Chapter 158

Chapter 158

The two of them hurried upstairs, just in time to run into Ren Fengjue, who was staying in the room next door, as he pushed open his door and stepped out as well.

“What happened?”

Everyone looked toward Yu Lang’s room at once. The door was wide open, and the waiter lay collapsed on the floor. The candle lamp in his hand had rolled all the way to the doorway.

Yan Zhengchu was the first to rush inside.

He bent down to check on him, only to find the waiter with his mouth agape and his eyes wide open. The terror on his face had yet to fade, but he had already breathed his last.

Yu Lang and Ren Fengjue, who followed in behind him, understood with a single glance.

He was dead.

And in all likelihood, he had been frightened to death.

But so little time had passed. How could something like this have happened?

Yu Lang’s feelings were complicated. He hesitated, then said, “This…”

Ren Fengjue did not know the whole story, but he could still sense the guilt Yu Lang was showing.

He reached out and patted Yu Lang on the shoulder, signaling that they should deal with the matter at hand first. Then he lit the candles in the room and began examining the scene.

However, after the two of them searched carefully, they found not the slightest clue.

Yu Lang told Ren Fengjue what had just happened downstairs.

What he could be certain of was that, aside from the waiter collapsed on the floor and the fallen candle lamp, everything in the room remained exactly as it had been before he left.

In other words, the waiter had only just entered the room before something scared him to death.

He had not even had time to let out a scream.

Could it have been the work of a ghost?

Yu Lang could not help calling to Yan Zhengchu. “Daoist Yan, this inn…”

Yan Zhengchu naturally knew what he wanted to ask. With a grave expression, he replied, “There are no traces of a ghost in this room.”

Not only that, but the Soul-Gathering Spell he had just cast had also failed on this corpse.

Had the waiter’s soul already left his body?

But in such a short span of time, how could it have left no trace at all?

“It wasn’t a ghost?” Yu Lang grew even more puzzled. “Then what frightened him to death?”

For a moment, Yan Zhengchu truly had no answer.

The whole matter was rather uncanny, yet the entire inn was very “clean.” There was nothing unusual about it at all.

Ren Fengjue examined the corpse again in broad strokes. Judging from the expression on the waiter’s face, it did indeed look as though he had suffered an extreme fright.

However, for some unknown reason, there were several drops of unidentified mucus inside the dead man’s mouth. It looked rather suspicious.

Ren Fengjue knew that a surface judgment was not necessarily accurate, so he said, “He may not necessarily have been frightened to death. In a situation like this, we may need an autopsy as soon as possible.”

Yan Zhengchu was familiar with the local situation, and he could not help looking troubled.

“Yunxia Town is too remote. The town yamen doesn’t have a coroner. If we want one sent down from the county yamen, I’m afraid we’ll have to wait quite a few days.”

Ren Fengjue had naturally taken that into consideration as well and was just about to call for Axia to make the trip when Yu Lang spoke first. “I’ll go to the county yamen right now. Before daybreak, I’ll bring the coroner here.”

With the Junior Minister of Dali Temple personally stepping in, it would certainly be faster than reporting the case through ordinary channels.

Ren Fengjue also felt that it was just right for him to handle it, so he said, “Take Axia with you.”

Yu Lang agreed, immediately put on his clothes and boots, and left. Together with Axia, he went downstairs.

Now that something like this had happened, the innkeeper was pacing anxiously in the corridor as well.

Seeing the innkeeper hovering by the door, Ren Fengjue took the initiative to step out and reassure him.

He knew that after this incident, the inn would definitely have trouble doing business for a while, so he immediately handed over an extra ingot of gold and instructed him not to take in any guests for the time being.

The moment the innkeeper saw the gold, the worry vanished from his face. He thanked Ren Fengjue repeatedly, but still could not help asking, “But how did my man die when he was perfectly fine?”

Ren Fengjue said, “The cause is not yet known, but we will begin investigating. You need not worry.”

The innkeeper had already heard them mention the county yamen earlier, and now that Ren Fengjue said they would get to the bottom of it, he felt reassured and asked no more questions.
When Ren Fengjue turned back again, he found that Xia Ximo had appeared at the doorway at some point.

“Someone died again?” she asked, her tone so flat it was as if she were asking about the weather.

“…”

That word “again” made Ren Fengjue instinctively rub both temples before he explained, “A waiter from the inn went to Yu Lang’s room to catch a bug and died for no apparent reason…”

“A bug?”

The two of them repeated the word almost in unison.

Ren Fengjue thought of the strange mucus in the waiter’s mouth, and a bad feeling suddenly rose in him.

Could the waiter’s death have something to do with the bug?

He went back into the room and asked Yan Zhengchu, “Daoist Yan, when you came into the room earlier, did you see any bugs?”

Yan Zhengchu was clearly puzzled. “No.”

When Yu Lang said there was a bug in the room, he had not paid much attention to it at all…

This small town was surrounded by mountains on all sides, with a humid climate and lush vegetation. Even if there were bugs around, it would not be anything strange.

Ren Fengjue picked up the candle lamp and shone it around again, not even sparing the bedding Yu Lang had lain on.

But in the end, he still found nothing.

Yan Zhengchu could not help asking, “Does the Young Marquis suspect the waiter’s death has something to do with the bug?”

Ren Fengjue took the candle lamp back to the corpse and held it closer.

At that look, he was even more startled.

In less than half a quarter of an hour, the corpse had already begun to change.

The entire body was not the ghastly pale color of blood loss, but had taken on an eerie bluish tint.

The skin was blue-tinged, the lips were blue-tinged, and even the fingernails had turned dark purple-blue.

More terrifying still, those dilated, unfocused eyes were actually glimmering with a blue light.

Ren Fengjue had seen his share of corpses with bizarre causes of death, but this was the first time he had encountered one so strange, with postmortem changes occurring so quickly.

He brought the lamp even closer and shone it into the corpse’s mouth. His brows immediately furrowed.

There was more mucus than before.

And a fishy stench had begun to seep from it.

Yan Zhengchu instantly realized something was wrong. In that moment, an ominous premonition swept over him, and his heart pounded like thunder.

He said to Ren Fengjue, “Young Marquis, I’m afraid something has already happened in this town…”

“What do you mean?”

Yan Zhengchu let out a breath, then told him everything he had seen and heard at the money house, as well as the strange circumstances at Miss Qiao’s home.

After hearing it, Ren Fengjue also realized the gravity of the situation.

Whether this was a plague or not, once it spread, there would absolutely be heavy casualties.

So they had to find the source as soon as possible, and determine whether someone was manipulating things behind the scenes.

“Daoist Yan, I’m afraid you’ll have to make another trip to Miss Qiao’s home to see what’s going on.”

Ren Fengjue instructed, “There must be something strange about her household. We have to get to the bottom of it and question them thoroughly.”

Yan Zhengchu was anxious about it as well.

After all, he had grown up on Mount Yunhe. Whenever the holidays came and supplies needed to be purchased, they relied entirely on this small town at the foot of the mountain.

“Don’t worry. I’ll go right now.”

Ren Fengjue glanced at the corpse in the room. After a moment’s thought, he picked up the blanket from the couch and covered it.

He walked out of the room and closed the door behind him. Seeing that Xia Ximo was still standing in the corridor, he asked her, “I need to go to the town magistrate’s office immediately. Will you be all right alone at the inn…?”

Xia Ximo gave him a faint glance and did not answer right away.

Ren Fengjue then realized his concern seemed somewhat unnecessary…

“Mm… Then I’ll go first.”

He turned to leave, only to hear her reply behind him: “I’ll go with you.”