What Was the Motive?

Just one update today—taking a breather. Two updates tomorrow.

The person who triggered the mechanism was either in the alley or in the residence at its end?!

Huang Bin was shocked by this. For a moment, he forgot all propriety and blurted out, "My lord, could you have made a mistake?!"

His reaction was understandable. Before Sun Shaozong and the others arrived, the alley had already been sealed off. The only people entering or leaving had been government runners.

Didn't Sun Shaozong's words mean that one of the runners present at the time had been an accomplice of the criminals, and had even intended to assassinate a Fourth Rank Official?!

This...

How could that be possible?!

But after voicing his doubts, Huang Bin quickly came to his senses—Lord Sun was renowned for his miraculous judgments, and even an ordinary official unfamiliar with criminal investigations would hardly tolerate being questioned to his face by a mere runner.

With that thought, Huang Bin's knees gave out. He dropped to the ground in a panic and stammered, "I... I merely spoke without thinking. I meant nothing else!"

As he spoke, he slapped himself hard twice.

Sun Shaozong paid him no heed. Instead, he stared at the Hand Crossbows covering the wall, his brow deeply furrowed. He first examined the middle and upper sections closely, then slowly lowered his gaze to the heads and necks, then the waists...

By the end, he had utterly abandoned any concern for appearances and was lying prone at the base of the wall—his gaze fixed on a hole almost flush with the ground.

It was the only hole without a Hand Crossbow mounted in it, yet it could not possibly have been meant for peeping—unless the victim had wanted to look at the dirt in the alley on