Red Mansion: Picking up a Lin Daiyu

Chapter 260: Encounter in a Murder Case

"Husband, does this dress look good? Is it too short? The dress and pants are very short and can't cover the body at all..."

Xiangling held the small bundle in her hand and looked at Yue Ling in confusion.

When she tried on these clothes just now, she blushed and her heart beat fast. In her mind, these were not clothes, but something immoral.

The soft and sweet Xiangling can only do what Yue Ling wants in everything.

After holding it in for a long time, she finally asked hesitantly.

"Wouldn't it be better if you don't wear it when you go out?"

Xiangling blushed and lowered her head, not daring to speak.

Yue Ling thought he would return with a full load from the tailor shop, but after trying to make a few pieces of clothing, he found that they did not meet his requirements.

Some decorations like lace are difficult to describe to the store owner, so I have to find a girl who is proficient in needlework to try to make them.

I don’t know if Ying’er can do it.

As far as Yue Ling knew, Ying'er was mainly good at making lace and weaving delicate things. As for needlework, she might not be that outstanding.

"It's not a big deal, let's talk about it later."

The two walked hand in hand, and although the atmosphere was a little awkward, when they arrived in front of the Shen family's house, they were both stunned.

What caught my eye was a white banner hoisted in front of the door, and people coming and going were taking care of the burial arrangements.

"Someone died?"

After Yue Ling went forward to inquire, he found out that it was not a big deal. It was not someone from the master's family who died, but a security guard in the yard died accidentally.

However, this guard had some connection with Yue Ling, as he was the one who had competed with him yesterday.

Xiangling looked at Yue Ling with concern, wondering if he would be targeted once he entered the sect.

Yue Ling was very calm. He struck with varying degrees of severity. If he had not shown mercy, he would have killed the man on the spot.

What's more, Yue Ling's identity has not been exposed, and Liu Xianglian's reputation is there, so who would act rashly?

When the two entered the door, they saw a coffin parked in the yard.

The head of the guards, who had a good impression of Yue Ling yesterday, stepped forward and said, "They went out to do business this morning, and passed by the river on their way back. He slipped and fell into the river, and his head was entangled by the water plants. He suffocated and died underwater. It has nothing to do with Brother Liu."

"Life and death are determined by fate. We can only say that he was unlucky and deserved this disaster."

Yue Ling nodded without commenting.

There was also a monk or nun in the scene, holding scriptures and praying for the soul to be reborn in front of the coffin.

After taking a closer look, I found that it was indeed a nun with uncut hair, one of the two nuns that Xiangling and I saw outside the mountain gate this morning.

Seeing Yue Ling staring at the female monk, the head guard thought that Yue Ling was surprised to see a female nun performing a ritual, so he introduced her to her, "This is the abbot of Panxiang Temple, who has become quite famous recently. She happened to be here today and is doing good deeds by performing a ritual to help the deceased to rest in peace."

"Master has great compassion and comes to chant sutras voluntarily. His reputation is not in vain."

Yue Ling nodded without saying anything.

The nun burned incense, chanted scriptures, rang bells skillfully, and struck wooden fish.

Yue Ling stood behind him and asked softly, "Where is Patriarch Shen?"

The head guard replied, "The owner thought it was bad luck, so he left everything to me and went out to do business."

"When performing rituals, there is usually a junior master helping out. It is quite rare for a master to perform a ritual alone."

The head of the guard said, "Brother Liu has been around the world and has seen a lot, so this is true. However, it seems that this young master is going down the mountain for the first time, and he feels unwell after seeing the dead."

Yue Ling nodded again.

He came to the nun and placed three incense sticks in the incense altar as a comfort to the dead. Then he looked at the nun carefully, and his eyes gradually fell on her slender fingers, only a part of which was exposed.

He held the wooden mallet and struck it rhythmically, but one could vaguely see the red marks on his fingertips.

This directly triggered Yue Ling's occupational disease, and he wanted to open the coffin for an autopsy.

However, his current position here was not suitable for him, so he gave up the idea.

After whispering a few words to Xiangling and asking her to go back and visit her elders in the inner chamber, Yue Ling asked the guard, "Where is the study room of the Shen family master? I will go in and wait for him to come back. I have something to discuss."

The nun's body trembled slightly, and the sound of beating the wooden fish became a little disordered, but this imperceptible change was seen clearly by Yue Ling who was trying to test it.

Yue Ling narrowed his eyes again and looked at the guard.

The guard raised his hand and said, "Okay, Brother Liu, please follow me."

……

In the Shen family's study, Miaoyu was searching up and down.

What she was doing was the Shen family's accounts, and now was the best opportunity to take advantage of it.

The outer courtyard of the Shen family was preparing for the deceased's funeral, and the head of the Shen family was not at home, so the study room inside and outside was completely unguarded.

The Shen family and the Xu family have close relations. This is information Miaoyu learned when she was at the Xu family.

As long as we can find some tricks in the Shen family's accounts that can point to the actions of the Xu family, it will provide direction and evidence for subsequent investigations.

The Shen family is not a secret organization that acts in secret, but an executor in the open, so it is impossible for their accounts to be perfect.

Miaoyu agreed with this deeply.

The study is divided into two rooms, the outer one is a reception room of medium size, with a tea table and several bookcases, which is used for daily reception of guests.

The inner room is furnished with a large desk furnished with all the four treasures of the study, and is the place where business is handled.

There is also a small couch behind the desk, with the curtains rolled up, which can be used as a temporary resting place.

Miaoyu went straight to the inner room and touched the drawers purposefully, searching for the account book containing the recent accounts of the Shen family, but found nothing.

No matter how calm Miaoyu's heart was, her palms were sweating from nervousness as she did such a stealing thing.

Miaoyu took a deep breath and looked around, noticing that the pillow on the bed seemed to be raised a little. She reached out and touched a book, and Miaoyu's eyebrows lit up with joy.

When she took it out and looked at it, there was no title page mark on it. After opening it, it was exactly the account that Miaoyu was looking for.

Miaoyu was very happy. Just as she was about to go out, she heard voices talking in the corridor.

It was the voices of two men.

Miaoyu was shocked. "The head of the Shen family came back so soon? It's impossible. He must have been out for a short time, or just arrived at the market."

Miaoyu had calculated the time accurately, but she didn't expect such an accident to happen.

"Maybe he forgot something and came back to get it. I'll put the account back first."

Having made up her mind, Miaoyu moved very lightly and tiptoed to restore the room to its original state. She then subconsciously hid under the bed, waiting for the situation outside to calm down.

"Brother Liu, the master of the family has gone to the market to collect grain, and I don't know when he will be back."

"Collecting grain? Isn't the Shen family a large farming family? Why don't they sell grain but collect it?"

"Brother Liu, you may not know that although the Shen family is a large farming family, they don't have any land now, and they still have to live for a few months. A lot of the surplus grain from last year was sold to Hangzhou, which is why there is less grain at the turn of summer and autumn." The guard explained, and said to Yue Ling: "Brother Liu, wait here first, I'll send a servant to get some water."

Yue Ling waved his hand and said, "Don't bother. I'll wait for a while. If it takes too long, I'll go back to my room first."

Hearing the conversation between the two, Miaoyu, who was hiding under the bed, sighed deeply.

According to what they said, Miaoyu still had a chance to escape. But I didn't know how long Xing Xiuyan could hold out. She was not very familiar with Buddhism, and if she made a mistake in chanting the sutras, it would be bad if someone found out.

Now she could only hope that this so-called "Mr. Liu" would go back soon and not ruin her good fortune here.

The account book is right in front of us, and we are one step closer to finding key evidence.

There were footsteps in the room, and Miaoyu quickly held her breath and stopped thinking about it.

Yue Ling looked at everything in the room. The furnishings and decorations were indeed much simpler.

Apart from the neatly arranged books in a line, there were no extra calligraphy or paintings as decoration in the room, which showed that Shen Yishu was not a person who cared about art.

Yue Ling had seen a true dilettante.

Take Jia Zheng of Rongguo Mansion for example. His study is filled with all kinds of antiques, calligraphy and paintings, and books. Yue Ling really doesn't like the kind of person who designs everything so carefully to show off his own purpose.

There was nothing unusual in the reception room, so Yue Ling continued walking into the room.

The nun's subconscious nervousness just now seemed to have directly told Yue Ling the answer, that there was something fishy going on here.

If there is no back door in the living room, then it must be in the inner room. Anyway, there is no back door in the study, so there is no way to escape.

It's funny to say that two nuns planned to kill the Shen family's guards, perhaps for something from the Shen family. Things are getting more and more confusing.

Not to mention their reputation outside, their identities as monks and nuns are too different from what they do.

How could Yue Ling not be interested in deciphering the code?

Yue Ling walked to the inner room. Without being too polite, Yue Ling sat directly in the host's seat and started flipping through the books on the long table.

Miaoyu, lying under the bed, secretly looked at all this and realized that she had met this man once before, and had seen him early in the morning.

"How could it be this scoundrel? When I ran into him early in the morning, I felt that he had bad intentions. He really doesn't know the rules. How could he casually look through the host's things and even sit in the host's seat?"

"It doesn't look like a good thing either."

Miaoyu completely forgot that she was the one who came in to steal, and continued to watch what Yue Ling did.

There was no place to hide in the room, and Yue Ling could see everything as soon as he entered the inner room.

The target naturally fell on the bed. If there was any place to hide someone, there was no other choice but here, and Yue Ling knew it very well.

Sitting calmly at the table, Yue Ling flipped through the books at will, but his mind was not on the book at all.

Yue Ling's five senses were sharper than those of ordinary people. When he got closer to the bed, he immediately sensed that there was someone under the bed, but he just couldn't catch him/her yet.

Now, what Yue Ling didn’t expect was why the nun came and what her purpose was in sneaking into the Shen family.

I searched around but didn't find anything unusual.

Until Yue Ling also saw another book on the bed.

Yue Ling sat on the bed again, flipped through it casually, and saw an account book.

"On September 19, the third year of Longyou, I sold 200 dan of rice in Hangzhou and earned 1,200 taels of silver."

One stone of grain costs six taels of silver, which is already considered a high price for selling grain.

"In the spring of the fourth year of Longyou, the Xu family borrowed three thousand taels of silver and is waiting to be repaid..."

Yue Ling closed the account and returned it to its original position. "The Shen family is indeed involved with the Xu family. It seems that we still need to be careful in dealing with it."

Sighing, Yue Ling suddenly asked, "Master, why haven't you shown up yet? How long will you hide before meeting me?"

Miaoyu, who was hiding under the bed, suddenly felt her pupils shrink and was horrified.

But she remained unmoved. There was no loophole in her group. She could not rule out the possibility that this scoundrel was trying to trick her. It would be foolish for her to respond.

Miaoyu gently touched her chest and felt her heart beating violently, and her breathing became heavier.

Just as Miaoyu was staring wide-eyed and looking outside vigilantly, a face came into her sight, hanging upside down and looking at her.

"Master, there are only two of us in this room. Didn't you hear it?"

Miaoyu jumped up in shock, but her head hit the bottom of the bed, making her dizzy for a moment and she couldn't help screaming.

Yue Ling was quick to pull her out, and covered her mouth and nose with his big hands, threatening: "Don't make a sound, if you make a sound, I will hand you over to the Shen family now."

"Do you understand?"

Miaoyu nodded with red eyes.

After Yue Ling released his hand, he asked again, "Are you really nuns from Panxiang Temple?"

Miaoyu replied, "I am, but she is not. If you want to make things difficult for me, just do it to me, and don't make things difficult for her."

Yue Ling couldn't help but laugh and said, "You stole, and she is also an accomplice. If you hand it over to the government, she will be imprisoned as well. Even if you don't punish her for the theft, you can't ignore the fact that she killed Song Erlang, right?"

Miaoyu's pupils shrank again.

Their actions were extremely secretive and there was no one around. The young man went to the temple to burn incense, so how did he know?

Miaoyu didn't say anything, so Yue Ling said, "This is not the place to talk. Let's go to another place and interrogate you two in detail."

Miaoyu felt so sad that she could not even cry. She thought that if the plan failed and that if it was exposed, she would be punished and put to death.

However, she didn't expect to fall into the hands of the bad guys, who had precise evidence against her. She had no one to turn to and could only let the bad guys do what they wanted.

Wouldn't it be better to die?

……

"Master, how long do we need to recite this scripture? He has no parents, and he doesn't hold any official position. Just reciting this scripture once to help him transcend is enough."

"Even if he is reincarnated as an animal in the next life, no one will care."

Holding a funeral at the gate is indeed unlucky, and it also blocks the way for others, which is inconvenient for no one.

If it weren't for the master who didn't want money and came to do good deeds, for a man of the world who died in a foreign land to have a coffin at all would be a sign of great kindness from the host family, and there would be no need to organize a funeral.

But Xing Xiuyan hasn't seen Miaoyu come out yet. If she leaves and Miaoyu is trapped inside, it will be a disaster.

But now, Xing Xiuyan can't delay any longer.

Standing up from the cushion and putting away the instruments, Xing Xiuyan saluted with one hand and said, "Amitabha, this donor committed too many sins of killing in his lifetime, so it will take a long time. I hope he can reform himself, be enlightened in his next life, convert to Buddhism, and wash away the sins of his past lives."

After hearing what the master said which made sense and was also conclusive that Song Erlang was guilty of murder, everyone around him stopped complaining.

He returned the greeting to the female master with great respect.

"It's just our petty thoughts. I hope Master won't take offense..."

(End of this chapter)