Zhongsun Mou asked him, "And what about you?"
"I intend to look around nearby for more clues and see if there are any suspicious individuals," He Lingchuan replied. "How about this division of labor? You pursue the killer, and I'll pursue Mr. Mai."
Zhongsun Mou gave a cold snort. Raising no objection, he pushed the door open and headed outside.
Yet before he had taken more than two steps, he held out a hand toward He Lingchuan. "Hand it over."
"What?"
"The object you took from the curio shelf," Zhongsun Mou said. "I am taking it back to examine with the rest."
He Lingchuan fished out the ivory sphere and rolled it around his palm a few times, looking hesitant.
In the end, however, he handed it over.
Zhongsun Mou took it, utterly failing to notice a tiny spider passed along by He Lingchuan that quietly crawled into his sleeve.
Upon returning to the courtyard, a guard stepped forward and whispered a few words to him. Zhongsun Mou cast another glance toward the study, then led his subordinates away.
General Ling deliberately made another circuit of the study before coming out to tell He Lingchuan, "That egg-tucking scoundrel used the chance to have his men strip the study bare! Not a single thing is left!"
"They took the vase too?"
"Eh? What vase?"
"Forget it, never mind that." He Lingchuan waved a hand. "Since the fellow departed at his leisure, he likely left no clues behind."
Though Mr. Mai had fled in advance, the study had been kept in neat order, not ransacked in a frantic search.
Just what had tipped him off?
He Lingchuan returned to the key question. "By the way, why did you call him an 'egg-tucking scoundrel,' General Ling?"
"When a jiaoren enters water, they turn back into a fishtail, and on land they split out human legs, but those bits of theirs stay buried deep in their bellies—completely different from us land-dwellers." General Ling bared his teeth in a chuckle. "So isn't he just a creature that hides his eggs and shows his tail?"
He then asked He Lingchuan, "What do we do now?"
Though both were special envoys, He Lingchuan felt far more approachable to him. After traveling together for several days, they had practically slipped into an easy familiarity.
"There are many contradictions in this affair that don't add up." He Lingchuan racked his brains in thought. "Earlier, when Zhongsun Mou heard your name, General, he looked rather anxious. Do you know why?"
General Ling shook his head. "How would I know what he's thinking? But he's hardly the only one who gets annoyed the moment they see me."
True enough. Given this old goat's temper, he was a thorn in the side of plenty of people.
He Lingchuan walked back into the study, drew a mirror from his breast pocket, and shone it in every direction.
Seeing it, General Ling immediately said, "That mirror of yours is a fine magic artifact."
"You recognize it?"
"Those patterns on it... hmm, they look unique to an immortal sect from the Middle Ancient Era." General Ling pondered for a good while. "Where was it I saw them before? Bah, can't remember."
He Lingchuan was slightly startled. Remembering that the soul-snatching mirror had shady origins and seemed connected to Lingxu City, he realized he could not casually display it in Beijia Kingdom.
Keeping his expression calm, he said, "It's a replica."
After sweeping the room, the soul-snatching mirror relayed its feedback: "No eavesdropping abilities or surveillance items remain."
The mirror was indeed a superb counter-surveillance tool.
Just as General Ling had said, the study had been practically emptied. The bookcase was gone entirely, the curio shelf had survived only because it had held so few items to begin with, and the desk drawers were hollowed out. Most likely, Zhongsun Mou's subordinates had lacked enough storage capacity to take such a massive desk.
He Lingchuan specifically looked where the vase had once stood. Yep, empty.
Only a ring of dust remained on the floor.
Was Lord Zhongsun born under the sign of the locust?
He Lingchuan had the two wind-boring beast guards stand watch outside the door, then drew several scrolls from his storage ring and set them on the desk.
General Ling asked in surprise, "Where did those come from?"
"They were inside the vase on the curio shelf." He Lingchuan rubbed his hands together. "I was just about to search the shelf when Zhongsun Mou barged in."
Jiao Yu was curious as well. "Why take only these scrolls?"
"The vase was tucked away in the darkest corner, covered in dust, but these scrolls... strictly speaking, the roller knob on this particular one was smooth as new, without a speck of dust." There were three scrolls in total, and since he had grabbed them together in one swoop, it saved doing it twice. He Lingchuan untied the cord and slowly unrolled it. "Which means Mr. Mai opened it frequently."
The scroll was not large, measuring only about two square feet.
It was a painting, but instead of the usual birds, flowers, insects, fish, or pine-covered crags, it depicted a round, lidless jar.
Moreover, the jar seemed transparent, revealing a red jade archer's ring, several booklets, and a few round spheres within.
Red spheres.
Why would anyone paint such things?
The more General Ling looked at the spheres, the more familiar they seemed. "Those balls look quite a lot like blood beads."
He Lingchuan, however, looked at the red seal by the painting's edge.
Truth be told, it looked less like a seal and more like a painted talisman.
He gently pressed against the surface of the painting.
Every inch had the soft texture of paper, except—
Except for the jar in the painting.
Both the tiger and the goat let out a gasp of surprise.
The moment He Lingchuan moved his hand over the jar, it sank right in.
Inside the painting, an extra hand appeared, hovering directly above the jar.
It was rendered quite realistically, too.
"There's a whole world inside this painting." He Lingchuan simply reached all the way in and scooped out all the red spheres from the jar.
When he pulled his hand back out of the painting, everyone looked: several crimson beads lay resting in his palm.
"They really are blood beads!" General Ling could never mistake that scent. "What in the world are these things used for?"
Jiao Yu said, "Pull that booklet out to look at, too."
He Lingchuan retrieved the booklet and flipped it open, only to find line after line of entries detailing the year, month, and day, how many pulp beads had been collected, and where they were gathered from.
"It's an account book."
He Lingchuan flipped toward the back, finding every page filled, without a single blank sheet.
"The ink is somewhat faded. These are all old ledgers."
Jiao Yu drew in a sharp breath. "They slaughtered this many demon citizens?!" A cursory look showed that just one ledger recorded the hunts of over two hundred demons, and there were seven full booklets here.
That was a tragic history of at least fourteen or fifteen hundred demons.
Although Beijia was known as a demon kingdom, its demon population numbered less than a tenth of its humans. For well over a thousand demons to vanish without a trace made even Jiao Yu's heart ache.
General Ling pulled out one booklet with his teeth. "This one is new."
He Lingchuan opened it. Sure enough, the ink was very fresh, and the latest entry prominently read: "Mount Niutou, wind-boring beasts, two beads."
Judging by the date and location of the hunt, this was the record of General Ling's juniors being murdered.
General Ling muttered a curse, then exclaimed, "How could it only be two beads!"
He Lingchuan gave him a sidelong look. "Isn't your focus a bit misplaced?"
"Those juniors of mine were bursting with vitality and blood, robust and in their prime! How could seven or eight of them yield only two red beads? Even a few from that useless, frail nest of porcupine demons could produce a blood bead!" Reaching this point, General Ling paused. "What were they called again—pulp beads or blood beads?"
"It's written as 'pulp beads' here," He Lingchuan said, recalling the detail. "Master Wan called them blood beads."
Naturally, Mr. Mai's record was the definitive one.
Yet although General Ling's complaint was bizarre, it made sense. Could the ledger have recorded it wrong?
Though He Lingchuan had never met Mr. Mai, he judged him to be a cautious individual; otherwise, he wouldn't have fled at the first sign of wind, staying one step ahead of both him and Zhongsun Mou.
Would such a cautious person make a mistake regarding his core business?
If he had not recorded it wrong, could Master Wan have pocketed the extra blood beads for himself?
He Lingchuan then took out the red jade archer's ring.
The jade was of fine quality, covered in minute lines that looked like capillaries. However, it was not a storage ring, just an ordinary archer's ring meant for display.
General Ling instinctively extended his tongue and licked the scroll—a habit goats had whenever encountering paper or grass.
Yet something on the painting actually came off on his tongue.
The bright-red seal mark.
"Eh?"
He Lingchuan picked up the seal mark and found it was a layer of parchment-like paper, tough and pliable, resistant to tearing.
This thing was movable, detachable?
He pressed his hand against the painting once more.
It was solid. The painting was just a painting now; the miniature space within had vanished.
The remaining items in the painting froze in place, turning into an ordinary still life.
So things inside the painting could become real all thanks to this strange red seal mark?
He Lingchuan examined it closely. Written upon the seal were the two characters "Baozhen"—meaning "Preserve Authenticity"—in the ancient immortal language.
He stuck the seal mark back on, and the items inside the painting could be retrieved once more.
Now this was interesting.
He Lingchuan casually grabbed another sheet of paper, drew a sketch of a chick pecking at rice, and slapped the seal mark onto it.
Could the chick be pulled out?
Experiment proved it could not.
A painting was just a painting; things drawn onto it could not be "taken out."
Yet they had clearly pulled out the red beads and the account books.
A thought struck He Lingchuan. He went to the kitchen, grabbed a handful of rice, and returned to press it against the drawing.
The grains of rice vanished in an instant.
One human and two demons peered closely: all around the chick in the sketch, a scattering of rice grains had appeared out of nowhere.
Before He Lingchuan could reach out, a caramel-striped tiger paw reached in from the side, pawing and digging inside the painting.
The human and the goat watched as a tiger's paw materialized within the drawing, swatting and scraping at the crudely sketched chick.
When Jiao Yu pulled his forepaw back out, a dozen or so grains of rice were indeed resting on his paw pads.
"So only outside objects can be placed inside and taken out." He Lingchuan peeled off the red seal. "Tear this thing off, and everything is sealed inside. Fascinating."
Even in this era of waning magic, there were still many bizarre little curiosities.
Returning to the matter at hand, their focus shifted back to the ledgers.
Jiao Yu widened his tiger eyes as he skimmed through them, suddenly noting, "These ledgers have times, quantities, and harvesting locations, but no delivery locations."
"Good eye, Lord Jiao! That's because delivery locations don't need to be recorded." He Lingchuan understood after a single glance. "In other words, they only conducted transactions here."
Jiao Yu found it hard to believe. "Could there be only a single team hunting demon beasts?" Otherwise, the ledgers should have recorded the different teams.
"They must possess an extraordinary magic artifact in their hands." Only then could they roam across the entirety of Chiyan Kingdom to commit their crimes in such short periods.
General Ling was stunned as well. "That can't be right, can it? Didn't that old caretaker say people frequently came looking for Mr. Mai?"
"Perhaps that was a cover?" He Lingchuan mused. "Mr. Mai conducts ordinary business as well."
With that, he instructed the two demons, "Do not share this intelligence with Zhongsun Mou for now. I can't shake the feeling that his sudden appearance here is far too suspicious."
Chapter 460