Chapter 42: Garlic White Meat (Part 17)
The woman before him clearly hadn't expected these to be Jing Yi's first words upon opening his eyes. Her heavily powdered face stiffened, and her brightly rouged lips twitched slightly. After weighing her options for a moment, she ultimately couldn't resist replying coldly.
"I don't belong to any pleasure house."
"...Huh?"
Half-convinced and half-doubting, Jing Yi blinked his still-sleepy fox eyes vigorously at the woman.
The woman was nearly thirty, with a slender figure so thin it appeared somewhat rigid. She was wrapped in a jade-green dress exuding strong worldly charm, her head fully adorned with pale green hairpins dotted with glimmering white pearls. Standing quietly in this dilapidated room, she resembled nothing so much as a blooming leek stalk growing wild in the fields.
"Then..." Jing Yi measured his words, offering a humble smile tinged with apology, "You must be from some pavilion?"
Jing Yi faintly heard the sound of teeth grinding.
"I am no young maiden."
Jing Yi frowned slightly, watching the person by his bedside without speaking.
The current situation seemed quite different from what he had imagined last night.
Drunken World...
It seemed Leng Yue hadn't administered it to him.
But if it wasn't Leng Yue who had given it to him, Jing Yi truly couldn't guess who else would need to make him sleep so soundly at this time.
So Jing Yi stared at the woman by his bedside for a long while.
Seeing Jing Yi's somewhat dazed expression, the woman chuckled coldly. Just as she was about to speak, Jing Yi suddenly let out an "Ah!" as if enlightenment had struck, startling her so much she trembled and forgot everything she had prepared to say.
From the sudden brightness in Jing Yi's eyes, one could tell that if he had the strength to lift his hand, he would have excitedly slapped his thigh at this moment.
"I remember now! My fault, my fault, it's all because I wasn't fully awake earlier and didn't see clearly... At your age, how could you possibly be working as a courtesan? You must be the madam of Brocade Garden!"
"..."
Lying stiffly on the bed, Jing Yi obediently revealed a row of white teeth, smiling both warmly and politely, "Has the silver I left at your establishment run out..."
"..."
"Oh dear! You really shouldn't have gone to all this trouble for such a small matter. You could have just sent someone to tell me! How inconvenient this must be for your business!"
"..."
"Why don't you come home with me now? I'll give you cash right away. If we wait any longer and my wife discovers I'm missing, not only won't you get your silver, but every brothel, pavilion, and garden on your entire street will face complete disaster..."
"..."
The woman opened her mouth several times but couldn't get a word in edgewise. Her face turned dark with suppressed anger, and despite her best efforts, she couldn't maintain the last trace of a smile at the corners of her mouth. Her chest heaved uncontrollably, and her hands clasped before her made audible cracking sounds from how tightly she was gripping them.
After Jing Yi finished speaking, the woman produced a pair of gleaming scissors from her sleeve with a darkened expression.
Heaven and conscience be his witnesses—when Jing Yi said those words, he absolutely hadn't meant to curse that busiest pleasure quarter in the capital. But sometimes when Heaven grows lazy, it listens only to words without hearing their meaning.
Having failed to find anyone at the Dali Temple, Leng Yue turned and went straight to the Crown Prince Manor.
The Dali Temple was where Jing Yi most frequently visited, while the Crown Prince Manor was where he most delighted in going.In truth, ever since that night when she fought with her second sister Leng Yan—the chief guard at Crown Prince Manor—in the pouring rain, Leng Yue had felt a knot of dread in her stomach whenever she thought of the Crown Prince Manor. Before leaving that night, Leng Yan had threatened that if she ever caught Jing Yi alone, she would capture him, chop him up, and stew him in a pot.
Last night, the Crown Prince had drunk too much at the palace and was still sleeping off his hangover. Leng Yan insisted that Jing Yi must have been stewed and eaten by her. So the Crown Princess sat on the doorstep, cracking melon seeds and watching the Leng sisters brawl fiercely on the opposite rooftop. Only after she had enjoyed the spectacle did she amicably separate the two and order a thorough search of Crown Prince Manor. They even checked under the Crown Prince’s blankets, but there was no trace of Jing Yi.
Leng Yue made another trip to Prince An’s residence.
Because Prince An’s residence was the one place Jing Yi had no say in whether he went or not.
On the way there, Leng Yue’s heart pounded nervously. Only a few hours remained before the deadline she had promised Prince An to solve the case, and she hadn’t even found a single clue about the killer—yet here she was, searching all over the city for a man…
Once she stepped through the gates of Prince An’s residence, however, she felt a strange calm.
The gatekeeper informed her that His Highness was not in.
Just as Leng Yue was about to ask if Jing Yi had been there, she was stopped by Wu Jiang, the chief guard of Prince An’s residence, who had hurried back from outside.
During her time as Prince An’s personal guard, Leng Yue had reported to Wu Jiang. Out of habit, she straightened up, lowered her head, and respectfully greeted, "General Wu."
"How did you know I was looking for you…" Wu Jiang, sweating profusely and carrying a large stack of ledgers, gestured with his stubbled chin toward the thinnest ledger on top. "Take the one on top."
Leng Yue picked it up and casually flipped through a few pages.
It was the night watch records of the capital’s night watchmen.
Leng Yue gave a silent, bitter smile. This was what she had requested from the Jing Zhaoyin in front of Prince An that day. The Jing Zhaoyin knew perfectly well she had given Prince An a three-day deadline, yet he had deliberately delayed until now to provide it—his intentions couldn’t be clearer.
"His Highness said you asked the Jing Zhaoyin for this. He was worried the man might give you trouble and hold up your work, so he told me to check on it for you. Turns out he really didn’t give it to you… Why didn’t you go ask him for it?"
Leng Yue placed the ledger back into Wu Jiang’s arms and said offhandedly, "Because it’s no longer needed… I had a case where I initially suspected the night watchmen, but last night I realized it probably wasn’t them."
Wu Jiang furrowed his sweaty, sword-like brows. "I know most of the night watchmen in the city—they’re all honest, simple folks. Why did you suspect them?"
"Because they have free time."
Leng Yue took some of the ledgers from Wu Jiang’s arms and walked with him toward the Three Reflections Pavilion, chatting intermittently. "The victims in this case all died in broad daylight, and the methods were quite elaborate. Only someone with free time during the day would have the patience and opportunity to carry it out… Also, based on testimonies from residents near the dump sites, the bodies were likely disposed of between the fourth and fifth night watches. At that hour, most people are asleep, so the night watchmen were the most suspicious."
She paused, then smiled wryly. "But last night, the Jing Zhaoyin’s family came to visit mine and incidentally cleared the night watchmen. So there’s no need to look through these records anymore."Leng Yue spoke vaguely, and Wu Jiang didn't press further. They walked all the way to the Sansi Pavilion. Only after entering and setting down the stack of items did Leng Yue realize what she had been carrying all this time, and she couldn't help but freeze for a moment.
"Is this... the register from the brothels?"
Wu Jiang nodded with a mix of amusement and exasperation. "I'd rather investigate the night watchmen for you. Going door-to-door along this street is more exhausting than fighting the main Turkic forces for three days and nights straight..."
"You, early in the morning..." Leng Yue paused, looking Wu Jiang up and down. No wonder she had noticed an unusually sweet and cloying scent of powder on him earlier. "Did you go door-to-door in the brothel district to harass the girls?"
Wu Jiang's already dark face clouded over even more.
"...If I said yes, would you believe me?"
Leng Yue wisely shook her head vigorously. "No."
If she fought with Leng Yan, she could still hold her own for a few moves. But fighting Wu Jiang...
Unless Wu Jiang had taken Drunken World and was in that comatose state for seven or eight hours.
Wu Jiang's expression softened slightly as he sighed bitterly. "I was following the prince's orders to lead the raid. These days, the madams are so money-crazed that they're assigning customers to girls infected with syphilis who are too ill to even get out of bed. They've screwed over a bunch of those old, lecherous officials in the court. The emperor got anxious, so the prince sent me running around. I sealed up over a dozen establishments this morning alone. The wailing from those women is still ringing in my ears..."
After finishing his lament, Wu Jiang noticed that Leng Yue was staring intently at the stack of registers, as if she hadn't been listening to him at all.
Wu Jiang waved a hand in front of Leng Yue's eyes.
Leng Yue snapped out of her daze, pursed her lips slightly, and frowned as she asked, "That... Sparrow Nest Brothel, was it sealed up too?"
Wu Jiang shook his head. "No infected girls were found there. It's clean."
Leng Yue froze.
Impossible.
She had personally checked Hua Mei's pulse last night—it was undoubtedly syphilis, though the poisonous sores hadn't broken out yet.
"Did you examine all those girls for illness?"
Wu Jiang's face darkened again. "At most, I can only tell if those girls are crazy or not... Their physical illnesses were diagnosed by your relative who's a court physician."
Her relative who's a court physician...
Jing Bai?
Then misdiagnosis was even more impossible.
"Are you sure you examined every single girl?"
Wu Jiang raised an eyebrow and slapped the stack of registers. "Why do you think I'm carrying these? From Sparrow Nest's top courtesan Hua Mei to the maids who wipe tables and sweep courtyards in every establishment, we checked every one... What, you want to help me check again?"
Seeing the slight suspicion in Wu Jiang's gaze, Leng Yue quickly put on a bright smile. "I don't have that kind of free time like you... In my opinion, those old men who go brothel hopping deserve what they get. If the sores haven't broken out and the girls can't tell, that's one thing. But if they're so sick they can't get out of bed, there must already be sores near their thighs. If they can't see that themselves, how can they blame the girls?"
Wu Jiang shook his head with a bitter smile. "It's not that they can't see. The madams have people forcibly cut out the poisonous sores on those girls, fill the holes with white wax, and cover them with pretty paper cutouts. Even if you had two extra pairs of eyes, you wouldn't be able to tell those were poisonous sores..."
Before Wu Jiang could finish, Leng Yue shot up like a cat whose tail had been stepped on, slamming her palm on the table and shouting.
"Damn it all!"Leng Yue finished drinking, then turned and ran out.
"Who the hell... Wait a moment! What did you come to the prince's mansion for?"
"Ah?" Leng Yue froze, stopped and turned back, thought for a moment, then said casually, "Ah... it's nothing. Jing Yi is missing, help me find him."
Before the words faded, she vanished in a flash of red.
"...!"
If Jing Yi knew what was happening in that pleasure quarter, he might have saved himself a lot of breath.
Unfortunately, "if" could only remain "if."
At the moment, after weighing his options repeatedly, Jing Yi felt that compared to his life, a little breath was indeed cheap. So, staring at that terrifyingly sharp pair of scissors, he tried his best to put on a harmless smile.
"Um... sister, I think you look familiar, kind-faced. Have we met somewhere before?"
The woman was slightly taken aback, her delicate brows lifting slightly as she gave a cold, faint smile. "Do you think I'm beautiful?"
"Well..."
The woman slowly moved closer to the bedside, so close that she filled Jing Yi's entire field of vision. "I've seen your wife—General Leng's youngest daughter, Chief of the Criminal Department's Constable Unit, Constable Leng Yue... Who do you think is more beautiful, me or your wife?"
Jing Yi pursed his lips lightly and studied the woman seriously.
The woman was brandishing the scissors, her eyes and brows straining to appear alluring.
"Well..." Jing Yi pondered for a moment, his smile growing even more harmless. "Sister, you're truly beautiful, like a priceless piece of jade..."
Before the woman could speak, Jing Yi maintained that harmless smile and continued, "But even the finest jade has its flaws. Sister, your face is too pointed, your chest too small, your waist too thick, and your hips too narrow. Compared to my wife, you fall far short."
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