught you how to investigate cases?”
Lu Dantao paused.
That tone… it sounded so familiar.
She secretly lifted her head to size up Xue Yao. His gaze rested on her face, as if examining her, yet also as if it were nothing more than an ordinary look.
Wait a second, was this bastard trying to fish for information?
Xue Yao, this NPC, was Pei Di’s sworn enemy, so he definitely knew her as Pei Di’s former lover.
This bastard already acted like he had paranoia. If she said one wrong thing, would he start suspecting her?
What if he realized she was not the original person, that she knew nothing about Pei Di? Wouldn’t he just chop her down with a single strike?
Pei Di was currently chasing after her, and she did not know anyone else…
But she truly knew nothing about the original host. The moment she transmigrated, the original host had already died, and she had not inherited any of her memories.
As for the plotline, the original host was just an NPC with less than two lines in the entire book. There was no mention at all of her family background.
And those analysis posts… perhaps because most of the analysts were men, or perhaps because the original novel itself was targeted at a male audience, so…
Among the countless analysis essays on that site, almost all of them focused on analyzing male characters. Even the female lead of this book was barely discussed.
Whenever the female lead was mentioned, it was always about how powerful her background was and how she supported the male lead.
If even the female lead was treated like that, then someone like her, an NPC, was even less worth mentioning.
No, she could not follow along with this topic. She had to steer it away.
Lu Dantao casually made something up. “Not really. I just once flipped through a book in my father’s study.”
“What book?”
“…《Fat Ling Chronicle》.”
Xue Yao seemed interested. “Oh? What is it about?”
Lu Dantao wore a pained expression. “It’s roughly about a remarkable figure who is deeply trusted by a female emperor, and who goes around solving cases with his guards.”
Xue Yao looked enlightened. “I see. Miss Lu is indeed widely read.”
Lu Dantao relaxed, her face modest. “You flatter me, you flatter me.”
‘If nothing else, I’ve watched Detective Di Renjie over and over again. I practically have the lines memorized.’
“But there are no signs of heavy objects having been tied to the corpse.” Xue Yao tilted his chin toward the corpse’s legs. “My family once taught me the methods of examining a body.”
As he spoke, a trace of mockery tugged at the corner of his lips.
Back then, in order to defend the country, the Xue family had trained its younger generation to be proficient in both literary and martial skills. They had even thoroughly learned the corpse examination methods that the world despised, fearing that any oversight might jeopardize military intelligence.
Who would have thought that the more one learned and the more one mastered, the more mistakes one made, and the faster one died.
Xue Yao concealed a cold smile. “If a corpse had once been tied to heavy objects, there would inevitably be dark bruising left on the body. But this corpse shows no such marks.”
Therefore, Xue Yao was more inclined to believe that the body had drifted from somewhere upstream. And the source of where it had been dumped might very well be that “Peach Blossom Spring” his father had mentioned.
Now that he thought back on it, his father had repeatedly instructed him that if he ever came to Shouzhou, he must go and take a look at that place called Peach Blossom Spring. Could there have been another intention behind it?
Was it, as he had inferred, related to his father’s former subordinates?
Or was it, as Lu Dantao had deduced, connected to the Eagle Guard?
Lu Dantao froze for a moment. “No marks?”
She was familiar with this common forensic method. If something had been tied to the body, there would definitely be bruising.
Xue Yao nodded. “Perhaps you saw it wrong. It wasn’t floating upward.”
“Impossible, absolutely impossible!” Lu Dantao said firmly.
She waved her arms, trying hard to mimic the way the corpse had floated. “I saw it with my own two eyes! His eyes were rolled back, and he floated straight up!”
Seeing that Xue Yao still did not believe her, she endured her disgust and revulsion, snapped off a branch, and used it to lift the clothing—
There was indeed only pale bluish skin and mottled patches of postmortem lividity.
Aside from that, she saw no bruising whatsoever.
That was impossible.
But there was no way she could have seen it wrong.
That scene had left too deep an impression on her. She figured that even when she was seventy or eighty years old, she could still vividly recount it to her granddaughter.
So what exactly was going on here?
To make an object float upright in water, there were usually only a few methods:
First, tie it with a rope or some other pulling device and drag it up from underwater.
But that was impossible. Both she and Xue Yao had been on the surface of the water, and neither had seen any ropes. She had not transmigrated into Detective Conan, after all. It could not possibly be something like fishing line, right?
Second, the corpse had originally been tied to a heavy object, such as a stone. After enough time passed, the object fell off, and the corpse, no longer weighed down, naturally floated up.
But there were no such marks on the body, and even so, it would not have floated up vertically like that.
Third, it would have to be the natural buoyancy of water.
When a person’s weight is greater than water, they sink. Otherwise, they float.
But according to Xue Yao, this corpse had been dead for about seven days. If it were going to float, it should have done so long ago.
So why did it just happen to rise only when she went into the water to bathe?
It could not be that only she was able to break some kind of seal, right?
Come on, this was not a fantasy novel. What kind of joke was that?
Then, since she herself was not the problem, and the corpse was not the problem either—
The only possibility was that the water was the problem.
Xue Yao stood behind her, watching as Lu Dantao hurried toward the riverbank.
Her small face was filled only with focus. The fear she had shown toward the corpse earlier had completely vanished.
To be precise, ever since she learned it was just an ordinary corpse and not the “water ghoul” she had mentioned, only disgust remained, with no trace of fear.
She bent slightly at the waist, staring intently at the river’s surface.
A gentle breeze passed along the riverbank. During her bath, Lu Dantao had already loosened her hair, and her long dark strands now fell freely over her shoulders.
The wind lifted her hair, revealing the vivid, striking cinnabar mole at the center of her brows.
Xue Yao’s phoenix eyes narrowed slightly, his gaze fixed firmly on that lotus-like face.
This face was exactly the same as the Lu Dantao in his memory. Yet the same features, because of the different expressions they carried, made him feel as though they belonged to two entirely different people.
The one he had seen back then was a delicate and radiant noble lady of the capital. With that cinnabar mole, she seemed like a peach blossom fairy nurtured by immortal aura, yet fallen into the mortal world, troubled by worldly love.
And the current Lu Dantao, with her small face tense and her expression focused, made him feel a sense of vitality, as if there were a light radiating from within her.
Memory loss.
Could it really cause such a drastic change in a person?
Lu Dantao had no idea what Xue Yao was thinking. In her mind, her “CPU” was running at high speed.
There was no way she could have seen it wrong.
What had been in the water just now?
There had been her, the water, and the corpse.
She went in, the water moved, and the corpse… moved along with it.
But why had it not moved from the beginning?
Why did it only start moving when she—
Lu Dantao’s eyes suddenly widened—
She knew!
“I know!” Lu Dantao suddenly turned around. “It’s the density of the water!”
“The density in the water is different. There are two kinds of water here!”
Xue Yao’s brows lifted slightly. “Density? Different?”
“Two kinds of water?”
The brightness in Lu Dantao’s eyes, which had been shining from her sudden realization, only grew even brighter when they met Xue Yao’s slightly confused expression—
Pitiful ancient people.
Pitiful arrogant guy.
She thought with sympathy, ‘What white moonlight, what peerless talent.’
‘Ancient men really have it easy. They can’t even compare to an ordinary female college student like me.’
“It means…”
She searched her mind for the right words, then put on a tone that was both guiding and unable to hide her excitement as she asked,
“It means… you know the saying, ‘river water does not interfere with well water,’ right?”
Xue Yao: ……
What was with her tone, as if she were teaching a small child?