"Why haven't the Dali Temple case files been submitted yet?" As astute as Lu Wuxie was, he understood Zeng Fan's unspoken meaning.
Zeng Fan nodded.
"How do you plan to deal with Miao Jie? Has Dali Temple ever asked for him?" Lu Wuxie inquired.
"Have they not?" Zeng Fan replied, "But Lord Lan, the Dali Temple Minister, is away on business. The one who came to request him was Xu Qing, the Vice Minister of Dali Temple. And so... Miao Jie is still in the Ministry of Justice."
It was said that a higher rank could suppress a lower one. The fact that Dali Temple couldn't retrieve the person from the Ministry of Justice likely meant that Minister Chen, taking advantage of Lord Lan's absence, was holding onto the prisoner.
"So, how will Miao Jie be dealt with now?" Lu Wuxie asked again.
Zeng Fan shook his head.
After all, according to the laws of the Southern Yue Kingdom, a case needed sufficient evidence to be filed and judged. Currently, Miao Jie's case lacked substantial physical evidence. Even with eyewitness testimony, the entire evidence chain was incomplete, making a conviction impossible.
Moreover, Miao Jie had been shouting his innocence from the prison cell. If a forced sentence were to be passed, and he were to cry out as he was being beheaded in the marketplace, the Ministry of Justice or Dali Temple would be drowned in the public's scorn.
"So, we'll just keep him like this?" Lu Wuxie asked.
"What else can we do?" Zeng Fan sighed. "What other options does the young prince have?"
"Since it's a murder case, there must be a corpse, right? How can evidence not be found?" Zhong Li, who had been standing by silently, finally spoke.
Zeng Fan glanced at her and waved his hand. "There is a body, but..."
He paused. "It's just a little girl, five feet tall, with over a thousand cuts on her body. Not a piece of flesh is intact. How can evidence be found?"
"What about the coroner? Hasn't the body been examined?" Zhong Li asked.
"The coroner?" Zeng Fan chuckled as if he had heard the biggest joke, "The coroner can't even get started. How can they examine it?"
Hearing this, Zhong Li fell silent. In ancient times, one's body and skin were gifts from one's parents. If someone was involved in a murder case, without the consent of the deceased's family, the coroner could only examine the exterior of the body, not the interior. If dissection was absolutely necessary, the body would have to be restored afterward.
Coroners in ancient times were considered low-caste laborers. Unless there was no other choice, no one was willing to take up such a profession. Therefore, those who practiced it were often rough, uneducated individuals. One could only wonder how someone of such background could restore a body after dissection.
Thinking back to Xie Xiaoyun's case, if she hadn't died during childbirth, which Zhong Li found suspicious, Ma Su might have gotten away with it.
"I will examine it," Zhong Li said coldly.
As soon as she spoke, Zeng Fan's gaze shifted to her again.
"You? Do you know that even a prostitute has family? If the body..."
"I will restore it," Zhong Li added. "I can even return her disfigured body to how it looked before death."
Upon hearing Zhong Li's words, Zeng Fan raised his eyebrows in disbelief.
Where did this young man, who appeared fair-faced and somewhat malnourished, get such audacity?
"If you try, sir, you'll know," Zhong Li read his thoughts and bowed.
Zeng Fan raised an eyebrow and cast his gaze towards Lu Wuxie.
Lu Wuxie stretched, gave Zeng Fan a knowing glance, took Zhong Li's hand, and walked away. "Minister Zeng, this young prince is leaving. Please send the request for examination to Dali Temple later."
Dali Temple, the morgue.
Xu Qing scanned the request for examination in his hand, then looked at the young man standing before him. Afterward, he said to Lu Wuxie, who was leisurely cracking melon seeds beside him, "Your Highness, you really intend to examine Ming Xia's body?"
Lu Wuxie leaned in and glanced at Zhong Li, who was already organizing a small box. "Otherwise? I've brought the person here, so why would I be faking it?"
"Your Highness, it's not that I'm making things difficult for you. Although Dali Temple's morgue is the coldest place in the entire city of Jincheng, it's currently the height of summer. Furthermore, the deceased has been dead for three days. I'm worried about you..."
"Wear this, and eat this. It will help." Before the Vice Minister of Dali Temple, Xu Qing, could finish speaking, Zhong Li had already taken out two items from her small box and placed them in their palms.
Xu Qing looked down at the objects in his hand. One was a small pouch resembling a handkerchief, with two small loops sewn onto it. The other was something like a pill.
"This..."
He looked confused.
Zhong Li did not speak. She popped the pill into her mouth and put the small pouch over her ears.
Seeing her actions, Lu Wuxie followed suit, busy with his own task.
Xu Qing, with no other choice, also began to act.
When the morgue door was pushed open, Xu Qing's expression, which had prepared him for the stench, instantly relaxed. He clicked his tongue a few times. A scent of mint mixed with ginger filled his nostrils. He then took a deep breath of the surrounding air. Although the foul smell was still present, it was accompanied by a strong smell of alcohol, making the corpse's odor less nauseating than he had imagined.
"Did you make these things?" Xu Qing, somewhat curious, couldn't help but ask Zhong Li, stepping past Lu Wuxie.
Zhong Li gave him a faint glance and nodded in reply.
"Where is the body?" she asked Xu Qing.
After all, Dali Temple was not handling only Ming Xia's case. In such a large city as Jincheng, people died every day. The vast morgue housed more than a dozen corpses.
"At the very back. It's coolest there," Xu Qing pointed to the body covered with a white sheet, placed at the farthest end.
Zhong Li looked at the body beneath the ice at the back of the morgue and quickly walked over.
As she moved, the sheet fell, and a much stronger stench rushed towards the three of them.
"Ugh..." Xu Qing covered his mouth, but it couldn't contain the turmoil in his stomach.
Zhong Li raised her eyes and looked at Lu Wuxie, who was standing opposite her.
She expected him to react like Xu Qing. However, his gaze upon the corpse held only a flicker of emotion that was barely perceptible.
"I'm going to start the examination, Your Highness..."
"Begin. Don't worry, I've seen more disgusting things than this," Lu Wuxie interrupted Zhong Li before she could finish.
A hint of surprise crossed Zhong Li's mind, but she quickly composed herself and began her work.
As Zeng Fan had said, no part of the body was intact. It was like a rotten, stinky fish stripped of its flesh, with decaying flesh, fat, and blood matted together. Even several pieces of flesh had been scraped from the face.
Fortunately, because Xu Qing had placed the body in a relatively cool location, the knife marks on the corpse were still faintly discernible.
Zhong Li took out gloves from her box and leaned close to the body to examine it.
"How is it?" Lu Wuxie stood aside and asked after waiting for a while, when her gaze moved away from the knife marks on the corpse.
"I recall the knives used for Lingchi in the Ministry of Justice are about this size, with the tip hooked upwards, right?" Zhong Li asked Lu Wuxie, gesturing a distance of about a foot.
Lu Wuxie nodded. He had worked in the Ministry of Justice before, and no one knew these things better than he did.
"Then it's correct. These wounds were not caused by Lingchi knives." As she spoke, Zhong Li's fingertip traced one of the wounds on the female corpse.
"Then what is it?" This time, before Lu Wuxie could speak, Xu Qing, whose face was still pale, finished spitting out the last of his vomit and anxiously asked Zhong Li.
Zhong Li took a deep breath and turned to take out another knife from her medicine box, holding it over the wound. "Does this look similar?"
Xu Qing and Lu Wuxie fixed their gazes on the knife Zhong Li was wielding.
"This... this is a surgical scalpel?" Xu Qing's eyes widened in disbelief.