The guard silently looked up at the opposite beam. General Wu had specifically reminded him that there was only one solution for such emergencies: play deaf and dumb, and trust that Wang Ye, blessed with great fortune, would always pull through.
Being stared at by Chu Chu in the dead silence, Tan Zhang had no choice but to adjust his smile and repeat, "Imperial Concubine, please..."
Chu Chu turned her head with seven parts pride and three parts smugness, flashing Xiao Jin Yu a triumphant grin. "Hey!"
This was Chu Chu's second time entering the Prefect Magistrate's Office's morgue. Her last visit had been just yesterday, barely a day ago, yet now the morgue looked completely transformed.
Originally, the room had been neatly arranged with two rows of autopsy tables, nearly half of them occupied by corpses tightly covered with white cloth. Ice buckets stood in all four corners, making the place cold and foul-smelling like any ordinary morgue.
But now, both the corpses and tables had vanished. The room was divided into three small sections by two screens. The section facing the main entrance held an incense altar, while the left and right sections each contained a large bed enclosed by curtains. The ice buckets had been replaced with braziers, filling the room with warmth and the scent of incense.
Had she not been here just yesterday, Chu Chu might have thought Tan Zhang had brought her to the wrong place.
Tan Zhang led Chu Chu to the right compartment and pointed at the tightly curtained bed from behind the screen. "Imperial Concubine, the corpse is inside here."
Half-doubting, Chu Chu entered and lifted the curtain, then broke into laughter.
On the crimson bedsheet lay a bamboo mat, upon which the dismembered body parts were arranged according to the sequence she had identified yesterday. An embroidered pillow rested at the head, and a silk quilt was neatly placed to one side. This was the first time she'd ever seen a corpse given such a beautiful bed!
Chu Chu turned to look at Tan Zhang, who was half-hiding by the screen. "Lord Tan, you're so kind to the corpse!"
"You flatter me, Imperial Concubine. This is my duty, my duty... I swore before Wang Ye that I would eat and sleep alongside this corpse..."
Chu Chu's almond eyes widened. "Can corpses eat?"
Tan Zhang forced a stiff smile. "Well... whatever I eat, I offer to her... How could I dare disobey Wang Ye's orders!"
"Lord Tan, you're such a good official!"
"I don't deserve such praise..."
Chu Chu examined the corpse on the bed for a few more moments—she still remembered the shape and size of each piece clearly. "Haven't these already been examined? Why examine them again?"
"No, no. We just dug up some... other parts from the courtyards of five butchers... We don't know yet if they belong to the same person as this corpse, so they're placed under the bed, not displayed. We must trouble you to identify them..."
Chu Chu crouched down to look under the bed, spotted a mat, and pulled it out. Immediately she exclaimed, "Ah! There's a head! And hands and feet! There are bones too... and internal organs! How wonderful! How wonderful!"
Tan Zhang stared dumbfounded as Chu Chu exclaimed with mixed shock and delight, picking up each piece with glowing eyes to examine carefully.
Others who had seen these dismembered remains had also screamed, but no one had reacted quite like this...
"Looking at the knife marks... the bones and flesh, and the time of death—these definitely belong with the ones on the bed!"Chu Chu excitedly lifted the head, turning the pale yet delicately featured woman's face toward Tan Zhang, and declared cheerfully, "Lord Tan, look! Now it's perfect. Her face is still intact, so her family can recognize her!"
Tan Zhang stumbled backward several steps in terror, his entire oval-shaped body hiding behind the screen, only half of his ashen, moon-like face peeking out as he forced a smile and said, "The Imperial Concubine is absolutely right... absolutely right... In fact, there's no need for her family to see—I... and many others... already know who she is..."
"Really?" Chu Chu sprang up from the edge of the mat, clutching the head as she rushed toward Tan Zhang. "Then tell me quickly, who is she?"
Tan Zhang gripped the screen frame tightly to steady his trembling legs, not daring to look at the head or even at Chu Chu. He stared fixedly at his own toes, his tongue tangling as he stammered, "She... she... she is... the wife of... of... of Magistrate Ji!"
"Ah?!" Chu Chu widened her eyes, swiftly rotating the head in her hands to examine the face closely, as if she were holding not a head but a pot of flowers. Finally, she sighed, "What a pity! She was so beautiful!" After saying this, she turned and carried the head back to the edge of the mat, crouching down to continue her examination.
It took Tan Zhang a long while to catch his breath. Trembling, he pulled a handkerchief from his sleeve to wipe his sweat, silently thinking, If Prince An dares to marry such a woman as his princess, he must be someone not to be trifled with...
Before Tan Zhang could fully recover, Chu Chu's clear voice came from behind the screen, "Lord Tan, you said these were dug up in the courtyards of five butchers. Are those five butchers the same ones who were just brought back?"
Hearing that the topic wasn't about the corpse, Tan Zhang breathed a half-sigh of relief. "Replying to the Imperial Concubine... yes, they are."
"Then the killers have been caught, haven't they?"
Tan Zhang was taken aback. Xiao Jin Yu had consistently referred to them as suspects and hadn't confirmed whether they were the murderers. But with the dismembered body parts dug up from their courtyards, how could there be any mistake? "Probably... probably so..."
"Why did they kill Lord Ji's wife?"
Touching upon his area of expertise, Tan Zhang replied with humble yet confident wording, "His Highness has not yet made a final judgment, but based on my years of experience in solving cases and various clues, it is inferred that Lord Ji's wife had a dispute with them a few days ago while buying meat at Full Fragrance Butchery... Butchers have a strong propensity for violence. They likely took revenge by killing her when she went out, then buried parts of the body in their own courtyards to prevent each other from reporting the crime."
"Who discovered these dismembered parts? To find them buried in the ground—that's truly impressive!"
"This... this was discovered by the general serving under His Highness. Indeed, His Highness is surrounded by a wealth of talent and exceptional individuals. I am utterly impressed, utterly impressed..."
OpenNovel