After the Immortal Disappeared

Chapter 454: Chapter 453: Keywords of the Murder Case

The scoundrel had recovered and was now trying to stress his importance. Hee Lingchuan didn’t call him out on it, merely frowning, but General Antelope was far more direct. ”More than a year? How could year-old news possibly be relevant now?”

The timeline seemed to be stretching things.

”Please, all of you, just listen.” Wangg Mazi didn’t dare to keep them in suspense any longer. ”East of Zhitian Village, there’s a nest of Porcupine Demons, over a hundred of them. Their territory is at the foot of Yulun Mountain, and it’s a large area. This group of demons doesn’t get along with the locals and often causes trouble. The townspeople don’t like them, but there’s usually nothing they can do about it. That nest of demons has been living at the foot of Yulun Mountain for over a hundred years. They have much more seniority than anyone else; they were there even before Zhitian Village existed.”

”And?” Hee Lingchuan knew that although the Beiga Kingdom claimed to be a place where demons and humans coexisted, most demons were still accustomed to living in their own clans and territories, keeping a clear boundary with humans.

It was a natural tribal segregation. Take the old goat beside him, for instance. He preferred to hunker down with his clan in their territory on the edge of the county, living it up, rather than reside within the city walls.

”Last winter, there was a sudden landslide on Yulun Mountain, and it seemed to have buried their lair,” Wangg Mazi said. ”But no one went into the mountains back then, so nobody knew. It wasn’t until the next year when the snow melted and the people of Zhitian Village went into the mountains that they discovered the landslide and the destruction of the demons’ lair.”

Hee Lingchuan couldn’t help but frown. ”How is this a disappearance case?” ’Isn’t this just an ordinary mortal tragedy?’

”A companion of mine is from Zhitian Village. He was hired to clear the landslide and discovered that all the Porcupine carcasses in the lair were piled together, as if they had died huddled up. And only bones were left,” Wangg Mazi said. ”It was a huge nest, over a hundred of them. Not long after, someone in town was attacked by a Porcupine Demon—one dead, one injured. The Government Office was alerted and sent people down, but they searched for over a month and found no trace of them. The matter was eventually dropped.”

After listening, Hee Lingchuan immediately said, ”This old news doesn’t seem to have any connection to what happened on Niutou Mountain.”

Wangg Mazi’s face fell. ”Even if they were crushed to death... Sir, don’t you know that Porcupines never like to crowd together, especially not over a hundred of them?”

’He knew the more he contributed, the greater his chance of survival. The alternative was a dead end.’

”The reactions of living beings in desperate situations are often beyond imagination,” Hee Lingchuan changed the subject. ”You said you encountered a Ghost Wall on the way back to Shuangyi Town and inexplicably ended up on the Official Land?”

”Yes, yes!”

Hee Lingchuan nodded. ”Then you were set up.” A Ghost Wall was just a common name for a Bewitching Array, whose basic function was to disorient people and make them lose their way.

’An Array, after all, must be set up in advance.’

Someone had laid a Bewitching Array on their way home beforehand, luring these villagers to the Official Land to provoke the Wind-Drilling Beasts.

”Who came up with this plan to steal the goods?”

”My cousin, Wangg Ling,” Wangg Mazi said. ”He told us that a group of greenhorns had come to Five Stars Town. They didn’t know the area, and their goods were prime. If we pulled off the heist, he said he’d give me two... two taels of silver!”

He added an explanation: ”’Greenhorns’ refers to out-of-towners who don’t know the local situation.”

”Wangg Ling is already dead?”

Wangg Mazi nodded, his face showing no sadness, only resentment. ”Serves him right. I sprained my ankle that night, and he didn’t even stick around to help me!”

”And where did he get his information?”

”I’m not sure, but probably from the gambling den,” Wangg Mazi said. ”He runs there whenever he gets money.”

Hee Lingchuan thought for a moment. ”And what about your targets, that group of greenhorns? What details do you remember about them?”

”Uh...” Wangg Mazi had already replayed the event in his mind countless times. ”It was a small caravan, just over thirty people and ten cargo carts. We stole two of them. They were loaded with Chewing Tobacco, and there were also a dozen or so bamboo tubes stuffed with saltpeter. Wangg Ling accidentally opened one tube, and the whole carriage frosted over.”

Hee Lingchuan rubbed his temples. ”Merchants privately smuggling Chewing Tobacco and saltpeter... Where did you get the nerve to mess with them?”

Chewing Tobacco was a high-profit product. The Beiga Kingdom only allowed it to be sold by official monopolies; private smuggling was a major crime. As for saltpeter, that was a crucial military resource, one of the basic ingredients for making gunpowder. How could private merchants be allowed to transport it?

”Occasionally... some people do transport it,” Wangg Mazi retorted stubbornly. ”We’ve all seen it. We’ve even... even...”

”Stolen it before?”

Wangg Mazi shrank back, then glanced at Jiao Yu and General Antelope at his side. Seeing they had no reaction, he tacitly admitted it.

Indeed, there were always people willing to do business that could get them beheaded, and small towns were especially lawless. Both Chewing Tobacco and saltpeter were small in volume. After stealing them, they’d just divide the loot, each person taking a small amount to sell. The goods could be fenced quickly.

They were local thugs; they had their own channels.

”Isn’t what you do also a beheading offense?” Hee Lingchuan looked at him with a faint smile. ”What else do you remember about these merchants? The more detailed, the better.”

”The leader was in his early forties, not short, not fat, with a neatly trimmed beard. He wore a green Jade Ring on his ring finger, and right here on his neck—” He pointed to his own neck to show Hee Lingchuan. ”—he had a flesh-colored mole.”

”When you were staking them out, did you ever hear them mention their destination?”

Wangg Mazi thought for a long time. ”N-No, I don’t think so?”

”Alright, let’s head back.” While Hee Lingchuan was interrogating Wangg Mazi, Cangying and the Wind-Drilling Beasts brought by General Antelope had gone to search the valley, but they returned empty-handed.

The culprits were masters at covering their tracks. Staying here any longer wouldn’t yield any more useful clues.

...

After returning to the inn, Hee Lingchuan took out Fushan Ji’s case files again, wanting to see if he had missed anything.

The Chiyan Kingdom was so vast; trying to find a single missing Flying Bird was no different from searching for a needle in a haystack.

Before Hee Lingchuan set out, Lil Qingge had shared some newly acquired intelligence with him:

A month ago, Beiga had suffered a setback on the eastern front.

It was said that a major tactical error occurred because two armies under Beiga’s command failed to coordinate in time, giving their opponent an opportunity to exploit.

And yes, one of those armies was from the Chiyan Kingdom.

Connecting this to the Emperor’s fury, it wasn’t hard for Hee Lingchuan to guess that the White-shouldered Eagle’s disappearance might have been the very reason the intelligence for the joint operation failed to reach the Chiyan Kingdom in time, resulting in a huge loss on the battlefield.

Of course, Lingxu City would not tolerate such a thing.

He was very curious about the source of her intelligence, but Lil Qingge obviously wouldn’t reveal it.

On the documents compiled from various regions, Fushan Ji had also written three keywords in red ink:

The first word—

Rainy night!

He was quite meticulous, having identified a commonality among the disappearances in different places: they all happened on rainy nights.

Hee Lingchuan recalled the night the Rock Sheep were almost stolen. It had indeed been a drizzly night, with the rain only stopping after 1:00 AM.

’These people only operate on rainy nights. Why?’

The second keyword Fushan Ji summarized was ”countryside.”

These disappearances all occurred in suburbs and mountain forests, far from the bustle of towns and cities.

Humans have a habit of living in groups, while many demons prefer to be solitary, far from human settlements. If these culprits were specifically targeting the countryside, then it was true that more demons were falling victim than humans.

This also showed the culprits’ caution.

The third keyword, then, was ”multiple locations simultaneously.”

Comparing the time and place of individual cases, some incidents happened very close in time, only a day or two apart, but the locations were very far from each other, separated by dozens of miles.

The culprits would travel dozens of miles within a single day to strike again. ’What was the point of that?’

Having personally experienced the sheep-stealing incident, Hee Lingchuan was more inclined to believe that these people were likely operating in separate groups.

In other words, this was very likely a cross-regional gang operation!

That was the extent of Fushan Ji’s deductions. Perhaps he hadn’t found any new clues, or perhaps Fushan Yue had stabbed him in the back at that moment...

In Hee Lingchuan’s opinion, Fushan Ji’s top-down investigation method was doomed to fail.

What kind of efficiency could you expect from the officials? They moved slower than an old ox pulling a broken cart, not to mention their constant oversights.

If he only used the officials’ manpower and their information, the day they solved the case would be far in the distant future.

Forget the motive; if they couldn’t figure out the pattern in the culprits’ locations, targets, and timing... they would never be able to catch this group.

Their movements were truly secretive. If a Lingxu City Messenger hadn’t been involved this time, it’s likely no one would have even noticed these scattered disappearance cases.

Never mind the Demon Kingdoms; even in the Yuan Kingdom, the occasional disappearance of a villager or two was too common to be worth mentioning.

These days, there were just too many reasons for living people and demons to go missing.

’So, should he go to Five Stars Town, where Wangg Mazi and the others were set up, and take a look?’

While Hee Lingchuan was still deep in thought, a TAPPING sound came from the window.

He got up and opened the window to see a dozen or so crows standing outside.

”What is it?”

The largest crow poked its head in and looked around. After confirming that Cangying wasn’t inside, it boldly hopped in and took two steps.

”Are you still investigating the strange incident on Niutou Mountain?”

Hee Lingchuan nodded. ”Do you have a new lead?”

”That depends on what reward you’re offering,” the crow said brazenly. ”No reward, no lead!”

He’d been dealing with these creatures since his time on the Three-Heart Plateau. He knew they had the classic temperament of bandits: they bullied the weak and feared the strong.

”Name your price, let’s hear it.”

”Three hundred catties of beef and mutton per month, and one hundred Spirit Protection Pills!” The crow had clearly thought this through before coming. ”Also, we want the forest south of Shuangyi Town as our roosting ground. No other birds are allowed to nest there besides our flock!”

Hee Lingchuan raised an eyebrow. ”I am the Crown Prince Envoy. Seeing me is like seeing him in person. You dare to ask for such an outrageous price?”

”The Crown Prince is incredibly wealthy. A single hair from him is thicker than our thighs!” the crow sneered. ”A few hundred catties of meat and a hundred Pills a month are nothing to him!”

”That’s true enough.” As soon as the words left his mouth, Hee Lingchuan pursed his lips and whistled, then flicked his hand.

A wave of Qi Force swept past, slamming the window shut.

Just like that, the crow leader was separated from his dozen or so underlings.

Seeing things were going south, the large crow didn’t attack Hee Lingchuan but rammed its head against the paper window, intending to break through and escape.

Hee Lingchuan’s prediction was precise. He cast a Net directly in front of it, making it look as if the crow was flying right into it.