Heavenly Dog Devouring Heart Incident on Xinglong Street, Part Two

A mongrel Heavenly Dog with human teeth—no matter how one thought about it, it seemed rather absurd!

Jia Yucun could not help blurting out, "Then Vice Minister Ge was murdered, rather than killed by some Heavenly Dog claiming his life?"

"Of course!"

Sun Shaozong said disdainfully, "Someone killed Vice Minister Ge, then imitated a dog barking in the room, intending to make it look like the Heavenly Dog had claimed his life! Unfortunately, the arrangement was far too crude. Not only did it fail to conceal anything, it exposed the flaws completely!"

Crude?

Apart from Sun Shaozong himself, probably no one present would have described those arrangements as "crude"—in fact, had Sun Shaozong not personally taken charge, no one else could possibly have spotted any flaw in that lump of minced flesh!

But...

"Prefect Sun."

Vice Minister Ge's eldest son, Ge Xiaorui, questioned, "You just said that after killing my father, the murderer hid in the room and barked like a dog? But if that were true, then when we reached the courtyard, wouldn't the murderer still have been in the study? How could he have vanished into thin air afterward?"

"Exactly!"

His second son, Ge Xiaoxian, chimed in, "When we smashed open the door, aside from Father's corpse, let alone a person, we did not even see a single hair... not even a shadow!"

He had originally meant to say that they had not seen so much as a single hair, but the words reached his lips and suddenly reminded him of that tuft of dog fur, so he hastily changed what he was about to say.

The remaining two, Third Master Ge Xiaoyi and fourth son Ge Xiaowen, also raised their doubts one after another.

Consort Zhang, who had been struck speechless earlier despite her air of mystical authority, immediately perked up when Sun Shaozong suddenly became the target of everyone's criticism. She shrieked, "I told you! It must have been the Heavenly Dog that took Master's life! Otherwise, how could it possibly vanish without a trace right under all our noses?!"

The theory of the Heavenly Dog claiming a life, which had just been overturned, suddenly rose again in a clamor. Even Jia Yucun and the others began looking about suspiciously.

Dispelling feudal superstition truly was a long and arduous task!

Sun Shaozong smiled helplessly and pointed at the bedroom. "Actually, vanishing from this bedroom is not nearly as difficult as you imagine. If you do not believe me, come inside with me and see for yourselves."

As he spoke, he called Zhou Da over and whispered a few instructions in his ear, then took the lead into the bedroom.

The others hurried after him in a line. Sun Shaozong pointed at the corpse and the bathtub. "When I first saw the corpse and the bathtub, I found something strange. Even if someone wanted to wash away the clues left on the body, there was no need to scoop out an entire tub of water, was there?"

"After all, no matter how one scoops water from a bathtub, it becomes especially troublesome near the bottom. By ordinary reasoning, there was no need for the murderer to empty it completely—unless he had some other purpose!"

"Following those suspicions, I examined the scene with great care and finally discovered that the murderer repeatedly rinsed out the chest cavity not to erase traces from the corpse, but to achieve two other purposes!"

"Two other purposes?"

"That's right!"

Sun Shaozong held up two fingers and continued smoothly, "The first purpose was to conceal the fact that he had bathed in the tub after committing the murder..."

"Wait!"

Before Sun Shaozong could finish, Consort Zhang jumped out again and shrieked skeptically, "How do you know the murderer bathed in that tub?"

"Because of the red marks on the inside of the tub, of course!"

Sun Shaozong walked over to the bathtub and pointed at its inner wall. "Though the murderer pretended to wash the corpse and splashed all the water onto the floor, he failed to notice that while he was bathing, the filthy blood on his body had already stained a faint red ring inside the tub!"

Everyone stepped up to inspect it in turn. Sure enough, near the top of the tub's inner wall, they found an extremely inconspicuous pale red ring!

While everyone else marveled at Sun Shaozong's powers of observation, Consort Zhang still refused to concede. "And how can you be sure those marks were left while bathing, rather than accidentally made while the murderer was scooping out water?"

Could this woman's unreasonable pestering mean she had a guilty conscience?

Sun Shaozong silently listed her as the prime suspect. Then he reached into the tub, held his hand level with the red mark, and nodded toward the corpse on the floor. "Given Vice Minister Ge's rather stout build, if the tub had originally contained this much bathwater, what do you think would have happened when he got in?"

"It would have overflowed!"

Zhao Wuwei was the first to answer. "Forget the vice minister, even if a lowly fellow like me climbed in for a soak, quite a bit of water would probably spill over."

"Exactly!"

Sun Shaozong spread his hands and shrugged at Consort Zhang. "The servants of your residence could not possibly have been careless to such an extent, could they? Therefore, that ring must have been left after the murderer got into the tub!"

At last, Consort Zhang had no response. She could only retreat behind the others in frustration.

Sun Shaozong held up two fingers again. "Besides concealing the traces of his bath, his other purpose was to make the scene more chaotic and terrifying, so everyone would completely overlook his sleight of hand!"

"Sleight of hand?"

Jia Yucun truly possessed the sharpest mind of anyone present. Hearing this, he immediately struck at the heart of the matter. "Brother Sun, do you mean the murderer never vanished from the room at all? He used some method to deceive everyone's eyes?!"

"That's right!"

Sun Shaozong paced back and forth, speaking with absolute certainty. "First, the murderer stripped naked and stabbed Vice Minister Ge to death with a sharp weapon. He cut open his chest and removed his heart, arranging the body to appear as if the Heavenly Dog had claimed his life. Then he washed the blood from his body in the bathtub and put on his clothes..."

He stopped abruptly and pointed behind the door. "He hid behind the door and began barking like a dog. When someone broke in, he silently blended in with the crowd!"

Before Sun Shaozong's words had even faded, the room erupted in an uproar!

"H-how could that be possible?!"

"Exactly! If someone had been hiding behind the door, how could we possibly not have seen him?!"

Even Jia Yucun, who had raised the possibility himself, shook his head repeatedly. Sun Shaozong's words sounded as fantastical and absurd as a wild tale.

Sigh~

For a group of people who had never watched Young Bao Qingtian, understanding the essence of this plan was indeed rather difficult.

Fortunately, he had prepared for this already!

"Everyone!"

Sun Shaozong raised his voice and asked loudly, "Have you not noticed that there is someone in this room right now who should not have been here, yet slipped in halfway through?"

Everyone was stunned again. They looked from one person to another, but truly could not identify anyone who should not have been there.

In the end, a thin and wiry young servant stepped forward on his own. He bowed before the Ge Xiaorui brothers and said with a fawning smile, "My lords, I am the person who slipped in halfway through. Since I was not present when the door was smashed open, the officials from Shuntian Prefecture did not call me over for questioning."

As he spoke, he pointed at Zhou Da. "It was only just now that this officer called me over and had me quietly slip into the room..."

"How is that possible?!"

Before he could finish, the vice minister's old steward was already shaking his head vehemently. "Liu Rui, you were Master's personal attendant. How could you possibly have been absent when they smashed open the door?!"

"Th-that..."

Just as Liu Rui was about to explain, two servants who knew him well suddenly understood and hurriedly said, "Old Steward, Brother Liu really was not there at the time! His stomach acted up in the middle of the night, and he squatted in the latrine for nearly half an hour. He happened to miss it!"

The crowd erupted again. They found it unbelievable, yet had no choice but to believe it.

"Everyone understands now, I presume?"

Sun Shaozong's hawk-like gaze swept over the people of Ge Residence one by one. At last, he gave a chilling sneer. "The true murderer who killed Vice Minister Ge is among you!"