Li Piaoqing's senior brother had had both wrists bound and suffered mutilation in several places, while Escort Chief Zhao had only been run through the heart with a sword.
The condition of these two bodies was the most thoroughly documented part of the case file. Pei Ye turned back to those pages and studied them repeatedly: which injuries were light and which severe, which had come first and which later; which had been inflicted during a struggle and which were meaningless wounds; which were sword wounds, which had been left by a short blade, and which had been caused by fists and feet. Every wound had been meticulously recorded.
But Li Piaoqing barely looked at these pages. She raised her head, her thoughts unknown.
Pei Ye thought she could not bear the sight. After carefully reading through the pages himself, he looked up at the girl. "Miss Li, judging by these wounds, some seem to have been inflicted during a fight-ruthless and controlled, severing tendons and piercing bone, solely to subdue the opponent. Others seem to have been inflicted after your senior brother was bound, with a great deal of kicking and punching-even for torture, that isn't the most effective method. It looks more like an outpouring of emotion."
"So I think either the killer alternated between composure and frenzy, or there were two people... Did your senior brother have any enemies in life?"
"...My senior brother had no personal enemies." Li Piaoqing suddenly smiled. "Thank you, Young Hero Pei, but I already knew all this... In fact, I wrote those pages about the bodies myself, word by word."
"..."
"Because we brought the bodies back and examined them ourselves. I gave this record to the Prefectural Office and had them enter it into the case file. But there was