Chapter 23

(Missing two painted skins.)

“Yes, I don’t know.”

After saying those words, Second Martial Brother parted his mouth open, as if he wanted to speak but was choosing to stop himself.

Yang Ye snagged onto that detail and tacked on a question, “Do you have anything you’d like to add?”

Second Martial Brother wavered for a moment, only saying: “No… No. It’s just… the photo you took of the corpse, can you let me see it again?”

“Sure.” Yang Ye pulled off the camera that was hanging his neck, retrieved the photo and handed it to the Second Martial Brother.

As Second Martial Brother scrutinised it for a long time, the knit of his eyebrows became tighter and tighter before they relaxed in the end.

“Done,” Second Martial Brother returned the camera back to Yang Ye. “I’m going to check the other places.”

“Is there a problem in the photograph?” Yang Ye squinted his long and narrow eyes, making it evident that he was observing and studying Second Martial Brother.

— After looking at the photograph, you’re going to leave without saying a word?

Second Martial Brother hesitated for a short beat, and then said: “Look, the dot at the top of ‘畜’ and horizontal slash at the bottom of the ‘生’ character, doesn’t it look too deep? Like it doesn’t share the same depth as the other carved strokes?”

Extremely keen, Yang Ye immediately posited a query: “Your meaning is, these knife wounds were done by two different people?”

— After the process of elimination, only you and Oldest Martial Brother could have knifed him, and yet you’re hinting to me that there are two stabbers now?

“I study art, so I might be more knowledgeable than you in terms of the human body structure. The deep dot at the top of ‘畜’ character happens to be where the lungs are positioned at, and the last horizontal line of ‘生’ runs across the stomach artery. These two external wounds might be the real cause of his death. I’ll only say this much for now; as for the rest, I’ll talk about them later during the centralised discussion.”

Once he was done speaking, Second Martial Brother wanted to leave.

Yang Ye called him to a stop again. “Wait, let me ask you one last thing.”

“Mn, you speak.” Second Martial Brother said.

Yang Ye said: “In your story, do you have this person ‘Youngest Martial Brother’?”

Second Martial Brother thought back about it, saying: “Yes. Is he related to this case? My story only mentioned him once. If you hadn’t asked, I wouldn’t have noticed him at all.”

Yang Ye asked: “What did your script write about him?”

And probably because Second Martial Brother had thought of this Youngest Martial Brother as a character of no importance and consequently put him out of his mind, he had to pull his card out from his bosom to check it before he could reply. He said: “There’s only one line about him in my script. It said that me and the Oldest Martial Brother later gained a younger martial brother, but he died two years later. I don’t really have an impression of him. We weren’t familiar.”

“Was the Oldest Martial Brother familiar with him then?”

Second Martial Brother shook his head: “I’m not sure. I was tasked to come to Xiaoyao Sect to be a planted agent, and I never had the intention of confiding in anyone. The script wrote that the Oldest Martial Brother had a deep personality while I was warm in appearance and cold in my heart. Thus, although I stayed together with the Oldest Martial Brother, neither of us truly understood each other.”

Now that Yang Ye had exhausted all his questions and he had finished his bowl of porridge, Second Martial Brother left to search for more clues from other areas.

When he took his leave, he left Yang Ye and Gu Liang more puzzled than ever.

Gu Liang rapped his index finger on the table. “For 75 whole minutes, both of the martial brothers had acted individually. They have the time to commit the crime. As for the Youngest Martial Brother’s matter, I can’t parcel anything out for the time being. But towards the matter of the knife wounds, the words that the Second Martial Brother said were rather strange.”

Yang Ye asked: “What did you find strange?”

Gu Liang said: “Why did he tell us that there are two kinds of knife wounds on the deceased’s body? Only he and the Oldest Martial Brother bear the possibility of being the stabber. What he did was equivalent to admitting that he had knifed him before. However, he was also unwilling to tell the entire sequence of events in full… Why is that?”

Upon further contemplation, Yang Ye grasped the implications behind his question. “Therefore, what have you a.n.a.lysed from his behavioural logic?”

Furrowing his eyebrows, Gu Liang started slowly, “He seemed to be… uncertain if he’s the real murderer. For example, could it be possible that he was the one who carved those characters? He’s actually not certain, if his act of carving resulted in his death, but he’s afraid that if he were to admit it, he would be directly marked as the murderer. Hence, the reason why he threw the problem at you was because he wanted to hear how you would a.n.a.lyse it. Or perhaps, after listening to your a.n.a.lysis, he would then reconsider if he wanted to tell you the truth.”

“Your meaning is, he’s testing if I’m a dog headed detective or not?”

“Maybe.”

Yang Ye chuckled. “If that’s really the case, this would mean that he carved the words on the counterfeit’s body first but he did not kill him right then and there. And later, the Oldest Martial Brother also went to the scene of the crime and realised that the counterfeit was not dead, so he followed the carved handwriting and added two additional stabs.”

Gu Liang nodded. “Yes.”

Yang Ye crinkled his eyes. “But it could also be the reverse. Or perhaps, both knife wounds were done by him. He offered the information because he wanted to splash dirty water on the Oldest Martial Brother and lure us into the line of thought that the Oldest Martial Brother had appended two additional stabs. He didn’t dare to say it too directly because he didn’t want to expose his own schemes. If he threw the question out to let us follow the train of thought he was guiding, it’d be a lot safer for him.”

Gu Liang exhaled. “Yes. What you said is also a possibility, which is why we can’t confirm who the murderer is exactly. In final a.n.a.lysis, we’re still lacking a few pieces of crucial evidence.”

Yang Ye lifted up his bowl and was planning to drink a mouthful of porridge when he suddenly thought of something. His movements stopped mid-motion, forming the image where his bowl was half-lifted and near consumption, but it was not drunk.

Studying him for a brief moment, Gu Liang realised he had been maintaining that posture without moving for a good while. “What are you thinking about?”

Yang Ye looked towards him and said: “Thinking about the phrase again; going back to the t.i.tle itself. This script is called ‘Painted Exteriors, Long Lived’, When we take apart the t.i.tle to study it, the ‘long-lived’ portion points at the fact that Perennial w.a.n.g lives forever and never grows old, but how is living forever and never growing old related to the story? Furthermore, what does painted exteriors mean? Could it be referring to human skin masks?”

Gu Liang replied, “Since there is a counterfeit pretending to be Perennial w.a.n.g, it’s certainly possible that human skin masks exist.”

Immediately, Yang Ye placed down the bowl on the table and took out his card to inspect the map. “Problem is, we haven’t found a single clue that concerns human skins or painted skins. This doesn’t make sense. Xiaoyao Sect can only be so big, and as a martial arts sect… could it be that there’s something akin to a secret room which hides rare and valuable martial arts books?”

Upon hearing Yang Ye’s words, Gu Liang sat up straight.

Yang Ye asked him: “Did you think of something again?”

“The fake mountain. There were issues with the route of the fake mountain.”

Gu Liang answered him resolutely, “When I was trying to find you last night, I followed the route indicated by the map. But as I walked to a certain area, I abruptly discovered that it was a dead end and had to walk around from the side. But the map clearly showed that it was a straight line… there might be a secret path there.”

“Understood. Let’s go.”

Yang Ye placed down the bowl, pulled on Gu Liang’s robe sleeve and ran out.

Since Gu Liang did not manage to stop him in time, he could only allow himself to be tugged and pulled until they reached the location of the fake mountain.

Beside the fake mountain was a flower garden as well as a small man-made lake.

At this very moment, Oldest Martial Brother and Doctor Yu happened to be by the lakeside too.

When Doctor Yu caught sight of the pair, she was split between feeling startled and pleasantly surprised, and some pride was mixed into it. “Did you think that there was a secret path here too? But you came later than us. We thought of it earlier than you did!”

“Both of you are amazing,” Yang Ye gave her a perfunctory praise before he immediately asked: “Have you discovered anything?”

“There’s a road here on the map but the actual geographical location proves that there is none because it’s been severed off by the fake mountain. This was also what Oldest Martial Brother and I determined. Look—”

Doctor Yu pointed in a direction with her finger, “The door is over there. However, we haven’t found the switch and we don’t know how to open it.”

Gu Liang strode towards the front of the stone wall and confirmed that he was here last night. He used his palm to graze the rock wall before he curled his fingers and knocked on it. “The switch to open the door? Let me try and find it.”

Saying that, Gu Liang checked the rock wall’s surroundings for rocks that protruded out and pressed it but the rock wall did not show the slightest reaction.

Lowering his head, his gaze s.h.i.+fted towards the rank gra.s.s close to the rock wall. Gu Liang crouched down and plucked away the gra.s.s to take a look.

Doctor Yu commented: “We’ve already searched that area, there was no switch. That’s why we were thinking, the lakeside has so many rocks; maybe there’s an issue with one of them? Hey, could it involve the five elements and eight trigrams? Does anyone know these?”

Despite searching the surrounding circ.u.mference of the rock face once, Gu Liang did not find anything. Hence, he could only run towards the rocks encircling the lake.

He proceeded to spend a considerable amount of time running several rounds around the man-made lake, going back and forth, which caused a light sheen of sweat to appear on his forehead again.

Meanwhile, Yang Ye was standing at the side watching Gu Liang.

The reddish hue on his face was even heavier like he had dusted on some rouge. With the red skirts that swathed his entire person contrasting with the lights and colours of the lake, it impressed upon him a quiet and exquisite charm.

His footsteps slowed and ceased. Heavy breaths were pulled in and exhaled. As Gu Liang raised his head to gaze at the colours of the sky, the daylight happened to fall into his tea-coloured eyes, and Yang Ye found it a little hard to tear his eyes away once he had seen it.

Even though the current atmosphere should be tense because they needed to seize every minute and second to solve the case—

But when he saw Gu Liang being like this, the restlessness in his heart would strangely and always quieten down.

And as if he had perceived Yang Ye’s stare, Gu Liang turned his head back and held his gaze. “Dog headed detective, what are you standing there for? Not looking for the switch?”

“Sigh, I say—” Yang Ye walked to the front of the rock wall of the fake mountain, and asked, “Have any of you tried to… push it directly?”

As he said those words, Yang Ye pressed his raised hands against the rock face and pushed it forcefully.

After a dull noise resounded, the door opened inwards.

Gu Liang: “……”

Doctor Yu: “……”

Oldest Martial Brother: “……”

After the door opened, a long pa.s.sageway appeared, and the faintest light shone out from the deepest recesses of the pa.s.sageway.

Yang Ye looked over his shoulder and blinked at Gu Liang. His expression showed that he was extremely pleased with himself, and it made him want to punch him a little.

This person always seemed to find a simpler and more effective way.

Whereas his own thoughts had the tendency to complicate matters.

Gu Liang was not particularly happy about it, but he had to admit to this point.

Having resigned himself, he could only squash down the impulse to give Yang Ye a thras.h.i.+ng and lift his foot up to enter the pa.s.sageway first.

“Be careful, who knows if there’s demons and ghosts inside.” Yang Ye stalked up and continued to hold him by the sleeve.

“This script asks of its players to solve the case, not take a huge risk.”

This time around, Gu Liang moved his arm forward to stop Yang Ye’s childish behaviour before he followed the paved road to walk further inwards.

Catching air, Yang Ye could only retract his hand resentfully and shadow him.

Doctor Yu and Oldest Martial Brother exchanged glances before they followed them in, with one in front of the other.

As the four walked down the paved pathway, they reached the innermost cave very quickly.

Altar lamps that burned through the day and night lit up the four directions of the cave, causing there to be an abundance of light.

On the left side of the cave was an elderly who should be a NPC. He was currently on a stone pedestal carving something with a cask beside him, which contained something flesh-coloured and starchy.

As for the things on the right side of the wall, they were enough to shock the four people into a standstill.

— On the obsidian rock wall, imposing and left standing for a long time, was rows upon rows of neat and tidy notches, and in every notch was a face skin.

The entire surface of the wall had skins in great numbers, but each and every one of those faces were different.

Gu Liang looked through these face skins carefully. He did not recognise most of them and they should be the disciples of Xiaoyao Sect. Every person’s name was also carved beneath each notch.

As he slowly worked his way to the centre of the rock wall, Gu Liang came to the bizarre realisation that the face skins of every character in the script were also present— namely, Beauty Yi’s, Master Hui’s, Oldest Martial Brother’s, and even Doctor Yu’s.

But there were two missing.

Two notches meant for the display of face skins were completely empty, and the two names carved below were “Second Martial Brother” and “Perennial w.a.n.g” respectively.