Remains

Song Caitang felt something behind her.

It was hard, cold, a little slimy. It also carried the humidity of the air and the smell of the mud.

She frowned a little as she slowly straightened her back and turned around to use the moonlight to look at what she had touched.

Just as she had expected, that unique texture…her guess had been correct. It was a bone. It was a human finger bone.

The finger bone was half buried in the soil, so only one joint stuck out and there was a little mud on it. It gleamed a pale white color in the moonlight, as if it was silently trying to tell her that something frightening had happened to it. With the cold night wind blowing and the sound of nocturnal beasts growling in the background, this was a scene that could ignite the fear deep in the hearts of many. It would have been difficult for some to not scream or just run away in a panic.

But Song Caitang wasn’t afraid.

After so many years, the sort of people she saw the most were dead bodies, and they came in all sorts of conditions. A finger bone definitely wasn’t enough to scare her.

But she felt that this…wasn’t all.

She took a step back carefully, then used her hands to dig around it. An entire palm quickly appeared.

After observing and touching the ground around her, she noticed another loose section and started digging. She didn’t have to go too far before finding another human bone. This time, it was a skull.

Song Caitang frowned.

They were on a river bank that was wide and flat with no graves nearby. The soil was of the same type and there was no new soil. This hand must have been buried here for many years. The soil might have come loose and revealed the bones because people had stepped on the soil and slowly flattened it, or perhaps there were animals living underground that had dug holes beneath the ground.

She wasn’t some saint and she wasn’t going to meddle in every dead person’s affairs. For example, the men in black whom Zhao Zhi had killed with a few swings of the sword earlier – she wasn’t going to inspect their bodies or anything like that.

Every world had their fair share of those who dabbled in criminal activity. In the world she was in right now, besides being an aristocrat, Zhao Zhi was also in charge of maintaining social order. Killing those men in black was both to save another person as well as in self-defense. Objectively speaking, his actions had not been wrong.

But that wasn’t the case for this body.

This person had died from unnatural causes and had not been given a proper burial.

This was a murder case.

While she was still deep in thought, Zhao Zhi suddenly stirred.

“Come…come over here…no need to be scared…”

His eyes were shut fast and his brows were tightly knit. He looked very troubled, as though he was facing a terrible crisis in his dream.

His voice was very low and unclear, so Song Caitang couldn’t hear him very clearly. But she could sense that he was trying to protect someone.

Someone very important.

His body trembled slightly, then his hand suddenly started moving about as though it was looking for something. Song Caitang did not pull away in time, so he ended up grabbing her hand and her hand began to hurt.

Zhao Zhi exerted a lot of force and was holding her hand extremely tightly, as though he was afraid to lose her, as though she might disappear if he didn’t hold onto her.

The strange part was, after he grabbed hold of her hand, his expression relaxed a little. He stopped clenching his teeth and no longer looked like a tight bowstring that might suddenly shoot an arrow. He placed her hand on his chest and gently caressed it, “As long as I’m here, you won’t die…”

Song Caitang raised an eyebrow at Zhao Zhi.

Didn’t you hate women very much? You kept dodging me and refused to even walk properly next to me earlier, but now you dare to grab hold of a woman’s hand?

Getting very bold, huh!

Song Caitang had no idea who Zhao Zhi had mistaken her for, but her hand was growing numb from the pain.

However, after she hesitated for a moment, she decided not to pull her hand away.

Of course, she couldn’t either.

Zhao Zhi’s expression slowly calmed down. As she looked at his face in the moonlight, she realized that he looked a lot more approachable when his eyes were closed. He was pretty good looking in the first place, with bold brows, a high nose, and a well-defined jawline. His facial features and bone structure were excellent, and now that his eyes that usually exuded arrogance and a dangerous gleam from time to time were shut, he looked more like an elegant gentleman. An elegant gentleman with the mysterious air of an aristocrat.

He had several tiny cuts on his face and two swollen bumps on his forehead that were bleeding slightly, but he still looked good.

The cuts, the bumps…

Song Caitang felt a little guilty and coughed a few times as she turned to look at the river instead.

She…really hadn’t meant to get his face all cut up like that.

He always claimed to be really manly, so he would probably forgive her, right?

Zhao Zhi didn’t sleep for too long and woke up after Song Caitang had stared at the river for a short time. His eyes were bright and alert the moment he opened them and he was full of energy, as though he hadn’t fainted from seeing the water earlier, but from going through too many fights and walking too much, so he had collapsed from exhaustion.

Song Caitang had pulled her hand away the moment she felt his breathing quicken and his eyelids started moving. And now, that hand was cupping her chin as she smiled faintly at him, the moonlight making her look intelligent yet gentle, “How was your nap, Mr. Surveillance Commissioner?”

Zhao Zhi rubbed the back of his neck and rotated his head, “Not bad.”

“Did you have any nightmares?”

Zhao Zhi stared straight at her with a raised brow, “Do I look like such a useless person to you?”

Song Caitang quickly clamped a hand over her mouth. She didn’t want any saliva to land on him as she laughed. That was very unbecoming.

“Hahahahaha!”

Zhao Zhi narrowed his eyes at her, “What are you laughing at?”

“Nothing, I remembered something funny when you were asleep.”

“You want to share the joke?”

“No,” Song Caitang shook her head rather solemnly, “After some thought, I think it’s better not to embarrass that person. It’s better not to say it.”

Zhao Zhi responded with confidence, “That’s a good way to look at it,” as though he knew what she was talking about.

But the more he spoke, the more Song Caitang felt like laughing. In order to avoid any unintended awkwardness, she quickly changed the topic, “Since you’re awake, I have two things I need to talk to you about.”

Zhao Zhi sat cross-legged on the ground like he was some great master and she was his lowly disciple, “Speak.”

“The first thing is this,” Song Caitang pointed at the hand and skull behind her.

In order to let him have a better look, she had shaken off all the soil from the bones. The bones had no flesh on them and were all white. The round skull didn’t have a single hair on it. It was completely bald with just two holes for eyes. It looked pretty scary.

But Zhao Zhi wasn’t afraid. He frowned and got up, “A dead person?”

“Clearly.”

“Lu Guangzong?”

Song Caitang rolled her eyes, “This corpse is so badly decomposed, it’s only left with bones. Pacification Commissioner Lu has only gone missing very recently, and even if he went missing and got killed a month ago, his body wouldn’t decompose so quickly.”

As she spoke, she noticed that one side of Zhao Zhi’s lips was curled upward slightly. He was laughing.

Song Caitang narrowed her eyes.

Zhao Zhi was a surveillance commissioner and had been stationed along the border for many years. He was a general who had seen countless dead bodies. Of course he understood this logic.

He was just making fun of her!

How annoying.

Given Song Caitang’s actual mental age, Zhao Zhi was like a playful child, an immature young man to her. If he wanted to make fun of her, there wasn’t much she could do about that. She couldn’t possibly hold him down and beat him up.

Zhao Zhi stroked his chin and nodded, “Are you showing me these bones because you suspect their appearance here is unusual?”

“That’s right,” Song Caitang pointed at the bones, “It’s a bit too dark and I can’t see very clearly, but I do have some observations that I can share with you.”

“Take a look at this skull. The face is large and narrow, with a well-developed mastoid process, pronounced brow arches, a significant brow ridge, and a deep depression at the top of the nose bridge. These are characteristic of a man’s bone structure. Of course, we will need the rest of the body to confirm this, but if my judgment is correct, this body should belong to a man.”

Zhao Zhi did not say anything.

Song Caitang went on, “I sat in front of this skull and stared at it for a long time. The sagittal suture and front suture of the victim are beginning to fuse together but are not completely fused together, so I estimate that the age of this victim–”

Zhao Zhi seemed to find what she was saying very interesting, “You can look at the bones of a corpse and tell if it’s a man or a woman immediately, and even estimate their age?”

Song Caitang nodded, “It’s not hard for those who know how to.”

“Our bones are a reflection of our growing process. Many of the things we go through can be seen in our bone structures. There are many small differences between the bones of men and women, especially the pelvis. You can basically determine if the bone belongs to a man or a woman immediately with one look. As for their age…”

She pointed to the skull, “We’re Chinese, so there’s a cartilage that separates the body of the pterygoid at the base of the skull from the base of the occipital bone called the basal suture, and this suture fuses at the same time for all of us. It starts to fuse between 21 and 23 years of age; it is fused with some marks left behind between 24 and 30 years of age. This skull’s has begun to fuse, but it’s not completely fused yet, so…”

Zhao Zhi finished her sentence, “His age must be between 21 and 23.”

Song Caitang smiled, “That is correct.”

She then pointed to the hand, “Look at his hand next. His palm is wide and a little worn out. He’s very young, so in order for his bones to look like that, he must have been doing just one thing for many years and he had to use a lot of energy. He was very hardworking and might have worked day and night.”

Zhao Zhi frowned, “A farmer? A carpenter?”

Song Caitang didn’t want to comment on that, “I can’t tell what he was doing from just this alone. But regardless of what it was, he must have been someone with very high expectations of himself. He was a hardworking and self-disciplined person.”

“You saw the damage on his skull, didn’t you? The bones have been here for a long time and it’s very dark, so I can’t see if the damage has any connection to the cause of death, or if it was inflicted by accident after the victim died. But it’s clear that his appearance here is not normal at all.”

Song Caitang raised her head to meet with Zhao Zhi’s gaze. The look in their eyes said the same thing – this was probably a murder case!

Zhao Zhi broke his silence after a long time, “Regardless of whether it’s one or not, we don’t have the time to look into it tonight. Cover up the bones and we’ll talk about them again when dawn break.”

Song Caitang had intended to do just that. She was telling him about the bones not because she wanted him to deal with them now, but because she felt that he ought to know.

They couldn’t be sure about why these bones had appeared here and whether this was the scene of the crime. So, besides covering the bones with some things and making a marking, they decided to move away from the area in order to preserve the scene.

But moving away from the river bank meant moving closer to the river.

Song Caitang was sounded both worried and cheeky as she asked, “We’re getting close to the water. Is that alright with you?”

Zhao Zhi glared at her as though she had just said something deeply offensive, “Who would be afraid of the water at this sort of distance?”

Song Caitang nearly blurted, and who was the one who fainted upon seeing the river just now?!

Thankfully, the river bank was wide enough, so as long as they kept to the side, he could take it.

He tried walking but his leg was still weak, so he hopped on one leg to the new spot that Song Caitang had chosen and sat down cross-legged next to her, “What’s the second thing you wanted to tell me?”

Song Caitang looked down and retrieved a white handkerchief from her sleeve, then waved it in front of him, “Look at this moon, these pear blossoms, this river. Don’t you think it’s lovely? Doesn’t it give you the urge to compose a poem?”

Zhao Zhi blinked a few times, “And so?”

“And so…I want to compose a lovely poem that will be well loved for decades to come, but unfortunately, I don’t have a brush and ink. But you’re injured and you’ve bled so much, plus it’s still warm and fresh. It would be such a waste to not use it, don’t you think?”

Zhao Zhi narrowed his eyes, as though he could sense what she was trying to do…

But before he could stop her, Song Caitang had already smiled prettily at him and jabbed a finger into the bandage around his waist.

The injury at his waist was too severe, so the bleeding had not stopped completely even though she had already changed the dressing and bandage. The surface of the bandage had a little blood on it and she only needed to press gently to get blood on her finger.

She put the handkerchief down and began writing on it with her finger.

When she ran out of blood, she’d press on his injury again.

Zhao Zhi was speechless.

The lighting was poor, so even though he was seated next to her, he couldn’t really see what she was writing. He gritted his teeth and hissed, “Since you wanted to do that, why didn’t you use the time while I was asleep–”

“A gentleman would never attack an enemy in a moment of vulnerability,” said Song Caitang as though it was right of her to do this, “I ought to let you know about it. Besides, you didn’t sleep for a long time either. It doesn’t matter, my inspiration has struck at just the right time.”

She then purposely turned so that Zhao Zhi couldn’t see what she was writing at all. Once she was done, she folded it up, wrapped it in oil paper (the stuff they used in ancient times to make umbrellas with, so it’s waterproof), ran to the river and threw it in such that it flowed downward with the water.

Zhao Zhi was even more lost for words now.

Song Caitang came back and smiled as she explained, “I’ve written my thoughts in a poem and I’ll leave it to the river to bring it wherever it’s destined to go. Very romantic, right?”

Zhao Zhi shut his eyes, “I’m not interested in what you’ve written.”

“I know,” Song Caitang smiled brightly, “How could a grown man like you try to find out what’s on a woman’s mind? That would be so rude!”

Zhao Zhi gave up talking.

It was the 10^th day of the month, so while the moon came up immediately after sunset, the moon also disappeared very early.

Quite a lot of time had already passed by now, so it was very late at night. The moonlight would be gone before long.

After a long period of silence, Song Caitang asked quietly, “Do you want to keep moving?”

Zhao Zhi shook his head, “It will get very dark and the forest is very dense, so leaving at this point will be even more dangerous. It’ll be safer to stay here.”

Song Caitang hugged her knees and looked up at the deep blue starry sky. She let out a soft but long sigh, “I hope we’ll continue to be lucky and stay safe until daybreak.”

Zhao Zhi did not say anything.

But a few seconds later, he frowned as his ears twitched. His pupils suddenly constricted as he pounced toward Song Caitang, “Watch out!”

She fell back as he landed on her, rolled a few times and still found herself under him. At the same time, a feathered arrow sliced through the air with a swoosh, stabbing right into the ground where Song Caitang was sitting just moments ago!