Another hour had passed since Shu He had finished his first training session, currently it was approaching mid-day, the sun almost at the peak in the sky blazing behind a thin layer of clouds.
Shu He had returned to his room to clean himself and change the clothes that were soaked in sweat, he probably wouldn't be moving much for the rest of the day so his Father left him be, his mother, Shu An, was cleaning the house; She occasionally worked as a seamstress when she had spare time and got requests since she was fairly skilled but today it seemed she wasn't.
Shu Li was inside the large shed within the yard, in front of him was the disassembled carcass of the board he inadvertently caught yesterday, he separated the skin, bones, organs and meat already, they had no need for any meat right now since they already had some stocked and dried for use whenever, but there was no need to waste it so he was prepping to dry the rest, the other pieces all had their uses so he'd pass them off on to whoever needed them, or have them sent to the fields to be ground up and fed to livestock.
Suddenly-
*Knock* *Knock*
A hard wood knock sounded in the yard, coming from the front door of the house.
"Yees~, give me a second I'll be right there!" Shu An's voice echoed from inside.
Shu Li continued sorting the items in to different boxes as he listened out for the response.
'It's a little early for the usual visitors, a one-off order?' He thought to himself as he perked his ears to listen.
Soon the door creaked as it was opened.
"Ah, Dai Niu? What's wrong, you don't usually come around like this?" Shu An let out an exclamation of surprise, as did Shu Li when he heard who it was.
"Shu An? Is Shu Li here? I need to talk to him" A deep voice filled the area, Shu Li quickly finished what he was doing and rinsed his hands in a bucket before heading out to leave the shed.
As he left, a large hulk of a man came in to view who heard the door to the shed opening and looked over, he had short black hair and a thick bushy moustache, his neck was almost as thick as a thigh and his body was round and bulky with veins that seemed to want to escape his flesh, many called him a human bull because of his large appearance.
"What's wrong, so early in the day, why aren't you at the fields?" Shu Li asked as he walked towards the bulky mass, he glanced at Shu An and nodded, she understood and bowed towards the guest before leaving to continue with what she was doing, the door closed behind her.
"Hmph, I would be but the geezer decided to get me to play messenger, I've been running around all morning because of it!" Dai Niu grumbled and cursed the old figure in his mind.
"You'd better not let him hear you say that or he'd wring you a new one" Shu Li replied with a chuckle before continuing; "So, all morning? Did something happen?" he asked with a serious look on his face.
Dai Niu nodded and stared Shu Li dead in the eyes before speaking steadily –
"Haoxi was murdered".
-Shi Li's pupils constricted slightly before relaxing again.
'Murdered? I only saw him last night, do they think I did it?' were the thoughts that passed through his head immediately.
"Don't worry, we know it wasn't you, at least most of us believe that" Dai Niu immediately said slightly easing Shu Li's worries. "I don't know if you know, but there was a noisy gathering last night near the town square, I didn't attend myself but a bunch of people gathered up a lot of alcohol and food and decided to go to town, Haoxi of course was attending and many of the others that went attested" he continued.
"Considering you're saying it was a murder, I'm guessing it couldn't have been just a man drinking himself to the other side?" Shu Li inquired.
"No way" Immediate denial, a slight bead of sweat rolled down Dai Niu's chops.
Shu Li, quite surprised at his extreme reaction couldn't help but ask- "Was it bad?"
"…It's better if you see for yourself, come on we want your help looking for tracks either way" He began leaving the yard and beckoned Shi Li along.
"I'll be out for it bit" Shu Li yelled, leaving the house without waiting for a reply, following along.
---
"This is…" Shu Li was left speechless at the sight before him.
He had been led to the location of one of the two wells in the village, surrounding it, crowds of people were gathered, chattering or whispering between one another, closer to the well itself was a group of field workers and of to the side was an older man with a long white beard and balding head with a sour face.
"Ptooey, that stupid drunkard, he couldn't have dropped dead in a worse place" He spat on the ground, grumbling while peeking at the large object laid out by the well.
The old man was Cao Yang, he was the owner of most of the fields and also the owner of the village called Green-Gate, he wasn't too easy to get along with but at the very least he wasn't hated by the general populace, though he was known to have a temper when it came to work or money.
The voices of the crowd kept going.
"That's horrible…"
"He deserved it honestly".
*Smack*
"Ow, the hell was that for?"
"Oh shut it, he may have been an asshole but no man deserves to die like that"
The general sentiment was repeated from person to person, there were many that left after a single look and some who sobbed from the sight, of course no child was allowed near and the majority was forced to return home.
Shu Li waded his way through the crowd of people to the open area around the well where the elder and workers were.
"Dai Niu, you're back? Oh, great Shu Li is with you, come here quick" One of the workers noticed them and yelled out, the crowd parted to let them through afterwards.
Finally, to the centre, Shu Li managed to get a full look at the situation and a shadow immediately cast over his face and he gritted his teeth.
Laid against the well was a clearly drenched body, a trail of blood seemed to line the edge of the well where it had clearly been dragged up from; His face distorted, as if stuck at the moment of death likely from the freezing cold waters of the well at night.
But that wasn't what surprised people the most.
"Gruesome, right? Doesn't seem like something a person could do…" One of the workers said to Shu Li as he stared silently at the corpse, more specifically he intently stared at the hole torn through the left side of its chest.
"Do you think some sort of animal could have done it?" The elder walked up to Shu Li and asked, to him, Shu Li was probably the most knowledgeable person about this sort of thing in the village.
Deaths in the village weren't uncommon, rather every month or two someone would die from hypothermia, overwork or some sort of disease, most of the time people would just acknowledge it, deal with the body and move on, it was just that kind of occurrence.
But this was different, if there was some sort of animal threat or a murderer on the loose, everyone's livelihood was at stake and it needed to be dealt with swiftly, especially when it's this gruesome and sudden.
"I'll take a closer look" Shu Li replied, taking a deep breath before moving closer, he knelt down next to the body and got a closer look at the face, the horror reflected made him remember images deep in his memory but he forced them down, that was then, this is now.
The body was stone cold and stiff, but that was obvious, spending a night in ice cold water would do that to a corpse.
He looked at the neck, no signs of bruising or cuts, a quick look over through the clothes didn't show any other kind of wound outside of old ones.
'No sign of struggle before the final blow' He concluded, which was all the more worrying to him.
As he did the crowd continued their whispering.
"How can he do that? It's creepy…"
"At least he isn't shitting himself at the sight, he's way more of a man you are".
"I'm your husband though?!"
"Maybe not for much longer"
Some people chuckled at the couples argument, almost as if to try loosen the atmosphere.
"Quiet, idiots, if you haven't got anything better to do go back to work!" Cao Yang yelled as loud of his old lungs let him, as he did people begun to disperse, in the end there wasn't much point to them worrying, the people that knew what they were doing will deal with it.
'One hit, accurate and powerful enough to puncture though a human, Haoxi was a bit of the slimmer side but that would still require quite a bit of body strength and skill' He continued to think as he looked at the wound closely.
'It's not a straight puncture, the flesh is sliced to torn, a circular cutting motion?' In his head, a picture was forming but it was not one he wanted to see, he got up and stared at the blood smearing his hands before sighing.
"See anything?" Dai Niu asked.
"His heart is gone" Shu Li replied, causing the others to nod.
"We saw that as well, maybe some animal that likes the taste went for him?" Someone chimed in on the conversation.
"But it's deep in the village, someone should have heard or seen something if it was one…" Another replied.
"It wasn't an animal" Shu Li firmly stated.
"How do you know?" The elder, Cao Yang asked to take control of questioning again.
"The wound… no the hole was made in a single continuous motion, no sign of teeth marks or tears from an animals claws, it was a swift and targeted motion." He explained to them, causing their eyes to light up in understanding, they were farmhands with little experience with weapons or such so they accepted the explanation.
"So, it was a person that did it? But who, I don't think anyone in the village is capable…" Cao Yang said with distress, a cunning person is much more dangerous to them than an animal you can track, he almost said 'Other than you' but decided to withhold the words, he didn't want to say anything that could mislead others.
"We haven't had any visitors and travellers come through recently?" Since Shu Li kept to himself and his family most of the time, he didn't know the full goings in the village.
Unfortunately, the elder shook his head and replied "None, if there were we would have already caught them and put them away from questioning."
"The last time anyone saw him, he was wandering away from the little party dead drunk and singing in high spirits, no one was with him" he further explained.
"""…""" Silence fell upon the group.
"Either way, we shouldn't incinerate the body yet, I'll go over it later in a better environment in case I missed something" Shu Li requested as he looked over at the elder.
Cao Yang nodded "Mm, that's fine we can use an old storehouse for now, the one over there is empty" He said as he pointed toward a slightly decrepit wooden shed over the field.
"You two, go move the body over there, wrap it up before moving though we don't want blood everywhere!" He yelled orders at the two nearest men.
"Got it"
"Ugh… seriously?" One replied, the other complained.
"Stop bitching and get your ass moving or I'll cut your pay" He said with spite.
"Ukk- Okay, okay!" Shortly after, the body was bundled and moved away, after a while the only ones left were Shu Li, Dai Niu and Cao Yang.
Dai Niu eyed the well as he clutched his head, he felt a slight headache coming on "This is going to affect our work pace… we won't be able to use this well until we clean it out properly"
On the other hand, Cao Yang stared quietly on Shu Li for a minute before speaking again "So, what do you think did it?"
Not 'who' but 'what'.
Dai Niu tuned back in to the conversation, they had all waited behind because there was a bit of information that wasn't shared to the masses earlier.
"I don't want to believe it but… it's likely a cultivator". Shu Li explained with a grim countenance.
"Shit, really?" Dai Niu felt his headache increase 10 fold as he felt tempted to leap down the well himself.
"Are you 100% sure?" Cao Yang asked, his voice now a tone lower than before, Shu Li nodded in reply.
"Haah, we'll have to call in someone from the city, this is going to cost a lot… as if it wasn't bad enough the well is unusable already…" Cao Yang grumbled to himself.
"Not necessarily" Shi Li interrupted.
"What do you mean?" Inquired the elder.
"I'll include my name on the request, there's a bit of information I'd like to include, it's not a guarantee but it's been bothering me." Shu Li explained.
"Your name… you mean?" The elder paused for a second before confirming "Are you sure? You're doing this now?" He reconfirmed and Shi Li nodded.
"Fine, if you really want to we'll do it, hopefully they'll send someone soon" he continued, soon he walked off towards his house since he had to get on writing up a letter as soon as possible, Dai Niu decided to head off to the fields, he wanted to grab a group to work on the well as soon as possible.
Shu Li stood quietly on the spot, he looked up at the sun, now passing the midpoint of the sky, then towards the horizon and the forest full of creeping shadows laying there.
'Is it him?' was the only thought in his mind.