A moment later, the three incense sticks atop the skull burned down completely, and the faint, indistinct laughter vanished with them. Song Tianming took a deep breath, bowed to the dried head of the young girl, then extended both hands and lifted it with utmost reverence.
Ye Qiutang had steadied herself by now. She approached on unsteady legs and saw that incense ash remained on the red cloth beneath the head. The ash was arranged in a rather mysterious pattern—not in three separate piles, one for each stick, but gathered together in a single heap.
Ye Qiutang's eyes widened slightly. "Old Man Song, what does this mean?"
"The three incense sticks crown the head; legitimate and illegitimate kin unite." Song Tianming relaxed a little and turned to Ye Qiutang, managing a faint smile. "You can rest easy, Miss. Jiang Cheng and Wang Fugui mean us no harm. They definitely aren't Nanman spies."
"If it wasn't them, then Lü Zhu's death wasn't a staged sacrifice. It seems another spy is still hiding among us." Ye Qiutang finished speaking with a grave expression, then abruptly stopped. She jerked her head up to look at Song Tianming, belatedly realizing something. "So... you didn't say those things to Jiang Cheng and the others for no reason earlier. You'd already confirmed that another spy was hiding among us."
As she looked again at the dried head, Ye Qiutang began to suspect the truth. "This isn't the first time you've used this method. You've already used it on the people in the room."
Seeing this, Song Tianming made no effort to hide it. He nodded. "You're perceptive, Miss. This morning, while the monks were reciting the prayers for the dead, I used this method."
At the time, the room had been in chaos. The monks' prayers