When I woke up, I was still at the main hall and people around me started waking up as well. Huang Tuo was taking care of those who were poisoned and the strangest thing was – Chao Ya was also beside him. Yue Shen had already come back and she was standing at one corner of the hall, not saying a word.
I was about to ask Huang Tuo what happened, he gave me a look, telling me not to speak. I looked at his expression and felt that everything has started to become more and more unpredictable.
Yue Shen walked over and knelt before me. “My king, I’m sorry for not protecting you.”
“Yue Shen, I’m glad that you are fine. Did you manage to get that person?” I said.
“No. I kept chasing until I found the murderous aura getting weaker and weaker then I realized someone must have tricked me to get out of the inn. By the time I came back, you were already unconscious.”
—
The next few days were snowing very heavily and the atmosphere in the inn was very depressed because people kept dying. Sometimes I could even hear the souls of the dears singing in the sky; those kind of despair, fear, destiny, betrayal, a.s.sa.s.sination, warm, blood, cherry blossoms and all other illusions were covering the black land together with the snow.
I had already gotten sick of the dark and heavy feeling that death brought and that feeling was so suffocating and fearful. But death didn’t stop happening in the inn. And this time the person, who died l, was actually Pian Feng.
It was twelve in the noon when Pian Feng died. When we heard Pian Feng’s scream, Huang Tuo was in my room and then we rushed out at the same time. Just when we were outside his door, Hua Xiao had also rushed down from Qian Cao Tang. “I heard…” She panted.
She didn’t complete her sentence because she had already seen the solemn look on Huang Tuo’s face and I believed I have the same look like him as well. But when we pushed Pian Feng’s door open, we found that the door was locked and it was locked from inside.
“The killer is still inside.” Huang Tuo said, looking at me.
Then I saw Hua Xiao staggered a few steps back. “You may want to step behind.” I turned to tell her.
And then Huang Tuo summoned a defensive enchantment that enveloped the two of us in it. When we tried breaking the door open, there wasn’t any response inside. I have already prepared to take the attack but the room was as quiet as a graveyard. In actual fact it was already a grave. Pian Feng was lying on the floor, his face looked twisted and frightened, just like the expression on Yi Zhao’s face when she got murdered.
Because Pian Feng’s room was right at the corner, there wasn’t any window and the door was the only exit. Obviously, the killer was still inside of the room.
“My king, let’s go find people.” Huang Tuo told me suddenly and turned to Hua Xiao. “You stay here and guard the exit so that the killer cannot leave the room.”
With that Huang Tuo pulled me out of the room, I wanted to ask him why did he leave Hua Xiao alone in the room but he showed him a weird hand sign when he pulled me out of the room and then I knew what was his intention. Hence I left the room with him. But when we were at the corridor, he stopped walking all of a sudden and he told me to watch silently.
From that angle, I could only see Hua Xiao’s upper body and her lower body was blocked by the fences. But we could still see her walking over, opening the room door and she has this creepy and mysterious smile on her face, but n.o.body walked out of the room. But when Hua Xiao turned her head over to look at the far end of the corridor, it seemed like someone had already come out of the room and disappeared around the corner of the corridor. I turned to look at Huang Tuo; his expression was as cold and firm as before. For that moment, I suddenly remembered a lot of things.
—
The wine of this inn was pretty famous and Shang Lie was someone who loved enjoyment, this was why he loved holding banquets at the main hall. Of course the waiter loved entertaining such customer so everytime when he served the dishes, his smile would be exceptional happy. No one would be angry over the fact of getting richer.
Huang Tuo, Yue Shen and I were sitting at one table; Ya Zhao, Yu Po and Shang Lie on another table and Hua Xiao has yet to arrive.
Huang Tuo drank a cup of wine and turned to Shang Lie. “I can tell you who is Feng Huang now.”
Then I saw the cup dropped to the floor from Shang Lie’s hand, that shiny porcelain cup was shuttered into pieces and the wine was spilled all over the floor. Ya Zhao and Yu Po’s faces darkened as well.
“Who is Feng Huang?” Sheng Lie asked.
Huang Tuo activated his protection enchantment; Yue Shen’s moonlight elongated into a light saber and I have already summoned all my spiritual power with countless of icicles circling around me; Chao Ya’s music had started to get sharper and countless of white b.u.t.terflies kept flying out from the chords, filling the entire hall.
The atmosphere has become exceptionally intense, wind kept swirling within the room and everyone’s hair and robe were fluttering crazily in the wind. The light in the hall was flicking non-stop, even the floor was shaking because everyone was gathering spiritual power respectively. Shang Lie and gang had already known that a major war was going to start, so they curled their ring fingers up and summoned their respective weapons. Ya Zhao’s one was a narrow glowing purple ice sword; Yu Po’s one was an ever-changing three-spines sword; Tong Xie’s one was a icy blue summoning stuff and Shang Lie’s weapon was a fire bow, the red bow and arrows were the forbidden weapon in the legend of the Ice Tribe.
The waiter was too scared to say anything, he sat on the floor weakly and he wanted to crawl out of the hall but his body couldn’t exert any strength because of fear. He could only move at an extremely slow speed and kept mumbling non-stop. “Don’t kill me… Don’t kill me…”
Huang Tuo suddenly stepped out to block his way. “Don’t worry. I won’t kill you so easily because you have killed many people so I won’t let you off so easily, Feng Huang.”
And then the expression on the waiter’s face became exceptionally calm, as if he has changed into another person. His gaze has become sharper and firmer, and starting to emit murderous aura from him.
He turned around to look at me, Yue Shen and then Chao Ya. “How did you know that I am Feng Huang?”
Chao Ya chuckled. “Please allow us to play a song for you, Hua Xiao.”
Feng Huang’s face darkens upon hearing that. “You even know that I am Hua Xiao?”
Shang Lie looked exceptionally shocked. I knew that no one would think of Hua Duao. This was supposed to be a perfect a.s.sa.s.sination plan and a concatenated a.s.sa.s.sination plan as well.
Feng Huang turned around to face the window and said softly. “Wu Ya, you can come out now.”
Just when she finished her sentence, everyone turned to look at the window but there was only the dark night sky and then I heard the sound of a robe flying past. By the time I turned around, Feng Huang had already flown towards the window. I know she wanted to charge out of the hall because she didn’t have the ability to fight against the people inside.
But when she fell down all of a sudden when she got nearer to the window, she turned around to look at me angrily.
I walked over to her side and said, “I have already predicted that you might want to escape so I have already transformed the wall to ice including the doors and windows. No one is allowed to step out of here without my dispelling the spell.
The glow on Feng Huang’s face faded away and she had aged a lot.
"When did you start to suspect me?” She asked me.
“From the first day when you tried to kill me from the roof.”
“How did you know it was me?”
“Because you didn’t wear anything underneath your grey robe. Huang Tuo said the a.s.sa.s.sin wouldn’t have anything to change so it would be faster to strip out than to change into a new set of clothes.”
“That’s how you started to suspect me?”
“Not just that. I only thought that it’s weird that’s all. After that you killed Zhen.”
“How did you know I killed Zhen?”
“At that time I wasn’t sure if you killed Zhen or not, I was only suspicious towards the waiter because I wasn’t that you are the waiter at that time.”
“Why?”
“Because that morning when Yue Shen and I told Zhen that we would be meeting her at night, she got killed right before our meeting and that day only the waiter was beside us to hear our conversation so from then on we started to suspect the waiter. After you killed Zhen, you put your needle in her hand and then you removed all her needles to bury into the ground. You just want to make us think that Zhen is Feng Huang. At first we did believe that but you have missed out the poison on the needle - those lethal poisons that could cause the gra.s.s to wither and die. Hence we deduced that Zhen isn’t Feng Huang but the person that killed her. It’s because when you tried removing those needles from her hair that time, you forgot to put on the gloves so your hands have gotten the poison but you didn’t want anybody to discover it so you have stopped playing zither from then onwards.”
“You needed to neutralize the poison but you cannot go get the medicines so openly so you’d decided to kill the doctor from the medicinal hall and then you disguised yourself as him to look for the rare herbs, putting them into his medicinal hall. And then you tried distracting us to another suspect so you changed the last three medicines in Yi Zhao’s prescription to those three poison neutralizers but this made me suspect you even more.”
“Why?” Feng Huang asked me.
“Because a doctor in the mortal world will definitely not know about the three rare herbs that have the effect of neutralizing poison. Hence Huang Tuo and I knew that the doctor isn’t any ordinary person and Yi Zhao is definitely not Feng Huang.”
“And then?”
“And then you went to steal the medicine but got discovered by Yi Zhao so you killed her.”
Feng Huang laughed. “If I were the one who killed Yi Zhao, how was it possible for me to be drinking with Shang Lie at the main hall?” I saw the sarcasm in her eyes.
“I almost doubted my own deduction when I saw you at the main hall. Chao Ya wasn’t around at that time so I thought of two possibilities: first one - you have been at the main hall and the person that went to steal the medicine was the waiter and I thought that the waiter was Wu Ya; second possibility would be Chao Ya and I have to admit that your way of making Chao Ya absent at that time was very clever and it did make us shift our suspicion to her.”
“Then why did you believe Chao Ya again and started to suspect me again?”
“I have to admit that your plan is very good. On that day, you told Wu Ya to lure Yue Shen away because with Yue Shen around, she would have known that the food was being drugged the moment she touched the food. But after she left, everyone was poisoned. At first your plan of pretending to be poisoned was a smart move but it was also flaw because Huang Tuo had already checked the food right before they got served but he didn’t say it out, he just went on to prepare the antidote, wanting to see who did not get poisoned and that person would be the one who drugged the food. Accidentally, Chao Aya didn’t eat the food so she wasn’t poisoned and you pretended to be poisoned so Huang Tuo concluded that Chao Ya was the one.”
“Why didn’t he continue to suspect her?”
“Because you ate his antidote.”
“Everyone ate it so why didn’t he suspect everyone?”
“Because my antidote is actually a poison, the face of person that wasn’t poisoned would turn blue without knowing it. When I was about to attack Chao Ya, I saw the change in your face so I knew you were the culprit.” Huang Tuo answered.
I continued on. “That was also when we stars to believed Chao Ya again. We went to ask her why wasn’t she in the room during those incidental nights but she told us she was sleeping in the room and she insisted that she hasn’t left her room at all. So that night, we were hiding in Chao Ya’s room, and then you came during midnight, drugged and moved the unconscious girl underneath the bed before you left the room. This was why we finally understood why was she not around everytime when things happened( she has been sleeping underneath the bed instead of being away from the room. When it’s near to dawn time, you came back to move her back to the bed so Chao Ya would say that she has been in her room all the time. She would look like she was lying and hence causing us to suspect her. Your plan is indeed thorough and well-planned.”
“So you have been suspecting me since then on?”
“Yes, but we aren’t quite sure until Pian Feng got killed then we are certain that you are Feng Huang.”
“That day you guys purposely left me there?”
“Yes, we had witnessed how you opened the door to release the killer at the corner of the corridor. We may not have seen anyone coming out, but I was sure that someone has been there before when I was in the room no matter if he was using any invisible skill or other method to hide his existence.”
“Then how did you guys know that I am the waiter as well?”
“We had once thought that the waiter was Wu Ya but we discovered that you and the waiter are the same person. First of all, you will always be absent when the waiter is around and if we wer o wait for you, you will have to wait for the waiter to leave the hall before you join us and everytime your face will be free of make-up, looking pale and that’s because you had to remove the disguise of the waiter from your face. When we went to look for Zhen and Yi Zhao that time, it was only the waiter that was with us and he was the only one who could hear our conversation. And that night when Huang Tuo picked the sword up, the hilt of the sword was oily and then I discovered that that wasn’t any other thing but cooking oil and it was only the waiter would have such thing on his hands. After that incident, I did take a good look at your hand; they don’t belong to a zitherist. A zitherist’s hands would never be so oily. Take a look at Chao Ya’s hands; they were so clean, soft, tender and dry. This has been a mandatory requirement to be a zitherist.”
Huang Tuo then walked to my side and said, “When we knew that the waiter has been you all the time, we could guess that Wu Ya would be someone else because when Yi Zhao got killed that time, you were indeed drinking with Shang Lie so the person who killed Yi Zhao would be Wu Ya and on the day when Pian Feng was killed, the room was locked and you were with us so the killer would be Wu Ya as well.”
Feng Huang looked at me and sighed. “I’ve always thought that you are a useless, stupid and cowardly king. I’m wrong. You may not be talking all the time but you know everything better than anyone. Is there anything else that you want to ask me?”
“Yes. First we didn’t see Wu Ya walking out of the room, did she make herself go invisible? But in this world, all spells have been blocked, how did she manage to use it?”
“Secondly, who is Wu Ya?”
Feng Huang looked at me and smiled creepily. “You will never know about it. You still don’t understand, I will never tell you.”
“You have nothing to fight back.”
“Even if I were to tell you, you may spare my life but Wu Ya will definitely kill me. I cannot fight against her illusion skis but if I chose to keep quiet, Wu Ya may save me because…”
But before Feng Huang could finish her words, I saw her face had turned creepily blue but she was still unaware about it. “Hua Xiao, your face…”
“What happen to my face?” She looked as if she didn’t know that she had been poisoned and it was the kind of poison that one would never know.
And then Hua Xiao let out a yell all of a sudden, finally realized what happened. She ran towards the bronze mirror and started yelling crazily. “Impossible! Wu Ya will never kill me…”
But it was already too late, her voice started to get softer and weaker and then she fell to the floor. Huang Tuo rushed forward to catch her and asked. “Tell me who is Wu Ya? Quick!”
“Wu Ya is… is…”
But Hua Xiao didn’t finish her sentence and she would never get to finish it.“
Wu Ya would never believe in anyone, she would only believe in the dead. Only the dead were able to keep the secret.
