Medicine Master Disc Chapter 153: What Makes Him the Murderer?

"Would you stop going straight to killing people? Listen, a senior brother from the inner hall ca to

about a boy who's planning to sit the children's examination next year and enter the inner hall."

"We don't know the exact story, whether he's soone's illegitimate child or so other kind of connection. Didn't ask for details. Point is, the boy is sharp, but his circumstances aren't great."

"Oh..."

The mont Bai Ke heard circumstances aren't great, he felt an imdiate kinship.

"So what does the hundred taels an?"

"The senior brother's intention is to make sure nothing goes seriously wrong for this boy between now and next year's children's examination. His physical health, his studies, ideally he makes it through the examination smoothly and enters the inner hall without incident."

Li Qiuchen produced a hundred-tael banknote and held it in front of Bai Ke.

"This hundred taels covers the registration fee for the examination. You'll accompany the boy through all four papers and make sure nothing and no one disturbs him during the examination itself. Once everything has settled, I'll arrange appropriate compensation based on how things go."

Bai Ke stared at the banknote with a blank expression.

"That... that's all? A windfall like this actually exists in the world?"

"Of course it's not that simple."

Li Qiuchen kept a straight face and continued sharing the story he had just invented.

"He and I have no personal connection at all. If he's willing to put up a hundred taels, there must be a hundred-taels worth of trouble waiting on the other side."

"I'm not afraid of trouble!"

Bai Ke said with righteous conviction.

"My swordsmanship has developed considerably. If it cos to guarding that young brother full ti, I'll go upstairs right now and take my leave of Young Master Xu!"

"Xu Qing has been feeding and housing you and giving you sword manuals. You'd drop him just like that? What kind of ungrateful behavior is that?"

"Well..."

At this, Bai Ke imdiately beca conflicted.

"If it's only a matter of a few months..."

"You don't need to put yourself in that position."

Li Qiuchen smiled. "Keep doing what you're doing with Xu Qing. Just find ti now and then to look in on the boy. His family circumstances are modest, but he hasn't fallen anywhere near as low as you were back then. All you need to do is make sure nothing happens to interfere with next year's examination. And naturally, you also count as one of the potential complications yourself, so it would be best if the boy doesn't know you exist. We don't want him overthinking things."

Bai Ke took the banknote and was quiet for a long ti.

Li Qiuchen patted him on the shoulder with a smile. "All right. Tomorrow find so ti to co with

and et the boy's family. When you do, don't say anything unnecessary. Just say you're a prospective classmate from next year's intake and you wanted to get acquainted. Everything else, use your own judgnt and check in with

at reasonable intervals."

"Brother Li, aren't you worried I'll take this money and disappear?"

"Pardon?"

Bai Ke raised his head and looked at Li Qiuchen directly. "I've got my swordsmanship now. I've got money saved. Doesn't it worry you that I'd just take the money and run?"

Li Qiuchen smiled. "You told

why you chose the surna Bai."

"And I told you I had a friend with the surna Bai."

"Given that, what reason would I have to doubt you?"

"But..."

Seeing Bai Ke hesitate as though wanting to say sothing, Li Qiuchen narrowed his eyes. "What is it? Has soone been saying things?"

Bai Ke said hesitatingly, "These past few months staying by Young Master Xu's side, I've overheard him talking with his circle of friends, and I keep hearing things connected to the Bai family."

"What do they say?"

"Mostly along the lines of... the Bai family's thods of subduing demons and monsters are too careless, leaving many loose ends behind."

"Like what happened during the Qingming Festival?"

"Yes, more or less."

"Do you believe it?"

"I don't know the inside of the matter. How would I be in a position to judge?"

"Then do you believe ?"

"Of course I believe you, Brother Li. If you hadn't stepped in to help , I would never have been able to..."

"You don't need to say all that."

Li Qiuchen raised a hand to stop Bai Ke's gratitude, and said with a serious expression, "I can tell you very responsibly right now, there is more to this matter than appears on the surface."

"What? There's more to it?"

"Indeed. You're close to Xu Qing's circle and well-placed to hear things. Pay attention from ti to ti to whether negative talk about the Bai family is becoming more frequent."

"Outrageous!"

The mont Li Qiuchen said that, Bai Ke was imdiately furious. "The Bai family's sword immortals have spent years punishing the wicked and upholding justice. How dare these petty individuals spread malicious slander behind their backs!"

"Don't be rash for the mont."

Li Qiuchen quickly said to calm him down, "This is only my own conjecture, and I have no evidence. Even if soone really is doing this, you're not in a position to do anything about it with your current ability. If you genuinely care about clearing the Bai family's na, just keep your ears open for information on this front."

"I will. Absolutely."

Bai Ke nodded firmly. "I owe you a debt I can't repay, Brother Li. A small matter like this is nothing."

Li Qiuchen smiled. "We're friends. You don't need to keep saying things like that."

"Spoken like a true gentleman, Brother Li!"

Bai Ke had a fairly uncomplicated nature, which made him easy to work with.

With the registration fee secured, whether he could actually pass the children's examination was, Li Qiuchen had to say, largely a matter of mindset.

There was no catching up the academic gap. He wasn't a miracle worker.

The only viable approach was to maintain a positive, calm, and stable state of mind.

Just like Tang Xiaoxue back in the day. The less seriously she had taken the examination, the better her chances of passing had been.

Because while the children's examination ostensibly tested the four foundation subjects, there was also a hidden assessnt of one's state of mind.

Only through clarity of mind and original nature could one receive the true transmission.

Early the next morning, Li Qiuchen took Bai Ke to the Mining District to find soone.

When they arrived, Chen Baishan was nowhere to be seen. All that greeted them were the Golden Valley Trading Company's ard escorts, surrounding every entrance to the great mine pit in an impenetrable cordon.

After asking around, they learned that Chen Baishan and his entire family had been thrown in jail.

The charge was suspected murder.

Li Qiuchen heard this and nearly burst out laughing from sheer outrage.

Good grief. The fat corpse from the Golden Valley Trading Company had never cared about his son's death at all.

According to people in the Mining District, at first he had tried to go down into the mine himself.

But with the shaft dropping a hundred and twenty zhang deep, without the lift and proper equipnt, there was simply no way for an ordinary person to get down there.

After several failed attempts, he had tried to hire the local professional exploration crews.

Without paying a deposit.

For all his obsession with displaying his wealth, right down to covering all ten fingers in rings, the man was apparently a complete miser who wouldn't part with a single coin.

He could have smoothed things over with Ma Tiancheng with the smallest of gestures. He refused to spend so much as a copper, and on top of that couldn't keep a civil tongue.

He had very nearly driven Ma Tiancheng into a complete fury.

Hiring soone to go down the mine was the sa story, not a coin forthcoming.

Anything involving the mine ant danger, and without a deposit nobody was going to take that risk for a stranger.

He didn't see it that way. He wanted the work done and refused to pay for it.

And naturally, nobody was going to indulge that attitude.

With negotiations going nowhere, Head Manager Feng had simply slapped a charge on Chen Baishan and been done with it.

I suspect my son was murdered by your people.

He had marched Chen Baishan and his crew straight to the county office.

"Brother Li, is this the trouble you were talking about?"

Bai Ke looked at the ard escorts blocking the Mining District entrance, hand resting on the hilt of his sword. "No wonder it was worth a hundred taels. This is quite a challenge indeed."

"No, no, you've misunderstood, calm down for a mont."

Li Qiuchen felt montarily overwheld.

What was this situation?

How much pull did the Golden Valley Trading Company actually have? They were arresting people at will?

Chen Baishan had never even set eyes on their young master, and just because negotiations fell through, they were framing him for murder?

To get a better understanding of what had happened, Li Qiuchen took Bai Ke to Chen Baishan's ho.

The boy planning to sit the county school examination was still there, along with only two bedridden elderly n. Everyone else had been taken clean away.

The boy's na was Chen Wen. Young as he was, he was sharp and knowledgeable, and the mont he saw Li Qiuchen, he looked at him as though he were his salvation.

"Please, Senior Brother, prove my family's innocence!"

He hadn't even passed the inner hall examination yet, but he was already calling him Senior Brother.

"Tell

exactly what happened and how it got to this point."

Chen Wen said through gritted teeth, "These outsiders are in bed with the county magistrate, all in it together. They arrested my father and uncles without any basis whatsoever, just to force them to do their work. They won't release anyone until they cooperate."

Li Qiuchen was sowhat skeptical. Based on his understanding of the Yun County office, whether it was Magistrate Peng or Sheriff Ma, both were officials who fell into the relatively normal category of bureaucrats.

The dead fat man from the Golden Valley Trading Company, on the other hand, looked nothing like a normal person.

"What did the magistrate say? What evidence do they claim Chen's brother killed soone?"

"What evidence do they need? They say murder and that makes it murder. I heard people say the Golden Valley Trading Company is in the grain business, and the Xu family is also in the grain business, and the county magistrate took a Xu woman as a lesser wife, so they're all on the sa side."

The Xu family was involved in this too?

Li Qiuchen turned to Bai Ke. "Is that a known fact?"

Bai Ke shook his head with a blank expression. "Young Master Xu has never ntioned anything like this. Shall I go back and ask him?"

"You could ask, but you'd need a natural reason to bring it up. If you walk up and ask directly, why would anyone tell you the truth?"

Li Qiuchen shook his head. "And even if you got an answer, what then? If that head manager really does have connections powerful enough to reverse black and white, there is very little the two of us could accomplish."

Chen Wen said beside them with a choked voice, "Senior Brother, my family truly didn't kill anyone. Those outsiders are simply after our ancestral equipnt."

"I know. I was an eyewitness. I know perfectly well how that person died."

Not just an eyewitness. The actual culprit.

Thinking about how the fat corpse had completely disregarded the carefully arranged scene Li Qiuchen had gone to such lengths to construct, and simply grabbed the first available person to fra instead, he felt a surge of genuine anger.

Who exactly did they think they were looking down on?

"Brother Bai, let's go back and find out from Xu Qing what we can about the Golden Valley Trading Company's background. Then I'll find senior brothers from the inner hall to see justice done. Innocent people cannot be allowed to suffer this kind of injustice."

Bai Ke nodded. "Agreed. I've been practicing swordsmanship since childhood, waiting for exactly this kind of mont. If reasoning doesn't work, I'll let the sword do the reasoning."

"It shouldn't co to that."

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