Chapter 469: Her Relic

Jiao Yu, of course, did not object. General Ling, on the other hand, spat hard onto the ground. “Fair enough! If that kid finds anything, he won’t tell us either.”

He Lingchuan flipped through the booklets again, all the way to the end, and suddenly paused. “This one isn’t a ledger.”

From the outside, it looked no different from the others, but inside, there were only a few thin pages. And instead of recording the receipt of jiang beads, it was filled with strange sets of numbers, for example:

76-4-11;

2-8-1.

And so on.

Each entry was three numbers linked by two dashes, and each page only contained a handful of such entries.

“It’s code.”

Both monsters immediately turned their expectant eyes on him. “You can solve it, right?”

“You think far too highly of me.” He Lingchuan did not look up, eyes fixed on the page. “This kind of code has to be used with a key text or cipher. Only then can it be translated into actual words.”

“A key text?”

“Basically, a book or text that pairs with it,” He Lingchuan explained. He had heard a public lecture back at the Hall of Inquiry where an elderly instructor had gone on at length about cryptography and encryption and how they were compiled. “Or you could say the code was designed specifically to match that book.”

“Damn it all!” General Ling’s face twisted instantly. “Anything made of paper got swept up by that Zhongsun bastard!”

“Then we’ll have to go find Zhongsun Mou again,” He Lingchuan said bluntly, without drama. “He might have found something useful on his side too.”

Jiao Yu added, “I saw him arrange some people to wander nearby disguised as ordinary townsfolk. He’s probably still hoping to get lucky, in case Mr. Mai comes back.”

“He won’t.” He Lingchuan said. He had no evidence for it. It was just a certainty that settled in his bones.

Two scrolls still remained at his elbow, the ones he had grabbed along with the others from the vase in the study. He Lingchuan had tossed them aside.

General Ling kept glancing at them, and finally curiosity overcame it. It clamped its teeth on the cord and yanked, then shoved its head forward as if to spread the scroll open.

He Lingchuan could only sigh and help flatten it out.

This old ram really does love paper far too much.

The first scroll was a landscape painting. It depicted high mountains under a small moon, including a mountain stream striking stones. The brushwork was good, but He Lingchuan did not care.

He was a vulgar man. Landscapes were not his thing.

The second scroll, however, made him stop breathing.

When he unrolled it, it revealed a portrait.

It was a portrait of a woman who appeared to be a noble lady. She had fine embroidered robes, elaborate hair piled high, and elegant features. She stood by a lakeside with a flute raised to her lips, as if playing.

Even the two monsters with no real sense of art could tell this portrait had been painted with far more care than the landscape. Every stroke seemed meant to draw out her beauty, to make her as lifelike as possible.

Then—

Crack.

They heard the sharp sound and snapped their heads around.

He Lingchuan had broken the edge of the table with his bare hand.

He was staring at the painting with eyes wide, pupils pinched down so small he looked like a man who had seen a ghost.

Jiao Yu blurted, “What’s wrong?”

Whether it be the earlier painting that hid an entire pocket space or the coded booklet, none of it had rattled him like this.

Jiao Yu leaned in, trying to see what could possibly be so shocking. It was just a portrait.

Could the woman in the painting be pulled out, too?

But there was no special inscription, and no strange seal like before.

He Lingchuan drew a long breath and forced his voice to be steady. “It’s nothing.”

However, his gaze never left the woman.

More precisely, he wasn’t looking at her face at all.

He was looking at the flute in her hands.

The front half of the flute was partially obscured by her fingers, but the rest was painted in careful detail: jade-white sections, distinct joints, and two striking red rings near the end.

The instant He Lingchuan saw those red rings, his blood had thundered straight to his head.

That was Sun Fuling’s heavenly centipede bone flute.[1]

He had seen her play it right in front of him. She had even used it as a teaching aid and explained things to him with it in hand.

How could he possibly mistake it?

Why was Sun Fuling’s flute in the hands of a noblewoman inside some stranger’s painting?

The paper had yellowed slightly, and it did not look specially preserved, so the painting could not be more than thirty or forty years old.

In the soul land, He Lingchuan had gotten along so well with Sun Fuling that he had kept pushing away the thought of her eventual fate again and again, as if ignoring it could make it untrue. Now this portrait had appeared like a slap, forcing the truth back into his face: people eventually die, and cities eventually fall.

But after she died, who had picked up her belongings? And how had this woman, whoever she was, come to possess Sun Fuling’s flute?

He Lingchuan’s voice was tight as a drawn string as he asked, “Do either of you recognize this woman?”

Both Jiao Yu and General Ling shook their heads.

He Lingchuan rolled the scroll back up in silence. The veins at his temple jumped twice.

The answer lies with Mr. Mai. I have to find him!

General Ling, still baffled, muttered, “What’s so special about this woman?”

Could it be that this is his type?

“Enough.” He Lingchuan steadied himself and dragged his thoughts back to the case. “The caretaker said Mr. Mai stayed in this courtyard for long periods. Given Wan Song’s knack for appearing and vanishing like smoke, he was likely nearby when Mr. Mai gave him instructions, maybe even right here in the house.”

General Ling said curiously, “But Zhongsun Mou’s people already searched the place once. They didn’t find anything.”

“They searched the way they search. We’ll search the way we search.”

Mr. Mai’s residence was not large. The study was already stripped bare, but there were still the bedroom, kitchen, side rooms, and the front and back courtyards.

They searched again from top to bottom.

Zhongsun Mou had left a guard stationed at the gate. The man stood there like a post, watching them tramp around with a cold expression and an unmistakable hint of mockery in his eyes.

To be fair, the mockery was not undeserved. Lingxu City’s people had already swept through like locusts, grabbing useful things, useless things, pretty much anything that was not nailed down. The bedroom now held only a bed and a small stand. The kitchen had nothing but pots and bowls. The front and back courtyards had been dug up so thoroughly that the ground looked like churned mud.

General Ling kept muttering as it checked corners. “What are we even looking for? You need a target. Some idea.”

“A clue connected to the monster-eating beast,” Jiao Yu answered from the back courtyard. Its voice then sharpened slightly as it said, “Something like this.”

The others hurried over.

Jiao Yu was crouched near a vine trellis. The courtyard had once grown gourds, fruits, and medicinal herbs. This season should have had the gourd vines already climbing, and even the self-heal herbs blooming with small purple flowers, but Zhongsun Mou’s people had not spared the garden. The soil had been turned over everywhere. Muddy footprints covered the ground, and crushed stems and broken blossoms lay in ugly patches.

If Mr. Mai had hidden anything in the dirt, it would have been found.

Jiao Yu angled its head toward the base of the wall.

This was the north wall, so sunlight never reached it, and the dampness clung here the worst. Moss coated the stone in thick green mats.

He Lingchuan leaned in and caught a slick, oily glint.

“Slime, but the trail is narrow, so this should have probably just been from an ordinary snail.” He Lingchuan was just about to stand when something else caught his eye. Beside the trellis lay a stone urn, a little over a third of a meter tall, half-buried.

These kinds of stone urns were made by polishing a whole block of stone smooth and carving it into various forms. In ordinary households, people used them as decorative fengshui stones, as garden ornaments, or even as weights to press down lids while pickling vegetables. They were practical, pretty, and could be used however the owner wanted.

This one should have sat quietly beneath the trellis as well.

But Zhongsun Mou’s men had overturned it without mercy, leaving it half embedded in the soil.

And the side facing He Lingchuan bore a carved spiral pattern.

He crouched, brushed away the dirt, and cleared the urn’s surface.

The spiral became clearer.

The two monsters leaned in. “Is that a shell? A snail shell?”

“A snail shell,” He Lingchuan confirmed. He had caught plenty of candy snails in the Panlong Dreamscape before, so he could tell the difference between snails and other shell-creatures by instinct now.

To be honest, the carving was artistic. The craftsman had done fine work.

But placed here, in Mr. Mai’s back courtyard, it felt deliberate.

A bit of moss had also grown on the stone urn. It had been sitting here for a long time.

After thinking for a moment, He Lingchuan simply put it into his storage ring.

They had already combed the residence so thoroughly that there was nothing left to search.

* * *

Night fell.

At the post station, when the lamps were lit, Zhongsun Mou was still writing furiously at his desk.

“One of you.”

A guard appeared at once.

“Take this letter to Chiyan’s capital and present it to the ruler.”

The letter’s content was simple. It was a complaint that the envoy sent by Chiyan’s Crown Prince, Fushan Yue, was crude, unruly, and obstructing the investigation.

Zhongsun Mou knew the ruler of the State of Chiyan had never favored his eldest son. If he also received a complaint from a touring commissioner from Lingxu City, he would almost certainly make some kind of move.

After the guard accepted the order and left, Zhongsun Mou began his dinner.

He disliked hot food, so the cook who traveled with him had prepared thinly sliced raw fish and slivers of clam foot, each slice so thin it was nearly translucent. Zhongsun Mou ate it with slivers of pepper and garlic, dipped in sauce and mustard. It was the flavor he was accustomed to.

Lingxu City’s monsters had lived alongside humans for centuries, and their clothing, lodging, and daily habits had become refined. Even so, their tastes still were not as broad as humans’, who devoured a hundred flavors with enthusiasm. Zhongsun Mou was considered open-minded already. Most merfolk did not like human sauces at all.

As he ate, he studied the ivory sphere in his hand.

Fushan Yue’s envoy had seized it first and looked reluctant to hand it over. Does that mean it concealed something?

Zhongsun Mou examined it for a long time, even dripped medicinal solution onto it.

Nothing.

In the end, he ordered someone to cut it open.

It was solid and appeared to have no hidden mechanism.

The identification confirmed that it was truly ivory, nothing more.

A waste of his time.

After dinner, a thought struck him. He ordered Mr. Mai’s caretaker brought in again for further questioning.

This time, he asked mainly about Mr. Mai’s daily routine and habits and, while he was at it, tested whether the old man had lied before. He would suddenly toss out a question he had asked earlier, but after several other topics, choosing the moment the old man’s guard seemed lowest. If the answers did not match, the old man would suffer.

If He Lingchuan had been present, he would have called it professional. Whether it was Uncle Hao back in Heishui City or the Gale Army later on, this was exactly how interrogations were done.

However, the old man did not slip even once.

Finally, Zhongsun Mou asked about Mr. Mai’s food.

The caretaker said Mr. Mai preferred noodles over rice. If he wanted a midnight snack, he liked soups and broths. The old man then pointed out one particular habit, “Every time Mr. Mai comes to Shuanglu Town, he brings an especially fine, especially white rice vermicelli. He has me cook it for him. You toss it into boiling water, and it’s done in a single roll. When Mr. Mai eats it, he insists on adding dried shrimp.”

“Especially fine, especially white? Where is it produced?”

“I don’t know.”

Zhongsun Mou ordered a guard to go back to Mr. Mai’s residence once more and fetch this fine vermicelli.

At that very moment, the candle on the table burned down to nothing.

When the guard replaced it and lit a new one, Zhongsun Mou caught a faint flash of green light at the corner of the caretaker’s eye.

“Hm?” His heart stirred. “Do your eyes usually trouble you?”

The old man blinked often, and Zhongsun Mou had not thought anything of it. After all, old people had plenty of ailments.

But now, Zhongsun Mou lifted a hand and pinched the candle flame out.

Then he ordered the guard to light it again.

He was the master. If he wanted to play games, his subordinates had no right to object.

When the flame rose again, Zhongsun Mou clearly saw a green glimmer flicker in the old man’s eyes again.

It was only for an instant, but it did not escape his gaze.

Zhongsun Mou let out a cold chuckle.

Then, without warning, he seized the caretaker by the throat, yanked him close, and with his other hand snatched up the soup spoon from the dish, pressing it into the man’s eye socket, digging and twisting!

1. This appeared in Chapter 417. ☜