Under the guidance of Zhou Wu, Brother Sun and Huang Donglai quickly arrived at He Da's room.
He Da's corpse still maintained the same state it was found in, lying on its back on the floor, with a-purple face, and eyes wide open in death.
Having seen corpses before, some in even more tragic states, Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie didn't have any psychological barriers; upon entering the room, they began to imitate the detective methods they had seen in various modern films and shows, examining everything in the room... from inconspicuous footprints on the floor to the state of the door lock, from whether there was anything under the bed and furniture, to the position and posture of the victim, and so on.
After looking around, they exchanged glances, and each immediately read a piece of information from the other's eyes—neither had a clue what had happened.
Yes, this was the normal situation.
Do you think someone with no professional criminal investigation training could come to the scene of a crime, imitate the thinking of a detective from a novel or a movie, and expect to find something after one look?
That's wishful thinking—They wouldn't find squat.
In fact, even with professional training, you might still come up empty.
In most murder cases, it's not that detectives find clues and decisive evidence at the scene to deduce the method of the crime; rather, it's because the culprit is stupid, leaves obvious traces, has a poor method of covering up the crime, or has an overly obvious motive for committing it.
Those cases in novels, with fully planned, skillful methods, perfectly executed, and culprits with high psychological qualities, hardly represent even 1% of real-world situations.
Besides, Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie were not actually detectives and couldn't investigate cases; those capable of investigating cases might have a name containing "South" and not "East."
So, in the end, Huang Donglai could only do what Zhou Wu asked of him—see what kind of poison He Da had encountered.
"This one... it's called 'Three Steps to Soul Severing,' a rather rare poison in the jianghu," Huang Donglai concluded after a brief examination of He Da's corpse. "Actually, not few know how to make this poison... you can find people who know it all over the great north and south, it's not really a secret recipe; it's just that its preparation process is complex, the materials are relatively expensive, and any slight error can lead to failure; this poison's characteristics, aside from being colorless and tasteless... is that after ingestion, it doesn't act immediately. The toxin takes effect generally when the person starts moving around and blood circulation speeds up due to some kind of activity, hence the name 'Three Steps to Soul Severing.'"
"Wow, look at you Brother Huang, speaking so authoritatively," Sun Yixie immediately flattered his brother upon hearing this.
"That's because..." Huang Donglai boasted with a lift of his chin, "I didn't spend all those years learning for nothing."
In the field of toxicology, Huang Donglai was indeed quite accomplished, after all, it was the Huang Sect's specialty; he could quickly identify almost any poison of certain notoriety in the jianghu.
"Shh— that's strange," Zhou Wu pondered with a frown after hearing Huang's explanation. "Why would someone use 'Three Steps to Soul Severing' on someone as insignificant as He Da?"
"That obviously means that he got involved in something, and someone wanted to silence him," Sun Yixie was quite sharp with this stuff and almost immediately pinpointed the truth.
"Oh?" Zhou Wu said, "Could the 'something' Brother Sun refers to be...?"
"The matter at the Zeng Mansion, of course," Sun Yixie responded.
Zhou Wu understood what Sun Yixie meant and continued, "You mean to say... there's more to the 'haunting' at the Zeng Mansion?"
"Where in this world are there really ghosts?" Sun Yixie replied with an obvious tone, "Whether it's the so-called haunting or that Lu Li fish, there must be someone behind it all, using these events as a cover for their true intentions."
"Eh?" At this moment, Huang Donglai's expression changed slightly, as if he had realized something, and he said, "Now that you mention it, Brother Sun... I think I understand."
Both having grown up under the red flag and nurtured by the spring breeze, they were firm materialists, quickly following each other's lines of thought.
"What do you understand?" Sun Yixie asked.
"It's that kind of routine... killing again and again just to cover up one murder, right?" Huang Donglai said.
Sun Yixie seemed to ponder upon hearing this, while Zhou Wu looked at him with a puzzled face, seemingly indicating for him to continue.
Huang Donglai then organized his thoughts and continued, "Like, for instance... the perpetrator behind this case actually only wanted to kill the second wife of the Zeng family, but fearing that killing only her would lead to suspicion, he premeditated these Lu Li fish incidents, the haunting, and all, killing two unrelated individuals. Once everyone starts to believe it was due to the haunting, he then proceeds to kill the second wife. This way, everyone would think her death is also caused by the ghost and won't associate it with murder... As for He Da, he was probably silenced because he knew too much."
"Wow, Brother Huang, you're the man. Did you figure all this out?" Sun Yixie patted Huang Donglai's shoulder impressed.
"Ah, it's nothing," Huang Donglai said, "Such a ploy, I could see through it with just a bit of thought."
Perhaps for the two of them, who had seen many modern detective stories, such connections wouldn't be difficult to make, but for Zhou Wu, this was a fresh and indeed rational theory.
"Ah! The words of Brother Huang have caused an epiphany in Zhou!" Zhou Wu exclaimed as if an enlightenment had struck him, "Both brothers are remarkably clever, Zhou admires you, if it were up to this humble brother alone… I doubt I'd have ever realized…"
"Hey, Brother Zhou, you flatter us. It's just a bit of cleverness on our part." Huang Donglai spoke modestly, but both he and Sun Yixie's faces were blooming with pride, "In my opinion, for now, we should start with He Da's case, interrogate the inn's staff and Shopkeeper, and check their kitchen to see how the 'Three Steps to Soul Severing' ended up in He Da's food before we make further calculations."
"Ah! Right, right," reminded by him, Zhou Wu immediately summoned his subordinates and started an in-depth investigation.
Unfortunately, things didn't go as smoothly...
The inn's staff and Shopkeeper obviously knew nothing about the poison, and no issues were found in the kitchen and the tea-watering area. In the end, it was Huang Donglai who, using a silver needle he carried, detected the poison in the teapot from He Da's room.
According to Huang Donglai's deduction, the perpetrator either sneaked into He Da's room when he was absent and poisoned the tea, or he did it while normally interacting with He Da, subtly adding the poison to the teapot during their exchange.
Back in those years, there were no surveillance cameras or anything; with so many guests coming and going daily in the inn, and the busy staff unable to remember everyone, the guests certainly wouldn't pay attention to such details, so it seemed difficult to progress the case through interrogation of those at the scene.
So for now, He Da's lead had come to an end.
To uncover the whole truth, they would have to circle back... starting from the Zeng Mansion.
At Zhou Wu's repeated requests, Huang Donglai and Sun Yixie couldn't snub him and agreed to delay their journey, spending a few days helping him investigate further; however, they also made it clear that if after a few days nothing came of it, they would have to leave regardless, as the Youth Hero Conference was also important.
But then another problem lay before them—they needed a reason to enter the Zeng Mansion to investigate.
With the Zeng family's influence, not even arrest officer Zhou Wu could simply walk in to conduct his business, let alone Sun Yixie and Huang Donglai, who were just sticking their noses into other people's business.
Luckily, Sun Yixie, who had many tricky ideas, quickly thought of a method...
The Zeng family thinks there's unrest and a haunting, right? So they would hide their identities as Taoists, use the pretense of performing rituals to exorcise ghosts, and let Zhou Wu introduce them, to blend into the Zeng Mansion to investigate.
He even came up with a title for Brother Huang—Xudong Old Immortal.