With the light behind him, she couldn’t make out the newcomer’s face, she could only feel his gaze settle on her.
Yun Xiu was sensitive to other people’s stares, so she hurriedly ducked her head again and pressed down her veiled hat.
Even though she’d only caught a rough outline, she recognized him as the good-guy bro who’d given her half a spirit stone last night.
She stammered, “F-fellow daoist, did you get in trouble too?”
As she spoke, as though she’d done some mental preparation for it, she scooted over, freed up her own cushion seat, and slowly pushed it toward him.
Xie Wuwang: “…”
“Enough nonsense. The honorable Sword Venerable has come today to investigate the case.”
The cell guard, dizzy from being pestered by the husky, spoke up. Walking over, he too spotted the tic-tac-toe grid on the wall, and his brow furrowed. “This one is no simple case after all. To scratch through the cell wall bare-handed, it seems she really did use some technique to disguise herself as a mortal. All the more reason not to release her lightly.”
Feixiao: !?
Feixiao poked its dog-head out through the gap. “Come on, big bro, it’s a kid messing around picking at it, she never once thought about breaking out.”
The guard respectfully handed the interrogation record to the white-clad young man.
“Does the honorable Sword Venerable perhaps know these two suspects?”
“A passing acquaintance.”
Xie Wuwang lowered his eyes and leafed through the case file, his voice mild.
Feixiao: “Right, right, the two of us saw the honorable Sword Venerable in the Liuhe Wildlands yesterday, there’s a witness, so this proves we weren’t at the scene, doesn’t it?”
Feixiao backed out and slapped a dog-paw down on the shoulder of Yun Xiu, who was hunched in the corner being a gloomy little mushroom. “And take a look at her, does THIS look like a murderous fiend who could kill three hundred people in one night?!”
Yun Xiu: OvO?
The guard fell silent.
After a long moment he produced a single line: “You can’t judge a person by appearances.”
The guard: “In any case, you two are now the prime suspects. No matter what, you won’t be released until this case is cracked—”
“Click.”
The cell door suddenly swung open.
The guard was startled. “Honorable Sword Venerable, what is the meaning of this?”
Xie Wuwang set down the case file unhurriedly, his tone calm. “I’ve grasped the essentials of the case. This person was present at the scene and must have a good understanding of the situation at the time. As it happens, investigating the case requires someone to help me get a handle on things, and I find her quite suitable.”
“If she wishes to clear herself of suspicion, she’ll surely search for evidence more diligently than the average person.”
The guard grew somewhat flustered. “If the honorable Sword Venerable is short a helper, the Bureau of All Affairs and the Immortal Prison’s people are yours to freely command, but releasing a suspect really does violate Immortal Alliance regulations…”
Feixiao’s tail shot straight up. “How is it against the rules? We’re not the real culprits!”
Xie Wuwang slowly raised his eyes, idle. “Then, shall I make a decision today that violates the regulations?”
The guard: !!
The guard, in a bind: “This, Honorable Sword Venerable, if you let the suspect go, how am I to explain it to my superiors…”
The little black lump in the corner seemed to have gotten sleepy. Hugging her knees and leaning against the wall, her head began to nod like a chick pecking at rice.
The young man abruptly gave a soft laugh, then changed tack. “But perhaps you’ve misunderstood something. I never said I intended to let her go.”
The guard blinked. “Eh?”
“To my knowledge, when the Immortal Prison lets a prisoner out briefly, it always binds them with the Immortal Alliance’s specially-made spirit-locking chain. Without the dedicated key, not even a Great Vehicle-stage cultivator could open it.”
The young man picked up the spirit-locking chain hanging on the cell wall, unhurriedly locked one end around his own wrist, walked into the cell, and dangled the other end before the girl in the corner, looking down at her.
Feixiao nudged the dozing girl awake with a paw.
She looked at the spirit-locking chain, then at Feixiao beside her, its tail wagging like a propeller, and, as though she’d understood something, gave a solemn nod.
A few seconds later, she slowly reached out and took the spirit-locking chain.
…and cuffed it onto the dog’s paw.
Feixiao: “?”
Xie Wuwang: “…”
Yun Xiu made an encouraging gesture and cheered it on in a small voice. “Y-you can do it, husky-bro! You’ll definitely clear your name and get your job back!”
“…”
Feixiao smacked her upside the back of the head with a paw. “Kid, are you an idiot?! The Sword Venerable means for YOU to wear it, not for you to put it on ME!”
“Oh.”
Yun Xiu cradled her head and whispered, “But didn’t you really want to get out?”
Feixiao froze, then its tone turned oddly unnatural. “Never you mind. I’ve suddenly decided I’d rather squat in here after all, can’t help it. I’ve thought it through: three meals a day and no work, it’s basically a vacation, real comfortable.”
Forget it. This little fox spirit was already at the edge of a breakdown, if it left her here on her own, wouldn’t that be exactly the undisturbed, quiet environment it’d been creating for her?
With an ice-cold face, Feixiao dragged the cuff off its paw, stuffed her slender wrist inside, and the spirit-locking chain drew itself tight, fitting seamlessly.
Then it shoved her out of the cell and shut the door.
Feixiao ground its teeth. “Go out there and do a good job. When the honorable Sword Venerable catches the real culprit, remember to smack him a few extra times for me, right across the face.”
Damn it all, framing even a wolf. What an absolute lowlife.
Xie Wuwang tossed the key to the guard, his tone level. “There, now you needn’t worry about the suspect fleeing?”
The guard shook his head furiously. “Not worried, not worried! Honorable Sword Venerable, take care on your way!”
Zhezhu’s spirit, having watched the whole thing, quietly gnawed a mouthful of spirit stone and couldn’t help marveling. Five hundred years of seclusion had really smoothed out the boss’s temper, even springing someone from the Immortal Prison, he did it by the book, nice and obedient.
Hmph. Even if he’d smashed the Immortal Prison to bits today, who in the whole Immortal Alliance would’ve dared make a peep?
…
It was sunset. The rosy clouds and daylight fell on the cold glazed tiles, all around was quiet, yet the sunset glow was vivid and lively.
Baihua City had been sealed off. This was no small matter, and the ones keeping watch outside the city walls weren’t only Immortal Alliance people, but local officials as well.
Besides the Immortal Alliance, the cultivation world also had the Three Palaces, Four Seas, and Seven Great Families.
Put plainly, these were great clans governing different regions, local landed magnates who culled gifted children from among mortals, sent them into the clans to be groomed, and, at the proper age, sent them on into the various great sects to cultivate and study the arts.
These great clans had been established far earlier than the Immortal Alliance, and in certain respects their thinking ran rather deep-rooted.
“Thank you all at the Immortal Alliance for making the trip today, but this matter occurred within Shuiling Palace’s territory, so of course it should be handled by us of Shuiling Palace. No need to trouble the Immortal Alliance, then, Fellow Daoist Lin, please head back.”
The male cultivator who spoke wore a blue daoist robe patterned with distinctive markings.
“Brother Shui, this is no longer Shuiling Palace’s private affair. Baihua City was emptied overnight, and until the true culprit is captured, the surrounding cities may at any moment—Sword Venerable Wuwang?”
Lin Zhengqing, catching sight of the person who had just stepped down from a flying sword, froze. His righteous, stern expression suddenly turned rather stiff, and he straightened his back.
“How is it you’re here?”
Then, glancing behind him, he saw the girl in the veiled hat, cowering and cringing, the very suspicious suspect he’d captured inside Baihua City that morning.
“This is…”
The white-clad young man said nothing, and calmly tossed him something.
Lin Zhengqing looked: it was the mission jade slip issued by the Immortal Alliance’s Bureau of All Affairs. He understood at once, yet still couldn’t quite believe it.
Heavens, he was actually going to get to work alongside his idol one day!
Lin Zhengqing reined in the little bubbles of joy in his heart, turned serious, and addressed the blue-robed cultivator. “Shui Yu, Sword Venerable Wuwang himself has come for this case, are you still going to cling stubbornly to your own view?”
Shui Yu: “…”
Knockoff, knockoff, your whole family’s a knockoff!
That word is pronounced YU, dammit! Illiterate! (Lin misreads Shui Yu’s given name, the wrong reading sounds like the word for cheap counterfeit goods.)
But now was not the time to blow up. Sword Venerable Wuwang was a man a lowly pavilion-master like himself couldn’t afford to offend, even the Shuiling Palace Master would have to receive him with the utmost respect.
Shui Yu swallowed his anger and had no choice but to let the Immortal Alliance people into Baihua City.
Today he really was having the worst luck in eight lifetimes. He’d planned to come to Baihua City to select gifted seedlings, and instead this whole mess had erupted.
Never mind that the people were gone, now he was being ordered around by this Immortal Alliance bunch.
Lin Zhengqing, following happily behind the white-clad young man, was about to enter the city alongside him when he heard the young man’s emotionless voice.
“I don’t like being disturbed while I work.”
Lin Zhengqing: “…”
Not happy.
Most of the day passed, and the sunset glow at the horizon slowly faded.
The corpses of the dead in the city had all been gathered and stored in one place. The streets were empty now, the scene hadn’t been disturbed. Apart from the bodies being gone, the streets looked no different from what Yun Xiu had seen that morning.
Only the two of them entered the whole city. Yun Xiu followed timidly at the white-clad young man’s right hand, the two of them a meter apart.
A meter wasn’t her limit. It was the chain’s limit.
By the time they’d finished surveying the streets, the sky had gone dark.
The two reached the place where the corpses were gathered, shrouded by a spell-technique, cold enough to make one shiver.
Facing corpses, Yun Xiu finally relaxed. She crouched beside one body, lifted the white cloth, and examined it closely.
Whether they lived or died was no concern of hers, but the sooner the case was cracked, the sooner this chain would come off, she had no reason not to try hard.
No obvious wounds or contusions on the body’s surface, not death by a blow.
Not that surprising, though. This was the cultivation world.
No livor mortis on the body’s surface…?
Yun Xiu scrunched up her little face.
“Why did you come to this place today, my friend?” the young man beside her spoke, his voice cold.
Yun Xiu murmured, “I, I said I wanted to go somewhere with no people to see the scenery, and Feixiao brought me here.”
In a certain sense, the place it had picked wasn’t exactly wrong.
Yun Xiu tried poking a corpse, and to her surprise her finger poked a little dent into it.
Yun Xiu: !?
Yun Xiu suddenly stood up and stammered, apropos of nothing, “F-fellow daoist, the city gate was barred from the inside. This morning when we entered, though it was shut tight, it wasn’t locked, one push and it opened. I, I think that’s very strange.”
Xie Wuwang’s tone was unhurried. “Strange how?”
“After the killer finished slaughtering everyone, he left through the main gate. The city was already empty, so the gate wasn’t locked from within, isn’t that perfectly reasonable?”
Yun Xiu gave a small gesture. “It’s just, I can’t figure out why he’d go out the main gate at all. Whether someone who can do magic, or a demon, they could all just fly over the city wall as they pleased.”
“If it were you, f-fellow daoist, after killing everyone, would you choose to go to all that trouble opening the city gate, at the risk of leaving traces?”
The young man cast her a lazy glance. “No.”
“Anything else?”
“There’s, there’s one more strange thing. This clearly happened at night, at sleeping time, yet all three hundred victims died out in the street, looking for all the world like the Baihua Festival was in full swing.”
“If the killer did this on purpose, then, then the problem of him unlocking the gate instead of fleeing out the main gate is solved. Because he, he was waiting for someone to push the gate open and see this scene in the street.”
Something like a faint smile seemed to flit across the depths of the young man’s black eyes. “And then?”
The sky around them had gone completely dark. A faint wind moaned through the branches and leaves, and rustling sounds echoed through the corpse-holding ground.
“A-and then, the last question is this, fellow daoist, these people are dead, but it seems…”
As she spoke, the corpse before her suddenly opened its eyes, its cloudy, hideous eyeballs glaring dead at her.
She was silent for two seconds, then reached out and closed the dead-fish eyes, adding softly.
“…they’re not completely dead yet.”