AUBTN -Chapter 121 The Death of the Eldest Prince

Yu Qing hid by the doorway, craning her neck to peek inside. Although she was scared, the flames of curiosity burned brightly in her eyes.

【My god, no way… he’s really dead! Ugh… no, I can’t—this smell is way too strong.】

Hearing her thoughts, Lu Yan quietly shifted a step toward the door, blocking Yu Qing’s line of sight without making it obvious.

He turned back and gave her a look that clearly said, “Don’t look around.”

Su Hewan, meanwhile, was fully focused on examining the corpse.

In order to help Shen Jue, she had deliberately studied anatomy. Fortunately, during her previous work in cultural relic restoration, she had occasionally helped restore ancient human remains as well.

So she already had some basic foundation. Later, Shen Jue even found her the best coroner to train her.

As a result, her forensic skills had improved by leaps and bounds.

“The estimated time of death is around the Chou hour last night.”

Su Hewan grasped the hilt of the knife and gently shook it, but did not pull it out.

“The wound edges are clean, and the blade penetrated very deeply—killed in a single strike. The killer must have been very strong, and… a left-handed person.”

“A left-handed person?” Shen Jue raised an eyebrow.

“Not only that.” Su Hewan pointed at Tuoba Lie’s twisted, ferocious facial expression.

“The scene is messy—tables and chairs overturned. It looks like there was a fierce struggle. But look at his fingernails. There’s no skin or tissue trapped underneath them, which means he didn’t claw at the attacker before he died. And also…”

She stood up and pointed to the distribution of bloodstains on the floor.

“If he had been stabbed during a struggle, the bloodstains would be more like splatter. But most of the blood here is flowing downward in streams. That means when he was stabbed, he didn’t resist violently. He may even have been… completely off guard.”

“You mean it was done by someone he knew?” Lu Yan immediately caught the key point.

Su Hewan nodded.

“Not just someone he knew, but someone he trusted deeply—or someone he wouldn’t dare resist. As for this Imperial Guard knife…”

She let out a cold laugh, her eyes flashing with intelligence.

“If it were really someone from Great Wei who carried out the assassination, who would be stupid enough to leave behind the murder weapon with their own name engraved on it? This is clearly—framing on two levels.”

Not only killing the man, but also shifting the blame onto Great Wei, and specifically onto Lu Yan, who commanded the Imperial Guards.

“The framing method is rather crude,” Shen Jue sneered, his gaze dark.

“But sometimes, the cruder it is, the more effective it becomes.”

“After all, those barbarians from Xifan recognize knives—not reason.”

Just then, Yu Qing, who had been silent all along, suddenly slipped in from outside the door, holding a delicate teacup in her hand.

“Um… sorry to interrupt all you great Detective Conans.”

Yu Qing raised the cup, her expression somewhat strange.

“I actually think the Eldest Prince died rather unfairly. Guess what I just heard while chatting with the maids sweeping the back courtyard?”

“What?” the three of them asked at the same time.

Yu Qing pointed at the teapot in Tuoba Lie’s room.

“I just asked the courier responsible for boiling water. He said the Eldest Prince had a huge temper tantrum last night and smashed quite a few things. But! Just before the Chou hour—which is the time Wanwan estimated for the death—the prince suddenly asked someone to bring him a pot of tea.”

“What’s so strange about drinking tea?” Lu Yan asked, puzzled.

“Drinking tea isn’t strange. The strange thing is the type of tea!” Yu Qing widened her eyes, as if telling a ghost story.

“The courier said the Eldest Prince specifically asked for—calming tea.”

Su Hewan suddenly lifted her head, her gaze sharp as a blade.

A hot-tempered brute who had just thrown a tantrum and looked ready to kill someone—yet instead of drinking himself into a stupor to vent his anger in the middle of the night, he specifically asked for calming tea meant to cultivate one’s temperament?

It was as bizarre as if Zhang Fei had suddenly taken up embroidery.

The air inside the courier station felt even colder than the autumn rain outside.

The body of the Eldest Prince, Tuoba Lie, was not yet cold, and the Western Fan delegation had already descended into complete chaos.

Just as Su Hewan had predicted, all the clues seemed to grow legs and run desperately toward one person.

The Second Prince of Western Fan—Tuoba Feng.

Although Tuoba Feng had not appeared at yesterday’s grand banquet, he was a real power figure within the delegation and had always been at odds with his elder brother, Tuoba Lie. Most crucially, this Second Prince was left-handed, and the size of the saber he carried matched the fatal wound with alarming precision.

In a side hall of the courier station, the atmosphere had completely frozen.

Lu Yan sat upright in a grand chair. Across from him, Tuoba Feng—surrounded on all sides by the Imperial Guards—looked like a furious lion.

“Bullshit! Absolute bullshit!”

Tuoba Feng kicked over the table in front of him, his eyes bloodshot.

“Sure, I wanted to kill that idiot pig—but definitely not last night! I was drunk out of my mind. How would I have had the strength to stab him?”

“Where was the Second Prince drinking last night? Who can testify for you?” Lu Yan didn’t even raise his eyelids, his tone as indifferent as if he were asking about the weather.

“In… in this prince’s room!” Tuoba Feng’s eyes flickered for a moment before he straightened his neck and shouted.

“Can’t I drink by myself? Do I have to report it to a Wei lapdog like you?”

Lu Yan let out a cold laugh, lightly tapping the scabbard of his blade with his finger.

“If there’s no witness, then the dead cannot testify. Second Prince, although this Imperial Guard blade may have been planted as evidence, your habit of wielding a knife with your left hand—and the unexplained half hour when you disappeared around the Hour of Chou last night—may be difficult to explain.”

“You—!”

At the same time, under the corridor of the courier station—

Yu Qing was squatting by a wall, holding a handful of sunflower seeds while chatting with a rather simple-looking Western Fan guard.

Her big eyes blinked rapidly, her face filled with admiration.

“Wow, big brother, your muscles are amazing! Way stronger than those frail scholars in our Great Wei!”

The guard, flattered, practically floated with pride. His face turned red all the way down to his neck.

“Of course! We Western Fan men grow up on horseback.”

“That’s true, that’s true!” Yu Qing seized the moment and shared half of her sunflower seeds with him.

“But I think your Second Prince is really impressive too—though his temper doesn’t seem very good… I just heard him shouting inside earlier. It scared the baby out of me.”

The guard accepted the seeds, glanced around, and lowered his voice.

“Miss, you don’t know the inside story. The Second Prince is actually feeling wronged. Originally, the old king said this diplomatic mission was meant to test several princes. But the Eldest Prince kept suppressing the Second Prince at every turn. Before last night’s banquet, the Eldest Prince even scolded the Second Prince in the back courtyard, calling him a bastard born of a concubine. He said that once he inherited the throne, the first thing he’d do would be chop the Second Prince up and feed him to the dogs.”

“Oh my! That’s horrible!” Yu Qing covered her mouth, looking shocked.

“Then the Second Prince must have been furious!”

“Exactly!” the guard sighed. “The Second Prince’s face turned green at the time, and he swore he’d make the Eldest Prince pay. Who knew the oath would come true so quickly? That very night the Eldest Prince…”

The guard suddenly realized he had said too much and quickly shut his mouth.

But Yu Qing had already gotten the answer she wanted.

【Bingo! Motive for murder obtained! The grudge between the Second Prince and the Eldest Prince is thicker than the Great Wall. He’s basically the perfect scapegoat!】