High noon.
East of Five Rams City, Qi Mansion.
A group of constables had sealed off the main gate of Qi Mansion, strictly forbidding anyone idle or unrelated from approaching. Even from afar, traces of terror could be seen on the faces of these constables.
The only ones truly coming in and out of the Qi Mansion courtyard were a group of Xuanqing Guards dressed in black brocade robes, Yanji Sabers at their waists.
Shen Hao, face gloomy, strode quickly into the Qi Mansion with his hands behind his back. Beside him, the School Commander followed, briefing him on the situation inside.
"The informant was Old Man Zeng, who collects night soil from the east side of the city. According to him, he went to Qi Mansion at mid-3 a.m. as per usual to collect the previous day's night soil, but after waiting at the back gate for a long time, no servant came to let him in. He went up to knock, only to find the back door ajar, and when he pushed it open, saw a severed thigh lying on the ground..."
"The first to enter the scene were three constables on duty from the county government. They said after receiving the report, they entered Qi Mansion by the back door, got as far as the side hall, and didn't dare go further, retreating in terror..."
"After that, these three constables, citing 'a strange major case', reported the incident to the Xuanqing Guard via the county government..."
As soon as Shen Hao set foot in the Qi Mansion, he subconsciously paused, muttering, "Such a heavy stench of blood!"
Passing through the entrance hall, he was met by the source of the metallic reek: dismembered corpses, torn limb from limb, lay scattered across the floor, over potted landscapes, and atop flowers and grasses...
Heads were stacked into a Jingguan and placed squarely in the most conspicuous part of the central courtyard, directly behind the entrance.
"Any survivors?"
"Every single person in the Qi Mansion—maids, servants, all sixty-one of them—none survived. All here."
"Tsk, wiped out." Shen Hao's brows knitted slightly. Seeing the Jingguan before him, he knew he'd run into yet another thorny case. After a short silence, he went on: "Has the treasury been located?"
"Found it. The Qi Family deals in textiles—a big operation, very wealthy. After a rough count, the silver alone in their vaults is no less than a million taels."
"Hmm? So your meaning is, none of the treasury's valuables are missing?"
"Correct. When we found it, the vault door's lock was intact, no sign of tampering, and all the treasures inside were neatly stacked with no sign of being rifled through or moved. I also found an account ledger in Qi Mansion's bookkeeping room—the latest balance matches almost exactly with the amount we counted in the treasury."
Shen Hao's frown deepened. Murder, with no intent to rob?
Walking through the central courtyard and into the main hall, the place grew even more chilling. Even at high noon, the room made one's back prickle with cold: arms of various lengths were stacked neatly atop the Eight Immortals Table, with blood trailing down the table legs, pooling into a great red puddle below.
"Xiaoqi, it was on this table that we found traces of Evil Qi."
At these words, Shen Hao nodded, stepping up to the Eight Immortals Table. He drew from his robes a regular hexagonal Array Disc, etched with complicated patterns—an Evil Chasing Disc, common gear among Xuanqing Guards.
Circulating his True Essence slightly, the Evil Chasing Disc in Shen Hao's hand lit up with a ghostly glow, flickering for a while before settling into calm.
"Hm? Third-Grade Evil?" Shen Hao was intimately familiar with every fluctuation of the Evil Chasing Disc. The flickering just now had told him that a faint trace of Evil Qi lingered around this Eight Immortals Table—and it was left by a Third-Grade Evil.
Shen Hao knit his brows and asked, "Are there any records of Third-Grade Evil sightings around Five Rams City?"
"None. I found it strange too—a Third-Grade Evil entering the city shouldn't have left only the Qi Family in ruin."
"The Evil Chasing Disc can't be wrong. Anything else odd?"
"Yes, in the side hall and the kitchen."
...
"This... is the kitchen?" Shen Hao considered himself familiar with ghastly scenes, but the instant he stepped into Qi Mansion's rear kitchen, he still felt his throat tighten and bile rise.
"Xiaoqi, the forensic doctor, ugh, has been here before—inside, all the offal, it's—it's all human entrails, ugh." Though the School Commander had already visited, the scene was so gruesome he couldn't stop retching dryly.
Shen Hao, understanding, clapped the School Commander on the shoulder and let him wait outside, while he himself entered the kitchen, brows furrowed, and began a careful search.
"Dismembered corpses, Jingguan stacking, organs separated, the arms... This really does fit the methods of those Evils."
He brought out the Evil Chasing Disc again. Moments later, the disc's reaction was the same as in the main hall—a faint, but genuine, trace of a Third-Grade Evil's Qi.
"Really, did a Third-Grade Evil slip into the city? Yet..."
Staring at the Evil Chasing Disc, Shen Hao grew puzzled. Though he trusted the disc absolutely, the School Commander had a point: Evils are never obedient—they're outright mad, and would never have stopped after wrecking a single Qi Family.
"Hm?"
Suddenly, Shen Hao squatted down, drew his Yanji Saber, and, with a flash of the blade, picked up a fingernail-sized scrap from a pool of blood on the floor.
"This is..."
Though the blood-soaked scrap was blackened, Shen Hao still recognized it—a torn paper fragment, more precisely, a piece of paper that hadn't been fully burned.
Burning paper in the kitchen?
He went over to the water jar, handled the scrap on his blade, dipped it in the water, and once the red-black blood washed off, a faint smile touched Shen Hao's lips.
"Talisman paper... Now this is interesting."
Leaving the kitchen, Shen Hao headed to a side hall of Qi Mansion.
The sight in the side hall was just as horrifying. Severed feet of various sizes had been ripped off and spread across the floor like tiles, terrifyingly coordinated in a way that sent shivers down the spine.
"Xiaoqi, we've checked—there are exactly sixty-one pairs of feet here, matching the sixty-one pairs of hands in the main hall. Belong to the Qi Family. Tsk, these Evils are so fucking disgusting!" The School Commander's face had gone pale; he cursed in a low voice.
"Disgusting? Heh, yes, but I've seen worse, frankly. Sometimes what people do is more revolting than any Evil." Shen Hao shook his head with a laugh, stepping first into the side hall.
Sixty-one pairs of feet sounded like a lot but didn't cover much ground, and the Qi Family's side hall was spacious—only the central area had been covered.
Compared to the earlier discovery in the kitchen, aside from the same faint trace of Evil Qi detected by the Evil Chasing Disc, there was nothing here worth probing deeper.
"Xiaoqi, these are the only three places in Qi Mansion where we've found traces of Evil Qi. Any further instructions?"
"Wang Xiaoling, do you feel like something's missing from this mansion?"
"Huh? Not sure, sir."
"Blood."
"What?"
"Don't you think there's not enough blood in this place?"
Shen Hao pointed at the mottled stains on the ground: "From the entrance on, the whole Qi Mansion looks extremely brutal and bloody—but did you notice? The carnage might be extreme, but from the skull-stacked Jingguan and the arm-stacked table at the entrance, to the organ piles in the kitchen and the feet here in the side hall, the amount of blood present doesn't add up."
The School Commander froze, thought for a moment, then suddenly realized: "That's right! The Garrison's 'Human Subdivision' manual says a grown adult has, at max, seven to twelve jin of blood—varies by gender and body weight. So for sixty-one people that's at least four hundred jin of blood! Even if not every drop was spilled, turning bodies to this many pieces, at least three hundred jin should be here! But here... there's nowhere near three hundred jin of blood!"