bookpub Chapter 89 Case Closed
Chapter 89 Case Closed
Chapter 89 Case Closed
As evening fell, the sun began to set.
Under the dilapidated shed of Anjia Teahouse, two tables of customers sat chatting about the monsters that had appeared in the canyon ahead.
An Da was carrying a teapot, busy inside and outside the house.
Meanwhile, Cui Niang, An Da's wife, was cutting meat in the kitchen. Her slender figure attracted the attention of merchants outside who frequently stole glances at her.
Occasionally, some bold individuals would crack a few jokes loudly.
At this moment, a young man dressed in black, with a skull embroidered on his chest, carrying a bundle, walked from the inn in front.
He entered the tea stall and sat down in an empty seat.
The merchants at the two tables next to them, who had been talking and laughing loudly, immediately lowered their voices.
"The brat of the Demon-Suppressing Sect—"
Someone whispered, their face filled with fear.
At this moment, An Da came out of the house carrying a teapot. When he saw the boy, he quickly went over and poured him a cup of tea.
Then he whispered, "Lord Luo, I heard that several demonic creatures have appeared in the canyon ahead. Is that true?"
Luo Qingchen took out a water bottle from her waist, uncorked it, took a few sips, and then looked at him, saying, "I came from the inn up ahead. Something happened there that you probably don't know about, right?"
An Da's expression darkened. He said, "I heard about it this morning. Apparently, my nephew is the murderer in the recent disappearances. They even found a woman and her remains in the wine cellar. Sigh, I was planning to go there, but we don't have enough manpower here."
He then sighed, "Who could have imagined this?"
Luo Qingchen asked, "Did his father always beat and scold him?"
An Da smiled wryly: "That's right, we've been fighting since we were kids. It's his fault for being lazy and useless."
Luo Qingchen looked at him and said, "But he's a cultivator, and at his age, he's already reached the Bone Strengthening Realm. He shouldn't be useless, right?"
An Da shook his head: "Who knows? His father just looks down on him."
"Who taught him cultivation?"
Luo Qingchen suddenly asked.
An Da thought for a moment and said, "It seems his father invited people from the martial arts school."
Luo Qingchen gently closed the kettle's stopper, twisted it, and slowly said, "His father did indeed hire people from a martial arts school to teach him, but they only taught him for half a year. The rest of the time—"
He suddenly looked up at him: "The rest of the time, you're the one teaching him, right?"
An Da was taken aback upon hearing this and said, "Me?"
Luo Qingchen nodded: "You are his uncle and a cultivator, shouldn't you teach him?"
An Da gave a wry smile: "I don't have the time."
Luo Qingchen said, "You definitely don't have time for other people, but for him—he's your son, how could you not have time?"
An Da's face stiffened for a moment, then he laughed and said, "Lord Luo, what are you joking about? Fa Cai is my nephew, not my son."
With that, he picked up the teapot and left, saying, "Please wait a moment, Lord Luo, I'll go get you a basket of steamed buns."
Luo Qingchen didn't say anything more.
An Da quickly brought over a basket of steaming hot buns and placed it in front of him, smiling broadly as he said, "They're freshly steamed, eat them while they're hot. Consider it a free gift from me, to thank you for your hard work these past few days."
As he spoke, he took out another five taels of silver and placed it on the table, saying, "This is what we agreed on before, please accept it, Lord Luo."
Luo Qingchen picked up the silver, weighed it in her hand, and looked at him, saying, "I was just joking with you."
An laughed and was about to leave when Luo Qingchen suddenly said, "Fa Cai looks a lot like you, and has a similar build, so that's why your younger brother overthinks things and dislikes him, beating and scolding him every day, right?"
The smile on An Da's face gradually froze.
Luo Qingchen added, "Fa Cai probably thinks the same way, which is why he's so close to you, right? But you know very well that it's all a misunderstanding. It's actually quite normal for a nephew to look like his uncle."
A bitter smile immediately appeared on An Da's face: "Actually, I've explained it to the second brother many times already, sigh—"
Luo Qingchen suddenly asked again, "What about your own son?"
Upon hearing this, the smile that An Da had forced on his face vanished instantly.
Luo Qingchen picked up the teacup in front of her, gently swirled it, and said, "I asked An Er, and An Er told me. That year, your son had just turned seven, with pigtails and wearing a little red jacket. He went to play at the inn in front with some familiar merchants, and then fell from the second floor and died. Chopsticks were stuck in his eyes; he died a very tragic death."
The teapot in An Da's hand began to tremble.
Luo Qingchen put down her teacup and looked at him again: "You think An Er did it out of spite, right?"
An Da forced a smile again as his face paled: "Lord Luo, the past is the past. My wife and I have long forgotten it, so why bring it up?"
Luo Qingchen shook her head: "If you really forgot, how could you have skinned the child, transformed him into your son's appearance, and kept going to the inn in front to play?"
An Da didn't say anything more.
At this moment, Xu Mang arrived at the teahouse, seemingly out of nowhere, and asked in confusion, "Brother Luo, if it's just a shadowy figure, what about the child's footprints we found earlier? Also, An Er's manhood was cut off last night."
Luo Qingchen looked at An Da in front of her and said slowly, "I said before that children are not necessarily children. Some adults are actually quite small."
Xu Mang's gaze also fell on An Da, who was short and stocky, and his eyes suddenly lit up!
"Sometimes it's a fake, sometimes it's the real person; the mix of truth and falsehood makes it even more like a ghost."
Luo Qingchen's gaze fell on the woman still cutting meat in the kitchen, and she said, "If I'm not mistaken, she should be a master of the Nourishing Spirit Realm."
The sound wasn't loud, but the woman in the kitchen who was cutting meat stopped chopping with her knife.
"you----"
An Da's facial muscles twitched a few times as he tried his best to force out the smile he had maintained for years.
Luo Qingchen continued, "You not only hate An Er, but you also hate the merchants who took your sons to play at the inn up ahead, right? That's why you've caused one merchant after another to disappear."
Xu Mang frowned and said, "But what are those three women doing in the inn's wine cellar? What happened to An Facai—"
Luo Qingchen said, "It wasn't An Facai who kidnapped them. He just accidentally discovered those three or four women being locked up there. Perhaps for some reason, he didn't tell anyone and went to bully them every day. Of course, there's also the reason that he thought it was his father who did the evil deeds, because he knows his father's character—he stole his daughter-in-law, coveted his sister-in-law, and was a lecherous scoundrel. So, he helped cover it up, and even though you found out last night, he didn't say a word in defense."
At this moment, the previously noisy sounds outside the teahouse had become unusually quiet.
Everyone held their breath, listening intently as he recounted this horrific case, word by word.
"All the missing people were probably killed by this couple."
Luo Qingchen's gaze fell on An Da, then on the woman in the kitchen.
The air was silent for several breaths.
An Da suddenly laughed: "Lord Luo, where's the evidence? If you have no evidence, then—"
At that moment, the voices of Yuan Zhao and several constables suddenly came from the side of the teahouse.
"Brother Luo, you were right! We found some children's red coats, shoes, and toys under the bed in the back room! They should all belong to his son, just like the ghostly outfit An Er and the others described!"
"Lord Luo, we also found a lot of bones in the cellar behind!"
Upon hearing this, the teapot in An Da's hand fell to the ground with a "clatter".
The other customers in the teahouse were all deathly pale.
Xu Mang hurriedly asked, "Aren't there any living people? Where are the corpses?"
The constable replied, "Nothing has been found yet!"
At this moment, Luo Qingchen picked up a steamed bun from the steamer in front of her, gently broke it open, remained silent for a while, and looked at An Dao in front of her: "I'm just a little curious, you've all tolerated it for so many years, why are you suddenly starting to retaliate now?"
An Da's face first showed a look of bewilderment, then gradually turned into hatred: "Actually, before, I couldn't be sure that he was the one who killed my son. It's normal for a child to fall from a building while playing—but recently, a few merchants passed by here, and one of them witnessed it firsthand—he told me that my son was running around playing when he accidentally ran into a room on the second floor. In that room, that beast An Er was abusing a woman he had drugged, and my son saw it, and then—"
Luo Qingchen said, "An Er said that he was just panicked at the time and chased after your son, hoping that your son would not tell anyone."
But your son, in his fear, ran very fast and accidentally fell from the building—”
"hey-hey."
An Da suddenly grinned maliciously: "Wasn't that all his fault? He killed my son, and then he coveted my wife! He even falsely accused me of stealing his wife! And he stole my business! He came to me penniless, and I helped him survive here. And what did he do? Heh heh, this is what brothers are like! I'll make sure his father and son turn against each other, the inn goes bankrupt, and they suffer a fate worse than death!"
Luo Qingchen paused for a moment, then said, "That Lu Qingqing, you killed her too, didn't you?"
The woman in the kitchen said calmly, "Killing a girl like that would be very simple; her skin is so tender, it's easy to peel. Unfortunately, her guards were incompetent and failed to kill you. When my husband first saw you, he said you were dangerous, so we had to get rid of you. If we could make your various factions fight amongst themselves, that would be ideal. Unfortunately—"
The woman looked at him calmly: "It's a pity we didn't expect you to be even smarter and more capable than we thought. Are all the disciples of the Demon-Slaying Sect like you? Probably not, right? At least, the few I killed before weren't as clever as you."
Luo Qingchen said, "So, you also obtained the Ghost Shadow Technique from those few disciples of the Demon Exorcism Sect?"
,
The woman lowered her head, raised her fingertips, and slowly stroked the kitchen knife in her hand. Her tone remained calm: "At first, they were just like you, they didn't eat our buns or drink our tea, they only ate and drank what they brought themselves. But they—in the end, were different from you. They coveted my body, they looked down on my husband, so in the end, we skinned them, chopped their flesh, and turned them into buns."
"My wife."
An Da looked at her.
The woman raised her head, a gentle and beautiful smile on her face: "Husband, it's too late. They brought more people than just these."
Her expression faltered for a moment, then she said softly, "Do you remember what our son looked like?"
The fierce look on An Da's face gradually turned into gentleness as he said, "Of course, he's like you."
The woman laughed and said, "Your nose looks like yours."
The two looked at each other and smiled.
At this moment, the teahouse fell silent.
The setting sun hung in the sky, casting its last rays of light upon the small teahouse.
Yuan Sanzhi of Qingcheng Temple and Shangguan Feng of Yumo Sect emerged from the woods behind the temple.
Before they arrived, Xu Mang had already sent someone to inform them.
Because Luo Qingchen told him that there was a master of the Nourishing Spirit Realm here.
Luo Qingchen got up and left the small teahouse at the last moment before the sun set, heading towards the distant mountains shrouded in night.
He felt that he still preferred places without sunlight.
The people from Xueyu Palace also received the news and rushed back.
When Han Yunshu arrived at the teahouse with his disciples, the teahouse owners, the couple, were already lying on the ground.
They lay together, looking peaceful.
Han Yunshu immediately inquired about the whole incident.
Upon learning that the steamed buns and various meat dishes served here and in the teahouse in front were made from human flesh, they immediately began to vomit.
After vomiting for a while, the girl named Han Zhenzhen suddenly stood up: "Huh? We don't think we've eaten anything!"
The people from Xueyu Palace were taken aback for a moment, then thought about it and immediately became overjoyed.
Yes, none of them ate.
The teahouse served them a basket of steamed buns, but they neither ate them nor took them with them.
"Not snow!"
Han Zhenzhen suddenly hugged the girl next to her, kissing and nuzzling her, feeling lingering fear and tears of gratitude, saying, "Thank you!"
Thank you! If it weren't for you, I almost ate that human flesh bun! Ugh!
Xue Feixue used her hand to stop the indiscriminate kisses, then looked at Xu Mang beside her and suddenly asked, "What's the name of that Demon-Slaying Sect disciple who solved the case?"