When the candlelight at Green Ox Lodge flickered and danced, Xiaotao's hands trembled as she clutched the Abacus Bead Pouch. One of the wooden ears fell off the Huwa carving on her double-bun hair, and the abacus beads bounced across her apron to spell out the word "Poison": "Brother Fan... Sister Wang next door got a stomachache after eating our sesame flatbread... Could it really be poisonous?"
Zhang Yifan pressed her trembling shoulders, and the beads bounced into the word "Steady" in her palm: "Don't panic. The abacus beads calculated long ago that there is only green plum jam and sesame in the flatbread—" He suddenly pointed at Moli's plain silk painting: "Moli has already drawn all today's diners. We'll use the abacus beads to eliminate possibilities and lock down the suspects."
Moli's wolf-hair brush flashed with a cold light in the candlelight, and the beads bounced into the word "Investigate" on her portrait of the diners: "This Princess has drawn thirty-eight people. Look closely, brat—" She tapped the portraits with an abacus bead: "The old pedant, the Hu merchant, the sour scholar... and a mysterious person wearing a bamboo hat."
Chapter 162