Why do I have so many masters?-Chapter 429 - 101 Ministry of Punishment Rules (2/2)

The bodies were stored at the charitable morgue.

The morgue, a place ominous with a chilling aura, was never built within the city. Fengyue City’s morgue was ten miles west, guarded by two men.

Unclaimed bodies or those of Jianghu martial artists who had died near the city were brought here. After a brief preparation and selling valuable items like weapons, they were buried.

Since the distance was not too great, the group left the Ministry of Punishment and hired a carriage, reaching the morgue quickly. The carriage steadied to a halt, and Wang Anfeng jumped out from behind Yan Ling, standing on the ground. The courtyard appeared gloomy, covered with snow that seemed like it had never melted.

The gate was not closed, and inside, neatly arranged black coffins could be seen. Ritual paper money was scattered all over the ground, adding to the eerie atmosphere.

With the sound of the carriage, an elderly man and a young boy were already waiting outside. The older one, appearing to be in his fifties or sixties, wore loose, white garments and a white short dagger at his waist.

The younger one was just an ordinary teenager in black, vigorous attire, with his eyes downcast, closely following the older man.

"Ahem, ahem, I wasn’t aware that the esteemed officials from the Ministry of Punishment were coming. I didn’t come out to meet you from afar, ahem, ahem... Please, come in for some tea..."

"Ahem, ahem..."

The old man kept coughing, his facial wrinkles bunching together, his skin pale like rigid leather. His eyes shifted towards Wang Anfeng and Yan Ling, a smile on his face that was pleasant yet somehow chilling, making one wonder whether the person before them was alive or merely a walking corpse.

The leading constable, familiar with this place, still reacted with goosebumps and forcibly calmed himself, saying,

"We don’t have time for small talk, Elder Wu, is that deceased woman still here?"

The old man looked at him with a flicker in his wrinkled face and smiled,

"Yes, she is still here."

"What’s the matter, Constable Li? That girl is to be buried in a couple of days."

"Such a pity, she was so beautiful. Someone stabbed a big hole in her neck... It won’t be easy to find her a match for a ghost marriage..."

The old man seemed to express regret, shaking his head as his voice lowered; the wind seemed to grow stronger, fluttering the white banners at the gate and the ritual paper on the ground. The three constables felt a slight chill and subconsciously shrank their necks.

Already turning around, the old man was assisted by the young boy in vigorous attire towards the inside.

Wang Anfeng looked deeply at the elder’s retreating figure but noticed nothing unusual. It seemed he was just a somewhat incoherent old man. Wang drew his gaze back, following behind Yan Ling, walking towards the courtyard.

............................

"This girl was found by a night watchman."

"When brought here, her clothes were disheveled. The old man checked and she had been dead for quite a while."

"Her chastity was untouched, unharmed by anyone."

Dressed in white, appearing more like a corpse than a human, the elder led Wang Anfeng and others forward, all the while talking.

A step behind Yan Ling, Wang Anfeng walked, observing the layout of the morgue, which unlike the usual city morgues, was much bigger and housed many Taoist deities’ statues, suggesting it was originally a Taoist temple that had fallen into ruin before being converted into the morgue.

These statues had long been neglected and were covered in dust, shrouding the room in an even more oppressive gloom.

The old man paused slightly and stopped beside a coffin, gesturing to the young man beside him to open it.

The young man was not very old, but his strength was not small at all; he spread his arms and pushed the heavy wooden coffin lid open in one go, revealing the corpse inside. Due to the mystery case, the coroner had scattered a unique medicine over the female corpse, which preserved it from decay for about ten days.

However, once the time had passed, it would rapidly decompose.

Hence, the young girl still looked as she did at the time of her death, with a pretty face and traces of her youthful innocence still lingering. Her black hair cascaded down, and she was dressed in a pale pink robe, truly a beautiful figure. Yet she was not someone Wang Anfeng recognized. Regardless, a hint of relief rose in the young man’s heart, followed soon by a sense of shame.

The old man standing aside murmured,

"What a pity, I wonder whose daughter she is. Looking at her eyebrows and eyes, she was probably only sixteen or seventeen years old."

"Even younger than this young official."

He looked at Wang Anfeng, showing a spine-chilling smile on his face.

Yan Ling stepped forward, looked at the deceased girl, and whispered an apology. Clearing his mind of all distractions, he brought his fingers together and lifted the girl’s chin to see the grotesque wound. It was extremely smooth around the area, obviously pierced through the throat bone by a sword, then piercing out through the spine, finally exiting near the nape.

He then looked at the girl’s clothes, which had not been stained with much blood.

His heart sank a little as he carefully placed the girl’s neck back down on the cotton fabric inside the coffin.

A martial artist might manage to pierce through bone with the fragile bamboo of winter, but to create a smooth hole in the spine as well without causing a more gruesome explosive wound, the one who did this must certainly be a skilled swordsman,

A skilled martial artist.

Among those he knew, there were not many who could accomplish this.

He raised his hand again, examining several parts of the female corpse’s body, matching his suspicions one by one. After pondering for a moment and forming some conclusions in his mind, he finally stood up and said to the old man,

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"Thank you, elder."

His expression was somewhat somber.

The old man laughed out loud, his turbid eyes shifting, falling on Yan Ling and saying,

"Many come here to view the body, but few are as polite as you, young hero."

Yan Ling pursed his lips and said,

"We students of the Bai Family’s philosophies naturally respect the old and help the young. Moreover, I am a Patrol Officer from the Ministry of Punishment, not a ranger from Jianghu."

The old man laughed out loud again, then followed it with a severe cough. He raised his hand to stop the youth from patting his back and said with a laugh,

"Though my eyes aren’t much good, my heart is not blind. A corpse was once a person; seeing many, one naturally can tell some differences. Young hero, don’t dismiss it, where you are and who you are doesn’t matter much."

"Regardless of who it is, eventually, they all end up in this coffin."

Lifting his hand to point at the Black Coffin, his voice paused, an eerie smile hanging on the old man’s face as he spoke:

"In the past, not many living souls came by, I just can’t keep my mouth shut all of a sudden."

"Would you care for some tea?"

Yan Ling pondered, ignoring the three constables beside him who were frantically signaling with their eyes, and said:

"Then we’ll take advantage of your hospitality."

"Hehe, no trouble at all, no trouble..."

"Young man, go wipe the table."

With a smile, the elderly man turned back, instructing the youth to attend to Wang Anfeng and the others; he himself went back inside to find some tea leaves. Wang Anfeng and the three pale-faced constables were seated at the clean table, and the young man in black glanced at them before turning away.

The three constables sighed in relief.

Wang Anfeng glanced at them, said nothing but turned again toward the frowning, thoughtful Yan Ling, and asked:

"Brother Yan, is something not right?"

Yan Ling came back to his senses, his eyebrows slightly furrowed, and nodded:

"Indeed, there are some issues..."

"I cannot confirm this woman’s identity."

"Just because someone practices martial arts doesn’t mean they belong to Jianghu. In the Great Qin, it is a golden age for martial arts, with countless schools and styles passed down among the clans and even among government officials. The wealthier families in the city spend a fortune to have their children trained by renowned martial masters."

Yan Ling paused slightly, but Wang Anfeng had already grasped his intent.

If this woman was involved in a Jianghu vendetta, as the Ministry of Punishment of Great Qin, he had no jurisdiction over it. Even though it was frustrating, at most he could only recommend that the County Magistrate revise any doubts in the dossier and rewrite it.

However, if this young woman was merely a city dweller of a wealthy family, or an ordinary person who happened to have learned some martial skills by chance and had not delved into Jianghu but died here for some reason, then Yan Ling would thoroughly investigate this case to seek justice for the wrongfully deceased.

Wang Anfeng looked at Yan Ling.

The young man stood erect, his features stern and his eyes cold.

This was the very place where the descendants of the legalist school hold their blood-drenched sabers.

It was also where these scions spoke with their blood.

With a sigh, Wang Anfeng pondered for a moment and then asked:

"Does that young girl bear any marks of a Jianghu fight?"

Yan Ling’s expression grew sterner, and he shook his head, saying:

"None."

"I have just examined her, and apart from the fatal wound at her throat, there are no significant injuries at any vital spots."

Wang Anfeng said, "Which means..."

Yan Ling nodded in agreement.

A martial artist wandering through Jianghu inevitably faces combat; when swords clash, injuries follow. Yet, this girl bore no trace of such encounters, suggesting a significant possibility that she was just an ordinary person who perished due to some reason, or someone from a wealthy family who practiced martial arts for self-defense, though it could also be among those pampered scions of noble clans.

However, by Great Qin’s standard practice, any case with unclear identities could straightforwardly be treated as a citizen of the Great Qin.

Relations between Jianghu and the Imperial Court are tense, and restraint is maintained by both, but on this matter, Great Qin was unyielding.

The first Minister of Justice during the founding of Great Qin had, after a three-day battle at Beheading Cliff, his eyes bulging with rage like a madman, screamed curses from miles away at numerous Jianghu experts.

On that day, he traveled alone for eighty thousand miles.

On that day, with the Ministry’s freshly cast Square Cauldron, he smashed seven mountain gates.

Finally, with a temporary retreat from the entire Jianghu and the blood-forged Eight Directions Cauldron, he returned to Heaven Capital City.

A human head rested in that cauldron.

The tumult of the era had just ended, and Jianghu was incredibly powerful, rivaling the Imperial Court. The owner of this head continued his murderous spree, casually killing a fellow martial artist over a verbal dispute, claiming that since the victim was a martial artist, he belonged to Jianghu and Great Qin had no right to intervene.

The first Minister of Justice died three days later.

Unwilling to acquiesce, the wife of the deceased, as if to challenge, brazenly killed another martial artist on the seventh day following the Minister’s death and returned to the mountains for a feast that lasted until dawn.

The next day, as she sobered up from the drink, there came a very polite knocking at the door.

The doorman opened it to see a middle-aged man with a white cloth tied on his forehead, smiling warmly and saying, "Forgive the intrusion."

His waist held the Bi’an Golden Order.

That day, the second Minister of Justice of Great Qin, appointed for just eight days and dressed in white, traveled through eighty thousand miles of mountains and rivers alone.

He stood outside the gate of that woman’s abode.

In his hand, he held the blood-stained Square Cauldron.

Thus was the grand establishment of Great Qin declared.

PS: Here comes the second update...