Analysis

Hongfeng was Xu Deye’s older sister, a servant who worked directly for Ye Nan, a pretty and kind lady who got along with everyone in the Sanctum.

And Zhuang Qingyu knew her too.

That sounded reasonable, since Zhuang Qingyu was best friends with the victim and had been friends for nearly a decade, so Zhuang Qingyu must have visited the Sanctum very often. Given how familiar Zhuang Qingyu seemed with the grounds, he must have come here more than just once or twice.

The Night Sanctum was where Liao Xingjian lived and it was also Ye Nan’s home. It made sense for Zhuang Qingyu to know Ye Nan, and it also made sense for him to know the servant who was constantly with Ye Nan.

But to help her…

Song Caitang looked at Dong Xin with a flicker in her eyes. “They were… very close?”

“I don’t think so…” Dong Xin shook her head. “I think Hall Master Xin was closer to Sister Hongfeng than Pavilion Master Zhuang.”

Hall Master Xin…

“Xin Yongwang?”

Dong Xin nodded. “Uh huh. Sister Hongfeng seemed to really like Hall Master Xin and always talked to him. Hall Master Xin never rejected her and he would do anything she asked him to do with enthusiasm. At one time, there was a rumor among the servants that they would get together soon.”

Song Caitang narrowed her eyes slightly. What was this Xin Yongwang trying to do?

She didn’t say anything, so Zhao Zhi cut in, “You said that Hongfeng died rescuing her employer. How did that happen?”

Dong Xin was a little afraid of Zhao Zhi, so she kept her head down and spoke very softly. “There was one time when Young Mistress and Mr. Liao left to attend to some matters and they ran into some enemies. It was very dangerous, plus it was summer and it rained heavily for many days, so there was a huge flood… Sister Hongfeng died to save Young Mistress.”

“At which point did she die?” Zhao Zhi’s voice sounded threatening even as it blended into the night sky. “Was it during their fight with the enemies or when the flood hit?”

Dong Xin froze, then shook her head. “I don’t… don’t know.”

“The others who went on that trip didn’t mention it? And your lover’s family didn’t ask?”

Dong Xin’s face was all red, as though she was filled with nothing but shame and guilt. “The servants closest to Young Mistress and Mr. Liao who went along all died, and those who weren’t close didn’t know what happened, so they don’t have any details… The Xu… family… Young Mistress had apologized gravely to them before, so…”

There was no need to finish the sentence. They all knew what she was trying to say.

The girl had died, so instead of focusing on her cause of death and all that, why not exchange it for greater benefits? There was nothing better than a promise from the Young Mistress of the Night Sanctum to treat the family better from now on.

So, even though the details of Hongfeng’s death were not clearly stated and it was sad that she had passed on, Ye Nan had already stated her position and apologized, and Xu Deye and his family had accepted it without objection. Both sides had reached an agreement, so they did not ask any further questions about the matter.

Song Caitang and Zhao Zhi exchanged glances.

Hidden details were their worst enemy. If Hongfeng had lost her life while bravely saving the people she served, why weren’t the details made public to everyone? Why wasn’t she thanked and praised and honored? Why was it kept so vague, which allowed everyone to imagine the worst possible scenario?

This sounded fishy.

Song Caitang asked, “What about her body? Were there wounds on her body when they found her?”

Dong Xin shook her head. “There is no body… When Young Mistress and the rest returned, they just said that Sister Hongfeng had died and they hadn’t been able to retrieve her body in time.” At this point, a thought suddenly struck Dong Xin and she weakly suggested, “So, she probably died in the flood?”

After all, if they were only engaged in a battle with enemies, they could return to retrieve the body after the fight was over. But natural disasters were merciless. It was hard enough to escape in time and save your own life, never mind find the energy to hang on to a dead body.

Zhao Zhi said, “The Sanctum ran into two troubles at the same time, so the sect must have lost a lot of people.”

Dong Xin paused to think, then said, “I think we were okay… back then, Young Mistress and Mr. Liao came back looking pretty good and weren’t really injured. The rest didn’t look severely injured either…”

As she spoke, she became more and more afraid.

At first, this important female guest was here just to investigate Liao Xingjian’s death. But after that, her Young Mistress was found hanging by a noose and now, she and her friend were asking so many questions about Hongfeng…

Dong Xin pursed her lips and didn’t dare to speak too much. “I really don’t know anymore than this… I’m on morning duty tomorrow and I really can’t stay awake anymore, Miss Song…”

She looked up at Song Caitang with a pleading look. Song Caitang was done with her questions and had gotten the answers she wanted, so she dismissed Dong Xin with a wave.

After that, Song Caitang turned and started walking.

Zhao Zhi was confused. “Where are you going?”

“Back to my room.” Song Caitang didn’t understand why he was even asking. Where else would she be going at this hour? “You come along too.”

Zhao Zhi stared intently at her. “You’re going the wrong way, then.

“Huh?”

“Your room is THIS way.” Zhao Zhi pointed in the opposite direction.

Song Caitang blushed instantly. Crap, I got it wrong again.

But she was able to get over it quickly and shifted the topic back to the case.

“You think Hongfeng is an important character in this case too, right?”

Zhao Zhi looked down at her, his lips slightly upturned in an amused smile.

Song Caitang gave him her straightest face. She looked especially solemn and serious, as though it was extremely inappropriate for him to make any jokes right now.

Zhao Zhi rubbed the corner of his lips with a hand and did his best to wipe the smile off his face. He cleared his throat and tried to consider her feelings as he nodded gravely, “Indeed.”

Song Caitang glared at him.

She had already noticed that smile on his face.

Forget it.

She looked away from Zhao Zhi and looked carefully at where she was walking. “Regardless of whether there’s more to Hongfeng’s death or not, dealing with it like that would make it easy for anyone to imagine the worst. Those concerned for Hongfeng would definitely have some ideas about her death…”

They continued to chat until they arrived back at Song Caitang’s residence.

Inside the study, one candle’s flame flickered in the wind. The fragrance of a small and delicately made snack hit their noses, while a freshly brewed pot of tea was at the right temperature.

Guan Wan probably prepared all this after she came back.

Song Caitang smiled as she looked toward the bedroom next to hers, which was already dark.

The little girl wasn’t just cute. She was so sweet too.

“Take a seat.” She led Zhao Zhi into the room and invited him to sit down.

Zhao Zhi’s expression froze for a moment.

All this time, he had only come up to the outside of Song Caitang since he happened to have the time, and chatted with her since it was convenient. But he had never actually entered the room and this was the first time he was officially invited in… There was something very novel about this to him.

Then again, it had never really been a case of “he happened to have the time” or “it happened to be convenient”. He had subconsciously wanted to do it, so he had also subconsciously found a good reason for doing it. His heart started pounding, so he picked a seat that was a little far from Song Caitang. He didn’t dare to look at her, but he also… couldn’t resist taking a peek.

The candlelight illuminated Song Caitang’s seat and gave her a faint glow, which reduced her bold aura and made her seem gentler.

The sky was dark and the room was silent, so the warmth of her body and the sound of her breathing became especially obvious. Even the shadow of her hairpin swaying slightly seemed hypnotizing.

Zhao Zhi gripped his teacup tightly and downed several cups at once.

“Are you very thirsty?” Song Caitang noticed and picked up the teapot to refill his cup.

Seeing her slim and fair fingers in front of him made his heart pound even faster. He forced himself to look away and started the conversation first, “You still want to talk about the case?”

“Yep,” Song Caitang nodded, “This whole thing about Hongfeng makes me feel like something’s amiss.”

The two of them always worked well together when it came to solving cases and they often thought of the same thing at the same time. Zhao Zhi narrowed his eyes and said what Song Caitang was implying, “The motive for killing.”

“That’s right.”

Song Caitang pulled out her notes on the case and drew two lines on it. “The relationships between the people involved in this case are now clear. There are probably two directions we could head toward to understand the motive.

Zhao Zhi tapped his fingers lightly against the table and named the suspects, “One is to investigate the most recent suspects, like Xi Rui, Hua Rong, Ye Nan and Xu Deye.”

Song Caitang nodded. “That’s right. All of them have a good reason to kill Liao Xingjian before the wedding. Ye Nan, for example, was bothered by what happened four years ago. She was regretful and guilty and felt like she couldn’t continue this journey with Liao Xingjian, who had gone through the same thing, but she also couldn’t find a good solution. After a period of struggling with her own emotions, she could have decided to kill Liao Xingjian. But that’s a problematic conjecture too. If she had really done it, then when she nearly died earlier, she would have called out Liao Xingjian’s name, not Hongfeng.”

No matter how she thought about it, she felt that Liao Xingjian meant more to Ye Nan than anything else, so she would think of something else that bothered her more only if Liao Xingjian’s death had nothing to do with her.

“Besides, what happened to her earlier wasn’t a suicide attempt. Someone had hung her on that noose.” Song Caitang narrowed her eyes. “So, I think we can rule Ye Nan out.”

Zhao Zhi nodded. He thought the same way as her.

She went on, “Xu Deye is in a rather precarious position. Perhaps he had killed Liao Xingjian because the man had heard what they were doing and he wanted to silence any witnesses. Or maybe he held a grudge ever since his older sister died, suspected Ye Nan and Liao Xingjian of being involved in her death and killed them out of revenge.”

“But if that’s the case, then there are two things that don’t make sense.” Zhao Zhi pointed at Xu Deye’s name on the notes. “Employers don’t particularly care about what goes on between servants, so apologizing and begging for forgiveness would be the correct thing to do. He didn’t have to kill Liao Xingjian. Also, murder committed at the spur of the moment is usually done without much of a plan. But the victim in this case died by poisoning. You found the almonds after dissecting the victim’s body, yet we still haven’t found out where those almonds have come from. The killer clearly had a very well thought out plan and they’ve hidden their tracks well.”

That was the first problem.

As for the second one…

“If he had made some guesses about his sister’s death and wanted to take revenge, why would he choose to do it now?” Zhao Zhi lowered his gaze so his eyelashes cast a faint shadow on his face. “His family was not assured of anything and the sect itself is going through a change of leadership. What good would it do him to kill anybody now?”

The clever way to carry this out would be to make arrangements for his family first, ensure he got sufficient benefits out of a stable situation, silently kill the people he wanted to kill, then make his getaway.

Clearly, neither of these ideas would work out.

Zhao Zhi didn’t think Xu Deye was the killer.

And of course, it wasn’t Dong Xin either.

Song Caitang agreed with him, so she struck off Xu Deye and Dong Xin’s names.

“In that case… Xi Rui.” Song Caitang’s brush stopped at Xi Rui’s name.

“This woman has been playing the ultra devoted role and keeps talking about how her heart is with Liao Xingjian both when he was alive and when he’s dead. But actually, she hasn’t displayed much sadness or grief since Liao Xingjian’s death. Instead, she seems to be even more fired up and has been charging at Ye Nan like a warrior of sorts. She seems very delighted with the chance to take the higher moral ground against Ye Nan…”

It was as though she had been dreaming about doing this for a long time and had to make sure she got the most out of it.

Compared to grieving over Liao Xingjian’s death, berating Ye Nan seemed more important to her.

“I feel like she wouldn’t want to kill Liao Xingjian and Ye Nan. She would enjoy herself more to see Liao Xingjian, and especially Ye Nan, suffer. Besides…” Song Caitang raised an eyebrow as though a thought had struck her, “she seems too engrossed in doing this and doesn’t seem to care about her son.”

“What sort of person would disregard their child and keep thinking about other things, or only care about their personal satisfaction?”

Song Caitang suddenly turned to look at Zhao Zhi intensely, as though there were flames burning in her eyes.

Zhao Zhi seemed to get what she was saying. “You mean..”

They stared at each other with the same look in their eyes.

Something wasn’t right here. There was something VERY wrong about this.

Song Caitang tilted her head slightly as her eyes twinkled intelligently, “I seem to have missed something out… I’d been focusing entirely on the case and overlooked one thing. Xi Rui’s son does look very much like Liao Xingjian, but he doesn’t resemble Xi Rui at all.”

As she spoke, she drew a circle around Xi Rui’s name.

The next name was Hua Rong’s.

“Hua Rong has a crush on Ye Nan but it seems to be nothing more than that. However, the fact that he has a medicinal business is a problem.” Song Caitang asked Zhao Zhi, “What do you think?”

Zhao Zhi shook his head. “He’s not very suspicious. But I think it’ll be good to check if his medicinal business has ever run into some trouble, because someone could make use of such a situation.”

Song Caitang nodded and asked, “Could you help with that?”

Zhao Zhi smiled faintly. “Sure.”

“I’ll leave it to you then.”

Song Caitang left it as that and went on.

“As for the other direction we could look toward for the motive…”

She circled another name. Hongfeng’s.

“Xu Deye would become more suspicious if we go down this direction, but as we analyzed earlier, it’s not very likely to be him.” Song Caitang’s gaze landed on the words “Xin Yongwang”.

“He seems to be very sincere, but I really think his self-proclaimed devotion to Ye Nan doesn’t come from his heart. He seems to be following a plan closely and his gaze is filled with schemes.”

“Either he wants the sect and killed Liao Xingjian in order to take the sect’s successor, Ye Nan, for himself, or Hongfeng was his true love or something and he was taking revenge for her. But…”

“But…” Zhao Zhi finished the thought for her, “if it’s the former, that wouldn’t make sense because he was imprisoned by the Western Xia prince when Liao Xingjian died and couldn’t have killed him, plus he wouldn’t have tried to kill Ye Nan earlier either. If it’s the latter, then he would have to make a lot more preparations for it, so he would need more resources than what he has now.”

His gaze flickered mysteriously as he spoke.

Song Caitang got it immediately. “You mean…”

Zhao Zhi nodded. “Still waters run deep.”

“So, you suspect Zhuang Qingyu.”

Zhuang Qingyu’s role in this entire case was a very strange one. He seemed to have nothing to do with it, yet he was present all the time.

The one who seemed the least suspicious was actually… the most suspicious.

Zhao Zhi looked at her. “What sort of feeling does this case give you?”

“Complex,” Song Caitang paused to think, “Everyone involved seems to be in great pain and makes everyone feel like fate has been terribly unkind to them. As though…”

She suddenly stopped mid-sentence.

“As though?” Zhao Zhi prodded her on.

“As though someone has weaved a huge net. They want everyone caught in it to be in pain all the time. To have trouble sleeping at night, to have trouble eating, to feel tortured, to feel like they can’t get out of this…”

Song Caitang began to understand what Zhao Zhi was driving at as she spoke.

“So, you’re saying that the killer seems to harbor a very deep hatred. They’re not doing it simply for love or money, but there’s a deeper layer of emotion to this.”

Zhao Zhi nodded. “Perhaps they arranged for this Millet’s Dream right from the beginning. Ye Nan and Liao Xingjian were victims of this poison because they had run into trouble when they had to attend to some matters outside the Sanctum. If this was someone’s plan all along, then this person might have arranged for the two of them to run into trouble.”

And to be able to arrange for something at such a scale, the killer had to be someone with sufficient capability and influence.