A Three Inch Adorable Wife Hidden in the Sleeve of the Chu King - Chapter 86

Chapter 86

The serial murder case on Sophora Lane had caused quite a stir when it was in the hands of the Jingzhao Prefecture.

Now it had been transferred to the Yin Yang Office, and the case was surprisingly solved in just a few hours.

Since this was the first case for the Yin Yang Office since its establishment, Emperor Hongtai was somewhat curious and asked the Crown Prince to fetch the case records.

The records were sealed, and Murong Yuan did not know their contents, but he followed orders and brought them to the Jianzhang Palace.Findd new 𝒔tories on nov/e(l)bin(.)com

Emperor Hongtai opened and glanced through them.

The records were written by Qiu Hong, a disciple of the National Master, and not only did they contain detailed information about the entire case, but they also recorded Xie Xun’s reasoning process.

After reading them, Emperor Hongtai’s expression revealed neither joy nor anger, and he simply instructed Du En to pass the records to the Crown Prince.

Murong Yuan received them and skimmed through them briefly.

He actually had no interest in catching ghosts or anything of the sort, but the words “King of Chu” on the records suddenly gave him a sense of crisis.

“Father!” The Crown Prince stood up, his expression ugly. “My third brother is not part of the Yin Yang Office, so why did he interfere in their affairs?”

Emperor Hongtai’s tone was indifferent, “You were the one who proposed establishing the Yin Yang Office, but didn’t you also not interfere?”

Murong Yuan was momentarily stunned.

The reason he established the Yin Yang Office was to leave himself a way out, but as for handling cases, he naturally left that to his subordinates.

He could ignore the fact that the head of the office was a servant girl Xie Xun had brought to the capital, for human hearts could be bought, and as long as he employed some means in the future, that foolish servant girl would be easy to control.

But he could not tolerate Xie Xun appearing in the case records of the Yin Yang Office!

What was Xie Xun trying to do? Was he trying to seize the Yin Yang Office?!

Murong Yuan gritted his teeth in anger, “Father, my third brother has overstepped his bounds!”

“Why do I feel that the King of Chu deserves half the credit for this case?”

Emperor Hongtai did not look up, sipping bird’s nest soup slowly.

Hearing this, Murong Yuan’s expression became extremely ugly.

Seeing the atmosphere in the palace becoming increasingly strained, Du En spoke up with a smile, “This servant has heard that the head of the Yin Yang Office, Miss Jiang, was brought to the capital by the King of Chu. Yesterday was also the first day the Yin Yang Office started taking cases. It’s only natural for the King of Chu to accompany Miss Jiang out of concern.”

Emperor Hongtai finished the last sip of bird’s nest soup, slowly placing the small bowl on the table, taking the towel Du En handed him and wiping his hands. “It’s just a set of records, Crown Prince. You’re overreacting.”

Murong Yuan’s body trembled.

Emperor Hongtai had always been inscrutable in his distribution of favor and punishment.

For all the years Murong Yuan had been the Crown Prince, he had never been able to fully grasp his father’s thoughts.

But there was one thing: whenever his father spoke in a serious tone, no one dared contradict him, for doing so would inevitably incur his great wrath.

Suppressing the anger in his heart, Murong Yuan lowered his head, “Your son accepts your reprimand and will take his leave.”

On the way back to the Palace of the Crown Prince, Murong Yuan thought about his father’s reaction and could not help but compare him to his teacher.

His teacher had always put his interests first, looking out for him in every way, and whenever something happened, he would carefully analyze the reasons with Murong Yuan and quickly find solutions.

In contrast, his father…

Sometimes Murong Yuan felt that his teacher was more like a real father to him than his actual father.

His teacher had not been at the Palace of the Crown Prince for a few days, and Murong Yuan did not know how the preparations at the imperial mausoleum were going.

Before the Yin Yang Office began operations, Jiang Xiaoxiao had no idea there were so many incidents caused by evil spirits in the city.

Just a day after the Sophora Lane case, she received another report.

This time, the person making the report did not go to the Jingzhao Prefecture but came directly to the Yin Yang Office.

“Master Jiang, this commoner has seen a ghost!”

The person making the report was a man named Tang Shun, around forty years old.

Jiang Xiaoxiao sat in the main seat of the public court, looking at Tang Shun kneeling on the ground. “Tell me the details.”

Tang Shun said, “My grandfather’s nursing home has been sealed with bricks for almost a month now. I was out on business, but I just happened to return last night. As I passed the graveyard, I thought I’d go and offer incense to my grandfather, but I saw him following a figure in a black robe. I called out to him several times, but when he turned around, his face was covered in corpse spots…”

Recounting this, Tang Shun himself trembled with fear.

Jiang Xiaoxiao looked at Xie Xun in confusion and asked in a low voice, “What is a nursing home?”

Xie Xun patiently explained it to her.

There was a belief that if an elderly person lived past seventy but did not die, it meant they were stealing the lifespan of their descendants.

So after many elderly people celebrated their seventieth birthday, they would be placed in an uncovered coffin and carried to a graveyard.

Their descendants would build them a clay jar tomb, place the coffin inside without sealing the entrance, and send someone daily to deliver food.

After each meal, they would seal one brick at the entrance, continuing until the hundredth day when the entire entrance was sealed. If the elderly person had not yet died, they would starve to death in the clay jar tomb.

To give this kind of tomb a nicer name, it was generally called a “nursing home.”

This was the first time Jiang Xiaoxiao had heard of such a horrifying custom, and she looked at Tang Shun.

Tang Shun cried, “Those bricks were bricked up by my own hands a month ago. When I looked last night, the bricks were still there, sealing it shut. There’s no way he could still be alive! Master Jiang, I must have seen a ghost!”

Jiang Xiaoxiao frowned, “You just said that your grandfather was following a figure in a black robe?”

“Yes. But it was too dark at the time, and the figure was also wearing a hood, so I couldn’t see their appearance clearly.”

“Oh, and another thing,” Tang Shun suddenly remembered, his face turning pale. “There were also many children following behind them, some two or three years old, some just a month old.”

Xie Xun said, “If there are no accidents, those children should be from the Abandoned Infant Tower.”

“And what is the Abandoned Infant Tower?” Jiang Xiaoxiao was confused again.

Xie Xun explained once more.

Just as there were customs for abandoning the elderly, there were also customs for abandoning infants.

In nursing homes were those over seventy years old.

And in Abandoned Infant Towers were mostly newborn babies.

Some were stillborn, some had physical defects, and some were sick.

But most were abandoned baby girls.

In an era where sons were preferred over daughters, the more daughters a family had, the less valuable they were considered, naturally leading to the phenomenon of abandonment.

Those infants were initially abandoned in the wilderness, with the predictable consequence of becoming food for wild animals.

Later, some kindhearted people, unable to bear it, built the Abandoned Infant Towers, where abandoned infants could be taken, but even then, those babies were still left to fend for themselves and die naturally.

Another horrifying custom that made one’s hair stand on end just hearing about it.

Jiang Xiaoxiao had a premonition that the man in black robe mentioned by Tang Shun was the same one who had been secretly causing trouble in the Palace of the Crown Prince.

Although she had buried him last time, the aura of the man in black robe was identical.

If this was indeed the case, then the man in black robe’s sudden appearance outside must have been part of a sinister plot.

“Can you recall the exact time you saw the man in black robe last night?”

Jiang Xiaoxiao wanted to use the Strange Gates Escaping Stems technique to deduce the approximate location of the man in black robe.