Chapter 29: Garlic White Meat (Part 4)
Leng Yue and Jing Yi remained silent for a moment until Uncle Qi couldn't hold back any longer.
"Master, Madam..." Uncle Qi reminded them, "Today is the Mid-Autumn Festival."
They had already discussed this matter last night. While tossing and turning in bed with Jing Yi, Leng Yue had pondered it all night long. Therefore, when Uncle Qi mentioned it, neither of them paid it any mind.
Seeing that they remained unmoved, Uncle Qi could only add with a pained expression, "Master, Madam... For the Mid-Autumn Festival, having a coffin in the house... isn't very convenient, is it?"
Leng Yue was taken aback. "They left the coffin here and just walked away?"
"Yes... They said to leave it to Madam's discretion."
Leng Yue felt like flipping the table.
On such holidays, the Ministry of Justice, like all other government offices, was closed. If the body was to be placed in the ministry's mortuary, it would have to wait until tomorrow morning. If those Capital Prefecture officers were still here, she could have examined the body in the coffin and then made them take it back to wherever they brought it from. But now...
She was certain that the Capital Prefecture office would also be tightly shut at this hour.
She didn't mind letting someone lying in a coffin rest in her courtyard for a day, but it was clear that the Capital Prefecture was deliberately making things difficult for her.
"Uncle Qi," Leng Yue suppressed her anger and spoke as calmly as possible, "Just move it to a more suitable place for now. I'll take a look later."
"Yes, Madam..."
As soon as Uncle Qi left, Jing Yi, who was still squatting on the ground, noticed Leng Yue's slightly darkened expression and tugged at the hem of her clothes again, asking in a low voice, "Did you take on a new case?"
"Mmm..." Leng Yue let him hold the corner of her clothes as she bent over to take a sip of porridge from the bowl before replying, "I took it over from the Capital Prefecture yesterday."
"Is it Xiao Yunde's case?"
"Mmm..."
"Then, in this coffin... is it Xiao Yunde?"
Leng Yue shook her head, thought for a moment, then nodded. "Pretty much."
A person either is who they are or they aren't. How could there be such a thing as "pretty much"?
"...How much is 'pretty much'?"
Leng Yue finished the bowl of porridge in a few gulps, pursed her lips, and stood up. "Just the name, I suppose."
Jing Yi released the hem of her clothes and stood up as well. "What name?"
"Didn't you hear what Uncle Qi said? Those people claimed that you would recognize him with just one glance." Leng Yue narrowed her phoenix eyes, looking at the still somewhat confused Jing Yi with a faint, ambiguous smile. "So, you're the one who has to tell me what that name is."
It took Jing Yi a moment to process this. She wanted him to...
Identify a corpse?!
On the Mid-Autumn Festival, first thing in the morning, identify a corpse...
Jing Yi raised his chin and widened his eyes. "No!"
"Fine," Leng Yue raised an eyebrow nonchalantly and said leisurely, "If you won't go, then I won't go either. We'll just spend the festival at home guarding this coffin."
Jing Yi immediately deflated. "Madam..."
Leng Yue straightened her clothes and slowly sat back down.
Spending a festival guarding a coffin was something she was more than capable of handling.
Watching Leng Yue calmly drink her tea, looking very much like she wouldn't go no matter what, Jing Yi sighed in resignation. "Madam... I'll go."
After dragging Jing Yi out of the room, Leng Yue encountered another maddening problem.
Where did Uncle Qi move the coffin to?Holding umbrellas, they circled most of the courtyard in the rain without spotting Uncle Qi or the coffin. Jing Yi was beginning to suspect everything earlier had been an illusion when Leng Yue finally located the coffin in a corner of the stable.
Leng Yue closed her umbrella and ducked into the stable, muttering discontentedly. Jing Yi, however, wore an expression of deep understanding. "Uncle Qi's work is always reassuring. This really is the most suitable place in our home for storing a coffin."
Brushing off the water droplets clinging to her clothes, Leng Yue shot him a glare. "Rest assured, when you die, I'll place you here immediately. Guaranteed no one will compete for the spot."
"Not that..." Jing Yi stood by the coffin, torn between laughter and tears as he pointed outside. Just three steps beyond the stable grew a well-aged peach tree, lush with foliage and heavy with fruit in this season. "This is our largest peach tree. Placing the coffin here offers the best protection against evil spirits."
Protection against evil spirits...
Leng Yue felt tempted to tie Jing Yi to this peach tree for a couple of days—perhaps it would cleanse all those unorthodox ideas from his system.
Unable to bother responding, Leng Yue reached out and touched the coffin lid, preparing to push it open.
"Wait!"
Jing Yi's sudden exclamation startled her. She glared at him irritably. "Wait for what? Just take one look and tell me this person's name, occupation, and hometown. That's all."
Jing Yi didn't speak but bent over, bringing his nose close to the coffin seam to sniff carefully.
The scent was fresh and clean—aside from the unique odor of a new coffin, there were no unpleasant smells.
Meaning, the person inside the coffin, at least by scent, was still quite amiable.
A corpse that smelled relatively friendly probably wouldn't look too bad either.
Jing Yi slowly exhaled in relief. "Open it."
Now that Jing Yi was prepared, Leng Yue hesitated briefly and added a few more warnings. "Once the coffin lid opens, just look at the face. Don't look anywhere else. Only the face. Once you see it clearly, step aside immediately. Remember?"
Jing Yi nodded obediently.
Only then did Leng Yue gather some strength in her palms and slowly push the coffin lid open. But the moment she shifted it about a head's width, her hand paused, and her expression instantly darkened.
The person in the coffin had been placed backward.
Feet at the head of the coffin, head at the foot, and lying face down.
When the lid was pushed open, a face should have been visible. Instead, what appeared before Leng Yue was a pair of feet—the soles of the feet.
The soles of feet whose calluses had been meticulously smoothed, with skin so fair and clean it was spotless.
They were a man's feet. Judging by the skin texture, it should be a young man, much younger than Xiao Yunde.
The position was wrong, but the person was correct.
Undoubtedly another trick by those people from the Capital Prefecture...
Jing Yi mustered his courage and leaned in for a look. He froze momentarily, but after the initial shock, he felt somewhat relieved.
Although the person in the coffin was lying backward, just by looking at these impeccably clean feet, one could tell the deceased must have died with some dignity.
Compared to the previous charred corpse—blackened and barely recognizable as human—this person was far more fortunate.
Remembering it was the Mid-Autumn Festival, yet Zhang Lao Wu had to endure the pain of his grandson's tragic death and his apprentice's imprisonment, guarding the cold porcelain in the courtyard while still bearing unhealed injuries, Jing Yi felt a pang of discomfort in his heart.That was the once-famous Porcelain King of the capital—surely someone would come to visit and care for him.
Just as Jing Yi was lost in thought about Zhang Lao Wu, Leng Yue made a major decision.
A coffin lid could only be pushed open from the head toward the foot of the coffin. So, with a surge of strength, Leng Yue pushed the entire lid all the way open.
Jing Yi had been calmly watching the pair of feet, so when the coffin lid opened like this, he clearly saw the slender legs above the feet, the full hips at the end of the legs, the evenly proportioned waist and back above the hips, the neck, and a gleaming, shaved bald head.
Jing Yi froze.
"Is this... a monk?"
Leng Yue shook her head with a grim expression, neither confirming nor denying. "Not necessarily."
Not necessarily?
One’s body, hair, and skin are gifts from one’s parents—how could a layperson shave their head like this?
While Jing Yi was still puzzled, Leng Yue said, "I’ll turn him over. Remember, only look at his face—don’t look anywhere else."
Jing Yi truly couldn’t imagine how someone who looked so pleasing from the back could be horrifying from the front.
Among the young men he knew, none had ever possessed a breathtakingly elegant back view paired with a disastrously ugly front.
So Jing Yi nodded calmly.
After Leng Yue repeated her warning to only look at the face, she finally reached down to grip the corpse’s cold shoulders, exerted some force, and turned the body slightly toward Jing Yi.
The moment his gaze fell on the corpse’s face, Jing Yi froze, silently gasping.
"Xiao Yue... you know this person too."
He knew him, and she did too?
Leng Yue and Jing Yi stood on opposite sides of the coffin. Leng Yue had only turned the corpse up slightly, so from her angle, she couldn’t yet see the front of the face. Hearing Jing Yi’s words, she paused, then casually turned the body a bit more.
Before Leng Yue could see the corpse’s face, Jing Yi let out a sharp cry.
In the pouring rain, such a cry was truly unsettling.
Leng Yue’s hands loosened, and the corpse silently fell back into its original position.
"His, his... his stomach..." Jing Yi looked as if he’d seen a ghost, his face deathly pale, his tongue tangled as he struggled to form a coherent sentence.
Leng Yue sighed silently. "I told you not to look down..."
Though Leng Yue hadn’t yet seen the corpse’s face, there was one thing she understood better than Jing Yi: the manner of this person’s death.
The reason this person was so clean wasn’t because whoever collected his body had washed him, but because the person who killed him had first cleansed him, shaved his body hair, then made an incision from the upper abdomen all the way down to the lower abdomen. Through this large opening, they had emptied out all the organs from the abdominal and chest cavities, then soaked and rinsed him until not a trace of blood remained—just like...
A whole pig slaughtered at a butcher’s shop, hung on the wall for sale.
Except, pigs are usually dead when they’re gutted, whereas this person was still alive—and likely fully conscious—when he was cut open.
And this person wouldn’t be hung on a wall; instead, he was quietly left at his own doorstep at night, placed where it would be immediately visible when the door was opened the next morning.
For a moment, neither of them spoke. Outside, the rain seemed to grow even heavier.Jing Yi took a long moment to regain his composure before suddenly realizing something. "I heard... Xiao Yunde's corpse was exceptionally clean, like... like butchered and cleaned pork... is it the same as this?"
Leng Yue nodded silently.
Otherwise, having handled no less than eight hundred corpses in her career, how could she have been so easily frightened to the point of icy limbs and breaking out in cold sweat?
Only then did Jing Yi understand what Leng Yue meant earlier by "almost the same, only the name differs."
"Actually," Leng Yue gazed at the clean, perfect lower body before her, her red lips pressing together slightly, "he isn't the second, but the fourth. There were already two others before Xiao Yunde."
"...Two more?!"
"Mmm..." Leng Yue said calmly, "When Jing Zhaoyin rushed to see the prince yesterday morning, it wasn't to pressure me about Xiao Yunde's case. He was following the prince's orders to transfer the two corpses in his custody to me."
"Who... were those two people?"
Leng Yue hesitated briefly before replying, "One was a wealthy merchant's son, the other was a high official's son." Then she pointed at the lifeless figure lying prone in the coffin. "Who is this one?"
"This person..." Jing Yi also hesitated. "You just saw him the day before yesterday."
The day before yesterday...
She had indeed seen many people that day whom she recognized and whom Jing Yi also knew.
"Where did I see him?"
Jing Yi slowly let out a breath, raising his gaze to look deeply at Leng Yue as he smiled bitterly. "At the place where we bought the turtle."
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