No leads

Sunlight streamed in through the lattice window, causing dust to float.

In the quiet environment, Xu Qi'an stood silently in the room for a while before the bulging veins on his forehead subsided. He began to examine the scene without any expression.

The tables, chairs, and other furnishings were intact, with no signs of fighting. The man's carotid artery had been severed by a sharp weapon, and his left temple was sunken.

Instant death.

The mother and daughter died from being stabbed simultaneously by a sharp weapon. The mother's heart was pierced, but the little girl's right chest was pierced. After touching her head, Xu Qi'an discovered that the real cause of death was that her skull had been shattered.

He then turned the three corpses over, lifted the cotton clothing on their backs, and checked the degree of lividity.

"The time of death was no more than four hours ago; he was murdered in the morning. No, that's not right. The temperature last night was about 2 degrees Celsius. If he was murdered at night, the actual time of death would be earlier."

Low temperatures have a "preservation" effect, which can affect the determination of the time of death.

"Although there were no signs of a struggle inside, that doesn't necessarily mean it was an inside job, because it would be far too easy to deal with an ordinary person; it could be done in an instant."

But who would kill this innocent family for no reason?

Xu Qi'an sat at the table, his fingertips lightly tapping the surface. With each tap, the pheromones in his brain seemed to boil.

"Besides Chai Xian and me, who else knows about this place? If no one else knows, then the murderer is either him or me. If someone does know about this place, why did they come after I sent the message to silence me?"

"The goal isn't to kill Chai Xian, but to stop him from going to the Demon-Slaying Conference. But what's the point? Wouldn't it be better to ambush him here and kill him outright?"

"So, it was Chai Xian who killed him to cover it up? No, that doesn't make sense; the motive is unreasonable."

Xu Qi'an's eyes suddenly widened as he realized a possibility.

The day I disguised myself as a cat and followed Chai Xian, I was also being followed by someone else.

"Chai Xian couldn't detect my tracking because zombies don't have the ability to counter tracking. But I didn't have that ability either; I was just a cat at the time, not my true form. If someone had been secretly following us that night..."

Xu Qi'an suddenly stood up, left the house, turned around and closed the door, mounted the mare, and galloped away.

Chai Mansion.

Li Lingsu held the steaming hot teacup in both hands and took a sip of the sweet liquid.

The pristine white cup was filled with goji berries, making the small amount of tea taste exceptionally sweet.

"Sigh, these days..." Li Lingsu sighed.

Before reaching the extraordinary level, the Daoist School offers limited enhancements to the body, far less extreme than the physique of a martial artist.

During the past six months, the Dongfang sisters deliberately drained his energy, leaving him constantly in a state of deficit.

I thought that after leaving the Dongfang sisters, I could recharge and conserve my energy, but for various reasons, I had to spend time with other female confidantes.

From Wenren Qianrou to Chai Xing'er, they were all like dry tinder and a raging fire.

"Perhaps I should try to cultivate the martial arts system. Although martial artists cannot break their bodies before reaching the Qi Refining Realm, that is for those without a foundation. Breaking one's body too early prevents one from Qi Refinement. If I recover my cultivation level, it wouldn't be difficult for me to forcefully Qi Refinement with my fourth-grade cultivation."

"Hmm, I still need to start from the Essence Refining Realm. Otherwise, without the process of tempering my body, it's basically impossible for me to reach the fifth rank of Transformation Energy. Wait, I'm not pursuing the path of a martial artist for combat power, so the Qi Refining Realm is enough."

Lost in thought, I suddenly heard a figure emerge from the shadows of the coffee table.

It was Xu Qian, who had an ordinary appearance.

"Senior?"

Li Lingsu was taken aback. She hadn't expected Xu Qian to come in person. Wasn't he afraid of being discovered by the Buddhist School monks?

He was about to ask that question when he suddenly realized that Xu Qian's behavior was off.

Tianzong possesses the ability to "investigate things to gain knowledge," and is particularly sensitive to people and things he has known for a long time, able to immediately detect even the slightest changes.

It is a prerequisite for the concept of "Celestial Person".

Although Li Lingsu didn't know Xu Qian very well, they had spent a considerable amount of time together.

The Xu Qian of the past was a still, unfathomable pool of water. The Xu Qian of today is a sea with turbulent undercurrents.

Xu Qi'an nodded and asked, "Where was Chai Xing'er last night?"

On my bed, Li Lingsu said, "You've always been with me."

Xu Qi'an reminded him, "Are you sure?"

It's also possible that while you're asleep, they'll go out and do something shady.

Li Lingsu frowned. "We didn't finish until 1:45 AM last night. Also, my seal broke through a small part, so I wasn't sleeping very soundly. If the person next to me left, there was no way I wouldn't have noticed."

At this point, Li Lingsu subconsciously rubbed her aching lower back.

"At two quarters past midnight, are you really suffering from kidney deficiency?" Xu Qi'an nodded slowly, not bothering with any nonsense. "Meet me outside the North City in two quarters of an hour."

He vanished into the room as a shadow.

"So mysterious."

Li Lingsu immediately left the room, asked the steward of the Chai family for a horse, and headed straight for the North Gate along the main road.

In just a quarter of an hour, the two met outside the North Gate. Li Lingsu noticed that Xu Qian looked different again.

Xu Qi'an nodded slightly, offered no explanation, spurred the mare on, and rode away.

"Drive!"

Li Lingsu brandished her whip and immediately followed.

As they approached the village, Xu Qi'an slowed his horse, tossed him a robe and hood, and said:

"Put this on. A murder has occurred in the village. Go and summon the spirits to find out who the killer is."

After Li Lingsu finished changing, Xu Qi'an dismounted, snapped his fingers, and the mare and the horse Li Lingsu was riding obediently went into the woods by the roadside and hid.

"Tsk, the Beast Taming Gu's ability is really useful," Li Lingsu thought enviously.

The Heart Gu is also known as the "Beast Gu" or "Beast Taming Gu" because Heart Gu Masters often use it to control poisonous insects and ferocious beasts.

The two entered the village side by side. As they approached their destination, Xu Qi'an noticed that the courtyard was surrounded by villagers, and mournful cries could be heard coming from inside the house.

The villagers stood either inside or outside the courtyard, pointing and whispering among themselves.

Xu Qi'an vaguely heard a few words:

"Did Wang Laosi's family offend someone?"

"Who knows? They even killed children. The murderer is utterly depraved."

"Sigh, could it be that Chai Xian? It must be him. I heard he's a madman; he even killed his adoptive father."

"Oh dear, aren't we in danger?"

He and Li Lingsu pushed their way through the villagers and entered the courtyard.

Inside the house, a makeshift wooden plank was set up, and the family of three lay on it, covered with a dirty white sheet. An elderly man with gray hair slumped down beside the plank, wailing loudly.

A young couple was busy inside the house. They were dressed in ordinary cloth clothes, their hands were rough, and their faces were dark. They looked like people who were used to doing hard labor.

Who are you?

Upon seeing Xu Qi'an and Li Lingsu enter, the young couple became somewhat wary, especially since Li Lingsu was wearing a robe and a hood.

"People from the government."

Xu Qi'an said in a deep voice, "Who gave you permission to move the body without authorization? What if you destroy the clues left by the murderer?"

He launched into a barrage of questions, leaving the young man flustered and realizing he had made a grave mistake.

Li Lingsu then took the opportunity to enter the inner room, which was the crime scene, and closed the door.

Without giving the young man a chance to react, Xu Qi'an asked sternly, "What is your relationship with this family?"

The young man turned to look at the male victim, a look of sorrow crossing his blank face.

"He was my brother, and my father was his uncle. Around noon, a neighbor saw a stranger come in and then leave quickly. He came over to check on him, but no one answered his calls. When he came in, he found that everyone had been murdered."

As she spoke, her eyes welled up with tears.

Xu Qi'an remained expressionless and said, "Call the neighbors over."

The young man stepped out of the door, glanced at the crowd of onlookers outside the courtyard, and said in his dialect:

"The official has some questions for you. Please come here for a moment."

He pointed to several of his neighbors.

Soon, two elderly women came in; they were neighbors.

The old women were somewhat afraid, yet unable to resist their nosy nature, their eyes frequently glancing at the three corpses on the wooden board.

"Has anyone strange been here?"

Xu Qi'an inquired and received the answer that "a strange man came by at noon."

"Has anyone strange come by this morning?"

The two old women looked at each other and shook their heads.

One said they didn't notice, and the other said they didn't see it.

Although the village was small and sparsely populated, the advantage was that if a stranger entered, they would attract a lot of attention, increasing the likelihood of a crime at night. He pondered this silently. Just then, Li Lingsu came out of the house and shook her head at him.

"His soul has been scattered," Li Lingsu transmitted her voice.

Xu Qi'an's expression darkened, and he slowly nodded.

The two did not linger and hurriedly left the village.

On the way back, Li Lingsu whispered, "What happened?"

"I followed Chai Xian that day and eventually found my way here. This is one of Chai Xian's hiding places."

Xu Qi'an sat on the back of a mare, gazing into the distance, and said:

"We agreed to use this as a contact point to exchange information. I planned to encourage him to confront Chai Xing'er at the Demon Slaying Assembly, using the opportunity to pinpoint his location. Yes, I used a cat controlled by a Heart-Slaying Gu to track him that day; by the time my main body arrived, he was already gone."

This ignores why he wanted to find Chai Xian's true form.

Although Li Lingsu had doubts, she did not ask further, and pondered, "But Chai Xian did not appear at the Demon-Slaying Assembly today."

"Yes!"

Xu Qi'an nodded. "So I came here to confirm, only to find that they had been silenced."

"Hiss!" Li Lingsu gasped.

"The purpose of silencing him was to prevent Chai Xian from participating in the Demon-Slaying Conference? There's a problem here: the person who silenced him knew Chai Xian would be coming tonight. Otherwise, if Chai Xian hadn't received your note, he probably wouldn't have shown up, and there would have been no need to kill him."

These words jolted Xu Qi'an awake. He said in a deep voice, "Perhaps it's not to prevent Chai Xian from getting the note, but to scare him away."

"How so?" Li Lingsu asked.

"I don't know much about Chai Xian, but I know he's a bit extreme. He stayed in Xiangzhou to prove his innocence and find out who the real culprit was. Even without my note, he would most likely have used the Demon Slaughtering Conference to seek justice."

Xu Qi'an analyzed:

"The note was an extra layer of insurance I added, but it wasn't the most crucial one. Because I couldn't be sure Chai Xian would definitely come last night, but how could the person behind the scenes be so sure that Chai Xian would come last night?"

The premise for killing him to silence him is that Chai Xian obtains the note and disrupts the Demon Slaughtering Conference tomorrow.

However, Xu Qi'an couldn't be sure if Chai Xian would come to the small mountain village last night. If he didn't come, he wouldn't have seen the note, and the motive for killing him to cover it up would be gone.

The fact that this family of three was still killed shows that the person behind it all knew Chai Xian would be coming last night.

Li Lingsu understood:

"The note isn't the key. The key is that the mastermind behind it all knew Chai Xian would be here last night. He killed that family of three beforehand, which frightened Chai Xian and made him think that the mysterious person he met that day, namely you, senior, was someone with malicious intentions."

"Out of caution, he abandoned the idea of causing trouble at the demon-slaying convention. But what was the killer's motive?"

Xu Qi'an couldn't give an answer and shook his head, saying:

"A crucial piece of information is missing: besides Myolie Chai and Chai Xian, there's another person lurking behind the scenes in this case. He's the one committing the murders. Once we identify this person, the truth will be largely revealed."

Li Lingsu thought of a character: "Could it be Chai Lan?"

This person never appeared; she mysteriously disappeared on the day Chai Jianyuan died and was never heard from again.

Xu Qi'an countered, "Does she possess that level of cultivation?"

"Chai Lan's cultivation is decent, but she probably hasn't reached the fourth rank, or even the fifth. However, we can't be sure if she's hiding her strength." Li Lingsu couldn't be certain.

Xu Qi'an said, "You don't need to come looking for me these next couple of days."

Why?

"I will investigate the case secretly, find the mastermind behind it all, and then kill him," Xu Qi'an said expressionlessly.

Chai Mansion.

A monk returned to the courtyard, knocked on Jingxin's door, and after receiving permission, he pushed the door open and entered, where he saw Jingxin and Jingyuan playing chess.

"My two senior brothers, Chai Xing'er asked me to tell you that a family was wiped out in Xiaobu Village, more than 30 miles west of Xiangzhou City. It is suspected to be the work of martial arts practitioners."

After questioning the villagers, the government-organized search team ruled out Chai Xian as the perpetrator. However, according to the villagers, a man in blue clothes came to the village at noon today. Not long after, two strangely dressed outsiders entered the village, claiming to be government officials.

"But the authorities have already confirmed that these two people are not government officials."

He described in detail how the family of three died.

Jingxin gently placed the chess piece down with a "clatter," her voice soft and gentle. "Understood."

The monk clasped his hands together and withdrew.

"Perhaps he's a wandering swordsman," Jingyuan said.

He was referring to the two imposters who came afterward.

"If you haven't taken Essence Blood, and you don't seek wealth, why kill someone?" Jingxin frowned and pondered.

"Perhaps it's a vendetta, or perhaps it's Evil Dao person taking advantage of the chaos. There's no need to worry too much about it. If we want to resolve this matter sooner, we must eliminate the root of the problem," Jingyuan said in a deep voice.

After the Demon-Slaying Assembly, the government and several major martial arts factions, referring to the Yellow Register, conducted a house-to-house search of the city.

In towns and villages, "search teams" have also been stationed.

The Xiangzhou government has done a remarkable job by achieving this.

"Tonight you will go out of the city to patrol, remember to make a big show of it," Jingxin said.

"Hmm." Jingyuan nodded.

Jingxin put down the chess pieces, took out an ancient book from his cloth bag, and stopped at a certain page as he turned the pages.

"The Corpse Gu Tribe of Southern Frontier possesses a secret technique of nourishing corpses with corpses. This technique is derived from the art of raising Gu, where walking corpses devour each other, extracting each other's essence, and the final victor becomes the Corpse King."

"Above the Iron Corpse is the Flying Corpse. The Flying Corpse lacks the warning of danger of the Spirit Refining Realm martial artist, the ultimate control of power of a Transformation Realm martial artist, and the 'Intent' of a Fourth Rank martial artist. However, the Flying Corpse can briefly fly through the air, and its combat power is no weaker than that of a Fourth Rank martial artist, or even stronger."

"Because they have extracted enough Essence Blood, they have condensed the rudimentary form of a blood pill within their bodies, giving them the ability to regenerate flesh and blood."

Jingxin slowly said, "Having killed so many martial artists, some had their Essence Blood extracted, and some corpses disappeared without a trace. The person behind this probably wants to create a flying corpse. He will certainly not let you, who has mastered the Vajra Divine Skill, go."

Jingyuan laughed and said, "Especially since my cultivation level at the Demon Slaying Assembly was barely at the fifth rank."

Just then, another monk came in and handed over a note:

"Brother Jingxin, the steward of the Chai residence handed over a letter, saying it was delivered by someone outside the door, specifically requesting it from you."

Jingxin opened the envelope with doubt in her heart.

Xu Qi'an returned to the inn and knocked on the door.

Who is it?

Mu Nanzhi's wary voice rang out from behind the door.

"I."

Xu Qi'an noticed something was off about her voice and asked, "Open the door, what's wrong?"

Squeak~

The door opened, and Mu Nanzhi stood behind it, her expression serious.

Two tiny white foxes, no bigger than her palm, sat obediently at her feet, their childish voices feigning seriousness:

"Someone is watching us. If you don't come back soon, Auntie will be so scared she'll hide under the bed."

P. S.: I recommend a book called "I Heard You're So Cool," written by a kindergarten teacher. Remember to buckle up before reading it.