He did not know why, but he kept feeling that only by solving this case could he find Baozhu's true whereabouts.
Wei Xun laid the unfamiliar woman's corpse back in the coffin, undid her clothes, and examined her from head to toe for injuries inflicted before her death. There was only one fatal injury: the strangulation marks on her neck. In his hallucination, he had injured himself to force his hands to release their grip, but had done no serious damage. These marks were sunken and black with bruising, with no elasticity left in them. They had formed more than ten days ago.
The killer had used tremendous force, not only breaking her neck but leaving crescent-shaped nail wounds in her skin. Traces of vividly colored pigment remained inside those wounds.
After dressing the corpse again and tidying her bun a little, Wei Xun gently pried open her jaw and checked inside her mouth, just to be thorough.
He raced through the meditation halls and among the Pagodas where the coffins lay in repose. Wherever coffins were placed, incense burners and ever-burning lamps were sure to be present. These were rites honoring the dead, and would arouse no suspicion whatsoever.
Holding his breath, Wei Xun overturned every incense burner he could see. Just as he expected, the burners contained peacock gall, arsenic copper green, mercury, cinnabar, lead white, and other deadly poisons. These substances were ingredients both for refining elixirs and for making painting pigments.
Burned together with the strong incense used to suppress the stench of corpses, they had confused his sense of smell and prevented him from detecting the trap in advance. Continually breathing the poisonous fumes was the direct cause of his unwitting descent into hallucination. Had he worked while holding his breath, as he used to