Not allowing Little Constable to refute or ask further questions, Brian Carter continued, “First, look at the bloodstains in the room. From the roof to the walls, blood is splattered everywhere. If the bodies were dismembered after death, the blood wouldn’t have enough force to spray up to the ceiling.”

Then, Brian Carter pointed to the piles of corpses on the ground. “Look at them more closely. Don’t you find it odd?”

Little Constable replied, “I was already wondering why you arranged the bodies in such strange positions.” The twelve ‘piles’ of corpses weren’t lying ‘properly’ on the ground; their limbs were spread wide, legs twisted, shoulders askew, all in bizarre postures.

Brian Carter shook his head and said, “I didn’t arrange them like this. This was probably their posture at the moment of death. However they were at that instant, that’s how I pieced them together… Now that they’re lying down, it looks extremely awkward, but before they died, they weren’t necessarily lying down.”

Little Constable didn’t understand, but didn’t ask more for the moment. Instead, he raised his arms and legs, imitating the posture of the corpse in front of him. After a moment, he suddenly realized, “This is a leaping posture!”

Brian Carter nodded, then pointed to the stone wall directly opposite the door. “Look closely. What’s on that wall?” Little Constable carefully avoided the piles of corpses on the floor and walked up to the wall. Only then could he barely make out that the wall was covered with hundreds of knife marks, each over a foot long, crisscrossing in all directions.

The knife marks were extremely fine, thin as cicada wings. The lighting in the Yin family inn was dim, and the wall was splattered with blood, so Little Constable hadn’t noticed these marks before.

Brian Carter stood at the doorway and didn’t walk up with Little Constable. He had spent an entire day in this room and was thoroughly familiar with everything inside. “The stone chips are white—these are all fresh marks… The leaping posture before death, the blood splattered at the moment of death, the knife marks left on the stone wall after death—it’s not hard to guess what happened.”

Then Brian Carter took a deep breath and stated his conclusion, “A thousand blades struck at once, the bodies were hacked to pieces!”

After that, Brian Carter kept talking, pouring out his thoughts: “The twelve corpse drivers gathered here, suddenly encountered a powerful enemy, and all leapt at the foe at the same time. The opponent, however, unleashed hundreds or thousands of sharp blades in a single move… While these corpse drivers were still in midair, it was like a row of water-filled vats being completely shattered, resulting in this bloody scene.”

“Hundreds of blades instantly shredded this group of corpse drivers. The remaining force struck the wall, leaving these knife marks. But look more closely—all the knife marks are about the same depth… That’s strange. Even if there was an incredibly skilled expert who could throw hundreds of hidden weapons at once, it would be impossible to distribute the force equally to every single one. The marks left on the wall should vary in depth.”

“My guess is, the killer had a mechanical weapon of tremendous power, capable of releasing hundreds of razor-sharp blades in an instant. Only the force of mechanisms, springs, and pulleys could distribute the power so evenly, leaving knife marks of identical depth; and because of the mechanism, the spacing between each blade was equal, which is why the corpse pieces are all the same size. The twelve corpse drivers died at the hands of this weapon. After the killing, the murderer retrieved each blade before leaving calmly.”

“The mountain-stream barbarians are strong and naturally powerful, and their tribe has some strange martial arts, making them very difficult to deal with. What’s more, the corpse drivers are the strongest among the barbarians. Without such a formidable weapon, it would be no easy task to kill twelve corpse drivers in one go.”

Brian Carter was no monster, and he too didn’t want to linger in the murder room. After finishing his explanation, he turned and returned to the front hall, then continued to say to Little Constable, “Blades as thin as cicada wings, yet sharp enough to cut flesh like tofu—no barbarian blacksmith could forge such weapons; and a mechanism capable of releasing so many blades at once must be extremely complex, far beyond the skills of barbarian carpenters… This murder weapon must be of Han origin. As I said before, the mountain-stream barbarians are xenophobic and reject Han things, no matter how good they are. So we can basically conclude that the killer is Han.”

After this long explanation, Little Constable listened with great interest, his eyes shining as he nodded repeatedly. Seeing Brian Carter fall silent, he hurriedly asked, “What else? Go on.”

Brian Carter blinked. “What else?”

“The case! You’ve deduced that the victims were mountain-stream barbarian corpse drivers; that the killer was Han; and that the murder weapon was a powerful mechanism. Any other discoveries?” Little Constable was still unsatisfied, apparently finding the story quite entertaining and wanting to hear more.

Chapter 7: Partners

Brian Carter coughed. “That’s all I can think of. The rest, I can’t figure out, so there’s no point in saying it.”

Little Constable perked up. “It’s precisely when you can’t figure it out that you should say it—maybe I’ll come up with something! Hurry up, when we get back to town I’ll treat you to noodles!”

Brian Carter chuckled. “That sounds great.”