Compendio de hombres apuestos en el mundo de las artes marciales

Capítulo 70

66

Chapter Thirteen: A Wrong Thought, Tears of a Beauty...

Duan Chen and the others boarded a horse-drawn carriage and headed to the village east of the town. After asking around, they found the old couple's house, but when they knocked on the door, they discovered that the door was not bolted and the house consisted of two very small rooms, one in front and one in back.

Upon entering the house, they found it heavily dusty, with cobwebs covering many parts of the ceiling. Only one bed was spotless, but upon closer inspection, it bore traces of blood. Everyone knew they had found the right place, but where was the person?

Duan Chen turned and walked out to knock on the door of the next house. A moment later, the door opened, and Duan Chen quickly bowed, saying, "Young man, may I ask where people from our village are buried if they pass away?"

The young man was taken aback by the question. Seeing that Duan Chen seemed quite anxious, he took two steps outside and pointed to one end of the road, replying, "Go west, there's a small hill, and that area is all graveyards." Seeing the carriage outside the door, the young man kindly advised, "Your carriage is too wide, and there's a section of the road that's quite narrow; you probably won't be able to get through."

Duan Chen thanked the young man, then said anxiously, "Let's hurry, or something bad might happen again."

Zhan Yun quickly followed Duan Chen beside him: "Chen'er, don't rush. I see the teacups on the table are still warm. That old man is old and can't move too fast."

Xiao Changqing took a few steps backward and looked at Zuo Xin with a grin: "Hurry up! Last time we competed in lightness skills and we couldn't decide who was better. It's been almost ten years now, I'm sure I can beat you!"

Zhan Yun and Zhao Ting noticed Duan Chen's slightly cold expression and remained silent. They hadn't walked for the time it takes to drink a cup of tea when they saw a graveyard not far away. Two people stood there, seemingly arguing about something. One of them brandished a gleaming weapon, about to stab the other in the chest. Zhan Yun drew his folding fan with his left hand, half-opened, and flicked it across the other's wrist.

As everyone rushed over, they saw that one of the people was the old man from the porridge shop. Next to him was a donkey-drawn cart covered with a white cloth. Zhao Ting stepped forward and pulled it open. Inside was an old woman; judging by her appearance, she had been dead for two or three days. She had been dressed in her burial clothes, and a gash in her left breast was faintly visible. Zhao Ting glanced at Zhan Yun, who nodded slightly; it was indeed the old woman from the porridge shop. Another person, clutching their right wrist, beads of sweat dripping from their face, straightened up and looked up. Whoa! Xiao Changqing pointed, his eyes wide: "Boss Sheng!"

The man remained calm and composed, bowing respectfully to the crowd. He was none other than the owner of the inn where they were staying!

The man bowed, then looked at Duan Chen with a mocking gaze: "It is said that Young Master Duan has solved many strange cases and is exceptionally intelligent. Why are you so slow this time?"

Duan Chen seemed unsurprised to see the person before him, and coldly said, "Boss Sheng has already gotten what he wanted, so why hurt the innocent?"

Boss Sheng's smile vanished abruptly, and a hint of resentment gradually appeared between his brows: "You've gotten what you wanted? I could have killed that old woman anytime these past years, using over a hundred different methods to torture her to death bit by bit. Why do you think I've only taken action now?"

Zhao Ting pulled Bai back and coldly rebuked her, "Are you out of your mind?"

Boss Sheng chuckled and nodded repeatedly: "Yes, I'm not mentally sound. But anyone who has experienced something like that would be just as mentally unstable as I am! You haven't gone through that kind of pain, so what right do you have to criticize my behavior?"

Zhou Yufei rolled his eyes and dusted off the corners of his robes: "You're arguing after killing someone!"

Boss Sheng raised his chin, his eyes wide with fury: "Yes, I'm right! If your sister was called a witch since childhood, your parents were ridiculed and mocked by everyone around you, and in the end you had to watch your sister be burned alive, and your parents died one after the other within a month, wouldn't you hate them? Wouldn't you want revenge, wouldn't you want those people to taste the suffering you endured, wouldn't you want to kill to vent your anger?"

Zhou Yufei was less familiar with the cause and effect of this matter than the others, and he was stunned when he heard the man in front of him shouting angrily.

Zhan Yun picked up the folding fan from the ground and listened with a frown. Now, he looked at the middle-aged man in front of him with some surprise: "Are you from the Sheng family?"

The man smiled sinisterly: "Finally, someone who understands."

Xiao Changqing's eyes widened, clearly surprised. He quickly patted Zuo Xin's arm and said, "Hey! He's the younger brother of the red-eyed enchantress in the story I told you before. So the story was true, not a rumor..." Zuo Xin frowned and nodded, realizing what he meant.

Zhao Ting had also heard Zhan Yun mention this, but he was still somewhat puzzled: "Are there really people with blood-red eyes in this world?" Neither Duan Chen nor Zhan Yun answered the question. Although both of them had some knowledge of medicine, and Zhan Yun had read many related books, they had never seen any similar records.

Xiao Changqing, standing beside him, stroked his chin, pondered for a moment, and then spoke: "I have read a similar record before. It seems to be a disease, extremely rare! People who have it have fair skin and their eyes are somewhat reddish. However, apart from being afraid of light, they don't have any other symptoms. It might look a bit scary?" As he spoke, he looked at everyone uncertainly.

Everyone imagined it and nodded in unison; it must be quite frightening.

The middle-aged man scoffed, "My sister isn't scary at all. Back then, many men in the village would stare at her like they'd lost their souls..." As he spoke, he glanced at the old man beside him with a hint of mockery.

The old man looked a little embarrassed, but nodded and replied, "It is very beautiful."

"Then what about the bluish lip color?" Zhao Ting found this quite strange as well.

Boss Sheng, whose face had been gloomy, became even more indignant upon hearing this: "My sister was just born with bluish lips, but she grew up to be just like everyone else. It was winter then, and it's not unusual for newborns to have bluish or purplish lips!"

Zuo Xin nodded in agreement: "That makes sense."

Duan Chen glanced at the old man, then continued staring at the middle-aged man in front of him: "Are you doing this to seek justice for your sister?"

Upon hearing this, the middle-aged man's facial muscles twitched slightly, indicating some agitation: "You understand that my sister has been wronged?"

Duan Chen looked at him coldly: "You've gone through all this trouble just to prove this point, haven't you?"

"The black cloth on the outside and the red cloth on the inside are meant to indicate the color of your sister's eyes back then, while the white inside is meant to show that although your sister's eyes were different from ordinary people, she was a kind and simple person, not as scary as she looked."

As Duan Chen spoke slowly, the man's expression grew increasingly agitated. He nodded repeatedly, his voice choked with emotion: "My sister is truly a very kind person..."

Zhan Yun frowned slightly, still harboring doubts: "Chen'er, how did you guess that woman was framed?"

The others around her also looked at her, waiting for an explanation. Duan Chen glanced at the middle-aged man before saying softly, "I only figured it out this morning. When I untied that cloth bundle yesterday, I felt something was strange." As she spoke, she turned to look at Zhao Ting and Zhan Yun: "Yesterday, when you two pushed open the door and came in, you saw blood on my hands and a heart on the table next to me. What was the first thought that came to your mind?"

Although the two were puzzled, they still told the truth. Zhan Yun replied gently, "When I first saw the blood on your fingertips, I thought you were injured. Then, when I saw the heart on the table, my first thought was that the man surnamed Bai had returned, but after calming down, I realized that wasn't the case."

Zhao Ting nodded beside him: "That's about right. At first, I also thought that it was someone from Qi Sheng's sect using that disgusting thing to intimidate us."

Everyone was still puzzled as to why Duan Chen would ask such a question, except for the man surnamed Sheng, whose eyes were red-rimmed and who was clenching his teeth, looking very resentful. The old man next to him also understood and sighed deeply.

Duan Chen took in the expressions of the two men and calmly explained, "You two think this way because you know me very well. But what if it were someone else? What if it were someone who is rumored to be a witch? How would you feel in that situation?"

After putting themselves in her shoes, everyone suddenly realized. Xiao Changqing opened his mouth and thought for a moment, then looked at Zuo Xin and nudged him with his elbow: "It's hard not to have impure thoughts!" Zuo Xin nodded. Indeed, it was easy to think that the woman in front of him was a truly wicked vixen.

"As for the rumor that the woman licked the blood off her hands while giggling, that's just something others made up. There were probably only a few people present at the time, but once the story spread, it naturally got mixed up with a lot of people's imaginations and embellishments." Duan Chen said, then looked at the two people in front of him.

Both men nodded. The middle-aged man gritted his teeth angrily and said, "That's exactly right. There were only five or six people who broke into my house. As soon as they saw the pig's heart my sister was holding, they ignored our explanations and forcibly dragged my sister to the village chief. Later..." The man couldn't bear to say any more, but everyone could imagine what it was like to watch your loved one being burned alive.

Zhou Yufei understood the gist of it and frowned, asking, "Then what exactly was your sister doing back then? Why was she holding a pig's heart?"

The man's eyes reddened with excitement: "What could I do? Uncle Zhang's pigs died of disease. My family is poor and can't afford good pork. At that time, the winter solstice was approaching. My father had some private connections with Uncle Zhang, so he used some money to exchange for some pig offal to make soup with rice!"

Zhou Yufei was dumbfounded, and everyone else was also greatly surprised. Duan Chen hadn't expected the truth to be so simple. Even though she had guessed most of the facts and considered many possibilities, she never imagined that the girl from the Sheng family would be arrested by the villagers for using the pig's heart to make soup and food, only to be burned alive. The answer was so simple it was almost laughable, yet it inevitably left people with a sense of sorrow and regret after the laughter subsided.