Pei Ye vaulted off his horse and darted into the woods.
Behind him came several officers' startled, angry shouts.
"What are you doing?!" Several officers chased after him, but did not draw their blades at once, for the boy's movements as he rushed in had almost dazzled them.
"Sorry, but I knew the deceased," Pei Ye said, turning his head. "Let me look at the scene."
The head constable strode over then, frowning. "Who are you?"
Pei Ye answered truthfully and showed him his Martial Competition documents and Bai Sibing's Recommendation Letter. After reading them one by one, the head constable's expression eased. "So you're young hero Pei. How did you know the deceased?"
"We stayed at the same inn in town."
The head constable nodded. "All right-Zhao Xin, accompany young hero Pei as he looks around, and record anything he finds."
A young officer beside him, holding a brush and notebook, immediately looked up. "Yes!"
Pei Ye took his documents back from the head constable and put them into his saddlebag, his eyes already fixed firmly on the corpse.
He walked slowly over and lowered his head. For an instant, he seemed to return to that rain-drenched forest in the early hours of the fourth day of Early Eighth Month.
The same man, the same posture of dying against a tree, the same eyes that would not close in death.
But it was only an illusion, after all. This was not a remote mountain where even cries to heaven went unanswered, and this corpse was not so brutally mangled. There was only a wound through his shoulder and a fatal cut across his throat.
Cheng Jianghong's warm, kindly eyes stood open. There was neither surprise nor anger in them, no expression at all, only lifelessness-utter lifelessness.
Pei Ye shifted