Chapter 203: The Water Here Is Too Deep

"Clap, clap, clap."

As Bi Jie finished speaking, the people around him began to clap.

It couldn't be helped. The atmosphere demanded it. Given Bi Jie's spirited, triumphant display, applause was absolutely necessary.

"Amazing."

"Incredible. Truly incredible."

"Bai Qiu is truly bold beyond words!"

The group delivered the praise with zero emotion.

Bi Jie had been thoroughly pleased with himself, but even he noticed something was wrong.

"Why does it feel like you're just humoring me?"

"Are we? I don't think so."

The Old Man looked perfectly sincere.

"Alright, you all keep interrogating Bai Qiu. Let's go look at the corpses first."

"..."

Bi Jie felt like he had been nursing a ball of fire in his chest for ages. He had intended to spit it out, light a firecracker, and enjoy the bang. Instead, he opened his mouth and just let out a pathetic burp.

"Unreasonable!" he muttered resentfully.

The group soon arrived at the room where the corpses were kept.

It was a place Yan Jing was quite familiar with. The courtyard where the Wei Faction had stayed was now cleared out, the ground packed tightly with corpses under white cloths.

"These are all of them."

Bi Jie sneered, crossing his arms. "Lift the covers yourselves."

Tiger stepped forward and pulled back the closest white cloth.

Looking at the corpse, the group immediately understood why Bi Jie had been so certain they would find nothing.

The body was densely covered in hideous wounds. Even the face seemed to have been deliberately slashed with a sharp weapon, rendering it completely unrecognizable.

"See? What kind of common traits can you glean from these corpses?"

Bi Jie scoffed twice before suddenly remembering that he was the one supposed to be solving this case. His smile vanished. He rubbed his temples and sighed.

"If you ask me, the main question is why these bodies ended up like this."

"As for why Bai Qiu didn't sell the corpses like you wondered, I think the reason is obvious."

These bodies definitely couldn't be sold; the damage was just too severe. Aside from an occasional Funeral Shop buying one to ward their storefront, no one would accept corpses with these kinds of wounds.

"The original damage was even worse," Bi Jie added.

"Their bodies were chopped into dozens of pieces. It took quite a bit of effort just to stitch them back together."

Yan Jing carefully examined the corpse before turning to Bi Jie.

"Boss Bi, would you mind stepping out for a moment?"

?

Bi Jie was dumbfounded. He already disliked Yan Jing, and now he was so angry he actually laughed.

"Old Liu, it seems this friend of yours has some secret tricks he can't show others."

"Fine. Fine, fine, fine. Let's see what kind of parlor tricks this brother has up his sleeve."

He waved his hand and marched straight out the door.

The Old Man looked at Yan Jing.

"What's the plan?"

"First, we restore it."

A silk thread materialized in Yan Jing's hand.

Seeing it, the Old Man instantly understood. He already knew about the trade Yan Jing had made with his young master—exchanging a Pathway Seed for this very Mei Family Heirloom.

"That thing requires some serious needlework skills," the Old Man whispered.

"It's fine."

In Yan Jing's hand, several silk threads leaped up as if coming to life, surging toward the corpse in front of him.

As time ticked by, the gruesome wounds on the corpse slowly stitched themselves closed. By the end, although the suture marks were still visible, the body's original appearance had largely been restored.

At the very least, the face was discernible.

"Have Bi Jie ask the station staff if they've seen this man, dead or alive."

Yan Jing wiped his hands.

"Alright."

The Old Man brought Bi Jie back inside.

Seeing the restored corpse, Bi Jie's eyes went wide. He looked at Yan Jing, his opinion of the man involuntarily shifting.

He hadn't expected this guy to actually have some real skill!

Soon, the station provided an answer:

No one had seen this man, dead or alive.

Yan Jing restored a few more corpses, and the results were largely the same.

Now, the question was:

Where did these people come from?

"Since they aren't locals, they could only have arrived by train,"

Bi Jie said thoughtfully.

"But the checkpoint guards on the train never saw them. Those guards have an eye for faces, yet none of them recognize these men."

"Which means..."

"They were disguised."

Even Tiger, standing to the side, had figured it out.

And this disguise definitely wasn't as simple as covering their faces.

The Old Man had tested that yesterday, and it wouldn't have worked.

In other words, this involved cultivators.

"Investigate immediately. See what kind of cultivator techniques might cause the checkpoint guards to misjudge what they're seeing."

While waiting for the investigation results, Yan Jing didn't stay idle. He and Tiger pulled back the white cloths one by one, sweeping their gazes over the faces of the corpses.

"What is your friend doing now?"

Bi Jie sat on the stone steps leading from the courtyard to the corridor and asked the Old Man beside him.

"I don't know."

The Old Man held a steamed bun in his hand. He hadn't eaten a single bite since yesterday.

"You don't know?"

Bi Jie asked, puzzled.

"I'm not him, so how would I know?" The Old Man took a bite of the bun.

"Either way, he can definitely handle it."

Bi Jie raised an eyebrow.

"You trust him that much?"

"Of course!"

The Old Man took another massive bite of his bun.

"We're going to conquer the world together in the future. How could I not trust him?"

These words made Bi Jie raise his eyebrow again.

Minhu wasn't just anywhere. 'Conquering the world' wasn't something to be said lightly.

This basically meant the Old Man had absolute trust in Yan Jing, the kind of bond forged in life-and-death situations.

"That's good. Really good."

Bi Jie nodded with a sigh.

"I didn't expect you, Old Liu, to still be dreaming about conquering the world at your age."

"It's really good."

Bi Jie truly felt emotional about it. A cultivator's age was a crucial factor. For an old fellow with one foot already in the grave, talking about conquering the world was as wildly unrealistic as a child shouting about being invincible.

He was both glad and surprised that his old friend still possessed such ambition.

After all, he himself had lost that fire a long time ago.

Those foolish words spoken in youth had long since turned to dust with the passage of time.

"What is it?"

Seeing Yan Jing stop in front of a corpse, the Old Man immediately stood up and walked over to ask.

"It's nothing."

Yan Jing stared at the corpse, his eyes flickering.

And then...

Bi Jie was politely asked to leave again.

"Motherf—"

Bi Jie got half the curse out before forcefully swallowing the rest.

Soon, the corpse in front of them was fully stitched back together.

Tiger and the Old Man looked at the body in confusion. No matter how they looked at it, this corpse didn't seem much different from the previous ones, nor did it share any obvious common traits.

"Is this corpse... different from the others?"

Tiger blinked. Short sleeves, bald, male. Besides that, he couldn't really discern anything else.

"It is indeed different."

Yan Jing exhaled softly.

Because he had seen this corpse before.

More than that, he knew this corpse's name:

Wang Dashan.

The man whose role he had played when he first arrived in Minhu.

[Originally ordinary, you have become this half-human, half-ghost monstrosity due to certain reasons.]

[In the end, you were disemboweled, resulting in your death.]

That was the evaluation of the character at the time.

He still remembered what the man looked like. His limbs were extremely thin, but his belly was disproportionately huge.

It looked as though he was suffering from some kind of disease.

Bi Jie was called back in.

"Mr. Bi, do you have anyone here who can perform an autopsy?"

Yan Jing asked.

"You mean a coroner cultivator?"

Bi Jie shook his head. "It's no use. We already had a coroner cultivator examine them. The surface wounds on these bodies were all inflicted at roughly the same time, and there was no so-called fatal blow."

"No, we aren't examining the surface wounds."

Yan Jing said, "We're examining the internal injuries."

"Internal injuries?"

Bi Jie's eyes widened. "We checked that too. There's no sign of poisoning or anything."

"It's not a fatal injury."

Yan Jing reached out and pointed at the corpse's belly.

"Examine here!"

"..."

Bi Jie stared at Yan Jing... For a moment, he couldn't keep up with his train of thought at all.

This guy...

Was he even normal?

Very soon, a coroner cultivator was brought in.

A period of examination followed.

The coroner cultivator walked up to the group, his eyes filled with doubt.

"There is indeed something wrong."

"This man's stomach looks like it was stretched open. There are signs of expansion, and the other internal organs all show marks of being squeezed."

"What about the other bodies?"

Yan Jing asked.

"Although the severity is much lower... any organs that weren't destroyed do show slight signs of damage," the coroner cultivator said slowly.

A few drops of sweat trickled down his forehead. In truth, these marks were almost negligible compared to the organs that had been stabbed to a pulp. They could easily have been accidental scrapes.

Yan Jing nodded. He had pieced together most of the puzzle.

Just as he'd thought earlier, Bai Qiu wouldn't do anything without profit.

The root of this entire case would ultimately trace back to business.

"Stomach... stomach... scrapes..."

Bi Jie's eyes lit up. "Smuggling goods?"

Right at that moment, the results from the checkpoint guard investigation came back.

They provided a list of cultivators who possessed the means to alter someone's appearance for border crossings:

Actor Cultivators (low-tier ones could change their own faces, high-tier ones could paint theatrical faces for others), hypnotist cultivators (a type of cultivator from west of the Lake capable of hypnosis), scholar cultivators (high-tier ones could cause cognitive confusion and subconscious compliance)...

"Cross off all the cultivators who can only get themselves through,"

Bi Jie ordered. Tiger took a pen and crossed out the unqualified cultivators on the paper one by one.

"Cross out the high-tier ones as well,"

Yan Jing said.

Tiger reached out and crossed off another large batch.

There were simply too many cultivators in Minhu. As long as there was a trade, there was a cultivator for it.

After eliminating those two groups, not many were left, but there were still a few.

By now, Bi Jie's inspiration was overflowing.

"This way, you can construct a complete industrial chain."

"For example, Across the Lake could gather a batch of desperate refugees, or just grab a bunch of wrongfully convicted prisoners. They slice their bellies open, stuff silver inside, and have a medical cultivator heal the wounds. Then, they use a high-tier Actor Cultivator to disguise them. Once they pass the checkpoint and find Bai Qiu, their bellies are sliced open again to retrieve the goods."

"If they wanted the wounds to heal so fast that a coroner cultivator couldn't detect them, a low-tier medical cultivator wouldn't be able to pull it off. Bianliu County doesn't have anyone like that anyway. So it's easier to just kill them. Besides, the number of mules will only increase, and keeping them alive is too risky."

"To avoid detection, they smashed the bodies to pieces."

"Because they were living people, there was no such thing as 'clearing customs.' They just needed to enter the station."

"The cultivators checking people at the station have low cultivation bases, and at most, they do a pat-down. Even if they run into someone with higher cultivation, they can just drop the name of their backer and bluff their way through. It's even better if they put on a disguise—like transporting corpses. Everyone's attention would be on the cargo, so no one would care about the people."

"By the same logic, this Domain would also smuggle people out using this exact route."

"Even if they did get caught, Across the Lake is massive. How could anyone trace the person back to Bianliu County? And how could anyone realize that someone from here was connected to someone Across the Lake?"

"Done like this, it's virtually flawless."

To the side, Yan Jing spoke up.

"If the goods they were smuggling were opium or corpses, they wouldn't need to go to such lengths. Bribing the right people would be enough."

"Which means there has to be something special about this item—something that makes bribing an inspector useless. Something the inspector would never turn a blind eye to, no matter what."

At those words, Bi Jie's eyes instantly lit up.

"I know! I know what it is!"

"It's an Ancient Relic! High-value items like Ancient Relics are completely different from opium. If you can't sell opium and turn it into silver, it's fucking worthless!"

"An inspector won't risk their neck to smuggle opium, so you slip them some cash, they let you pass, and it's a win-win."

"But Ancient Relics are different. Some have massive destructive power, some have bizarre effects, and others just look beautiful and make great gifts. If an inspector spots one, they're taking at least half, if not more."

"How do you make any money then? That's why bribing them is useless, and they could only resort to this method."

These were hidden secrets kept strictly among the higher-ups. Someone at Bi Jie's level shouldn't have ever come into contact with them, but he had just pieced it together.

"Motherfucker, no wonder Inspector Liu has been so secretive, just strolling around every day without putting in any real effort. He probably guessed what was being smuggled. And no wonder he insisted on investigating—it wasn't out of some sense of justice. Motherfucker, he's in on it too!"

"Or maybe the people backing me noticed goods circulating in the upper echelons, which is why they sent someone with no background like me to investigate. They pegged me for a clueless pawn."

Realizing this, Bi Jie literally jumped up.

"The water here is too fucking deep!"

"Fuck this, playing me for a fool. No way, I'm not working this case anymore. Whatever happens, happens."

Bi Jie made up his mind and deliberately warned the others.

"Just pretend you don't know anything. Don't get involved. There's an immense terror hidden in this."

But the moment his words fell, he saw the others staring blankly at the space behind him.

"What happened—"

He turned around, just in time to see the regional inspection envoy, Liu Ye, standing in the doorway in his red and white robes, his eyes incomparably gloomy.