Great Li Martial God

The servant followed Mei Yanyu’s gaze, and at that moment Li Musheng raised an eyebrow slightly and turned his eyes in Mei Yanyu’s direction.

Seeing this, Mei Yanyu and the servant behind him immediately shifted their gazes elsewhere without any visible sign of doing so.

Li Musheng narrowed his eyes slightly. Right, yet another person envying his looks.

”And there is more to it than that. There is something very peculiar about Hu Rui’an’s group. Has Master Mu not noticed that the ghost in the Tianjin Guards branch office has not made a single move until now?”

Mei Yanyu appeared to be casually looking around the scene while continuing his covert voice transmission.

Hearing this, the servant furrowed their brow, thought for a moment, then replied, ”This is indeed unusual. I have been keeping a close watch on the Tianjin Guards branch office all these days, but have not been able to determine anything. The fact that those three clearly attracted the ghost’s attention yet have survived until now must have a reason behind it that we are unaware of.”

”Even so, we can observe for a while longer and see whether anything happens to them today.”

Mei Yanyu thought it over briefly, swept a glance at Hu Rui’an and the others, then gave a slight nod.

The three of them were not as well-informed as Mei Yanyu about the specifics of the haunting at the Tianjin Guards branch office.

As a result, they did not know that the ghost’s pattern of killing had always been to act before noon.Even so, they had been feeling an undercurrent of unease all day, though the tedious work of the investigation had absorbed most of their attention, leaving them less consumed with worry than one might expect, and they were actually managing to appear relatively normal.

The day passed quickly, and because the four major martial world families had mobilized to besiege the Murong estate, the streets of the provincial city were almost completely empty.

Li Musheng and his companions spent essentially the entire day at the government office. By the time the sun was setting, the hundred-odd bodies had finally been examined and recorded by the coroner and Six Doors personnel, and were then transported to a mortuary for temporary storage.

The scene throughout the government office had also been largely surveyed and documented, and the investigation had ultimately identified the Murong family as undeniably the primary suspect in the murders.

Even so, given the Murong estate’s special situation at this moment, Six Doors Gold Constable Yao Lingyuan had no immediate intention of going to question them.

”Your Highness has had a long day overseeing us in this matter. Why not accompany this official to Six Doors for some tea and refreshments?”

Once the work was done, Yao Lingyuan came to Li Musheng with an eager, ingratiating suggestion.

Hearing this, Li Musheng surfaced from the thoughts he had been absorbed in about revising the Azure Dragon Profound Darkness Scripture.

Throughout this period, though he had nominally been fulfilling the role of overseeing the three parties in his capacity as a prince, he had not actually given the matter much of his attention, leaving Hu Rui’an to handle essentially everything.

Li Musheng had spent the time quietly refining the Azure Dragon Profound Darkness Scripture. As his derivations continued, he had noticed earlier that if modified along a particular line of thinking, this scripture seemed to potentially be capable of absorbing the special power within the Qilin Blood as well.

Li Musheng had absorbed Qilin Blood before and knew it was genuinely ferocious. Ordinary people simply could not withstand it.

He had also previously used brute force to forcibly absorb the power within the Qilin Blood, and if the Azure Dragon Profound Darkness Scripture could be improved to allow him to absorb both Azure Dragon True Qi and Qilin Blood with ease and simultaneously, that seemed like a worthwhile direction.

So these past few days, Li Musheng had been working toward this goal, and since the Azure Dragon Profound Darkness Scripture was already an exceptionally rare divine technique whose contents were both brilliant and profound with relatively few flaws, revising it was considerably less demanding than creating a technique from scratch. He had made quite meaningful progress over the past few days.

”No need.”

Li Musheng waved a hand and declined Yao Lingyuan’s suggestion. A flash of visible disappointment passed across the man’s face.

This Gold Constable’s investigative abilities were solid, but his connections and networks left something to be desired, which was why he had never managed to transfer to the capital.

He had rarely come across an opportunity to establish a connection with a Great Li prince, and naturally wanted to make the most of it. Even so, Li Musheng was clearly not inclined to give him much of an opening.

At the same time, seeing the government office business coming to a close and the hour reaching dusk, Shen Anran and Murong Xiaoya also prepared to leave.

Throughout the day, Shen Anran had been quietly working through what Li Musheng had taught her about the Zhanliu Blade Art the night before. Though he had only covered a few moves, they were enough to keep her occupied with insights for quite a while to come.

Murong Xiaoya, though she had said she was not worried about the Murong family, was clearly harboring some quiet anxiety inside, especially now that Six Doors and the Tianjin Guards had identified the Murong family as the prime suspect in the killing of over a hundred government officials.

The worry in her heart was growing more evident, and several times she had been on the verge of getting up and heading back to the Murong estate. Only remembering Murong Hong’s instructions kept her in place, staying at Li Musheng’s side.

”Let’s go.”

Li Musheng swept a glance over Hu Rui’an and the others and called out.

Hearing this, Shen Anran quickly followed, while Murong Xiaoya’s heart was also clearly eager to be on their way.

Hu Rui’an, Wu Shang, and Cheng Zhong exchanged a look. Now that all the work on the government office case was done, the three of them seemed to have finally remembered the fear of being in the ghost’s power.

Even so, the puzzlement in their hearts was now even greater than before.

Because they had discovered that the rumors about the haunting at the Tianjin Guards office seemed to have been mistaken. The ghost had not made a single move throughout the entire day.

And they had been alive and well the whole time. Not only was there no sign whatsoever of the three of them being strangled to death, but having been busy all day, they had not even caught so much as a glimpse of a ghost shadow.

Nothing had happened, yet Hu Rui’an could not stop furrowing his brow. His expression was shifting and uncertain.

He quickly told Wu Shang and Cheng Zhong to go and bring the carriage around, then swept a look around, and finally walked in the direction of Mei Yanyu.

Seeing Hu Rui’an heading toward him, Mei Yanyu’s expression became deeply unusual.

He had spent virtually the entire day at this provincial government office. Was it because of the case?

Naturally not, or rather, that was only a very small part of the reason. After all, Governor Zhu Ziming’s death had nothing to do with him.

Even if there had been some entanglement between Zhu Ziming and the Mei family, every piece of evidence had been completely destroyed before Hu Rui’an and the others arrived. There was simply nothing to find no matter how thorough an investigation one conducted.

Though Mei Yanyu was also somewhat curious about why Zhu Ziming had been killed, he was not inclined to give much thought to someone who was already dead and of no further value.

The real reason he had stayed at the government office from morning all the way through to dusk was Hu Rui’an and the other two.

He had simply wanted to watch the ghost appear and make its move, acting against the three of them right there in front of everyone at the government office, while he and his people might take the opportunity to gather more information about the ghost entity.

What he had genuinely not expected was that after standing around for this long, he had not seen so much as half a ghost shadow, let alone any kind of attack.

Before this, when the ghost had not appeared by noon, he had found it unusual that the usual pattern of killing had been broken, but had been confident the attack would come in the afternoon.

Yet he had clearly been overthinking things once again.