Under Zhou Wu’s guidance, Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie quickly made their way to He Da’s room.
He Da’s body remained exactly as it had been when first discovered, lying face up on the floor, his face black and purple, his eyes open in death.
Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie were no strangers to corpses, and they had seen deaths far worse than this, so they felt no psychological barriers. After entering the room, the two began poking around, imitating detective methods they had seen in modern films and TV shows—from inconspicuous footprints on the floor, to the condition of the door lock, to whether anything was hidden under the bed or furniture, and finally to the deceased’s posture and position, and so on.
After one circuit, they exchanged glances and immediately received one message from each other’s eyes—this guy hadn’t figured out anything at all.
Yes, this was the normal state of affairs.
Did you really think someone with no professional criminal-investigation training could rush to a crime scene, copy detective thinking from novels or movies, take one look, and make a discovery?
You’re thinking too much; they wouldn’t discover a thing.
In fact, even if you had received professional training, you might still discover nothing at all.
In this world, the vast majority of homicide cases are solved not because a detective at the scene deduces the method of the crime through various clues and conclusive evidence, but because the killer is too stupid, leaves very obvious traces, covers up the crime too clumsily, or has an overly obvious motive, and so on.
Cases like those in novels—fully planned, cleverly executed, perfectly carried out, with killers of extremely high psychological quality—probably account for less than 1 percent in reality.
Besides, Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie were not detectives; they couldn’t solve cases. That kind of tough guy who can solve cases doesn’t have “Dong” in his name—only “Nan.”
So in the end, Huang Donglai could only do what Zhou Wu had asked him to do—find out what poison He Da had been given.
“The one he took… is called ‘Three-Step Soul-Severing,’ considered a relatively uncommon poison in the jianghu,” Huang Donglai concluded after briefly examining He Da’s body. “Quite a few people know how to use this poison—people in both south and north know it; it’s not some secret formula. It’s uncommon only because its preparation process is relatively complex, the materials are relatively expensive, and any slight error will cause the preparation to fail. As for its characteristics… besides being colorless and odorless, after someone ingests it, the poison doesn’t take effect immediately; it generally only strikes when the person gets up and moves around, or when their qi and blood are set flowing by some kind of exertion, hence the name ‘Three-Step Soul-Severing.’”
“Wow… impressive, Brother Huang, you’re so articulate.” Sun Yixie, hearing this, immediately laid on the praise from the side.
“Of course…” Huang Donglai raised his chin, saying proudly, “Brother hasn’t learned all these years for nothing.”
In the field of toxicology, Huang Donglai did have considerable accomplishments, after all this was the Huang Clan’s hallmark skill; basically, as long as it was a poison that had appeared in the jianghu and had a certain recognizability, he could quickly distinguish it.
“Hiss—this is strange.” On the other side, Zhou Wu, after hearing this, frowned and pondered, “Why would someone give a nobody like He Da a poison like ‘Three-Step Soul-Severing’?”
“That of course means he was involved in something; someone wanted to silence him.” Sun Yixie was quite sensitive to this, almost without thinking he pointed out the truth.
“Oh?” Zhou Wu said, “The ‘something’ Brother Sun speaks of wouldn’t be…”
“That would naturally be that matter at the Zeng Residence.” Sun Yixie replied.
Zhou Wu also understood Sun Yixie’s meaning, and continued, “You mean… behind the Zeng Residence’s ‘haunting,’ there is some hidden truth?”
“Where are there any ghosts in this world?” Sun Yixie continued in a matter-of-fact tone, “Whether it’s the so-called haunting or that whatever Liuli Carp, there must be someone stirring up trouble behind the scenes, using it to cover up their true intentions.”
“Huh?” At this moment, Huang Donglai’s expression changed slightly, as if he had thought of something, and he continued, “Brother Sun, now that you put it that way… I think I understand.”
The two of them, in their original universe, had been born under the red flag and raised in the spring breeze, and were natural staunch materialists, so they could quickly follow each other’s train of thought.
“What did you understand?” Sun Yixie said.
“This is that kind of… routine, right, where you commit continuous murders to cover up one murder?” Huang Donglai said.
Hearing this, Sun Yixie immediately looked thoughtful, while Zhou Wu looked at him with a face full of confusion, as if gesturing for him to continue.
Huang Donglai organized his thoughts again before saying, “For example… the killer behind this case, the person they actually want to kill, is only the Zeng Residence’s Second Lady. But he fears that killing only her would be discovered, so he designed in advance these Liuli Carps and hauntings and such, killing two unrelated people. Once everyone thinks this is a haunting, he kills the Second Lady, and then everyone will think her death was also due to the haunting, and won’t think of it as a homicide… As for this He Da, he may have been silenced because he knew too much.”
“Oh~” Sun Yixie, hearing this, slapped Huang Donglai’s shoulder, “Brother Huang, you’re skilled; you figured all this out through reasoning?”
“Ah~ no big deal.” Huang Donglai said, “This kind of routine, I can see through it with just a little thought.”
Perhaps for these two, who had seen many modern detective works, thinking of and understanding this approach was not difficult, but for Zhou Wu, this was an uncommon theory, and… it did make sense.
“Ah! Brother Huang’s words have cleared Zhou’s mental block!” Zhou Wu suddenly understood and praised loudly, “The two of you have extraordinary talent; Zhou admires you. If it were left to me alone… I’m afraid I could never have thought of it…”
“Hey, Elder Brother Zhou, you’re too polite; we two brothers just have a little cleverness.” Huang Donglai was modest with his words, but he and Sun Yixie were already beaming with smugness, “In my opinion, right now, we should start with He Da’s case, first question the shop’s staff and manager, and check their kitchen, to see exactly how that ‘Three-Step Soul-Severing’ was put into He Da’s food and drink, and then decide.”
“Oh! Right right.” Zhou Wu, reminded by him, immediately summoned his subordinates and launched further investigation.
Unfortunately, the progress of the matter was not so smooth…
The staff and manager in this inn obviously knew nothing about the poison, no problems were found in the kitchen or the place where water was boiled for tea, and finally Huang Donglai used the silver needles he carried to discover the location of the poison from the teapot in He Da’s room.
According to Huang Donglai’s speculation, the killer either sneaked into He Da’s room to poison it while He Da was away, or went in normally after knocking, and while communicating with He Da, quietly put the poison into the teapot.
In that era, there was no surveillance or anything, so many people came and went in the inn every day, the assistant couldn’t possibly remember everyone, and the guests certainly wouldn’t pay attention to such things, so trying to advance the case through on-site questioning would probably be difficult.
He Da’s lead, for the time being, could be considered broken.
To find out the truth of the whole matter, they still had to circle back… start from the Zeng Residence side.
After Zhou Wu’s repeated requests, Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie finally could not decline, given the face involved, and agreed to delay their journey, spending a few days helping him investigate this case again; but they also made it clear that if after a few days they still couldn’t find any results, they couldn’t stay any longer, after all the Youth Heroes Assembly was also very important.
But, next, another problem was placed before them—to enter the Zeng Residence to investigate the case, they needed an excuse.
With the Zeng family’s power, even Constable Head Zhou Wu going door-to-door to handle business couldn’t just casually enter, let alone Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai, these two busybodies.
Fortunately, Sun Yixie had many crooked ideas, and he quickly thought of a way…
Since you Zeng family feels your place isn’t peaceful due to haunting? Then we’ll pose as Daoists, using the excuse of going door-to-door to perform rituals to exorcise ghosts, and have Zhou Wu be responsible for introductions, sneaking into the Zeng Residence to investigate the case.
He had even thought up a name for Brother Huang, called—Old Immortal Xu Dong.
Chapter 15