Sima Tianyuan’s arrival eased the tension in both Peng Fulai and Zhang Yue. The latter imdiately coughed up blood, and blood seeped from his pores all over his body.
While Peng Fulai was rely exhausted from exerting his Zhenyuan, Zhang Yue had invoked the ’Xingtian Golden Body’ with the Tiger Wolf Elixir, and it was impossible not to pay a price.
He could originally hold on for a while longer, but since Sima Tianyuan had already arrived, there was no need to continue using thods that damaged his body.
Sima Tianyuan didn’t disappoint them either. Within less than ten breaths after his arrival, all the assassins, except for the woman in red who had fled, were either dead or wounded.
However, these individuals chose to make their move in the alley less than a mile away from the Zhuque hall, clearly prepared for death. Those who were injured and captured by Sima Tianyuan all died within monts of their capture, their orifices bleeding black blood.
—— Without exception, they had all filed double-sided suicide pills in their mouths in advance and had taken poison.
"These scoundrels are really lawless."
Sima Tianyuan, fearing that Li Xuan would be attacked again, did not pursue further after sweeping away all the assassins.
On one hand, he himself wasn’t adept at escape techniques, on the other, several figures had already erged from the Zhuque Hall, chasing after the woman in red.
"Thank you, Xiaowei!" Li Xuan gratefully clasped a fist in salute to Sima Tianyuan, "If it weren’t for your tily arrival today, we would have t a disastrous end."
"I just happened to be having breakfast at a nearby restaurant and rushed over when I saw your distress signal."
Sima Tianyuan laughed in response, "Don’t play coy with , I know these n couldn’t touch you. Your roars, Qianzhi, were truly domineering."
"That’s only because they weren’t desperate enough. Otherwise, mutual destruction would have been inevitable." Li Xuan looked at Sima Tianyuan up and down, "Xiaowei, what happened to you?"
Sima Tianyuan was practically wrapped up like a rice dumpling.
"It’s just a minor injury that will heal in three to five days." Sima Tianyuan’s face turned pale, extrely upset, "We received a tip from an informant in the evening and rushed to engage in a skirmish with Shenhui, Xue Wuya and others. As a result, they still managed to escape, and we lost several n. Damn it! If only we had more hands, how could we have allowed those bastards to run amok?"
With these words, he vented his anger by suddenly kicking a nearby wall. With the force of his kick, the already screaky and flimsy wall collapsed.
The residents inside had been terrified from the earlier fight. As the wall collapsed, the won hiding inside the house imdiately scread.
Sima Tianyuan beca even more upset and spoke in a venting tone, "Shut up! The Six Paths Bureau is investigating the case here. Any damages occurred during this will be fully compensated by the Six Paths Bureau."
Li Xuan exchanged a look of astonishnt with Luo Yan, "What happened?"
He had been relying on the bureau to capture Shenhui and the others to solve this explosion case of the Zhenyao Tower.
"The two top experts from The Fourth Gate who were escorted out of the prison had already restored seventy to eighty percent of their strength. We had not expected them to recover so soon. They must have relied on blood food and so evil secret technique."
Sima Tianyuan said with a bitter smile, "On top of that they also have other experts. There was an additional mber from The Fourth Gate on the scene who was not included in the previous intelligence report, and another one arrived later. Despite we brought two Zhonglangjiang and invited Vice Master Zhang to accompany us, we were only able to capture about a dozen evil cultivators. Right now, I’m so furious at Shi Xin that I just want to tear him apart. If only Deputy Zongguan Qiu could take action, or if one of the detained Xiaowei like Jiang Hanyun could help, we wouldn’t be in such a desperate situation."
Li Xuan was taken aback. With four top experts from The Fourth Gate gathered around Jinling plus one Knife Demon Li Zhetian, who is still sowhere in south Zhili and missing - the situation is extrely dangerous.
"However, we did manage so gains. In Shenhui and others’ hideout, we found a map of the Xiao Mausoleum." At this, Sima Tianyuan looked over curiously, "By the way, how is your investigation on the explosion case going? I heard that the old man handed the case over to you."
Li Xuan did not answer, but directly handed him the parchnt he had in his sleeve.
Sima Tianyuan glanced at it casually and slightly furrowed his brows, "Aunt Lin? Zhen Shenlian, Shen Zhimou, Yin Ruolan, Lei Yun, Ma Chenggong, Li Sansi, are you suspecting Old Zhen? He doesn’t seem like soone who would do such a thing, and there’s no reason for him to."
"Just suspecting." Li Xuan shook his head, "Aunt Lin is dead, the biggest clue is gone, and since you haven’t captured Xue Wuya and Shenhui, it’s going to be a headache for ."
"You better hurry up!" Sima Tianyuan didn’t show any compassion and gave Li Xuan a heavy pat on the shoulder, "At least get Deputy Zongguan Qiu and the others out as soon as possible, the rest is up to you."
Li Xuan looked straight ahead, his eyes reflecting a unique glimr, he fell into silence.
Although this assassination attempt was dangerous, it also gave Li Xuan a new direction.
He might have been in a misunderstanding from the beginning to the end.
※※※※
"Slavery and servitude?" At the top of Zhuque House, the blind old man ditated with his eyes closed.
After a long while, he turned to look at Li Xuan again, "Thankfully you reminded , otherwise I would’ve been blinded by the so-called ’Maitreya Buddha’s Son’. You go first, I will have soone investigate this thoroughly. Duwei Li, the top priority now is to quickly solve the bombing case, please be sure to hurry."
Li Xuan bowed, "I understand."
Once he left Zhuque House, the first place he headed for was the mortuary.
Before, when it was inconvenient to perform outside, he didn’t think that he would find anything in Aunt Lin’s autopsy. But now, Li Xuan held great expectations.
As before, he ticulously checked from head to toe repeatedly. After reaping no results, Li Xuan began to open the stomach.
When Aunt Lin’s stomach was opened, Luo Yan, who was serving as an assistant, covered her nose.
"This poison, should be a variant of Crane Crown Red, isn’t it? Probably it has been left for too long; its toxicity has weakened. No wonder she hanged herself after poisoning."
Then she found an odd expression on Li Xuan’s face.
"Did you discover sothing?"
"There is a significant discovery. Look at the food in this stomach, this is obviously a food lover. She poisoned herself around the early morning (1:00-2:59 AM) after the cri, and these foods were eaten roughly three and a half Shichen ago."
Luo Yan’s brows rose slightly in contemplation.
Li Xuan put the dissection tools back into the toolbox and concluded his Yuanyi Spell, focusing slightly, "We are only one step away from the truth now."
When Li Xuan ca out of the autopsy room and returned to the Demon Tower’s docunts room, he found that nurous interns under Shi Xin were carrying piles of docunt files out of the room.
Li Xuan glanced at these people, and then looked puzzledly at Yue Qianqian at the door, "What’s going on?"
"They said they were investigating the case, then forcibly seized all our docunts. Even Duwei Gongsun was taken away by them."
Yue Qianqian pouted slightly, but there was not much annoyance, "Fortunately, the whereabouts of all the paper, sulphur, and charcoal before the cri have been traced one by one. I have created a summary, it’s all on these few sheets of paper."
The several sheets of paper handed over by Yue Qianqian contained densely packed text, much clearer than the mountain-like books of accounts previously.
"It’s hard to ascertain the usage of charcoal, but yesterday, I visited all the floors of the Demon Tower. From the fortieth to fifty-sixth floor, they all reported that there was a slight shortage of charcoal on September 17th, and they had to save usage."
"Then it’s sulphur. Its usage in the Demon Tower is enormous, reaching 30 Shi in a day. However, what is most suspicious is this item, several snake demons that were recently sent to the tower."
As Yue Qianqian spoke, she handed another sheet of paper to Li Xuan.
It recorded where these snake demons ca from, who handled them, and the usage of sulphur and realgar.
Li Xuan looked at the paper while asking inexplicably, "Why?"
When he saw the several nas on the paper, Li Xuan’s expression grew serious.
"The usage of sulphur is a bit abnormal, realgar is much more effective in suppressing snake demons."
Yue Qianqian pointed out on the paper and explained, "But after careful review, I found that not only did they requisition sufficient sulphur, they also took a lot of realgar, enough to suppress the snake demons. So—"
"So, we can’t see any abnormalities in the accounts, right?"
"Exactly!" Yue Qianqian nodded, "Take this fifth house level Red Scale Snake Demon, for instance. They took two Shi of sulphur and a half Shi of realgar. Both the amount of sulphur and realgar are enough to suppress snake demons. But because neither of them exceeded the specified amount, the in charge of the warehouse approved. We skipped this section several tis when we were checking the accounts. Only checking sulphur does not reveal the truth."
"Well done!" While admiring Yue Qianqian’s ticulousness, Li Xuan continued to ask, "How about the paper? Did we find anything?"
"No?" Yue Qianqian shook her head, "Although I suspected so discrepancies in a few places, the paper on several floors was put to fla on the day of the cri. What is strange is that the riots on two floors were not severe at all. I marked these suspicious places for you."
After she finished speaking, she asked sowhat worriedly, "I heard that you were attacked today, are you okay? What about Peng Fulai and Zhang Yue? Why haven’t they returned?"
"Old Peng accompanied Zhang Yue to the pharmacy for treatnt." Li Xuan smiled at the girl in front of him, "Qianqian, are you so concerned about ? I’m so touched."
"What are you talking about?" Yue Qianqian’s face reddened slightly, "Just...just a polite question, the kind of concern a subordinate has for her superior, don’t overthink it."
The more Li Xuan looked, the cuter he found her. He instinctively wanted to continue flirting, but then found Luo Yan looking at him with contempt.
Li Xuan imdiately rembered that he was already engaged, he couldn’t be so unfaithful, so he forcibly suppressed his urge and resud a grave expression, "Qianqian, I need your help with two more things! First, check the family backgrounds of all the Xiaoweis in the Six Paths Bureau, see if there are any that have connections with slavery."
The look on Yue Qianqian’s face showed clear bewildernt, then she heard Li Xuan say, "In addition, check carefully to see who in our Six Paths Bureau might have access to the structure of the Demon Tower. I rember Luo Yan ntioned that the sewers of the Demon Tower underwent extensive renovations two decades ago, find out the backgrounds of those craftsn for ."
Yue Qianqian looked stunned, "Am I doing this alone?"
"You are free to deploy all the docunts from Zhuque House and Mingyou city, just investigate it as soon as possible."
As he spoke, Li Xuan started walking towards the kitchen to verify certain conditions and to check out the sulphur that Yue Qianqian ntioned.
After he ran all the information through his mind, he felt that he was getting closer and closer to the key to the truth.
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