This Lady Is Trying to Kill Me - Chapter 105
Chapter 105: Life and Death In Jianghu
Translator: Atlas Studios Editor: Atlas Studios
A soft drizzle fell outside a window, sounding like an hourglass quietly flowing.
It was quiet and long, making people feel as if they were in an eternity.
Rustle, rustle, rustle…
Dressed in a blue dress, Luo Ning was sitting by the window, stroking the Dragon Pool Tourmaline in her hand and staring at the lake in front of the window with countless thoughts.
I must have lost my mind today. That little thief was obviously cheating. How could I fall into his traps…
It’s only been a few days. How did he get the princess to take a fancy to him…
Overnight, Xiangjun’s hair turned gray…
He’s quite worried about his delicate and charming boss…
The environment of the room was elegant. On the bed not far away, Zhe Yunli, who was wearing an undergarment with a bird sewn on it, was hugging her blanket and sleeping soundly, revealing her fair and flawless waist.
At an unknown time, the sound of thunder came.
Pitter-patter…
Zhe Yunli’s eyelashes fluttered. She opened her eyes sleepily and looked out the window. “Martial Mistress… Huh? Martial Mistress, you’re back?!”
Zhe Yunli flipped over, put on her clothes, and ran to the window. “Did you see Brother Jingtang? How did Brother Jingtang become the young master of the Red Flower Pavilion? Did you tell him that he should come to the Pacifying Heaven Cult?”
Luo Ning came back to her senses, and a hint of guilt flashed across her eyes. She pondered for a moment before saying, “He… he received money from the Red Flower Pavilion to help them. Don’t tell outsiders about this. As for the Pacifying Heaven Cult, after he finishes the Red Flower Pavilion’s matters, he will follow me to the South Firmament Mountains.”
Zhe Yunli’s eyes lit up. “Then, Brother Jingtang will be my junior brother from now on?”
“What junior brother? He will be a protector of our Pacifying Heaven Cult. You have to call him martial uncle in the future.”
Huh?” Zhe Yunli’s expression froze for a moment. She pondered for a moment. “Brother Jingtang is only a few years older than me. Calling him martial uncle is probably…”
Luo Ning left the window and pulled Zhe Yunli to the bed to lie down. “We’ll talk about these things later. Let’s rest. We have to leave for the capital at dawn.”
Zhe Yunli wasn’t sleepy at all. She lay on her pillow and rested her chin on her hands. “Then, won’t Brother Jingtang become a spy planted by the Pacifying Heaven Cult beside the princess? Will he be in danger?”
“Don’t worry. Your Brother Jingtang knows the principle of ‘a man knows when to yield and when to stand tali’. If Jian Yuhua hadn’t been too chivalrous today, and Zhou Huaili hadn’t wanted to kill him, your Brother Jingtang would have taken the overall situation into consideration and wouldn’t have bickered with that villain Zhou Huaili.”
“Zhou Huaili is really shameless. Brother Jingtang clearly won, but he still blatantly distorted the truth. If Master were here, she would have slapped him to death on the spot.”
“Ye Jingtang isn’t your master. How dare he attack Zhou Huaili in the Zhou family’s territory…”
“Third Uncle! Third Uncle…”
Tread, tread, tread!
While the two women, who looked like mother and daughter were chatting, hurried footsteps and shouts suddenly came from outside the Zhou family’s ancestral residence in the distance.
There were several courtyards by the lake for distinguished guests to stay. Along with the commotion, the sound of robes cutting through the wind rang out.
“Elder Guanghan, what’s going on? Is the Red Flower Pavilion attacking at night?”
“It doesn’t look like it. Let’s go over and take a look… Hongzhi, what happened to the Zhou family?”
“I’m not sure. 1 was just woken up…”
Luo Ning frowned and felt that something was wrong. She turned around, put on her veil, and walked out of the courtyard.
“Master!”
“Who did it…”
It was already early in the morning. The Zhou Manor, whose lights had long been turned off, became as bright as day in a moment.
Below the octagon archway outside the villa, countless Zhou family disciples with swords were gathered. Some of them hadn’t even had time to put on their shoes and stood there in a daze.
Outside the octagonal archway was a boat owner dressed as a merchant. His face was pale, and he was holding a sword and a bronze token in his hand. He didn’t even dare to speak and only trembled on the spot.
Beside the boat owner was a stretcher covered by a white cloth. A few servants were drenched, but they held an oilcloth to prevent the rain from falling on the corpse covered by the white cloth.
Tread, tread, tread…
In an instant, dozens of famous figures of Jianghu, who had stayed overnight in the Zhou Manor and were returning tomorrow, rushed out of the manor. When they saw the famous sword with the green and white hilt, Morning Dew, their eyelids twitched. This was the sword of the Water Cloud Sword Pool’s sect master!
“This…”
“Who is so bold…”
All the famous figures revealed looks of disbelief!
Earlier, they had thought that this storm might end with the strange and sudden death of the young master of the Red Flower Pavilion.
Who would have thought that just a few hours later, Zhou Huaili would use his corpse to slap their faces and tell them what a true strange and sudden death was?
How could Zhou Huaili die?
As long as the current Sword Saint was still around, who in Jianghu would dare to kill him easily?
Could it be that he had drunk too much just now, ran to the city to find a courtesan in the middle of the night, and died on her stomach?
“Big Brother…!”
While everyone was looking at each other, hurried footsteps came from the back of the crowd. Zhou Huaiyi, who had just gotten up, rushed out of the crowd with a pale face. When he saw the stretcher on the ground, he staggered and fell. His eyes were full of disbelief, and then his eyes turned bloodshot with anger and hatred.
In the afternoon, Xuanyuan Hongzhi and Zhou Huaili had exerted pressure on the Red Flower Pavilion. In the wee hours of the morning, the corpse placed in front of him had shock in its eyes. “Did the Red Flower Pavilion do it?”
The boat owner had just extinguished the fire at the docks. When he found this corpse, he was scared out of his wits.
At this moment, when a big shot of Jianghu asked, the boat owner didn’t know anything, so how could he dare to speak nonsense? He only handed over the bronze token with a trembling hand.
The bronze token had a python dragon carved on the back and the word ‘Jing’ engraved on the front.
When Xuanyuan Hongzhi saw the token that only chief constables of the Black Office had, his expression turned solemn. He quickly took the token to confirm its authenticity. The token was obviously real.
Zhou Huaiyi, whose face was full of hatred, knew that something was wrong. He turned around, stood up, and raised his hand to chase away the surrounding juniors. “All of you, go back.”
The Jianghu juniors who had come to watch immediately scattered like birds, leaving only four or five famous figures standing under the archway.
“Where was the body found?”
“At… at Yellow Pine Pine. The fire was too strong, and the inside was full of stone. After putting out the fire, I got people to go in and clean it up… And then… then they saw this token nailed to the wall by the sword…”
After the boat owner finished speaking with a trembling voice, he bowed and ran out of the manor.
Xuanyuan Hongzhi frowned. “Let’s take a look at his injuries first.”
Zhou Huaiyi gritted his teeth, knelt down beside the white cloth, and raised his hand to lift it, only to see a charred corpse inside. The skin and flesh had basically been burned clean, turning into a charred substance stuck to the bones. It was impossible to recognize it.
But Zhou Huaiyi was very familiar with his brother’s bone structure. He recognized him at a glance, and his hand trembled slightly.
The Three Absolutes Elderly Immortal squatted down beside him and carefully checked the marks on the corpse. “He suffered heavy blows to his chest and back. I can’t tell what moves caused them. The fatal injury was a saber wound. The saber cut through his lower jaw and skull. There’s a wound on his lower ribs, and the bones in his left arm were shattered… Which saber technique is this?”
Everyone turned their gazes to Xuanyuan Hongzhi. After all, Jun Mountain Terrace was the sect of the current Saber Chief. No one was more familiar with the saber techniques of the world than them.
Xuanyuan Hongzhi slowly walked over and checked the two broken ribs in the lower ribs. An unknown killer began to appear in his mind. The saber was drawn from behind and struck Zhou Huaiyi. The posture, strength, and speed…
Rustle, rustle, rustle…
The rainy night fell into a dead silence. Everyone was waiting with rapt attention.
Xuanyuan Hongzhi’s eyes moved slightly, and a trace of shock flashed across his eyes. After a moment of silence, he looked at the skull.
The Three Absolutes Elderly Immortal moved to the front of the charred corpse’s head and carefully looked at the hole in the skull. “The saber is two and a half fingers wide, and the blade is straight. It looks… quite common.”
Although Three Absolutes Elderly Immortal said this, he looked at Xuanyuan Hongzhi with a meaningful gaze. This was the form of the Hornless Dragon Saber.
Xuanyuan Hongzhi rubbed his fingers gently, and his gaze moved slightly, as if he had something on his mind. After pondering for a long time, he said, “I can’t tell what saber technique it is. Including Ye Silang, there are only four Grandmasters in the Red Flower Pavilion, and no one is proficient in the saber. The conflict only happened in the afternoon, and the Red Flower Pavilion already took back the Clear River Wharf. It’s impossible for them to be stupid enough to kill him outside Azure Yang City at night… This doesn’t seem to be the Red Flower Pavilion’s doing. The murderer is someone else.”
Everyone thought the same way. The Red Flower Pavilion was a well-known force in Jianghu after all, not street barbarians. If they really wanted to kill someone, they would do it secretly without leaving any traces. How could they be so brazen, as if they were not afraid that people wouldn’t know they did it?
Luo Ning, who was standing at the back, was full of surprise when she saw the saber wounds. Afraid that everyone would suspect the Red Flower Pavilion, she interrupted, “Why did Sect Master Zhou go to Yellow Pine Pier alone in the middle of the night?”
The famous figures present looked puzzled when they heard this and looked at Zhou Huaiyi.
Zhou Huaiyi’s eyes moved, but he didn’t speak immediately. After all, his eldest brother went out in the middle of the night to kill Jian Yuhua and bring his second daughter back.
Jian Yuhua had a good reputation. Today, he even characterized the word ‘chivalry’. If this matter spread, it would be a family scandal. He couldn’t even tell the disciples, so how could he let the people of Jianghu know?
“Big Brother… i went back to my room to rest after the banquet ended. I don’t know why he suddenly went out.”
Seeing that Zhou Huaiyi wasn’t telling the truth at a time like this, everyone could roughly guess what Zhou Huaiyi had been doing outside.
Cleaning up the Zhou family!
Speaking of which, although the person who died was wrong, the goal was unexpectedly achieved…
When these clues were connected, one could roughly deduce the sequence of events.
Jian Yuhua left the Zhou family and ran to Yellow Pine Pier with the second miss, preparing to elope.
When the Zhou family heard the news, Zhou Huaili couldn’t swallow his anger. He went to clean up the family in the middle of the night, but he happened to bump into an expert of the Black Office.
Jian Yuhua had a good reputation in Jianghu. Zhou Huaili’s actions could be considered indiscriminate killing of the innocent. When the expert of the Black Office found out, he killed him in anger.
As for leaving the identity token, it might be because the expert didn’t want to cause a commotion in Jianghu, so he openly revealed his identity and told the Zhou family to go to the Imperial Court for verification and reasoning.
This logic and motive made sense. Everyone present looked at each other and felt that this matter might not be easy to handle.
The people in the Black Office were all the guards of the empress’s sister. Even if this person of the Black Office was in the wrong for killing someone, they would only be punished according to the law. No matter how powerful the Zhou family was, they couldn’t drag out the person from the Black Office and torture him…
Zhou Huaiyi knew that it would be extremely difficult to deal with this matter in the Jianghu way. After thinking for a long time, he looked at Xuanyuan Hongzhi. “Lord Xuanyuan is a marquis conferred by the Imperial Court. 1 wonder if Brother Xuanyuan has a way to find out the identity of the murderer?”
To be honest, Xuanyuan Hongzhi’s mood was even heavier than that of Zhou Huaiyi, whose brother had died.
He was sure that the saberman had used the Eight-Steps Frenzied Blade.
Being able to shatter Zhou Huaili’s arm bones and kill him meant that the saberman had long been a Grandmaster but was still unimown in Jianghu. There was a high chance that he was lying low and waiting for the day when his saber technique reached perfection to do something.
Needless to say, this matter was to avenge the disciple of the Eight-Steps Frenzied Blade who had been crippled back then!
If this was the case, it wasn’t a big deal for Zhou Huaili to die. After all, this person only killed Zhou Huaili and wasn’t targeting the Zhou family.
However, for Jun Mountain Terrace and the successor of the Eight-Steps Frenzied Blade, there was a possibility that Jun Mountain Terrace had killed this person’s father or master!
But this person was under the Prince of Jing’s command. As a founding marquis of Great Wei, Jun Mountain Terrace really didn’t dare to act rashly…
Xuanyuan Hongzhi wiped the rain off his face and stood up. He thought for a moment and said, “Huali and I are as close as brothers. How can I sit back and do nothing after such a misfortune? I will surely think of a way to help the Zhou family investigate this matter.”
Zhou Huaiyi hurriedly cupped his hands. “Thank you for your kindness, Brother Xuanyuan. As long as you help the Zhou family find the murderer, my Zhou family…”
“Let’s bury Huaili properly first. This concerns the Imperial Court, so we have to act with caution. Let’s investigate first. Everyone, please disperse..”
