Blood In The Streets

After recuperating from his encounter with two older women, Edrick decided to head to the woods as he always did, every single day, unfortunately not running into anyone that he would like to discuss with, Xiao was nowhere to be seen, Li was probably brooding whilst in seclusion, Yi was most certainly busy with the gift Anoteros made to the city decoration department, and Shu was probably busy putting Edrick’s advices to work.

Honestly, the little rat was probably the one that interested Anoteros the most at the moment, he was just some guy found in the wild after all, unrelated to any plot or anything, Li and Yi were still stuck in their scripts and felt weirdly one-dimensional despite being living, breathing people, as for Xiao, well, he was a fruit that had yet to ripen, and someone who was also in the habit of altering his own plotline.

He had had no problem abandoning the first love interest or his sword, and had now seemingly given up on the second love interest and instead entangled himself with another girl, although useful, quite a bit of the knowledge Edrick had earned through the wisps did not really help him in making the reincarnated protagonist’s life miserable.

There was little he could really do to get to him, and perhaps that was a good thing, Anoteros had decided to instead build a good relationship with him, their first meeting had been a little bit rocky, but no one had died, or rather, Xiao didn’t know that people had been killed shortly after, he might have heard a few things during his stay in the town, but it would have been nothing more than gossip to him.

In any case, from Xiao’s perspective, they had just had a little confrontation, his sword had been taken, and that was it, but men were simple creatures, they could get over the most heinous of things and become good friends without that much trouble, Xiao didn’t seem like the sort to hold grudges anyways…

The woods were the same as usual, and nothing of worth happened, and it stayed like this for about an entire week, apart from another citizen of Oie having a deadly encounter in the dead of night, that is.

Yi not only possessed a special ability he had had from birth, which allowed him to see past events through the presence and intent that were left behind by the people on the scene, though, same as with the slaughter of Golden Teeth, and Jingyi’s assault, his ability proved useless, or rather, it only told him that the culprit was most likely the same person.

Although he could not rule out the possibility of more than one culprit in good faith, his instincts were telling him that a single person was responsible, as once again, when he investigated the awful murder of a young couple, apart from their own remnants, there was nothing else of note, all that was found was what had been left behind by guests, but the young prosecutor could distinguish the approximate amount of time pieces of presence and intent had been left behind, thus, he knew that the killer’s were absent.

The wife had been left lying in the bed after being tormented, whilst the husband had been tortured and cut into pieces after being forced to watch it all, his scalp had been found on top of a statue of the previous lord of Oie, which had enraged the current city lord beyond belief as it was his own, late father being desecrated.

The husband’s face had also been plastered on a wall, and many other pieces had been spread around, some of which had yet to be found as the body was not whole.

And now, found just as the first rays of light rose in the morning, was the dead body of a well-known drunkard, a loud rube that somehow scraped by enough to get his daily fix of strong alcohol, but a well-liked man nonetheless, as he was usually only loud in appropriate places, Yi had interrogated him for the the other two crime scenes in the city before, since he tended to wander through the streets at night.

Some had suspected the alcoholic, but they were proven wrong today, as his lifeless corpse was found floated on its stomach in a fountain, a broken bottle of Whishal alcohol stuck right in the back of his head, unlike the couple, the kill had been swift and efficient, although the prosecutor could once again not see anything of the attacker, he could see the remnants of the drunkard.

One second he was just walking happily, and in the blink of an eye, his bottle was snatched, swung at his teeth and promptly used as a stabbing implement, it wasn’t your run-of-the-mill madman that could do something like this.

Though, Yi had more ground to stand on to pin the murder of the couple and the drunkard on the same person than just a hunch, but simply because the killer had signed them, the torso of the husband had been left proudly just at the entrance of the home upon which a message had been directly addressed to Yi in person, and the same was true for the floated dead man, his back had been used to send a message.

Both began with :

“Dear Prosecutor”

The first one had called him a fool for not taking the job offered by the crown.

And this one…

Yi read it in full a second time.

It was telling him to stop waiting for ‘it’ to happen, and just take action to get things over with.

The young prosecutor thought for a few seconds, not certain if his interpretation was correct, but what else could it be about? The vile murderer was actually telling him to confess his feelings to Jingyi, that was the only thing that made sense, unless the killer was just making up nonsense on the fly, but Yi doubted that.

He sighed.

“Once again, keep the number of people who know about the messages to a minimum, only tell people who can be trusted to keep it secret, don’t announce that the murders are linked to one another for now, wait to see how the people will see it, we won’t lie to them, but if they make the wrong assumption, we will not correct them either” he said, his clear blue eyes staring as the corpse was wrapped up.

‘Why did a madman have to take interest in me? And how do they know what is going on with Jingyi? Are they the one who attacked her as well? I don’t have concrete proof for it but…’

Yi did not like to deal with those sorts of criminals, he had already had to face one once, and it had drained him severely, now, it was personal as well, not that anyone but him knew that.

‘So the killer has to be a disciple of the sect, right? Even if skilled at concealing their presence and intent, only someone of the sect could possibly not be picked up by any of the elders’ Yi believed in the power of the elders, the Myriad-Arm Sect was powerful, and deeply righteous, if that individual had intruded upon the sect’s ground and main building, they would have been found out and dealt with accordingly, he was certain of it.

So the only explanation was that the culprit had been accepted into the sect, and had only recently decided to act in such a manner, with their ability to disguise intent, they might have been capable of going unnoticed despite their heinous actions against Jingyi.

‘Jingyi… I can’t believe I am being influenced by that filthy message, but I really should just tell her how I feel, I should just do it when I visit Edrick’s residence…’