SCE - 9

Chapter 9: The Crown Prince's Reward

"How did you know there were two cases?" Le Jiu's eyes instantly turned fierce, assuming an attack stance.

Yang Xuanse didn't even have the energy to roll his eyes. "I'm not deaf. The inn was in an uproar for a long time that morning. I screamed for help, but nobody heard me. When it finally quieted down, I suddenly realized I might be turned into a scapegoat, so I ran."

In truth, Yang Xuanse hadn't thought deeply about this at first. But as they say, the threat of death unleashes a person's potential. Upon learning he was about to be sent to the Ministry of Justice to suffer, Yang Xuanse's fever-addled brain suddenly became brilliantly clear—rivaling his mental state during the college entrance exams.

Regardless of his time-traveling origins, the whole incident reeked of something amiss. First were the shouts of "Murder!" he heard when he arrived, followed by the commotion of many people calling for various officials and loudly proclaiming their innocence.

This indicated that two cases had actually been discovered that day, and they should have been independent of each other. Le Jiu arrived at the inn early, but because the other case caused a much bigger stir, he dealt with that one first.

The Crown Prince arrived later. It was only upon his arrival that the waiter informed him of another room seeping blood.

Of course, the inn definitely had its own selfish motives. One murder could be called an accident; two murders meant the feng shui was cursed. The inn had to consider its future business, so they deliberately kept quiet about the issue in the second room—the Minister of War's room.

Two cases happening simultaneously easily led the investigators to misjudge the situation, confusing the nature of the two crimes.

Afraid Le Jiu wouldn't understand, Yang Xuanse deliberately added, "Let me give you an example. Da Niu and Da Hu both die in the same inn. People say Da Niu treats his wife poorly, and his brother-in-law was shouting about teaching him a lesson. Meanwhile, before Da Hu died, he offended the local bandits and fought with them. So, let me ask you: who killed Da Niu, and who killed Da Hu?"

Le Jiu hadn't quite grasped the earlier talk about defining the nature of the cases—he wasn't as adept as the Crown Prince at understanding Yang Xuanse's strange phrasing—but he understood this perfectly.

"Since you put it that way, the bandits obviously killed Da Niu... wait, the bandits killed Da Hu, and the brother-in-law killed Da Niu. Is there even a need to ask—" Le Jiu abruptly stopped, finally realizing what Yang Xuanse's rambling meant. "Are you trying to say..."

"Yes. The two cases might have been mixed up from the very beginning." Yang Xuanse nodded calmly. As for the three questions he initially asked Le Jiu, he didn't actually need the answers. As long as those questions provided the Crown Prince with the inspiration to solve the puzzle, that was enough.

Le Jiu immediately grabbed his sword and dashed out. Before he had even fully stood up, Yang Xuanse breathed a sigh of relief. He felt no further hints were needed; the Crown Prince would definitely understand. It was just a theory anyway—whether it was right or wrong was uncertain, given his lack of further clues.

His little life now rested entirely in the Crown Prince's hands. Hopefully, this line of thought would prove useful.

Before Yang Xuanse could fully exhale his breath, Le Jiu ran back. Holding a stack of rice paper and Yang Xuanse's fountain pen, he offered an ugly, fawning smile. "Young Master Yang, I'm afraid I might not explain it right. Could you write it down? Once you write it, I'll take it to His Highness."

Yang Xuanse was too exhausted to hold a pen. "Our writing is different. Will he even be able to read what I write?"

Le Jiu possessed an inexplicable confidence in his master. "I believe the wise and martial Crown Prince is capable of anything!"

Feudal ideology is truly terrifying.

Yang Xuanse still struggled over, took the fountain pen, and wrote down his hypothesis. Afraid the Crown Prince wouldn't understand, he tried to use all the traditional characters he knew. He couldn't remember many, but he could at least manage simple characters like long (長) or shell (貝).

After he finished, Le Jiu took a look and said, "Your handwriting looks like a lazy child's."

"That's just how we do it where I'm from. Hurry up and go. I don't want to stay here anymore. I can't even take a bath..." Yang Xuanse waved his hand, grumbling a bit.

Le Jiu hurriedly folded the paper carefully and tucked it away. "Oh, right, right! I'm going right now. Make sure you stay alive; once His Highness solves the case, you can get out."

Lying back under the covers, Yang Xuanse wiggled his fingers in a goodbye gesture.

With the news in hand, Le Jiu didn't dare delay for a moment. He rushed back to the Deputy Minister's hall, which the Crown Prince was temporarily using to handle the case. It was nearing lunchtime, and aside from the Crown Prince and a few attendants on duty, there were no outsiders present.

Hearing the commotion, the Crown Prince set down his brush. "What did he say?"

Le Jiu quickly presented the note. "This subordinate had him leave a written statement. He says he believes we mixed up the two cases that occurred at the inn that day, and that we should investigate them in reverse."

Finding it rather abrupt, the Crown Prince frowned and unfolded the rice paper.

Yang Xuanse hadn't written anything too complex. He only jotted down the brief example he had given Le Jiu, appending a final sentence: "Before the killer is determined, do not make assumptions about the victim."

The Crown Prince was a bit impatient at first, but upon seeing the final line, he paused. He went back and reread it from the beginning. Through a mix of guessing and deduction, he grasped Yang Xuanse's meaning. After a moment of thought, he refolded the paper and held it over a candle to burn it.

Seeing this action, Le Jiu knew the Crown Prince had taken the advice to heart. He asked, "Your Highness, what should we do next? We only have four and a half days left."

"Take the case files for both murders to Yang Xuanse. If he can't read them, read them to him. Make absolutely sure he identifies the killer within three days. If he can't, he must at least sort out the crucial clues," the Crown Prince ordered in a deep voice.

Judging by that letter, Yang Xuanse did have some ability—he just needed to be pushed. He could have provided this answer from the very beginning, yet he waited until he was sick and backed into a corner to finally think of it.

He just needed to be pushed a little harder.

And so, while Yang Xuanse was eating his lunch, Le Jiu arrived carrying a basket and wearing a flattering smile.

Yang Xuanse looked at him. "What are you doing here again?"

"His Highness asked me to deliver something to Young Master Yang, with the strict order to have a reply within three days." Le Jiu walked straight into the cell and placed the basket next to Yang Xuanse.

"Oh, I get it. A thank-you gift, right!" Yang Xuanse laughed. He quickly put down his bowl and chopsticks and reached out to lift the lid, only to see a pile of scrolls. His smile instantly froze.

Le Jiu gave an awkward, light chuckle. "As for a thank-you gift... that will certainly have to wait until we are less busy. So... Young Master Yang, take a look..."

Yang Xuanse gasped, feeling that this whole transmigration thing was completely pointless. He was already sick, yet they were piling more pressure on him. He wasn't a donkey on a production team!

However, with the looming threat of the Ministry of Justice hanging over his head, Yang Xuanse endured his weakness, opened the case files, and began to read. He figured he'd read while he ate, but just as he picked up his bowl, he realized Le Jiu hadn't left.

Having someone hover over him made Yang Xuanse a bit uncomfortable. "Why are you still here? When I make some progress, I'll just have the jailer brother notify you."

"His Highness feared you might not be able to read this, so he told me to stay behind. If there are words you don't understand, I can read them to you," Le Jiu answered honestly.

Yang Xuanse let out a soft scoff and shook his head helplessly. If they couldn't even read his handwriting when the characters were so similar, did they really think he could understand Le Jiu's heavily accented reading?

Impossible. The Crown Prince could understand him because he was well-traveled, knowledgeable, and had a knack for languages. Yang Xuanse didn't have that talent. Conversing with Le Jiu already required half-guessing and hand gestures, let alone having Le Jiu translate complex texts.

The good news was that the traditional characters of this era weren't exceedingly difficult. As long as there was punctuation to separate the sentences, Yang Xuanse could still read them. His only fear was not knowing where to pause.

When Yang Xuanse encountered long blocks of continuous text that left his brain completely blank, Le Jiu's usefulness finally shone through: he knew how to punctuate and break sentences!

In ancient times, this was a skill reserved for scholars. Moreover, aside from the official mandarin dialect, every family's tradition of sentence-breaking was different, relying entirely on master-to-apprentice transmission or inheritance. This meant that while Le Jiu appeared to be a mere attendant, he possessed at least the educational level of a Xiucai (a scholar who passed the county exams).

Yang Xuanse looked at Le Jiu with newfound respect. As expected of someone who manages to hang around the Crown Prince.

Reading through all the files took roughly a day—or at least that was Yang Xuanse's rough estimate, since there was no day or night in the prison.

The reason the inn case had been bungled was that prior to it, a very serious serial murder case had already emerged in the capital.

According to the records, a total of five people had died: a little boy, a little girl, a teenage girl, a teenage boy, and a woman. The methods of death varied, and the execution was clean. The reason they were linked together was the dates: every victim died between the evening of the twenty-eighth and the morning of the twenty-ninth of the month.

The exact time of death depended on the method. For instance, the very first victim, the little boy, died on the twenty-ninth of the twelfth lunar month last year. It was the dead of winter, right before the Lunar New Year. The snow in the capital was so deep that it would swallow a child over their head.

That was how the little boy was frozen overnight, freezing to death.

Although the coroner ruled that medical treatment was ineffective and set the final time of death as the early hours of the twenty-ninth, the child had been thrown out to freeze on the evening of the twenty-eighth. He endured a whole night of freezing before finally succumbing.

Therefore, after three such cases, the authorities realized it had to be a serial killer. The use of different murder methods each time likely held special significance, but no one had figured it out yet.

The six cases were summarized as follows: the little boy froze to death; the little girl was strangled with silk threads; the teenage boy drowned after falling into the moat; the teenage girl was turned into a puppet with needles and threads piercing all her meridians; the woman was beaten to death; and the newest victim, the man at the inn, died of suffocation and chest compression.

Because the causes of death were completely different, but all occurred on the same day of the month, the Dali Court inferred that these six victims all seemed to die seeking something.

Through inquiries by the Dali Court and local authorities, they discovered that the little boy's parents didn't love him and punished him frequently. Thus, he froze to death in the snow as a winter punishment.

The logic behind the little girl's murder was similar. She was born to a concubine and had to work alongside her mother from a young age; otherwise, she would be scolded and beaten by her father and the main wife, and her mother would suffer along with her.

The teenage boy came from a merchant family and attended a private school. However, because his family sold fish, he was often ostracized and had been bullied and pushed into the river by his classmates.

As for the teenage girl turned into a puppet, she was the daughter of a prostitute. Born to be a marionette for others, she died the night before she was to be officially put up for bidding. It was hard to say whether her method of death involved some sick sense of humor on the killer's part.

The woman died from a beating. Investigations revealed she was a child bride who had been beaten and scolded since childhood. Her parents-in-law, her husband, her husband's siblings, her own children—there wasn't a single person in that house who didn't beat her. She never had a patch of unbruised skin, and ultimately died from a beating.

Finally, the man discovered at the inn was a dock peddler. He did heavy manual labor and was constantly away from home all year round, leading a very hard life. However, he had a massive appetite, which his wife and children heavily complained about, claiming he was a glutton who ate up all the hard-earned money he made.

It was precisely the testimony of the peddler's wife and children that caused his case to be filed as the clueless sixth incident of the serial murders.

On the other hand, the testimony regarding the Minister of War was much simpler. He stayed at the inn because he had previously taken leave to visit his master beyond the Great Wall. His master, now a border general, was getting on in years, so every meeting was precious. By the time the Minister returned to the capital, night had fallen, and the curfew had begun. Unable to make it back to his estate in time, he settled at the nearest inn.

Thus, the Dali Court's initial deduction was that the peddler was the sixth serial murder victim, and the Minister of War's death was a separate case.

If they were to reverse this assumption, they would have to find a similar underlying reason for the Minister of War's death; otherwise, it would be difficult to convince the public.

After reading all the files, Yang Xuanse formulated a hypothesis and asked Le Jiu, "Are there any temples or shrines to the Earth God near these victims' homes?"

Le Jiu thought for a moment and replied, "Nearby? Their homes are in completely different directions across the capital. It would be very hard for them to cross paths at markets or temple fairs. We've checked all this; there are no clues there."

Yang Xuanse frowned. "Then why wasn't that written down clearly?"

"How could we document such things? Usually, only formal trials record every word and action. There's no need to document routine inquiries. But I did bring a map; take a look," Le Jiu said. Slapping his forehead, he pulled a small but detailed map from his inner pocket.

Le Jiu helped mark the locations of the victims' homes and where they died.

There was no geographical pattern. The killer seemed to strike randomly, as if passing by, seeing the victims, pitying them, and stepping in to end their suffering.

Yang Xuanse stared at those locations. Connecting them in his mind, he suddenly spoke up: "Private schools. These victims... they all have one thing in common: private schools."

Le Jiu was utterly dumbfounded. "No way, you're just pointing at random things, right? Where did you even see that? Only the merchant's son had any connection to a private school. How could the others possibly be linked to one?"​