Ch.198 Jing Er (2)
Mu Mingtang had her ears pricked up as she listened tentatively, but Xie Xuanchen had stopped yet again, she was so angry that she was about to flip: "Cut it out!"
Mu Mingtang was fuming with anger and slightly lifted her upper body. Xie Xuanchen looked away hurriedly, he didn’t dare to look at her again: "Lie down still, don't move."
Mu Mingtang could only lie back down in silence and whispered: "I'm not scared, just continue."
Mu Mingtang moved slightly just now, and now her posture was different from before, and her curves could be vaguely seen from the side.
Xie Xuanchen, who had finally managed to calm down, blushed yet again, but he could not tell Mu Mingtang of this. He could only avoid his line of sight and try his best to use a flat and rigid tone to say: "When a person falls into the water alive, they would instinctively call for help and the water would flow from their mouth and nose, so one’s abdomen would be filled with water and appear slightly swollen. But looking at the woman’s body, her mouth and eyes were closed, her hands were hanging down naturally, her nails were clean, but her abdomen was swollen. She was obviously already dead when she was dumped into the water, hence there was no sign of struggling and she wouldn’t spit water."
Mu Mingtang followed Xie Xuanchen's words and recollected the scene and couldn't help but nod. That's right, the corpse she saw this afternoon was exactly the same as what Xie Xuanchen had just said. At that time, she couldn't sense that something was fishy. However, after hearing what Xie Xuanchen had to say at this moment, she found the incident extremely suspicious.
If a person slipped and fell into the water by accident, it was impossible for her not to struggle for help. In any case, her hand should not fall naturally to her sides, and her mouth would not be firmly shut. It seemed that this servant was actually killed before she was thrown into the water to act as if she had drowned to death.
Mu Mingtang was in awe. If it weren't because she was in an inconvenient posture, she would stand up and give Xie Xuanchen a round of applause: "You’re amazing! You just took a look at the body, you didn't even land your hands on her, you could already tell that there were many suspicious points. If the world can live together in peace and there is no need for war anymore, you could be a constable at Dali Temple!"
Mu Mingtang's compliment was straightforward yet superficial, but it was such a heads on compliment that it made Xie Xuanchen feel slightly overwhelmed. He coughed and said, "Constable? Even if I really went to Dali Temple, shouldn’t I be a monk, and not just a small official?"
Mu Mingtang laughed when she heard this: "Okay, okay, you were born to be a leader. Since you realised that something was wrong, why did you walk away when the post-mortem examiner came?"
"If I didn’t walk away, how could Xie Xuanji signal to the post-mortem examiner to announce fake results?" Xie Xuanchen said casually, "What's more, their tricks aren’t even that clever. If I watched over the whole scene for way too long but didn’t notice anything odd, and just let the post-mortem examiner talk nonsense, I am afraid that they would grow suspicious. It’s better to excuse myself in the name of being sick, that I was in poor health and felt powerless. This would make more sense."
Mu Mingtang suddenly realized that Xie Xuanchen knew what Xie Xuanji and the others were up to from the very beginning. Xie Xuanchen understood what was going on but didn't comment on it, and followed along with their plan. He just let the mastermind behind all this replace the aromatic ball, and let the post-morgen examiner announce the maid’s death as an accident, and let the imperial physician deny the spice.
Doing too much will expose their plans, but if Xie Xuanchen didn’t show a sense of doubt, it will make Xie Xuanji and the others suspect that he was hiding something. Therefore, Xie Xuanchen expressed his suspicion but he didn't pry deeper, and invisibly guided Xie Xuanji and the others for a spin, to make them think that their plan was a complete success.
Now, the news has probably been passed back to the big boss. They would reckon that their plan was a total success. Although there were some accidents because of Mu Mingtang, however the ashes from the spice have now been changed, and the maid who handled the spices was also dead. Although Xie Xuanchen had doubts, the post-mortem examiner had proved that the maid had drowned herself. The mastermind behind all this should think that he had fooled Xie Xuanchen.
Even if he was not fooled, there was no longer any evidence to back up his claims. Xie Xuanchen coughed so many times in the afternoon, even if he had doubts, how could he find the energy to investigate with such a weak health condition?
However, this was Xie Xuanchen's motive. He knows what the person above wants to do and what he wants to see and he has everything in the palm of his hands.