Horace's face was filled with shock, grief, and disbelief. From the moment he heard the news until he saw Pude's corpse, he had been no different from everyone else around him.
But that did not dispel Qin Ran's suspicions.
Pude was a young man blinded by love, but his teacher was not.
When Pude first got into trouble, Horace had appeared before him and begged for forgiveness.
So, what should he have done afterward under normal circumstances?
Naturally, he should have restrained his disciple and kept him from appearing before Qin Ran again.
But what had happened instead?
During the Companion Festival, Pude had not only appeared, but had provoked him again.
That was simply too unreasonable.
Not to mention the so-called challenge afterward.
If the earlier provocation could barely be explained away, then the later match had been far too deliberate—so deliberate that it seemed intended to make Pude lose, leave the Hunter Temple, and die here.
This was an alley in the Council District. It was directly connected to the Temple District, yet entirely different from it: it was not covered by the radiance of the gods.
The traces on the ground and nearby had also been cleaned away completely.
Other than Pude's corpse, his eyes still wide open in death, nothing of value had been left behind.
"The killer closely followed Pude. Pude, distraught and absent-minded, noticed nothing until his throat was slit!"
"Pude's eyes were wide open, and the surprise still remained on his face, but there was no fear of death. That means the slash was extremely fast—so fast that Pude's body died before he could react."
"But his throat was cut through in one stroke, yet there were no large blood splatters, and not much blood was left at the scene... Was the killer