Heavenly Dog Haunting?
Sun Shaozong placed the dozen or so dog hairs beneath his nose one by one and sniffed them. Then he carefully rolled them into a small tuft and examined them in his palm for quite some time. A trace of disdain immediately appeared on his face, but he gave nothing away, merely tossing the hairs to Zhao Wuwei for safekeeping before resuming his inch-by-inch search.
Seeing that Sun Shaozong did not take the claim of "Heavenly Dog Haunting" seriously, Zhao Wuwei could not help trailing after him and chattering away, "Sir, this case is truly uncanny!"
"I heard that last night, Vice Minister Ge once again drove all the pages and maids out of the courtyard and stayed alone in this study. Then, near the third watch, bursts of shrill dog howls came from inside—and each cry was more miserable than the last!"
"Vice Minister Ge's household felt that something was wrong, so more than a dozen of them gathered their courage and came over to find out what was happening."
"The moment they entered the courtyard, the barking stopped. But no matter how they shouted from outside, there was never the slightest response from within."
"With no other choice, the steward and Ge Residence's eldest young master ordered the door broken down!"
"Yet once they entered this bedroom, they discovered that Vice Minister Ge had died on the spot. There was not a soul in the room, and his heart had vanished without a trace! Only a few dog hairs had fallen on the transom window. If that was not the Heavenly Dog claiming his life, then what was it?"
Hearing this, Sun Shaozong suddenly pulled his head out of the bathing tub and asked seriously, "Can you confirm that the dog howls abruptly ceased only after everyone entered the courtyard?"
"Of course! More than a dozen witnesses said so!"
Seeing that his words had finally made an impression, Zhao Wuwei hurriedly added fuel to the fire. "See how sinister this is?! Either the murderer was some demon capable of flying through the heavens and burrowing through the earth, or the Heavenly Dog ate Vice Minister Ge's heart and escaped through the transom! Otherwise, with so many people blocking it inside, how could it possibly vanish into thin air..."
Before he could utter the final word of "vanish," Sun Shaozong said nothing and lunged straight for the corner behind the door, carefully inspecting the floorboards and walls there.
Zhao Wuwei eagerly crowded over as well, but even after staring until his eyes were bloodshot, he could not spot anything unusual behind the door.
Just as he was beginning to wonder whether Sun Shaozong had made some mistake, Sun Shaozong suddenly clapped his hands and said excitedly, "Come on! First, let's meet those witnesses. While we're at it, we can give our Prefect Sun a dose of reassurance!"
A dose of reassurance?
Could the case have already been solved again?!
Zhao Wuwei was stunned. For a moment, he even forgot to follow—he had immense faith in Sun Shaozong's ability to solve cases, but this one was clearly beyond human means!
Could it be...
Like Bao Longtu, who judged the living by day and interrogated the dead by night, could Prefect Sun also arrest and question demons and ghosts?!
Because he had lagged behind for that brief moment, by the time Zhao Wuwei emerged from the bedroom, Sun Shaozong was already speaking eloquently to Jia Yucun and the people of Ge Residence.
"The murderer left behind two extremely obvious pieces of evidence at the scene."
"First, the few dog hairs on the transom window!"
"Second, the victim's missing heart!"
At this point, Sun Shaozong paused and swept his gaze across the crowd before continuing, "Based on my inspection just now, that heart was most likely torn out by the murderer's teeth and then eaten directly!"
"The Heavenly Dog! It must have been the Heavenly Dog that ate Master's heart!"
Before Sun Shaozong had finished speaking, a middle-aged woman draped in sable fur shrieked hysterically, "That ghostly thing tormented Master for a full year and a half! I knew that one day, Master would die at that thing's hands!"
"Wuu wuu wuu..."
Before the woman's shrieks had even faded, an elderly man burst into tears. "Master, oh Master! This old servant told you long ago to invite some experts to drive away the evil, but you refused no matter what! And now look at this—you were killed by that ghostly thing! Wuu wuu wuu..."
Judging by their positions and attire, the two were probably Vice Minister Ge's concubine and steward.
Though the others were not as distraught as they were, every one of them was pale as paper, their faces still full of lingering terror.
Even Jia Yucun's usual coldness had been replaced by panic. His eyes darted wildly in their sockets, as though the word "retreat" had been written directly across his face.
At that moment, however, Sun Shaozong suddenly laughed aloud and shook his head. "The murderer did this precisely to make others think of the 'Heavenly Dog claiming a life'—but this clumsy method is like drawing legs on a snake, or adding a dog's tail to a ferret. It is utterly laughable!"
As he spoke, he held out his hand to Zhao Wuwei and ordered, "Give me that tuft of dog hair!"
Zhao Wuwei quickly unfolded the paper packet and carefully presented the dog hairs.
Sun Shaozong pinched them between his fingers and gave them a few shakes, snorting. "These dog hairs differ in thickness, length, color, texture... even their smells are different. They were plainly picked up at random and gathered together—when you all heard the sounds last night, it was not a pack of dogs barking at once, was it?"
After hearing this, everyone looked suspiciously at the dog hairs.
But the woman in the fox-fur coat did not believe him in the least. She gave a cold laugh and said disdainfully, "The Heavenly Dog is no ordinary dog. It is formed from the resentment of countless beasts that died unjustly. What is so strange about it growing many different kinds of fur?"
What the hell...
There was actually an explanation like that!
Not only did the others seem suddenly enlightened, but even Sun Shaozong was momentarily left speechless.
Fortunately, this was not his only piece of evidence. He reached out to Zhao Wuwei for something else, then displayed it in his palm for everyone to see. "Fine, even if that Heavenly Dog truly was some mixed-breed creature, then how do you explain this?"
The crowd looked closely and saw that he was holding a small clump of minced flesh stuck together. Though some vaguely guessed where it had come from, they could not understand no matter how hard they thought what Sun Shaozong intended to prove by displaying it.
"Brother."
Jia Yucun could not help urging him, "Stop keeping us in suspense. Tell us quickly—what is suspicious about this thing?"
"Prefect Sun."
Only then did Sun Shaozong explain, "If I am not mistaken, this should be chewed-up fragments of the heart left by the murderer. But do you not think this minced flesh is a little too fine?"
As he spoke, he ground the meat into a thin layer across his palm and continued, "A dog's teeth are sharp and pointed, better suited than human teeth for chewing hard objects or tearing flesh—but precisely because they are so sharp, dog teeth cannot grind food into fine mince! On the other hand, human teeth can easily produce this result!"
Having said that, Sun Shaozong gestured with his palm toward the middle-aged woman and asked with a smile, "Madam, surely you are not going to tell me that the Heavenly Dog not only grew a coat of mixed fur, but also had a mouthful of human teeth?!"
To ensure that my deduction in this case did not have any overly obvious flaws, I spent a long time researching the details, so this chapter came out a little late.
Before you continue