"That man was definitely not a Taoist priest," Qian Mingyue said with a sudden flash of insight. "Because anyone in love with a woman would never disguise themselves as a priest to approach her."
"True," Li Lianhua gave Qian Mingyue an approving look and lowered his voice. "Actually, there is another very strange detail. Madam Liu said that the person disguised as a priest recounted family secrets. Those so-called secrets were definitely things no outsider could possibly have known."
Qian Mingyue's eyes suddenly lit up.
Li Lianhua made a shushing gesture and dropped his voice. "There is a high likelihood that this person is right here inside Jin Family Fortress. Please, Prefect Qian, use the pretense of investigating the case to gather all the guards, manservants, and handymen of the Jin Family Fortress into the front hall. We only need Madam Liu to take a look at them to confirm whether our suspicion is correct."
"What Lianpeng brother says makes complete sense. I'll go take care of it right now." Qian Mingyue eagerly hurried off with his bailiffs.
"Actually, there is still one thing this young lady cannot figure out." Bai Buyu watched Qian Mingyue's excited retreating figure, looking thoughtful. "I checked yesterday, and father and son of the Jin family are undoubtedly poisoned. Since the two of them have already been poisoned, the killer only needed to wait another two days to finish them off. Why go to such elaborate lengths to do something superfluous like terrorizing the two of them?"
Li Lianhua sat up straight and leisurely smoothed his robes. "I haven't figured that out either."
"Have you ever seen a cat catch a mouse?" Bai Buyu asked.
Li Lianhua raised his eyes to look at Bai Buyu.
"Some cats don't rush to eat a mouse after catching it; instead, they toy with it repeatedly before leisurely biting its head off to kill it. Do you suppose this killer is doing the same thing?"
"You mean, for him, Jin Dagen and Jin Fulu slowly being poisoned to death isn't satisfying enough?"
"Miss Buyu," Li Lianhua smiled slightly. "Thanks to your reminder, I have thought of another possibility."
"What possibility?" Bai Buyu asked.
Li Lianhua, however, stopped talking. After waiting in vain for a while, and realizing he was not going to reply, Bai Buyu could only glare and inwardly curse under her breath: "Old fox."
Qian Mingyue soon sent men to gather all the males of Jin Family Fortress in the front hall.
Everyone stood around staring at each other, filling the entire room. When they arrived, the bailiffs only said they needed to cooperate with an investigation; how exactly they were supposed to cooperate, nobody knew.
"Madam Liu," Qian Mingyue had Granny Fang support Liu Ruyu over. "Come and identify if any of these men is the fake Taoist priest you saw behind the temple that day."
Liu Ruyu showed a look of astonishment. Her gaze unconsciously swept over the men in the hall, and for a moment she was dazed. "Prefect Qian, this... there are simply too many people here, and this concubine cannot be entirely certain all at once."
"Madam Liu, do you recall roughly how old that priest appeared to be?" Li Lianhua asked.
"He should have been around forty."
Li Lianhua suggested, "Prefect Qian, you can first have those around forty who have been in the estate for less than three years come over for Madam Liu to identify, to see if the person we are looking for is among them."
"Good." Qian Mingyue was already at the point where he did whatever Li Lianhua said, and immediately picked out seven or eight men around the age of forty who had entered the Jin estate less than three years ago.
Supported by Granny Fang, Liu Ruyu walked over to examine them closely. After looking at three or four of them in succession, she shook her head with slight hesitation. "Not him... not him... this one doesn't look like him either..."
Until she reached the fifth man, who had his head lowered, somewhat sunken cheeks, and narrow eyes.
Liu Ruyu frowned slightly, feeling that this man looked somewhat familiar from somewhere, yet unable to place it. It wasn't until she noticed a nail-sized red mark on the lower right side of his face that Liu Ruyu matched this man with the person from seven or eight days ago.
"It's him, it's him!" Liu Ruyu pointed at the man and cried out. "The person who disguised himself as a priest behind the temple that day!"
Upon being identified by Liu Ruyu, the man was first startled, then narrowed his eyes, his gaze suddenly turning fierce.
Bai Buyu inwardly thought things were bad. Now that this man had been exposed, there was an eight-tenths chance he was going to leap over the wall in desperation.
"Madam, watch out!" Qian Mingyue also saw that something was wrong, and before the man could make a move, he stepped forward two steps and without another word grabbed Liu Ruyu's clothes from behind and yanked her back.
"Ah!" Caught off guard, Liu Ruyu was yanked backward several steps, stumbling and nearly falling over.
The man was also clumsy; before he had time to pull the dagger hidden in his sleeve, seven or eight guards pinned him to the ground.
Li Lianhua stepped forward to take a look at the pinned man, sighed, and said, "It really is you."
This man was the groom of Jin Family Fortress. When Li Lianhua went to feed the horses, the two of them had even casually exchanged a few words.
"Oh my, isn't this the First Madam's uncle? How could it be you?" Granny Fang was an old servant of the estate. When she looked closely at the groom's face, she immediately cried out.
"Master Ma, how did you end up like this?" Seeing the man pressed down in pain by the guards, Granny Fang anxiously wanted to go help, but halfway out her hand pulled back as if remembering something, and she could only stamp her feet in anguish on the spot. "The master treated you exceptionally well when he was alive, and the young master is someone you watched grow up! Why would you do this? Heavens above!"
"I..." Pressed down by a flurry of hands and feet and unable to move, Ma Xianggui flushed red and blurted out in desperation, "I never wanted to harm Jin Dagen and Jin Fulu! From beginning to end, the only person I wanted to poison to death was this vile bitch!"