"Bred fierce beasts?!"
The expressions of everyone grew stern, and the air seemed to freeze.
Gu Chang'an slowly stood up, his gaze sweeping across the bloody and chaotic scene like a knife:
"Look at these traces on the ground."
He pointed to the mottled bloodstains and mixed mud prints in the courtyard:
"These are beast claw marks. The claw prints are wide and deep, with four toes and hook shapes—anything that can leave traces like this is no ordinary wild beast."
He squatted down, examining once more a corpse torn to bloody shreds, and said in a deep voice:
"The bite marks are irregular, with immense strength, tearing flesh and bone in a single bite..."
"This kind of bite placement is trained, killing with a single blow."
"If it really is a fierce beast," Li Hongye said in a deep voice, her brows tightly furrowed, "then where did it come from? And where did it go?"
Gu Chang'an did not answer. He stood up, his expression solemn as he walked along the mottled bloodstains in the courtyard, pondering and observing at the same time.
He bypassed the main hall, walked into the backyard, and suddenly stopped beside a rockery.
That was a patch of seemingly abandoned withered grass, with a few bluish-stone slabs standing crookedly and the surroundings cluttered, as if unmanaged for years.
Yet Gu Chang'an's eyes narrowed. He squatted down and gently brushed the grass aside, his gaze instantly hardening.
"There is a problem here."
He drew the long blade at his waist, the sharp edge prying with a clack as a wooden board concealed beneath a bluish-stone slab suddenly loosened, revealing traces of a hidden mechanism.
"Indeed a concealed secret passage."
He completely lifted the wooden board, and a gloomy and profound passageway instantly appeared before his