Chapter 380

Chapter 380

“Of course not!”

Mr. Tan strongly resisted the official account of the case.

“I was young then, but my uncle truly was a good man.”

“Think about it. How cruel would someone have to be to attack his own family? If my uncle had been that heartless, he would never have given his own child to his younger brother through Adoption merely because his brother had no heir.”

Mr. Tan’s face turned ashen. “My father had doubts, too. He rejected the official conclusion from the beginning and filed several appeals, but every one was denied. With no options left, he emigrated in anger.”

I reminded him, “Mr. Tan, your family could conduct business overseas back then, and your uncle could afford to build an estate. Very few people at the time could have matched that kind of wealth and influence.”

“So the police were unlikely to mishandle your uncle’s case. If they issued that conclusion and repeatedly denied your father’s appeals, they probably had conclusive evidence.”

Seventh Master nodded. “I hadn’t settled in this city when the incident occurred. I only heard about your family’s case from colleagues many years later.”

“As I recall, the official report said your uncle had superstitious tendencies. He firmly believed in attaining immortality and the Dao. He killed his entire family and then himself, intending to take them all with him into immortality. That was the stated motive.”

“Police also found pills he had refined himself in the Basement. Those pills had powerful hallucinogenic effects. Investigators therefore concluded that his obsession with superstition, combined with the hallucinogens, drove him to commit the murders.”

“That’s only what I heard, so the details may be incomplete. As a family member, your father must have told you more. Why don’t you explain the entire incident first?”

Mr. Tan was well mannered and had not interrupted Seventh Master once.

Now he said, “My father told me that my uncle did have religious beliefs. He followed Daoism, but not for his entire life. He only began after his first wife died.”

“His first wife died from an illness after suffering for more than a year. My uncle remained beside her throughout that time. After she passed away, he began following Daoism and became obsessed with attaining immortality. My father admits that much. My uncle often discussed it openly with the family.”

“Later, his second wife, my aunt, developed cancer five years after giving birth to me.”

Mr. Tan sighed. “That drove my uncle even deeper into obsession. He abandoned the family business and shut himself inside the estate, studying ways to attain immortality and the Dao. He wanted to save my aunt.”

“Then, shortly after my sixth birthday, the case occurred.”

“After investigating, police concluded that my uncle had killed the entire family and then committed suicide. The murder weapon was still in his hand and bore only his fingerprints.”

“The motive was exactly what you said: his obsession with attaining immortality and the Dao…”

By that point, I felt the truth was probably exactly what the police had found.

Mr. Tan’s uncle had been obsessed with immortality, the murder weapon bore only his fingerprints, and police had discovered so many pills at the scene.
There seemed to be nothing wrong with the police conclusion…

“I know you must think my uncle was the killer.”

Mr. Tan shook his head. “But there is a major flaw in that conclusion. The greatest problem is that the killer stabbed the victims with his right hand, while my uncle’s dominant hand was his left. He was left-handed.”

“He wrote and ate with his left hand. Why would he suddenly switch to his right while committing murder?”

“Also, my uncle’s body showed no external injuries and contained no fatal toxin. There were hallucinogenic substances in his system, but my father later hired experts to analyze the concentration. It was nowhere near enough to kill him.”

“That means my uncle’s cause of death remains a mystery. Even the police did not know how he died.”

After hearing Mr. Tan’s account, the tragedy truly did seem strange.

Apart from Tan Wannian, every family member had been stabbed by someone wielding the knife in his right hand. The weapon was found in Tan Wannian’s hand and bore only his fingerprints.

Yet Tan Wannian had been left-handed.

“Could the hallucinogens have caused his uncle to use his right hand temporarily…?” I asked Seventh Master.

Seventh Master shook his head. “Unlikely. Assuming Tan Wannian killed them, if he retained enough physical control to murder six people, instinct would still have driven him to use his left hand. If the drug altered even his dominant hand, he could not have remained capable of killing all six.”

“Judging solely from the killer’s dominant hand, Tan Wannian truly seems an unlikely culprit.”

Then Seventh Master asked Mr. Tan, “When police found your uncle’s body, was the knife in his left hand or his right?”

Mr. Tan fell silent for several seconds. “His right hand…”

Seventh Master fell silent as well.

If the knife was in his right hand, Tan Wannian might truly have killed them.

But that created a paradox. If Tan Wannian retained enough motor control to murder six people, he should not have switched dominant hands.

Unless… his body had killed them, but his consciousness had not controlled it at the time.

“There is another detail,” Mr. Tan added. “My uncle left a letter when he died. My father examined the handwriting and confirmed it was his.”

“In the letter, my uncle told my father not to dispose of his body or the bodies of the other six family members under any circumstances. He wanted all seven bodies left in the Basement for seven days.”

“The tone of the letter made the request sound extremely important. He repeated that they absolutely, positively must not handle the bodies.”

A chill ran through me.

Was leaving the bodies untouched supposed to allow them to shed their mortal shells and become immortals…?

If the dominant-hand issue was a flaw in the case, the letter seemed to prove Tan Wannian was the killer.

He must have written it while alive, which meant he already knew the entire family would die.

Seventh Master asked, “Were the bodies… left alone afterward?”

Mr. Tan’s expression grew complicated. “My father wanted to honor my uncle’s final wish. It wasn’t that he believed in those things. He simply wanted to respect the dead.”

“But after the incident, police took the bodies away for autopsies.”

“And… for various reasons, including the case’s connection to feudal superstition, the authorities forcibly cremated the entire family…”