Being an emperor is not something he can do, so he can only rely on his connections.

The flickering candlelight cast a long shadow of Zhang Jingwei, bent over his desk, against the mottled wall. The open file on the table was roughly pushed aside, and the crucial "map" brought back by Wang Ergou took center stage.

Zhang Jingwei's brows knitted together, and he pressed his slender fingers hard against his temples, as if trying to suppress the turmoil within. He stared at the paper intently, his eyes shifting from initial solemnity to disbelief and astonishment, and finally to a speechless blankness.

"What the hell...what kind of shit did this bastard draw!" He slammed the table so hard that a few drops of ink splashed out of the inkstone. "To call it a ghostly scribble is flattering him!"

That so-called "map" was a visual disaster. A few distorted, unevenly thick lines of ink, barely recognizable as the riverbed, twisted like a drunkard's footprints. A boat, utterly crude, resembled a floating coffin, with five or six scribbled "stick figures" poked upon it, barely discernible human forms. Even more outrageous, a dozen or so large, jet-black circles and crooked crosses were scattered haphazardly across the river, as if casually smeared by a mischievous child.

Wang Ergou had been standing by with his hands hanging down, not daring to utter a word. Seeing his young master seething with rage, he quickly stepped forward and said cautiously, "Young master, calm down! Young master, calm down! Let me explain this map to you..." He pointed at the tangled mess. "Look, the thickest, most crooked section is the Sangshui River. Circling this area are the villages downstream. Those demonic sects probably use this river to find the entrance to their secret passage..." He moved his finger to the dark mass of black circles and crosses. "This huge, pitch-black area must be their base."

Zhang Jingwei took a deep breath and slowly exhaled, as if to expel the depression in his chest. He rubbed his throbbing temples vigorously, feeling a sense of weakness spreading from his fingertips to his entire body. "He..." Zhang Jingwei's voice was filled with the exhaustion of someone who had survived a disaster, "Is he still in the city?"

"They should... they should have left the city," Wang Ergou replied quickly, his tone somewhat trying to excuse the man. "Master, if it wasn't a serious matter, why would he dare to risk entering the city?"

Zhang Jingwei snorted, his lips involuntarily curling up in a faint, helpless arc. The candlelight flickered in his eyes. "He's missing his girlfriend. He's really sneaking in for a private meeting under the pretext of delivering intelligence!" He paused, his fingers unconsciously tapping the "ghostly talisman," his eyes sharpening again. "But... this news is indeed significant."

He sat up straight, his tired expression vanishing, and the sharpness that was unique to a police captain returned to his face.

"exist!"

"Go to the morgue immediately and find Huang Liang! Ask him to put down everything he is doing and conduct the examination overnight." Zhang Jingwei's tone was firm.

"Yes! I'll go right away!" Wang Ergou took the order and turned to leave.

"Wait!" Zhang Jingwei stopped him again, his eyes once again fixed on the troubling picture, filled with deep curiosity. "By the way, how did he get this information?"

Wang Ergou scratched his head, an expression that said, "I knew you'd ask." He smiled wryly and said, "Master, I did ask, and that kid... hey, he was keeping it a secret! He refused to tell us, just giggling and saying he'd tell us after the case was solved, so it would be exciting."

Zhang Jingwei was stunned at first, then scoffed, a hint of helplessness creeping back into his brows. "That blockhead! He's even got the hang of keeping us in suspense..." He shook his head, his gaze gazing out the window at the dark night, his tone firm. "Never mind! Let him be. Once this case is over, I bet he'll be unable to contain himself. He'll definitely brag about it everywhere, exaggerating it for three days and three nights! By then, we'll know everything. Go ahead!"

County Government Mortuary

The smell, mixed with lime, cheap incense and the lingering stench of corpses, almost condensed into substance, weighing heavily on people's chests.

This was the deepest part of the county government mortuary, a converted ice cellar. Chills seeped through the thick stone walls and the specially constructed ice troughs beneath, freezing even on a summer night. The few dim oil lamps on the walls, their flames shrunken to a pea-green hue by the chill, flickered tenaciously, casting huge, distorted, swaying shadows across the jagged stone walls and the frost-covered morgue.

Huang Lao Xie—Gaoyang County's only coroner and Huang Liang's father—was hunched over the largest morgue. Wrapped in a half-worn, thick cotton robe, his complexion appeared sallow under the pale green light, his eyes sunken and cheekbones prominent. He occasionally suppressed a cough, each one causing his bony shoulders to tremble violently. Clearly, he had been urgently summoned by yamen runners while recuperating at home. His fingers, covered in calluses and chilblains, worked on the cold corpse with an almost demanding precision.

Huang Liang, his son and apprentice, stood by, his lips purple from the cold, rubbing his hands together as he held the autopsy chart and writing brush. The tip of his nose was red from the cold, and his breath condensed into white mist in the icy air. He tried to concentrate, but the chill of his body and the shock of the scene before him made him flinch.

"Ahem..." Huang Lao Xie suppressed another cough. He paused, took a few breaths, and glared fiercely at Huang Liang with his turbid yet sharp eyes. His voice was hoarse but filled with undeniable severity, "Fortunately! Ahem... Fortunately, the ice in this northern ice cellar is thick and sufficient! Ahem... Otherwise, these bodies would have long since rotted away, and the truth would be hard to come by! Ahem... The wronged souls in the morgue will probably never be redeemed because of your negligence!"

His scolding echoed in the empty and cold stone chamber, and every word was like an icicle, piercing Huang Liang's heart.

Huang Liang shrank his neck, and a trace of embarrassment and dissatisfaction appeared on his frozen face: "Dad... who could have thought of this? That medicine... would be hidden deep in the rectum! This... is this because of intestinal obstruction? The food can't go down..." He tried to explain his previous omission.

"Bullshit!" Huang Lao Xie interrupted him abruptly, his voice rising sharply with a fury of disappointment, shaking the flame of the oil lamp. He pointed at the corpse's exposed anus with a finger stained with an unknown mucus. "You! Ahem... you could find a foreign object in the anus, but you didn't even think to carefully examine the intestines?! You're so stupid! Ahem... If I had come earlier, why would it have taken so long? Lord Zhang would have followed this clue and cracked the case!" He cursed violently, coughing violently, his sallow face flushing abnormally with excitement.

Huang Liang was scolded so badly that he couldn't even raise his head. He could only mumble in response: "Yes, yes, Dad is teaching me a lesson... Dad is the best." There was obvious perfunctory and helplessness in his tone, but there was also a hint of awe for his father's professional ability.

Huang Lao Xie snorted heavily, ignoring his son and returning his full attention to the cold corpse. He picked up a slender silver probe and a sharp lancet, his movements becoming extremely focused and steady.

He opened it carefully and explored it.

"Remember!" Huang Lao Xie's voice was low and clear, leaving no room for doubt.

Huang Liang shuddered and quickly dipped his pen in ink and picked up the brush: "Record!"

"On the inner side of the anal wall, about one inch and three fen away from the anus, there is a linear wound caused by repeated scraping by a sharp object. It is deep into the muscle layer, the wound edge is turned outward, and there is slight redness and swelling and old bloodstains attached!" Huang Laoxie's fingertips pointed precisely at an extremely hidden location.

Huang Liang wrote so quickly that his frozen fingers could hardly hold the pen, but he forced himself to write neatly and clearly.

Huang Lao Xie's hand continued to move downward, pressing and groping at the back of his calf. His fingertips touched something unusual, and with a frown, he carefully lifted a small piece of skin tissue with the tip of the knife.

"remember!"

"Yes! Remember!"

"A hard lump was felt deep under the skin at Chengfu (the area below the gluteal muscle). Upon opening it, a purulent cyst was revealed, about the size of a broad bean. The cyst wall was broken, and the pus was yellow-green and sticky. It was suspected to be caused by foreign body stimulation or toxic erosion!" His voice was solemn as if he had discovered a key clue.

Huang Liang's heart was in his throat. He knew that the location and nature of the abscess were extremely unusual and it was definitely not an ordinary injury.

Huang Lao Xie's expression grew even more focused, even a touch solemn. He picked up a specially crafted, long-handled silver spoon and reached deep into the calf, scraping the material from the inner wall with extreme slowness and care. The tip of the spoon gleamed faintly in the light of the oil lamp. He placed the scrapings on a clean white porcelain piece and held it up to the lamp to examine them carefully. It was a collection of extremely fine, dark brown, granular residues, mixed with mucus and blood.

His nostrils twitched slightly, as if trying to catch a faint scent. A moment later, a gleam of light flashed in his eyes!

"remember!!!"

"Remember!!" Huang Liang almost shouted, anticipating a major discovery.

"I've found dark brown dust particles scraped from the inner wall of the mid-rectum. They're hard and have a slightly pungent, dry smell. I suspect they're stone medicine. This is key evidence!" Huang Laoxie's voice trembled slightly, the excitement of discovering the truth. He carefully wrapped the residue on the porcelain shard in oil paper.

The only sounds left in the ice cellar were the heavy breathing of the father and son and the crackling of the burning oil lamp wick.

The biting cold seemed to be even worse, but Huang Liang felt his palms sweating slightly.