Sounding Out Xi Rui

“So, we can dig deeper in this direction.”

Song Caitang looked up at Zhao Zhi and he looked down at her at the same time.

The candle flame danced and the brilliant moonlight shone in their eyes. Their eyes gave off an intelligent glint, as well as highlighted how much they thought alike.

In that moment, his heart started beating a little too fast. Zhao Zhi turned his face away and ran his fingers across the paper on the table to tap on Hongfeng and Xi Rui’s names.

“That’s right.”

Hongfeng’s past as well as Xi Rui’s child.

Both of these things were extremely important, and they were… possibly the key to cracking this case.

Song Caitang couldn’t suppress the happiness she felt inside. Her eyes were curved and her smile was bright.

She had been stuck in this unfamiliar environment with a complicated case and a host of characters who had secrets and were constantly suspicious of each other. She didn’t have anyone to help her, so there was only so much she could do. Now, she had Zhao Zhi, so it felt like none of this was a problem anymore.

For that one second, Song Caitang suddenly didn’t care about why Zhao Zhi was here. Even if his reason for coming was a bad one, she was happy to have him around.

And that was because one Zhao Zhi was equivalent to having an entire army of helpers!

She could give him any conjecture, any clue and any direction, and he’d definitely conduct a thorough investigation for her!

Song Caitang felt completely relaxed and let out a long sigh of relief.

After she downed a cup of warm tea, she suddenly remembered that she had forgotten something.

“By the way, when Dong Xin appeared earlier, I think you were trying to tell me something?”

Zhao Zhi nodded. “Our night visit to the study earlier was very short, but I did manage to take a look at the place and I had some thoughts.”

Since he wanted to share these thoughts, he must have discovered something significant.

Song Caitang knew that anything he said would be important, so she straightened up again and looked seriously at him. “Please tell.”

“You said before that after you inspected the body, you concluded that the dagger found in the chest was a result of an accident and not a stabbing.”

“That’s right.” Song Caitang was fairly confident of this.

Zhao Zhi raised his eyebrows slightly. “The drawer that was pushed over and is currently lying on the floor also contains other sharp objects like scissors and more knives, so it’s highly likely that the dagger you found in the victim’s chest came from this drawer.”

Song Caitang nodded. “That’s right.”

She had examined the angle of the wound and found that it was very likely that the dagger had come from the drawer.

“The victim was a martial artist, so he would have certain weapons he would be used to using. If he was in an unsafe place and needed to defend himself, he would have his weapon on him at all times. If he was in a safe place, then he wouldn’t need to carry weapons. So, why would he place so many sharp objects in his drawer?”

The things inside the drawer seemed like ordinary scissors and small knives that one might need, but each item was very sharp and very new, and the blades had all been sharpened nicely. Anyone with a sharp eye would notice that these were definitely not meant for use in a study.

The owner had prepared these things on purpose.

Zhao Zhi shook his head slightly. “It doesn’t make sense.”

Song Caitang didn’t know much about weapons, but she knew what Zhao Zhi was driving at.

“You’re saying that Liao Xingjian did this on purpose.”

His usual weapon wasn’t on him, which made him look like he was feeling safe and didn’t find it necessary to arm himself. But he had secretly prepared weapons and placed them in the drawer under his table where he could reach them easily. He was actually being very wary.

Who was he wary of? Who was he trying to trick?

Zhao Zhi narrowed his eyes. “I think the victim knew something or had confirmed something, so he got ready for it and was trying to sound out the other party, but unfortunately, he wasn’t successful…”

…And fell into the other party’s trap instead.

Song Caitang placed the teacup in her hands back on the table. “If that’s really the case, then we would definitely find some notes about this in Liao Xingjian’s daily writings!”

Zhao Zhi looked at Song Caitang with a little gentleness in his eyes. “I’ll find those missing records.”

Since he took the initiative to take charge of some work, Song Caitang decided she had to do something too. “I’ll sound Xi Rui out tomorrow.”

But when she realized that Zhao Zhi not only had to search for Liao Xingjian’s missing records but he also had to investigate Hongfeng’s past as well as Hua Rong’s medicinal business… That seemed a little too much to put on him.

“Are you sure you can do it? Do you want to find someone to help you?”

Zhao Zhi seemed rather displeased with this question and he frowned hard as he stared straight into her eyes. “I am more than capable of getting things done.”

Song Caitang wasn’t sure how to react. How did the conversation suddenly become awkward again!

“It’s still early, you should sleep some more.”

Zhao Zhi seemed to find it awkward too, so he forced himself to just say something and left after that.

Song Caitang stared at his back view and didn’t say anything for a long time.

But after a while… she actually did feel a little tired. She yawned a couple of times and went back to bed.

Song Caitang went to look for Xi Rui first thing the next morning.

The child happened to be around too.

The boy was three years old that year, but he was a little small for his age and had a timid personality. He had to raise his head and eyes to look at anybody who came by and his gaze seemed cloudy, so he was obedient but seemingly pitiful. His official name had not been confirmed yet, so he was always just called by his nickname, Xiaoman.

Xi Rui was feeding the child porridge as he sat on her lap. She always carried the child somewhat awkwardly, so Song Caitang could tell that the child wasn’t in a comfortable position but he dared not protest. It looked like he didn’t want to lean on Xi Rui either and did his best to sit up straight. Even Song Caitang felt tired for him.

She felt tired for Xi Rui too.

One didn’t want to carry the boy but was very possessive and didn’t let the boy out of her sight as far as possible. The other didn’t like the way he was carried and was uncomfortable with his caregiver, yet he didn’t dare to raise any objections and just endured it.

“He really looks like his father.” Song Caitang couldn’t stand what she was seeing, so she pulled a candy out of her sleeve and put it in front of the child.

The little boy’s nose twitched slightly as though he could smell the sweetness from the candy. His eyes lit up a little too, but he pursed his lips tightly and kept his head down, too afraid to take the candy.

“Of course. He’s the son I bore for my man, so of course he would look like his father.” Xi Rui seemed very unhappy with how timid her child was and frowned as she raised her voice and snapped at the boy with great displeasure, “Just take the candy! Why are you so shy about it! You’re a boy! You ought to stand tall and strong! You keep the skies above your head and the ground beneath your feet! You even pee standing! So what are you afraid of? Why are you such a timid boy!”

The louder her voice got, the more frightened the boy became and the harder he shrank back, which only made her even angrier. This vicious cycle went on until she actually raised her hand and looked like she was going to hit the child.

Song Caitang narrowed her eyes and quickly stuffed the candy into the boy’s hands. “I don’t have anything urgent to attend to today, so I thought I’d come over and have a chat with you. Why don’t you get someone else to bring the boy elsewhere to play?”

The boy didn’t like strangers, so offering to carry him wasn’t going to work. Getting someone to take the boy away was probably a better idea.

Xi Rui was already annoyed with the boy in the first place, so she was happy to pass the boy to the maid next to her and instructed the maid to bring him away.

The boy kept his head bowed and did not utter a single word. He didn’t have any expression on his face either as he obediently followed the maid out.

“What do you want?” Xi Rui had no patience for the child, and she had no patience for Song Caitang either.

Song Caitang was a guest invited by Ye Nan after all. She had been coerced into coming, but she was essentially Ye Nan’s guest and in Ye Nan’s camp. Xi Rui didn’t like anybody who was close to Ye Nan, so she didn’t really want to talk to Song Caitang at all.

Of course, Song Caitang could sense that.

But she had an objective to achieve today, so she did not get angry at all and found a good way to start the conversation, “You loved Liao Xingjian so much and you even bore a son for him. Life must be so tough for you.”

This was a topic that Xi Rui liked.

She loved talking to other people about how much she had sacrificed for Liao Xingjian and how noble she was for doing that. If the other party agreed with her and complimented her, she would be even happier.

The way she looked at Song Caitang changed instantly. Her gaze was now filled with tenderness as she said, “That’s exactly what I would expect from the daughter of a well-to-do family! You’re so much more polite and understanding than all these awful martial artists!”

“It wasn’t as though I had to cling to him, but he had saved my life. As the saying goes, if one gives you a drop of water, you have to give them a gushing spring in gratitude. The man saved my life! Of course I had to thank him by giving the best I could off.”

Xi Rui felt that her way of thinking was perfectly logical and she had been frustrated by how nobody seemed to understand her, so she had been searching for someone who would agree with her for a long time. Song Caitang seemed to empathize with her, so she wasn’t going to let go of Song Caitang now.

“I don’t own much, I don’t come from a rich or powerful family, so the best I can offer is myself. I’m happy to be a servant and serve him for the rest of my life without asking for any change in status. Why would he be unhappy with that? And how does that get in anybody’s way? After all, neither the man nor the woman was already married, and which man in this day and age doesn’t have more than one woman in the house? Why does this one sect care about this! Just because he’s marrying into the family? So, he’s not a man anymore?”

Xi Rui scoffed loudly. “It’s so important to have dignity, you know? Xingjian was such a nice man, so he didn’t mind getting bullied by those people. But I felt so bad for him! I really, really felt bad for him.”

“But Xingjian was so obstinate and kept rejecting me. It was as though he was blind and simply couldn’t see how evil that Ye Nan was. What else could I do? I was an unmarried woman who has some pride too. I didn’t want to stick to a man who didn’t want me, so I had no choice but to walk away.”

“Who would have known? Xingjian and I were destined to become a couple. You can’t run away from fate. Four years ago, Xingjian ran into trouble, forgot who he was, forgot his past, forgot Ye Nan and the Night Sanctum, and ran into me again.”

“At that time, I thought, if he still doesn’t fall for me despite everything, I’d give up and stop thinking about him. But if he does fall for me, that proves that his ideal partner doesn’t have to be Ye Nan, so I still stood a chance. Look what happened in the end – I had a child with him!”

She turned her alluring gaze toward Song Caitang and stared at her intensely, “You’re still young so you don’t understand – actually, all men are the same. As long as you’re willing to lower yourself and serve them humbly, even the toughest man will be unable to resist you. All that talk about being devoted or having one’s name engraved on their hearts is nonsense. They’re all lies that men tell to fool silly girls.”

Song Caitang’s gaze flickered. “So… both of you were very happy during that time?”

“Of course! We were so happy.” Xi Rui smiled gleefully as though she was reminiscing, but also as though she wished it was happening right now. “He couldn’t have been better to me. He would hug me as we watched the sun rise together, he would hold my hand when we went to bed, and he would insist on hugging from behind when I was cooking. He would hunt for me, barbeque fish for me… as long as I wanted it, he would find a way to get it…”

As Xi Rui described her time with Liao Xingjian, Song Caitang narrowed her eyes slightly again.

Actually, most people recounted events in a similar fashion. The more vividly they remembered something, the more vividly they would describe the scene and the more details they would add to it, like the angle of the sunshine, the humidity of the air, the smell of the wind, the feelings they felt at that time… You would want to tell others why that particular moment or event was special and different from other times.

After hearing such recounts often enough, one would be able to differentiate a real one from a false one.

Xi Rui’s description only included basic events with no details, and that was a problem.

She was trying her best to tell everyone about how wonderful Liao Xingjian was to her and how much he loved her. She worked so hard on making sure everyone thought of them as a loving couple, but her descriptions were actually very empty.

It was as though all of this was just her imagination and something she had dreamed of, but it had never actually happened.

Song Caitang removed the cover over her cup and used it to push aside the bubbles on her tea as she said quietly, “It must have been tough to give birth too, right?”

“Oh yes it was! You’re young so you have no idea. Giving birth is as good as walking on the brink of death. While you’re pregnant, you’re so terribly tired. You vomit all the time, you can barely walk, your legs become swollen and you become so fat and ugly. Also, there are so many things you can’t eat.” Xi Rui looked like she had a lot of experience as she continued ranting, “I love eating crabs, but I couldn’t eat a single one during my pregnancy. I couldn’t have any barley either. Xingjian felt so bad for me…”

“But thankfully, he was a good man who cared for me. He would enter the mountains every day to dig for herbs that would be good for me. If the mountains didn’t have it – ginseng, for example – he would hunt an animal and use that to exchange for some in the market. No matter how difficult things got, he would make sure I got my daily intake of these supplements. When I was vomiting badly and wanted something sour, he climbed up the cliff face just to get hawthorns for me to eat…”

Song Caitang’s hand froze for a moment. “You ate these things… every day?”

“Uh huh!” Xi Rui broke into a bright smile and tried to cover her glee with her handkerchief. “I told him that he didn’t have to do this, but that’s how much Xingjian doted on me.”

“Unfortunately, before the child could be born, he left the house one day and regained his memory, so he didn’t return. I ended up having to give birth by myself. It took me three days and three nights to give birth. It was a really difficult labor and I lost so much blood,” Xi Rui patted her chest fearfully, “Luckily, I’m blessed by the heavens and I managed to survive. Heaven helps good people, after all.”

Song Caitang looked Xi Rui up and down carefully. “But you look like you’re in the pink of health. You don’t look like you’ve gone through an ordeal like that at all.”

“That’s why I say I’m blessed by the heavens,” Xi Rui smiled faintly.

Song Caitang was a little speechless. The more Xi Rui said, the more holes she revealed. It would have been better if she hadn’t said anything at all.

Who in the world would eat ginseng every day? And hawthorn too!

Which pregnant woman would dare to do such a thing!

Hawthorn could cause narrowing of the vaginal canal, so it wasn’t good for a pregnant woman to consume too much. It could make her feel discomfort and even cause a miscarriage. Besides, if one did not suffer from any pain or ailments, consuming so much of herbs and medicines would not do the body any good. In fact, it might harm the mother instead.

The conditions for giving birth in this time and age were poor, so if a woman lost a lot of blood during labor, they were most likely to die. Furthermore, Xi Rui claimed to have taken three days to give birth. That would have drained her of all her energy and it would be impossible for her to bounce back entirely from it in such a short time. Even if she were allowed to rest for three to five years, she would be weak and sickly, prone to anemia, and definitely look pale.

But Xi Rui had lovely rosy cheeks, plenty of energy, didn’t seem sickly at all and wasn’t afraid of the cold.

She seemed to know a few things that pregnant women should avoid and she might have purposely gone around to ask others about it, but what she listed earlier wasn’t enough to prove her story.

Song Caitang slowly began to think that this Xi Rui…

…might have never given birth before.

She lowered her gaze slightly and had a curious smile on her face, “What did the boy look like when you first gave birth to him?”

“How else would he look like? He wasn’t good looking and looked more like an old man,” Xi Rui spoke very confidently and felt superior to this young, unmarried woman seated in front of her. “He looked better after a month.”

“Did he stick to you a lot after he was born? Was it tough to breastfeed him?”

Xi Rui finally looked a little panicky at this juncture.

She couldn’t understand why a young lady would be so curious about childbirth and ask such detailed questions, but then again, she assumed that a young woman like Song Caitang wouldn’t know anything and would be easy to fool, so she calmed herself down and went on, “I’m his mother, so of course he would stick to me all day. Women naturally know how to give birth and they would have milk for their babies after giving birth. As for how much they have, I was lucky to have enough.”

“Did it hurt?”

Xi Rui looked a little confused. “Did what hurt?”

“I heard that… children bite.” Song Caitang smiled a little shyly.

Xi Rui burst out laughing. This girl was definitely too young to understand anything.

“A newborn baby doesn’t even have teeth, so how could they possibly bite anybody? It was just terribly painful when I gave birth, but everything was fine after that. He was a good boy when I breastfed him and he didn’t cause me any pain.”

Song Caitang was very sure now that Xi Rui had never given birth before.

Most people knew that childbirth was painful, but actually, breastfeeding was painful too.

Xi Rui had clearly not done enough homework.

Thanks to modern internet technology, Song Caitang could read all about such things even if she had never experienced it herself.

Since things had come to this point, Song Caitang didn’t need to probe further into the birth of the child and moved on to Liao Xingjian. “When both of you started living in the Night Sanctum, did he ask you about what happened when he was with you four years ago?”

“Of course he asked. He didn’t want to believe what I said and didn’t treat me nicely either. He only looked more kindly at his son,” said Xi Rui sadly before looking smug again, “But men are responsible creatures. After a while, he began to change. He knew how to treat me nicely and was willing to hear about our past. He had forgotten everything, but I remember everything, so of course I had to tell him everything that happened so that he knows how much I’ve done for him. I gave him all of me and even bore a son for him. Of course he has to treat me well, don’t you think so?”

Song Caitang just smiled and did not say anything.

Did that mean that Liao Xingjian had already become suspicious of Xi Rui?

Was he purposely asking her about the past because he was trying to sound her out and check if there were loopholes in her story?

“What about Ye Nan?” Song Caitang added as she stared at Xi Rui. “Does she dislike the child?