The punishment of the female imperial court

Chapter 266 Testing
The dust outside the wooden door was stirred up by the soles of the boots, and tiny spots of light trembled between the cracks in the door.

Just a door apart.

Yu Qiansi's knuckles turned white as she held the silver dagger in reverse, and the silk wrapped around the hilt soaked her palms with sweat. The man was quite skilled, so she could only wait for the right opportunity.

“Aru, it’s me.”

Bo Yi gently pushed the door open and stood in front of her against the thin sunlight outside.

Yu Qiansi retracted the dagger, turned around calmly and continued to look around the house.

"As soon as I went out this morning, I received news that His Majesty summoned the Wu Ya Guards to the palace to investigate for clues. I only had some free time just now. I heard that you took over Lan Shu's case, so I went to Yizhuang to look for you. Then Zhang Yilun said that you came here."

Thinking back to when I met Zhang Yilun just now, Zhang Yilun didn't look very well.

Seeing that young man during the day always made him feel an uneasy feeling that was hard to ignore. He suppressed the strange feeling when Fang Yilun looked at him just now and asked, "Does this have anything to do with the case?"

"This is Shi Moer's home."

Bo Yi stood there in a daze.

"He's dead," Yu Qiansi pointed at the black stain on the ground and said calmly, "He was hacked to death by someone."

Her slightly drooped eyes concealed the emotions in her eyes, and in the dim and dilapidated room, there was only a cloud of gloom.

After a long while, she seemed to sigh and praise: "Shang Fu is really smart this time. He thought of starting with the burial objects to investigate the Lan family."

Bo Yi understood immediately.

The Lan family suddenly disappeared. Even if they could be broken up into smaller groups, it would naturally cost a lot of money to support so many people. They had been guarding the imperial mausoleum for many years, which was the largest treasure house in the world.

"The things we picked for Shi Moer are all medicinal herbs and gold and silver that can be smelted. Even if he can't find someone to help him smelt them, he only needs to cut a few small pieces for his daily expenses, which is enough. He knows the pros and cons and is not likely to take risks. This must have been done by the Lan family."

He deliberately used the burial objects in the imperial mausoleum to draw the attention of the Dali Temple to Shi Moer.

The dusk climbed up the wall along the window lattice, dyeing the worry in Bo Yi's eyes into a deep pool. He looked at the silver-embroidered Xiezhi beast on Yu Qiansi's red dress, the beast's horn was pressing against her back: "The Lan family is coming for you."

Her fingertips brushed across the ashes on the stove, leaving two finger marks like a book of life and death drawn by a judge's pen: "Shang Fu said that when he came, the person had been dead for several days. That's why Zhang Yilun was needed to perform an autopsy."

He loved his daughter so much that he was willing to rob the imperial tomb for her. But the first thing he did when he returned to Beijing was not to take his daughter to Yuli Pavilion. I guess something happened to his daughter after he came back.

But according to the investigation records of the Dali Temple, the neighbors only knew that Shi Moer had gone on a long journey half a month ago and left some loose change to the neighbor aunt, asking her to help take care of her daughter.

"They used his daughter as bait." Yu Qiansi picked up the root-carved hare with a silver dagger, and bloodshot eyes condensed in his glass eyes. "The neighbors said that his daughter disappeared on the day Shi Moer returned home."

After that, no one saw Shi Moer again.

Unexpectedly, a few days ago, a foul smell came from the Shi family's dilapidated house, and no one answered the door. They were planning to find the Fang Zheng to take charge and search for the source of the stench in the dilapidated house. The people from the Dali Temple happened to find Fang Zheng with a search warrant.

His daughter had an accident half a month ago, and he must have discovered something as soon as he got home, so he didn't make it public. But for some reason, he was killed a few days ago.

"I checked him carefully at the charity cemetery just now. Apart from those knife wounds that seemed to be caused by him to vent his anger, there were no other wounds on his body. And the clothes he was wearing were still a set of newly cut coarse linen clothes. It was as if someone deliberately wiped out all the traces of his injuries in the past half month."

It is unknown what he went through during this period.

It is even more puzzling that an illiterate person left behind the word "corpse" before dying.

"Aru." Bo Yi's Adam's apple moved slightly: "I have something important to tell you." The sound of clappers came from outside the alley, and people who were leaving the work force rushed by like a school of migrating fish. Yu Qiansi raised his hand to interrupt him: "This is not the place to talk."

Bo Yi breathed a sigh of relief.

The golden chi pendant representing the Wuyawei's identity swayed lightly on the belt like a hanging bell. Since the day at the imperial mausoleum, there have always been other people and other things between them, just like the steaming atractylodes smoke that Zhang Yilun burned at the entrance of the charity cemetery, the silence was so thick that it was disturbing.

He still owed her an explanation.

He didn't want to create a rift between him and her.

Dusk was creeping over along Suzaku Street, twisting the two people's shadows on the blue brick ground into a hemp rope.

Craftsmen returning home passed upstream with bamboo baskets on their backs, their coarse linen fabrics brushing against the corners of Yu Qiansi's red robe. A dough seller pushed a wheelbarrow and shouted past, the aroma of melted maltose wrapped around the ambergris escaping from her sleeves. Several women carrying vegetable baskets looked back frequently, whispering to these two wealthy people who were out of place in the narrow and poor alley.

Bo Yi was ordered to enter the palace today to interrogate the people involved in the court meeting, but he could only check the body outside the palace.

The saint's suspicion grew like a wild vine.

Boyi in front stopped, and Yu Qiansi came to her senses when she stopped walking on the dead leaves on the ground. They were already standing under the mottled ochre wall of Yinlong Temple. The broken eaves cut the twilight into jagged shapes, and the sound of copper bells wrapped in old incense ash fell on her shoulders.

"Why are you here?"

She thought she would go to that tea break.

Bo Yi: "The tea break is the property of the Feng family."

The Feng family is now ready to make a move. If the interests of the Lan family were known, there is no guarantee that they would not have some evil intentions.

Yu Qiansi understood, and the two of them walked along the familiar path in the bamboo forest, pushed open the now-abandoned gate, stood in the dilapidated courtyard, and looked at each other in silence for a moment.

"I still remember the first time I met Master Jikong, I was disdainful and wanted to see if this man was just being mysterious. But the master said that I was the son of an old friend and he hoped that I could let go of the past and look forward."

Yu Qiansi frowned slightly, her fingertips brushing across the faded flying fairy paintings on the corridor pillars, where the patterns of the necklaces were still embedded with blackened blood scabs - it was as if that day, the roses in the courtyard were dyeing the summer into a cinnabar pool.

Even more colorful than the bloodstains all over the yard.

Yu Qiansi turned around, lifted the corner of her robe and sat on the cracked stone steps, looking at the corner that was once planted with purple lilies and yellow lilies. The charred dead branches looked very much like the finger bones described in the autopsy book.

Jikong's joke from that year still rings in my ears: "Is its effort a coincidence, or is it a destiny?"

"Is there anything unusual in the palace?" She pulled out a dagger and scratched it casually on the bricks, making a harsh sound.

It seems that only in this way can she calm down.

Bo Yi was slightly stunned. It turned out that she wanted to talk about the case.

He pursed his lips and said, "We carefully checked all the furnishings and everyone in the hall, and there was nothing unusual."

Rotten leaves swirled between the two of them.

Yu Qiansi hesitated and said, "So Lan Shu suffocated himself to death in front of everyone?"

Bo Yi also felt that this matter was too outrageous. He hesitated for a long time before saying, "Maybe I missed something. It would be better if you could go to the palace and investigate it yourself."

Yu Qiansi stood up and looked at him inquiringly: "Bo Yi, do you really trust the master in the Mingtang completely?"