Ming Huashang couldn’t deny it, so she silently suppressed her fear of the dead and carefully looked for the psychological traces left in the room.

This should not be the first scene, the one where the murderer killed Lian Xin, but to Ming Huashang, how the murderer placed the body and arranged the ritual was far more important than the murder scene. She paced around the room slowly, and in her mind, a figure stepped over the threshold, and on his shoulder was a delicate, weak, and warm woman’s body.

He walked into a Duke and Marquis miss’ bedroom unimpeded, and with the decorations that obviously belonged to noble women surrounding him, he felt excited and hatred at the same time. He looked around; there were many places he could place the corpse: under the bed, in the wardrobe, or on the seat, but these places were not enough. After searching for a long time, he finally found a satisfactory place.

The bed.

The quilts were neatly stacked, and they seemed to have a woman’s fragrance on them. He excitedly placed “his woman” on the bed, pulled back the quilt, and covered Lian Xin’s face with the brocade quilt that had touched a noble lady’s skin not long ago.

Unknowingly, Ming Huashang was half squatting in front of the bed, staring blankly at Lian Xin’s empty eye sockets. Ming Huazhang waved the torch in front of her eyes and called out, “Second young miss?”

Ming Huashang snapped back to her senses and turned her head to find Ming Huazhang frowning at her, with worry in his eyes. Sparks flickered on and off, and his stern face was shrouded in the firelight, half bright and half dark, giving him an aura of solemnity like the murals of heavenly deities.

Ming Huashang was stunned for a moment before breaking free from that extreme affinity. Seeing that she still didn’t speak, Ming Huazhang reached out to touch her forehead but was grabbed by Ming Huashang.

“Second elder brother, the most important point, I figured it out!”

Even though Ming Huazhang didn’t mind being close to a corpse, when he saw her squatting in front of the dead person, he still held her arm calmly and pulled her to a more tranquil space in the room: “En?”

Ming Huashang was completely immersed in the excitement of her discovery and didn’t pay attention to Ming Huazhang’s actions at all, “I was not sure about his attitude towards women before, and now I finally understand! Obviously, he hates us very much and deliberately wants to scare us. But if he only wanted to scare people, wouldn’t it be better to hang the corpse from the door frame where we would find it as soon as we opened the door? Why hide Lian Xin under our bedding?”

Ming Huazhang had been investigating how Lian Xin died, what tool the murderer could have used, and when the murder occurred, but he never considered the reason behind the murder’s actions.

That’s right, whenever there is an action, there must be a purpose behind it. What was the murderer thinking when he did this? Why did he choose to do it this way and not some other way?

Ming Huazhang humbly asked for enlightenment: “Why?”

Ming Huashang pointed at the bed, her eyes shining brightly: “Because of the bed. A bed is not like other furniture…”

Ming Huashang originally wanted to say that the bed was the place to engage in husband-and-wife activities which held far more significance than any ordinary seat, but she realized that she was in front of her brother just when she was about to say the words. Ming Huazhang had beautiful clear eyes that were looking at her seriously, waiting for her explanation; how should she put it?

Ming Huashang blushed and had a rare moment of being tongue-tied. Quickly, Ming Huazhang understood her expression. He was a little embarrassed. He was the elder brother, how could he think about this in front of his younger sister? He tried his best to be unflustered and put on a steady air, and asked, “Then what?”

Ming Huashang wasn’t sure if Ming Huazhang understood. She stammered and continued, “This was his hidden desire. I’m afraid he didn’t even realize it himself. When he was provoked, he subconsciously choose a bed to declare his dominance which happens to reflect his life experiences.”

Ming Huazhang’s attention was genuinely caught at this time, and he didn’t dwell on those awkward scarlet matters: “Life experiences?”

From a murder scene, even the life experiences of the murderer could be deciphered?

“Yeah.” Ming Huashang nodded, reorganizing her thoughts, “He should be a man, between twenty and thirty years old. He can’t be too young because if he was young, he would have no experience and wouldn’t have such a strong emotional bias towards the bed; not too old either, after all, killing three people in two days is not a small test of physical strength. Given that he has such a strong desire and hatred for beautiful maids, I guess he once had a wife who was beautiful, and the neighbors also liked her very much. His wife may have served as a maid in a noble household, but later betrayed him for some reason. Most likely, she became the concubine of that household’s young master…”

Ming Huashang paused at this point, thinking of the situation in Taiping Gongzhu’s manor, she said, “No. Not the young master, but the master’s concubine.”

After figuring out this point, Ming Huashang’s thought process became smoother: “Seeing how cruel he was to the corpse, it can be seen that he is powerful, physically strong, possessive, and can easily strangle a woman to death. When this kind of person finds out his wife cheated on him, it is very likely that he would be furious, beat, and even kill his wife immediately. He shouldn’t have had to suppress his fury for several years and vent it out on a group of maids of similar identity yet unrelated to his wife. Therefore, the most likely explanation is that while he was away from home for business, he wasn’t aware of his wife’s new situation. When he came back, his wife had already run away with the nobleman. Therefore, he should have been in the army, and was a formidable soldier.” 

Ming Huazhang had a portrait in his mind almost immediately, but he did not accept it hastily, and asked, “A person who had been away from home for several years may also be a businessman. Why do you think he is a member of the army, not a traveling businessman?”

Ming Huashang explained, “Although the saying goes that a man’s destiny is determined, I think that a person’s character and which line of work he enters are actually correlated. A person who chooses business will not be aggressive. Similarly, a person who likes to use force to solve problems will never go into business in the first place. He places his grudge and revenge out in the open, which is unlike a businessman’s way of thinking, but more like a soldier’s. Moreover, because he is aggressive and unable to hide his brutal personality, he couldn’t do well in the army, and he was probably kicked out. But he appeared in Taiping Gongzhu’s villa, so it can be seen that after he left the army, he sought shelter with the powerful and became a servant of a certain dignitary.”

Between twenty and thirty, a man in the prime of his life who had been in the army but became a domestic servant, fierce and aggressive, who had a wife who ran away… A man immediately appeared in Ming Huazhang’s mind.