ragginovel Chapter 666 The 3th Person
Chapter 666 The 3th Person
Chapter 666 The Third Person
"So I immediately rushed up and punched that guy from behind..." Ma Zhao said, recounting this childhood memory.
"Wait, wait, wait, wait..." Yun Shili interrupted, rattling off six "wait"s like a machine gun, "You mean... you killed that man without even asking?"
“Yes,” Ma Zhao replied in a matter-of-fact tone, “Didn’t I already say that I attacked from behind? How could I have attacked if you asked me?”
Hearing such lines, Brother Yun, who was involved in criminal investigation, was so angry that he had a headache. He immediately raised his hand to his forehead and said, "How can you know who is a good person and who is a bad person if you don't ask first?"
“Uh…” Upon hearing this, a hint of shame flashed across Ma Zhao’s face. “Now it seems that I did misunderstand…” He paused and explained, “But given the situation at the time, anyone who saw it would only think that the man was committing the crime. Why should I care about so many other things?”
His explanation makes some sense. Assuming the man with the knife is the assailant, rushing up to stop him is indeed a better option than shouting.
Because once he shouts out and exposes himself, the initiative is in the hands of the other party, who then has a variety of options such as turning back to resist, forcibly killing, taking hostages, or turning around and running away.
Ma Zhao's martial arts skills are only second-rate, so how could he possibly have the luxury of relinquishing the initiative?
If a top-tier expert were here today, you wouldn't even need to shout first. You could just bring a few beautiful women over to scatter flower petals to pave the way, then hide in a tree and float down from a great height while reciting poetry, and no one would stop you... No matter how the other party reacts, you'd be very confident that you could stop them with your speed advantage or long-range methods.
"That's still not right." Yun Shili thought for a moment and then said, "If you're going to launch a sneak attack, fine, but you can still ask questions afterward. You can't just kill the person with one punch, can you?"
Upon hearing this, Ma Zhao looked troubled again, and after a few seconds of hesitation, he finally said, "Uh...yes."
"Whoa~" Upon hearing this, Yun Shili, who had been leaning forward at the table, immediately leaned back tactically. "What do you mean by this? I don't think your martial arts are good enough to kill someone with a single punch. You can't be saying you went for the kill right from the start, can you?" As he said this, his detective instincts kicked in again. "Eh? Could it be... that all that stuff about corpses, knives, and blood you mentioned earlier was all made up? Actually, you were lustful, so you killed them to cover your tracks and abducted a woman..."
"Hey, Brother Yun, you've gone too far!" This was truly an injustice to Ma Zhao, so he was particularly agitated when he replied, "I, Ma Zhao, am not some great hero, nor can I call myself a gentleman... but I would never do something like this." At this point, he didn't care about saving face anymore in order to clear his name, and he abruptly changed the subject, bringing up the scene in the guest room not long ago, "Besides, you saw it upstairs just now, does that look like something that would happen after I forcibly took a woman?"
“It would have been better if you hadn’t brought it up…” Yun Shili believed Ma Zhao, so when he said the next sentence, he had already changed to a playful tone, “I want to ask you… how did that scene just now happen?”
He emphasized the word "how" with a strong sense of irony, making no attempt to hide his sarcasm.
Ma Zhaozong was a seasoned veteran, and he was somewhat embarrassed to talk about this, so he spoke the following words in a fragmented and hesitant manner: "That's not... well, you know... right?"
"That guy... I really didn't use any force, I just touched him and he died. I was stunned."
"Then the woman said her name was Li, that her family was in business, and that they were passing through the area when one of their servants suddenly had malicious intentions..."
"Well, I saved her... I couldn't just leave her in the woods, so I took her with me on the journey..."
"Later, as we walked, we came out of the mountains and forests and arrived at this inn."
"Then she said that her whole family had died there, and she was all alone and wanted to follow me. She also said that she wanted to repay my life-saving grace that very night..."
"Then tell me... can I refuse to accept their request?"
Upon hearing this, Yun Shili raised an eyebrow and asked, "You seem to be a seasoned veteran, don't you think there's something fishy about this?"
"Sigh, how could I not feel regret?" Ma Zhao also looked regretful. "So when I was in the woods, I carefully examined every corpse around her, afraid that it was a bunch of con artists in disguise. But it turned out they were all real dead people... I thought, surely they couldn't have really killed so many people just to fool me, right? Besides... I don't have much to fool. If we're talking about swindling money, the silver I'm spending right now is all taken from her luggage. As for swindling her for sex..."
He stopped there, because in the end, it was clear that the other party had indeed deceived him sexually, or rather, used the act of deceiving him sexually to take his life.
As for why Li didn't throw herself into Ma Zhao's arms in the woods, it's quite simple... After all, in her story, all the dead people there were her relatives and servants. If she were to directly invite Ma Zhao to a game on that pile of corpses, it would be a bit too outrageous.
No matter how much Ma Zhao was blinded by lust, he couldn't possibly think it was okay when the other party was trying to "dance on the grave," so Li Shi waited a day until they arrived at this inn before making her move.
"In that case, the identities of those people on the ground, their relationship with the Li family, and even the name 'Li family'... none of them can be believed..." Yun Shili murmured thoughtfully after hearing Ma Zhao's story.
"Brother Yun, what should we do next?" Ma Zhao asked again.
Yun Shili was still thinking about how to answer the question when the Jade Tail Immortal whispered the answer in his ear: "Tell them to wait here for a while. You still need to go find someone."
Yun Shili was too lazy to argue with Yu Wei anymore. The next second, he stood up without making a sound and said to Ma Zhao, Tang Chou and Xu Wei, "You guys wait here. I still have to go find someone."
"Huh?" Tang Chou reacted quickly this time, "Could it be... there are other ghosts?"
When Ma Zhao heard these words, his scalp tingled. In the end, he was still just an ordinary person, and his ability to withstand pressure in this kind of situation was different from that of the two "stand-ins" beside him.
"Don't ask, I just don't know." Yun Shili replied impatiently, and of course, he was telling the truth.
After saying that, he left the guest room while listening to Yuwei's instructions.
The place he was going to was also on the second floor, but at the other end of the inn. And the person he was looking for, I think you can all guess... it was Cao Weier, who had already finished dinner and gone to her room to rest.
This time, Yun Shili didn't tiptoe around. He walked normally to the door of Cao Weier's room and knocked on the door.
"Who is it?" Cao Weier asked casually when she heard the knocking.
"Open the door, officials are on duty." Yun Shili used an old phrase, but it was just that it was easy to use.
But when he suddenly said that, Cao Wei'er naturally became suspicious.
Two seconds later, Cao Weier picked up a steel rod, went behind the door, and cautiously asked through the door, "What kind of official are you? Do you have any credentials?"
“If you want to see the receipt, you have to open the door first before I can show it to you,” Yun Shili said.
"That won't do. I'm just a weak woman. If you open the door based on just these two sentences, what if you're a bad person?" Cao Wei'er wasn't so easily fooled. If she didn't have this ability to lie through her teeth, would she have become the top courtesan at Xinghui Tower back then?
"So, what do you want, girl?" Yun Shili wasn't in a hurry and continued to pull at her from the doorway.
“Tell me clearly first…where are you working, and what cases are you handling?” Cao Wei’er asked.
"The Embroidered Uniform Guard wants to ask you about something," Yun Shili replied.
"What? The Embroidered Uniform Guard?" Upon hearing these three words, Cao Wei'er couldn't help but be stunned for a moment, but after the initial surprise, she immediately asked, "The Embroidered Uniform Guard would come looking for me?"
At this moment, her inner monologue was actually—I'm just a wandering thief, even if I'm "another me," I'm nothing more than a Robin Hood-like thief who robs the rich to help the poor... I didn't steal from any of the imperial relatives, so why did this alarm the Embroidered Uniform Guard?
"Hmm? Judging from this, you seem to know the Embroidered Uniform Guard quite well?" Yun Shili probed, following the other party's words.
“I have seen a few.” Cao Wei’er was telling the truth. In Xinghui Tower, you might even run into eunuchs from the Eastern Depot, let alone the Embroidered Uniform Guards. However, most of them are disguised and on official business. “By the way, since you say you are from the Embroidered Uniform Guard, that makes things easier. Just slip your waist token under the door so I can see it. That will prove your identity.”
"Wow~" Yun Shili was not surprised by the request made by the other party, but rather, "Could it be that you can also distinguish between genuine and fake Embroidered Uniform Guard waist tokens?"
"Why can't I?" Cao Weier retorted.
"Hmph... Fine." Yun Shili sneered, his tone turning cold as well. "But if you can even recognize a waist token, you should know that I'm not going to hand this over so easily."
"Then do you have any other way to prove it..." Cao Wei'er was just about to try to argue with the other party from a different angle.
Unexpectedly, she was speaking when she heard a "shh" sound.
An invisible blade of energy suddenly "cut" in through the crack in the door, destroying both the lock and the latch.
Upon seeing this, Cao Weier immediately understood who was outside the door.
After delivering the blow, Yun Shili did not actively push open the unlocked door.
He simply stood outside the door and casually asked again, "Does this prove my identity?"
"The Illusion Cloud Blade..." Cao Wei'er knew its value; as she softly uttered these three words, she had already opened the door.
Then, she looked Yun Shili up and down outside the door, and bowed, saying, "I have long heard of Lord Yun's reputation. Seeing you today, I can see that you are truly extraordinary."
"It's alright, it's alright. It was I, Yun, who disturbed your rest, Miss Cao. Please forgive me." Yun Shili was quite polite, but he didn't even bother to clasp his hands in a fist salute. As he spoke, he swaggered in with his hands behind his back.
Don't think he was being reckless by showing off. He had thought things through before he made his move. Someone who knows martial arts and can recognize the Embroidered Uniform Guard's waist tag should have no reason not to guess his identity after seeing the Illusion Cloud Blade.
Even if the other party's words were all nonsense, Yun Shili had already located them during the conversation. This way, he could at least ensure that he wouldn't hurt the other party when breaking the lock, and he could still push the door open and come in on his own afterward.
"I wonder what brings Lord Yun to see me?" Cao Wei'er said, then casually closed the unlocked door.
"Hmm...where should I begin..." In truth, Yun Shili didn't know how to begin, so his soft murmur was somewhat a reference to Yuwei.
As he was pacing back and forth, he happened to pass by a table inside the house.
On that table was a bronze mirror used for dressing, and Yun Shili, by sheer bad luck, glanced at it as he passed by.
He glanced at it and immediately saw in the mirror that the person closing the door behind him was not Cao Weier.