The Golden Hairpin

Everything in the East Pavilion was exactly the same as on the day of the accident. Although they had searched carefully, the searchers always remembered that it was in the palace and tried their best to restore it afterwards.

And in this exactly the same environment, there was a girl who had already changed beyond recognition. She wore a yellow shirt, a loose bun on her head, and a pair of plain silk shoes on her feet, exactly the same as on the day of her disappearance.

However, her skin was ulcerated and black, and blood was flowing, and she could no longer see the true face of that face. No one could tell from such a corpse how beautiful she had been like a peach and plum.

Huang Zixian stared at her silently, and that day flashed in her mind for a moment, a beautiful colored glaze on her temple, and her face was reflected in each other.

However, it was only a momentary trance, she pressed her lips and walked to the bed where the corpse was lying.

Zhou Ziqin pulled a chair and sat in front of the bed, then took out a pair of extremely thin and soft leather gloves from his body and put it on his hands, before leaning down, holding her face and taking a closer look.

It's Huang Zixian who is used to seeing corpses, and can't see such a face that is swollen and blurred. She tilted her head and asked, "Aren't you without tools? When did you bring these gloves? of?"

"When I went out in the morning. I heard that there was a murder case on the street and it seemed to be poisoned, so I took it quickly. I didn't expect it was useless at the time, but now I use it." Zhou Ziqin taught her with a serious face, bowing. The body looked closely at the seven orifices of the corpse, and then opened the mouth to check the tongue and teeth inside. "When testing a poisoned corpse, especially this kind of poison, if you break a little skin during the inspection and the poisonous blood seeps in, it will be necessary soon. Oops, so you have to wear gloves."

Huang Zixia didn't want to hear him say this, just asked: "Since the deceased is wearing Wang Ruo's clothes, can he be suitable for all ages and figures?"

"The deceased was about sixteen or seventeen years old, and he was tall and slender, about five feet seven inches tall. Such a height is relatively rare among women, and it is basically acceptable. I don't know if Wang Ruo has any moles, scabs, or moles on his body. Birthmarks or something?"

"Let me think about it..." She tried to recall her previous contact with Wang Ruo. "There are no such things as cripples and birthmarks. It seems that there are small freckles on the right wrist. Can you see if there are?"

Zhou Ziqin rolled up her right sleeve, looked at it, and said frustratedly: "The skin is so dark that it is completely invisible, not to mention freckles, even moles are probably not visible."

"Yeah" Huang Zixian looked at the swollen black and purple hands, a little sadly remembered the slender and beautiful jade hands that were exposed from her sleeves in the carriage when she first met Wang Ruo. The palms that were unbearable to look directly at her made her chest twitch slightly, "How could this hand...swell like this? Her previous hands were so slender and beautiful that everyone would envy them."

"Slim?" Zhou Ziqin held the giant palm of the corpse and touched it from the palm to the fingers, and said, "Impossible. Her palm bones are relatively large among the female corpses I have examined. Yes, even before it can’t be considered slender, right?"

Huang Zixian gave a surprised "Huh", looked at the swollen black purple hands, then bumped Zhou Ziqin's shoulder with his elbow, and said, "Give me the gloves."

Zhou Ziqin looked at her suspiciously and asked, "What are you doing?"

She did not speak, raised her chin and narrowed her eyes. Zhou Ziqin immediately took off her gloves obediently.

Although it is a pair of soft leather close-fitting gloves, men's gloves are relatively large after all, and Huang Zixia wears them slightly loose. She didn’t care about this anymore. She pinched the female corpse’s hand through the glove, and compared it with the female corpse’s hand through the glove—the swelling can only expand horizontally, but after all, the fingers won’t grow too much, and the other’s The fingers are longer than her big hands once called by Chen Nianniang to be suitable for playing the piano.

Zhou Ziqin said next to him: "Look, although you are a man, I guess you must have been cleansed at a very young age, so your hands are smaller than hers."

"What does the body size have to do with the size of the palm?" Huang Zixia secretly said in her heart, and squeezed her own bones through the gloves, and then squeezed the opponent's bones. Although it was difficult to touch the bones because of the swelling of the skin and flesh, she tentatively pinched it inch by inch, and finally touched something hard, which confirmed Zhou Ziqin's statement that the bones of these hands are definitely not slender.

Zhou Ziqin said nervously next to him: "Chonggu, don't use too much force, the skin will fester, and it won't be good if you squeeze it..."

Huang Zixia hurriedly relaxed her fingers, and turned to see if her palm was squeezed to pieces by herself. Fortunately, it only broke a little at the edge of the lower palm, and there happened to be a thin layer of white puffy skin. Although it was broken by her, it did not bleed.

"This, it should be a thin cocoon, so it doesn't matter if it is broken. Moreover, the skin of her whole body is already ulcerated, and no one cares about breaking a little cocoon." Zhou Ziqin said, carefully looking at her cocoon. In the place where I saw it was on the edge of the palm under my little finger, I couldn't help but frowned slightly, "It's strange, this is the first time I have seen a cocoon growing here after an autopsy in so many years."

"Well, logically speaking, the place where a person's palm exerts force is at the tiger's mouth, and the side of the outer palm should be the place where calluses are least likely to grow." Huang Zixian observes carefully and sees the fingertips of the three middle fingers of the left hand and the thumb of the right hand. She also had a slightly harder skin, thinking for a long time, making gestures such as writing, embroidering, sizing, and pounding clothes, but couldn't draw any conclusions.

Zhou Ziqin collected the gloves she took off and said, "Other than that, there is nothing to be concerned about. This woman should have a good background, her hair and teeth are very shiny, and she seems to have no traces of heavy work on her body. She is now wearing it. Wang Ruo’s clothes appeared in the Yongchun Hall, and his face was difficult to distinguish. If we say it is not Wang Ruo, it seems that we can’t provide strong evidence..."

Huang Zixian said cleanly: "In order to avoid the horror, you should write it down in the autopsy book first, but don't just talk about it, just talk about the cause of death."

The two opened the door and went to the outer hall to see everyone who was waiting.

Zhou Ziqin saluted everyone, then held the autopsy record in his hand, and only picked up a brief statement: "Examination: a woman of the deceased, five feet seven inches long, with a fuzzy face, her skin black and swollen, and pus and blood all over her body. The deceased. The teeth are complete, the hair is shiny and long to the ankle, and the whole body has no trauma. He should be poisoned and died."

Wang Lin lamented repeatedly and said: "Hateful, too hateful! I didn't expect that my niece would die in the midst of many imperial palaces..."

Behind him, the two brothers Wang Ruo who came from Langya to prepare for the wedding also showed horrible faces. The older one asked: "I wonder if the cause of my sister's death was...?"

"Dying from poison arrow wood is undoubtedly." Zhou Ziqin replied.

"Poison Arrow Tree..." Everyone had never heard of the name, but Wang Yun asked: "But the kind of poison that Nanman calls'seeing the blood seal the throat'?"

"Yes, it's rare in the capital." However, several people died from the poison last night. Zhou Ziqin looked at Huang Zixia, and saw that she didn't want to explain to them, she closed her mouth and stopped talking.

Not long after, the Queen and King also came in person. She glanced at the female corpse on the bed through the window, then turned around immediately, and the long-ling behind her hurriedly supported her so that she did not fall to the ground. She staggered and hid her face and left, without even saying a word.

Changqing led the Houting staff to clean up the remains, but a group of people remained silent. The king's carriage carried the coffin and left, and Li Shubai stood at the gate of the palace, watching them go away.

Zhou Ziqin rushed to Cui Chunzhan's carriage. Huang Zixia pulled the horse she had prepared to climb up. Li Shubai, who was sitting in the carriage, looked through the window. She had to withdraw her foot from the stirrup, got into the carriage, and sat there as usual. On a low stool.

The carts and horses headed towards Yongjiafang all the way.

Li Shubai didn't look at her along the way. He only touched the glass bottle for fish farming with his fingers, causing the small red fish inside to chase his fingers with its tulle-like tail.

"I heard the results of the autopsy, what else hasn't been said?"

Huang Zixian sat on a low stool and looked at the little fish with her cheek, and said, "It was true that she died of poison arrowwood. The time of her death was last night, but unlike those beggars, her throat was not as swollen as her appearance. So the poison that killed her was not in the food, but trauma. If Zhou Ziqin could dissect the corpse, this should be more accurate."

"If it is a trauma, where is the injury?"

"This is another strange place. Although the whole body is ulcerated and swollen, there are no signs of sharp weapon damage on her body. Judging from the traces of skin discoloration, it is most likely that the poison spread from the right hand and then spread all over the body."

"Right hand." Li Shubai thought, "Is the poisonous arrowwood contaminated with the skin and can penetrate into it to kill?"

"No, so how the deceased was poisoned is still a mystery."

Li Shubai's gaze shifted from Xiaoyu's body to her face, and suddenly asked: "Before, your parents passed away and when your men's clothing escaped from Shu, no one doubted that you were a woman along the way?"

Huang Zixian, who looked at the little fish with his cheeks, was inexplicable, but he didn't know why he suddenly mentioned it: "No, I used to go out with my father to investigate cases in menswear since I was a child. , But there are also surprises."

He didn't respond to her puzzled look, but stared at her. The girl in the crimson eunuch's costume, knelt on her knees and sat on a low stool, staring at herself with her right hand, her eyes were as clear as the dew of the hibiscus flower in the morning. When the carriage was bumping, her eyelashes occasionally trembled, and the dew-like gaze seemed to sway slightly with the breeze in the wind, instantly flowing brilliance.

The corners of his lips, which he had been pursing tightly, raised slightly at this moment.

Huang Zixia touched his face inexplicably, still hesitating, but he turned his head, did not correct her too young posture, just asked: "Besides, what traces are there on the body? For example— Is that body Wang Ruo's?"

Huang Zixian was slightly surprised: "The prince has never seen the body before, do you think so?"

"I believe there is a reason for everything. I will deliberately use poison arrowwood to make the corpse so unsightly. It is totally unrecognizable, and I must conceal something."

"The prince guessed right, that corpse is not Wang Ruo, because although the flesh is illegible, the bones cannot be faked. The palm bones of that corpse are much larger than Wang Ruo's." Huang Zixia said, raising her right hand. Turning her palm and looking in front of her, "There is another thing that I don't understand, that is the distribution of the cocoons on the female corpse's hand—the fingertips of the middle three fingers of the left hand, the thumb of the right hand, and the edge of the right palm, here—" she He gestured with his hand and pointed it to Li Shubai, "The palm edge under the little finger has a thin layer of cocoon. Although it may not be visible at ordinary times, the skin on this side has a slightly harder skin than other places. ."

"It's really rare to use the movements here for a long time." Li Shubai spread out his slender and white hands, clenched his fists and closed them, gestured, thoughtfully.

Huang Zixian asked: "What clues does the prince have?"

"I just seemed to think that an action flashed in front of me, but I couldn't remember it in a hurry." He frowned and said, then let go of his hand and said, "The biggest point I want to come to in this case at the moment should lie in the invisibility. Words."

Huang Zixian nodded and said, "The sudden appearance and disappearance of the man in Xianyou Temple, Wang Ruo disappeared in front of our eyes under heavy guards, and even the wounds that did not exist on the female corpse's hands are invisible and invisible. Solve the mystery."

"In fact, sometimes, it's just like conjure. It's just because it is a simple trick to start from an unexpected angle, but because the onlookers can't turn their heads, they have no way of knowing the truth. And another possibility... "Li Shubai said, holding the glazed lamp on the small table with his own hand, and holding it to the window of the car.

In the light coming through the curtain, the clear and clear colored glaze lamp and clear water instantly disappeared, and Huang Zixia was in a daze, only to see a small red fish floating in the air on Li Shubai’s palm, as if in the sun. phantom.

"The other possibility is that it is clearly in front of us, but because of the angle and feeling, we lose our judgment and think it does not exist."