Chapter 229: Totem

Chapter 229: Totem

"Lu Chuang?"

Fei Jing was startled, thinking to himself, "How did Lord Song bring him back?" But seeing Song Tingzhou's displeased expression, he suppressed his doubts and quickly explained to Song Tingzhou, "My Lord, I assure you, I conducted a thorough investigation and questioned the relevant parties before determining that this young man is the murderer."

Watching Fei Jing's smug look, Song Tingzhou felt his teeth itch. "Did you also go to Zheng Er?"

Fei Jing forced a flattering smile. "That's right, I carefully pieced together the clues and finally uncovered the oddities in the Zheng family..." He repeated Zheng Er's bizarre story to Song Tingzhou.

Song Tingzhou, with a stern face, waved his hand at Tao Shi. Tao Shi then escorted a man from the back to the front—it was none other than Zheng Er.

Fei Jing said eagerly, "Your Lordship, I have already interrogated Zheng Er." The man's face was swollen like a pig's head, a result of Fei Jing's own handiwork.

Unable to contain himself, Song Tingzhou kicked Fei Jing, who was still trying to take credit in front of him, sending him tumbling. His voice was ice-cold. "Fool! You believe everything they say?"

Ignoring the befuddled county magistrate, Fei Jing, Song Tingzhou strode over to sit beneath the plaque inscribed with "Clear Mirror High Above." He slammed the gavel, and his deep voice carried the authority of a high-ranking official. "Suspect Zheng Er, confess everything you saw and heard that day!"

Though Song Tingzhou was not wearing his official robe, his cold, stern demeanor far surpassed Fei Jing's. The barely conscious young man on the ground opened his weak eyes, first looking warily at Chu Ci, who was treating him, then at Song Tingzhou seated in the hall.

Although he couldn't understand their language, he knew that without this man, he would have died just now.

He deeply burned Song Tingzhou's voice and appearance into his memory. Then, looking down at Chu Ci, who was tending to his wounds, he relaxed his guard slightly.

Zheng Er was pushed to kneel before the hall by Tao Eleven. It was unclear how Song Tingzhou had interrogated him, but he looked dejected, his head drooping as he spoke honestly. Aside from the part that matched what he had told Fei Jing, his subsequent statements were clearly different.

"At that time, I was terrified and fled in a panic..."

Zheng Er's mind was numb. He hadn't managed to escape as smoothly as he had told Fei Jing. Instead, as he turned his head, a sticky, cold feeling suddenly touched his neck.

It felt so real, something sliding over his skin, that even before being bitten, Zheng Er was so scared he twitched, rolled his eyes, and passed out.

When he woke up again, he was at the foot of the mountain. Lying under a tree, he opened his eyes to see a young man in weird clothes standing before him. The young man wore a short-sleeved indigo tunic, revealing light brown arms, and his trousers only reached his knees. His shoes were straw sandals, and he wore a cloth cap covering his forehead.

The young man was very tall and handsome. But because his collar was extremely wide, Zheng Er immediately noticed the small Adam's apple on the young man's neck.

"Did you save me?" Zheng Er got up from the ground, his smile somewhat strange.

The young man stared at him for a moment, then nodded slowly.

Zheng Er didn't dare to go back up the mountain to confirm whether Lin Qiaoniang was dead or alive. He brought this young man, what he thought was indecent clothing, back to his home.

Unfortunately, the young man seemed mute, never speaking. Occasionally, when listening to the Zheng family talk, he would show a confused expression.

Zheng Er guessed that this young man must have lived in the mountains for a long time and rarely came down, so he couldn't communicate with normal people, and might even be slow.

This got his mind working even more. Originally, he planned to keep the young man living with him first, but after a few days, the young man said he wanted to leave.

How could Zheng Er let his "savior" walk out of his house? He put sleeping powder he had prepared into the food, and the unsuspecting young man passed out. Just as he was about to act, the cops came to search his house. Zheng Er had no choice but to hide the young man in the cellar.

Song Tingzhou threw the gavel at Fei Jing's head. "Did you hear that? Even when Zheng Er casually found someone to fool you, you couldn't tell. You only wanted to hastily close the case. You, the county magistrate of Deqing, are a joke!"

Fei Jing, hit by the gavel in the hall, didn't dare to make a sound. Instead of reflecting on his own incompetence in handling the case, he thought he hadn't beaten Zheng Er, that lousy bastard, enough during the day—how dare he deceive him!

Song Tingzhou could guess his thoughts just by looking at his face. He couldn't help but calmly think about when Lu Su would go to the capital for the imperial examination, and that he should give him some travel money. He probably wouldn't make the second tier, but if he could become an Associate Jinshi, with some string-pulling, he could get appointed as the county magistrate of Deqing. That would be better than this hopelessly dumb Fei Jing.

"You're just an ordinary farmer. Where did you get such a powerful sleeping powder?" Setting aside distractions, Song Tingzhou continued interrogating Zheng Er.

Zheng Er obediently replied, "I first went to the Huichun Hall and bought a small packet of numbing medicine. The doctor said it was for pain and would make the whole body numb. How strong it is depends on the person. But after I gave it to that young man, he fell asleep and never woke up." He hadn't expected the drug to be so effective; he once thought the young man had died.

"On the day you bought the medicine, did you bump into a short beggar kid? See if this is him." Song Tingzhou gave an order, and Tao Eleven pushed a beggar forward.

Reminded by this, Zheng Er recalled, "Ah! That day, it seemed a little beggar did bump into me, and I cursed him a couple of times." But he had forgotten what the beggar looked like. Now, looking at the beggar in the hall, he did seem to have a similar build.

The beggar, paid for the job, confessed right away. Pointing a grimy black finger at Lu Chuang, he said, "He gave me a packet of powder and told me to swap Zheng Er's drug."

This lead was really hard to follow. But the greedy little beggar, after getting Lu Chuang's money, then took the swapped powder back to the pharmacy to exchange it for copper coins.

The pharmacy assistant thought it was weird and remembered this trivial matter, muttering in the shop that the beggar might have stolen the medicine Zheng Er had bought.

When Song Tingzhou was investigating Lu Chuang, he happened to talk to the pharmacy assistant from the pharmacy. Thus, he discovered the secret link between Zheng Er and Lu Chuang, beyond the "adulterer" story.

"Lu Chuang, you paid off the beggar to swap Zheng Er's anesthetic for a stronger powder. Do you recognize the young man in the hall?"

"Were those five deaths on the woodcutter's mountain also related to you? Confess the truth quickly, to save me the trouble of interrogating you item by item."

Song Tingzhou's cold words struck Lu Chuang, but the man showed little fear. Instead, a weird smile crept across his face. "You've already been to the old house in Pingle Town and found everything out, haven't you, Your Lordship? Why bother asking?"

Song Tingzhou gave him a deep look. "Lin Qiaoniang, the coachman, Yang Tai, Liu Yong, and Li Erzhuang—aside from Lin Qiaoniang, the only commonality among the other four is that they were all poor men who suddenly became rich. And when they were poor, they all worked as long-term laborers for the Lu family in Pingle Town."

Fei Jing, who had been listening on the sidelines, finally caught up with Song Tingzhou's train of thought. "The Lu family of Pingle Town was the most famous local gentry family of the previous generation in Deqing! You're also surnamed Lu—so you're from the Lu family of Pingle Town!"

No one in the hall cared to answer Fei Jing. Although Song Tingzhou had figured out the cause of the incident, he still couldn't understand Lu Chuang's motive. "Could it be that the Lu family's fall was related to those five? Did you kill them to avenge yourself?"

Lu Chuang's expression was calm. "The Lu family was already in decline when I was a child. But back then, I was still a young master who knew nothing."

The Lu family in Deqing County was an old landowning family, once at the height of their prosperity. In their prime, they had produced jinshi and juren, but by the time Lu Chuang came along, they were already fading. A family's long prosperity inevitably leads to decline—this is common.

By age, Lu Chuang should have grown up with the coachman, Yang Tai, Liu Yong, and Li Erzhuang. Lin Qiaoniang was his former fiancée. Thus, the connection between the five victims was finally established.

"Your Lordship, don't bother guessing. I'll tell you straight." Even kneeling on the ground being interrogated, Lu Chuang maintained a relaxed demeanor. At a time when the clues were so tangled, he showed no panic at all.

"Back then, they were all low-class scum in front of me. When they couldn't even eat their fill, they lived off the Lu family's charity. They'd fight over my half-eaten steamed bun."

As if recalling the days when he was a young master, Lu Chuang's usually greedy face turned arrogant. He squinted his eyes and lifted his chin. "Later, when my family fell, they all became prosperous instead—buying houses, doing business. Why the hell should they?"

Even Song Tingzhou, who prided himself on having weathered many storms—having entered the palace, met the emperor, and endured the dark intrigues of officialdom in his lowest moments—couldn't make sense of Lu Chuang's reasoning.

"Just because they became rich through their own hard work, that pissed you off, so you had to kill them?"

Lu Chuang yelled arrogantly, "That's right! Once they were commoners, they should have bowed their heads to me forever. Who does that coachman think he is, trying to boss me around? And Yang Tai—he was the stupidest of them all, yet now he's the one who's doing the best. Lin Qiaoniang, that slut, is still as cheap as ever. She said the broken engagement was her parents' idea, and she thought I hadn't married because I was still pining for her. She wanted to compensate me with silver and introduce me to her sister."

Lu Chuang spat crudely. "Pah! Look at her—who does she think she is? I was the one who dumped her back then. Does she really think I could actually like a country whore like her?"

Zheng Er's eyes were wide open. "Then why did you say that Qiaoniang seduced you into bed? You lied to me! You deliberately ruined her reputation!" He had been almost ruined by Lu Chuang, his family destroyed. Though he hadn't killed anyone, he couldn't escape imprisonment. Suddenly realizing that the whole thing had been fabricated by Lu Chuang, he lunged off the ground and punched Lu Chuang, only to be subdued by the bailiffs.

Lu Chuang covered his injured mouth and spat out a mouthful of blood, sneering, "Stop pretending. You don't even know the temperament of your own bedmate. You believe whatever others say. Do you even have the right to avenge that slut?"

Zheng Er's eyes were bloodshot. He couldn't help but yell that he would tear Lu Chuang apart. Song Tingzhou's face darkened. Without a word, he threw out two red-headed tokens. "Zheng Er, for abducting a decent young man, first give him twenty lashes, then throw him into the dungeon."

"Yes, Your Lordship!" Tao Ba, as the prison warden of the prefectural court, directly took over the bailiffs and runners of Deqing County. He dragged Zheng Er to a spring bench and began the beating.

Zheng Er's screams echoed through the courtroom, causing the faces of several people in the hall to change drastically. Only Lu Chuang remained relatively calm.

Song Tingzhou glanced at the darkening sky outside the hall and ordered the runners to light torches. The interrogation continued under the moonlight.

"Fei Jing traced the case to Zheng Er—that was your deliberate misdirection, wasn't it? You knew this young man was at Zheng's house, and you knew Fei Jing was a sloppy, careless official. Zheng Er was a cowardly, cunning man. You wanted to use the government's hand to kill him?"

"What kind of person is he? Since you have such mysterious means, capable of controlling snakes to kill, why didn't you just use the snakes to kill him?"

Lu Chuang, facing Song Tingzhou's repeated interrogations, did not even frown and spoke calmly: "This humble servant confesses to killing people with snakes, but as for this young man, Zheng Er was the one who was greedy for pleasure—how is that related to me? This humble servant does not confess."

Song Tingzhou seemed to have anticipated his denial. "Take off his shirt."

Tao Shi and Tao Shiyi stepped forward. Lu Chuang could no longer maintain his composed demeanor, struggling violently as he hastily said, "What are you doing, Your Honor? I have already confessed—if you want to beat or kill me, do as you please. Why must you humiliate me like this?"

Song Tingzhou was tired of his sophistry. "Do you really expect me to believe that flimsy excuse—that you killed them because you couldn't stand their rising fortunes? I would never believe such nonsense."

The Tao brothers ignored Lu Chuang's struggles and quickly pulled off his clothes, revealing a body covered in blackish-green tattoos. The most complete pattern was on his chest: a creature with a human torso and a serpent's tail. From the creature's mouth protruded a long black object—not a tongue, but a small snake as thick as a finger. Its eyes were closed, as if in slumber; if not for the occasional flick of its tiny tail, one might have mistaken it for part of the tattoo.

Without doubt, this was the venomous snake that had claimed five lives! The yamen runners Song Tingzhou had brought drew their blades halfway, keeping a watchful eye on the snake.

The foreign youth, who had been lying on the ground, had been given medicine by Chu Ci. Now, struggling to sit up, he stared in shock at Lu Chuang's chest, unsure if he was looking at the tattoo or the snake.

His eyes darted between Lu Chuang's face and the snake, and his bloodless lips pressed tighter and tighter.

The small black snake seemed to sense danger. Its black tail flicked with increasing frequency, as if it were growing out of Lu Chuang's chest and trying to forcibly detach itself. The effort brought pain to Lu Chuang's eyes, and he let out a suppressed groan from his throat.

"Ah... ah!"

The instant the snake's tail tore free from Lu Chuang's body, it tore away a flap of bloody flesh from his chest. The snake's terrifying vertical pupils snapped open, and in the next moment, it shot toward Tao Shiyi, who was closest, aiming for his throat.

"Shiyi!"

"Protect the magistrate!"

"Owww~"

"Snow Wolf! Ah? You..."

Before anyone could react, Snow Wolf pounced, slapping the small black snake to the ground with its broad paw and pinning it firmly. Then, without hesitation, it opened its mouth and chewed it up before swallowing it.