Chapter 71

Chapter 71

“And who might you be? How dare you speak so rudely to Lord Ren?”

Seeing Xia Ximo force her way in despite their attempts to stop her-and then say such a thing to Ren Fengjue-Guan Yue immediately stepped forward, intending to defend Lord Ren’s official dignity.

But Yu Lang, standing beside him, was quick-eyed and quick-handed enough to pull him back. “Ah? Director Guan, a word in private.”

Guan Yue was dragged several steps backward by his strength, utterly baffled.

“What is the meaning of this, Vice Minister Yu?”

Yu Lang immediately leaned close to his ear and whispered, “This young lady and Lord Ren… well, you know. Their relationship is not exactly ordinary.”

Guan Yue’s thick brows, which had nearly shot upright, instantly settled back into place. He lowered his voice as well and asked, “So the rumors that His Lordship is hiding a beauty in his residence are actually true?”

“…”

Yu Lang did not dare answer. He could only furrow his brows and shoot him a meaningful look.

Guan Yue, however, sank even deeper into his own conjectures, unable to extricate himself.

Hah! Then this was almost certainly true.

On the other side, Ren Fengjue was somewhat surprised by Xia Ximo’s arrival.

His mind had always been quick. Connecting cause and effect, he more or less understood what had happened.

But perhaps he was still brooding over her remark about him being “someone irrelevant.”

His expression remained calm, yet he deliberately asked, “What? Has Miss Xia come to help me solve the case?”

To be honest, Xia Ximo also felt a faint strangeness in her heart.

Since entering the mortal world, she had rarely paid attention to human emotions.

Even she herself was always still and untroubled, neither sorrowful nor joyful.

But now, she could actually sense the subtle shifts in this man’s mood.

That was not a good sign.

“Do you not need me to?”

Xia Ximo asked him in return. Though the words were phrased as a question, her tone was entirely certain.

At that, a smile instead appeared on Ren Fengjue’s face.

To Guan Yue, watching from not far away, that faint smile was an earth-shattering discovery. He lightly bumped Vice Minister Yu’s arm.

“Did you see that? Lord Ren smiled at her…”

Yu Lang: “…”

Under the steward’s guidance, the group began heading toward Zheng Daoyuan’s study.

Ren Fengjue led the way, with Xia Ximo behind him on the left and Yan Zhengchu behind him on the right.

Farther back were Yu Lang and Guan Yue.

The study was not far from the main hall. They only needed to pass through a long corridor and cross a courtyard.

Ren Fengjue observed the layout as they walked.

In front of the study door, he saw the “small room” the servant had mentioned. It faced the study entrance directly, and also faced the window.

In other words, whether someone had come by or any movement had occurred inside the room, the person in the small room would have been able to see everything clearly.

Last night, if they ruled out the possibility that the servant had neglected his duties, then the only one capable of killing in such a silent and unseen manner could only be…

Zheng Daoyuan’s body had already been examined by a coroner.

The old coroner’s surname was Dong, and he was one of the foremost figures in his profession.

Yet even when faced with this corpse, he was completely at a loss.

Aside from the distinctive sign of “bleeding from the seven orifices,” there was no way to determine the cause of death.

There were no external wounds, it was not poisoning, and there were not even any obvious signs of illness in the body.

The only thing that fit was natural death from old age.

But Zheng Daoyuan had only just reached the age of forty.

Most importantly, the characteristics of this corpse were exactly the same as those of the body found yesterday at the Zhou Residence by East Market Street.

After hearing the old coroner’s explanation, Ren Fengjue subconsciously looked toward Xia Ximo beside him.

He saw her standing before the desk, staring at the corpse, without the slightest trace of fear on her face.

Seeing this, Guan Yue, off to the side, choked slightly as well.
He thought to himself that she truly deserved to be the woman Lord Ren had hidden away in his residence. To think she had such nerve.

Xia Ximo stroked the Soul-Ferrying Lantern and asked in a low voice, “Do you sense it?”

Wuyou replied, “This time, a little…”

“Where?”

“Behind… that folding screen.”

The study was actually quite spacious, divided into an outer room and an inner room.

The outer room was used for reading, writing, and handling official business.

Inside was also a small sleeping chamber, its doorway just concealed by a six-panel lacquered sandalwood screen, making it rather hidden from view.

Xia Ximo was just about to go over when she sensed a gaze on her. She stopped and turned back, meeting Ren Fengjue’s eyes.

Her thin lips parted slightly. “Don’t come too close.”

Ren Fengjue immediately understood what she meant and withdrew from the room of his own accord.

Seeing this, Guan Yue was quietly startled, but he followed Lord Ren out as well.

Yan Zhengchu, however, had not entered the room. At this moment, he was standing in the courtyard, holding a compass and gesturing with it.

All of a sudden, he cried, “Aiya!” and looked up toward the roof. Then, with a light leap, he sprang up onto it.

Guan Yue stood at the doorway and glanced inside and out several times. Aside from confusion, suspicion also filled his heart.

But seeing Lord Ren looking completely unruffled, he could hardly speak up to ask too many questions.

So he could only quietly move over to Yu Lang and signal with his eyes, asking, “Vice Minister Yu, are those two reliable?”

Yu Lang had somehow produced a folding fan from somewhere. He gave it a pretentious little wave and answered in a low voice, “To be honest, I’m curious too…”

“I feel like… after that trip I took to Xiling County, I missed out on quite a few interesting things.”

Instead, he asked Guan Yue, “I heard His Lordship recently solved a case involving a rotting corpse in a brothel, and in the end, the killer died by decapitation. Do you know anything about that?”

Guan Yue nodded. “That matter was strange too, now that you mention it.”

With that, the two of them began whispering back and forth.

Xia Ximo went around the screen and entered the small sleeping chamber inside the study. Sure enough, she saw a blurry black shadow huddled in the corner.

“Don’t go over yet.”

Wuyou spoke up in warning. “That’s only one Po of the deceased.”

Among the Three Hun and Seven Po, the Seven Po corresponded respectively to a person’s joy, anger, sorrow, happiness, fear, love, hatred, and desire.

Logically speaking, after a person died and became a ghost, as long as they had not lingered in the mortal world for too long and had suffered no outside interference, the Three Hun and Seven Po should still remain as one.

Why this single Po had separated, and why it had been left behind here, was rather puzzling.

Wuyou could not help emerging from the Soul-Ferrying Lantern and slowly approached the black shadow.

Disturbed, the black shadow shrank even farther into the corner…

After pondering for a while, Wuyou speculated, “This Po was probably frightened out of him.”

It corresponded to “fear.”

It should have been caused by Zheng Daoyuan suffering an extreme fright just before his death.

Xia Ximo knew that a Po was an even lower form of spirit than a scattered soul. Not only did it lack consciousness, it could not even take shape, and it was even harder for it to remain in the human world for long.

“Is there a way to preserve it for now?”

Wuyou said, “We can take it into the lantern first, but how long it can last there is hard to say.”

Xia Ximo made the decision at once. “Take it. We’ll ask that Taoist priest about it later.”

At her words, Wuyou immediately turned into a streak of white shadow, swept up the remnant silhouette in the corner, and vanished with it into the Soul-Ferrying Lantern.

Yet just then, a faint rustling came from a storage chest nearby, as if some living thing were hidden inside.

Hearing the movement, Xia Ximo immediately swept her gaze toward it.

“Come out.”

The next second, the storage chest was cautiously pushed open from the inside, revealing the face of a young man, who stared blankly at everything around him.