Something Suspicious

"We've already questioned the ordinary disciples and the people in the city. They all greatly admire the Fire Saber Sect and are deeply grateful to it." Luo Fang lifted her chin slightly as she spoke.

"Occasionally, demonic beasts attack the surrounding area, and Zhu Ren personally deals with them. Liu Yong went into the city today to look for any traces of demonic beasts."

Lu Feng suddenly spoke. "Were the demonic beasts that attacked the people all ape demons?"

Luo Fang's expression froze for a moment.

She opened her mouth, but no words came out.

"Th-that's not something we specifically asked about." Zhu Lin, standing beside her, picked up the conversation, sounding uncertain.

Zhou Si exchanged a glance with Lu Feng and made an immediate decision. "All right. You two go investigate this and get to the bottom of it. Focus on asking what kinds of demonic beasts they were. Lu Feng and I will go to that disciple's room. We'll meet back here in four hours."

This time, Luo Fang didn't refuse. She nodded and hurried out of the room with Zhu Lin.

Only after the two had gone far away did Zhou Si look at Lu Feng and say quietly, "Let's go."

Following the marks on the map, the two passed through several rows of crude disciple quarters and arrived at a secluded little hut at the very back.

The door was unlocked.

The moment they pushed it open, a heavy, musty smell hit them.

The room was small, about ten square meters, and furnished extremely sparsely. There was a wooden plank bed, a crooked table, a chair missing a leg, and several empty clay jars piled in a corner. A few worn articles of clothing and sheets of coarse paper lay scattered across the floor. The place had clearly been searched more than once.

In a place where everything could be seen at a glance, nothing could be hidden.

Zhou Si frowned and began searching the room carefully. Lu Feng crouched down as well, his gaze sweeping over the coarse paper on the floor.

A moment later, Zhou Si straightened, dusted off her hands, and shook her head. "Nothing. Zhu Qi probably died from Qi deviation. There's nothing suspicious about it."

Lu Feng didn't respond.

Zhou Si turned and saw him crouching beside a table leg, holding a crumpled sheet of coarse paper. His gaze was fixed on it as he read intently.

"What's that?" Zhou Si moved closer.

The coarse paper was densely covered with words, the handwriting hasty and messy, as though it had been written in great haste. Most of it concerned problems encountered during cultivation-force becoming blocked at a certain acupoint, a dull ache in the meridians, Qi and blood churning without settling... There were more than a dozen scattered notes.

"These are records of problems he ran into while cultivating. He may have intended to ask someone about them." Zhou Si made her assessment after a glance. "Nothing special."

Lu Feng still didn't answer.

He stared at the coarse paper, his gaze growing increasingly deep.

"Senior Sister Zhou," he finally said, his voice soft. "You said before that someone wrote a letter to the Demon-Slaying Bureau reporting that demonic beasts at the Fire Saber Sect were eating people. Have you seen that letter?"

Zhou Si froze for a moment, then nodded. "I have. Deputy Commandant Qin showed me the original before we set out."

Halfway through speaking, she suddenly stopped.

She snatched the coarse paper from Lu Feng's hand and brought it close to her eyes, examining it carefully, character by character.

The longer she looked, the wider her eyes grew.

"This handwriting..." She raised her head, keeping her voice extremely low. "It really does look like the handwriting in the letter. Very much so."

Lu Feng looked at her. "Exactly the same?"

"I can't say it's a perfect match, but it's at least eighty or ninety percent similar." Zhou Si's fingers tightened slightly, crumpling the edge of the paper. "But if Zhu Qi was the one who sent the report, why didn't he come find us? We've been at the Fire Saber Sect for days. He could easily have contacted us in secret-"

Halfway through, she suddenly understood.

"Unless... he'd already been discovered by then."

Lu Feng nodded, his voice so calm it was almost chilling. "A Ming Jin disciple discovered the sect master's secret. He wanted to report it and sent the letter, but he was exposed too. Then we arrived, and he just happened to die from 'Qi deviation.'"

Zhou Si's fingers whitened slightly around the coarse paper.

"What do we do next?"

Lu Feng stood up, folded the paper, and tucked it into his robes.

"Let's go back and talk."

The two left Zhu Qi's room and returned to their quarters.

An hour later, Luo Fang, Zhu Lin, and Liu Yong pushed the door open and came in together.

Zhou Si immediately stood. "Well? Did you find anything?"

Luo Fang sat down at the table and took a long gulp of tea before speaking. "We got it straight. We found more than a dozen townspeople and seven or eight ordinary disciples of the Fire Saber Sect. We questioned them separately, and their accounts all matched."

She paused.

"The ones attacking people really were ape demons. Every time, it was ape demons."

Lu Feng and Zhou Si exchanged a glance without speaking.

At that moment, Liu Yong took an ape demon's corpse from his storage bag and threw it to the floor with a bang. It was a small, unranked ape demon, with a clean saber cut across its neck. It was thoroughly dead.

"Today I searched Nanxi City inside and out." Liu Yong clapped his hands, undisguised pride on his face. "I happened to run into this ape demon just as it was about to attack a townsman, so I cut it down with one stroke. The corpse is right here. We have both a witness and physical evidence."

He glanced around at everyone, his tone growing lighter. "Put that together with what the townspeople said, and we can basically be certain-the incidents of demonic beasts eating people in Nanxi City were the work of this group of ape demons. I didn't expect this mission to be so easy. We've wrapped it up in just a few days."

When he finished, however, he found that no one in the room looked relieved.

Zhou Si's expression was grave, Lu Feng remained silent, and even Luo Fang and Zhu Lin were frowning as they pondered something.

"What's wrong with you?" Liu Yong was somewhat puzzled. "The mission's complete. Why are you all wearing such long faces?"

Without speaking, Zhou Si took the coarse paper found in Zhu Qi's room from her robes, unfolded it, and laid it flat on the table.

"Lu Feng and I found this in Zhu Qi's room."

Liu Yong and the other two leaned over and scanned the paper.

"It's just some cultivation notes. What does it prove?" Liu Yong asked with a frown.

Zhou Si spoke deliberately, stressing every word. "The handwriting in the letter sent to the Demon-Slaying Bureau is exactly the same as this."

The room fell silent for a moment.

Luo Fang jerked her head up, then brought the coarse paper close to her eyes again. She examined it carefully for a moment, and her expression gradually changed.

"It really... it really is the same." Her voice grew more serious. "That means Zhu Qi was the one who sent the message to the Demon-Slaying Bureau."

"So what?" Liu Yong spread his hands. "Zhu Qi died from Qi deviation. The three of us confirmed it with our own eyes. There was nothing wrong. He wrote the report, and he died. What connection is there between those two things?"

"Then how do you explain the demonic beasts on the rear mountain?" Zhou Si stared at him. "Lu Feng and I searched South Rear Mountain twice. Seven demon nests, all full of unranked lesser demons without a single first-rank demonic beast. The ape demons' nest was the only exception-two first-rank and one second-rank."

"And the ones attacking the townspeople also happened to be ape demons. Every time, it was ape demons."

She stressed every word. "Put all that together, and isn't it too much of a coincidence?"

Liu Yong opened his mouth, but for a moment he was at a loss for words.

He wanted to argue, but when the words reached his lips, he felt something was off. He wasn't a fool. With so many "coincidences" piled together, something really wasn't right.

But the mission was already complete. And he had earned the most credit-he had slain the ape demon, he had investigated the leads in the city, and the witness and physical evidence were both in his hands. As long as they closed the case here and returned to the Demon-Slaying Bureau, the credit was as good as his.

And now they were telling him there was more to it?

"Even if something is wrong, it's just that Sect Master Zhu Ren failed to keep his people in line and let one of his disciples suffer Qi deviation," Liu Yong said, sticking out his neck. "What does that have to do with demonic beasts eating people? Where's the evidence?"

Zhou Si looked at him coldly without speaking.

Her gaze made Liu Yong uneasy, and he instinctively looked away.

Just then, Lu Feng suddenly spoke.

"There's a way."

Everyone turned to look at him.