Help! I just woke up and was stabbed by a big kid

At this moment, Shen Wumou led someone in.

"This is... Yunxi's yamen runner. He knows a lot about the Prince Shen's Mansion. If you have any questions, feel free to ask him." Shen Wumou said.

The yamen runner was not wearing yamen runner uniform, but a casual dress. He was about forty years old, with an impatient look on his face. He looked at Gu Yue with his hands behind his back, saying nothing and not even saluting.

Gu Yue looked at him for a while and said with a smile: "This big brother must have been pulled to watch the scene many times, right?"

"Who said it wasn't!" The yamen runner shouted, "Every time someone comes to investigate the affairs of Prince Shen's Mansion, I have to be dragged here to give an explanation. It's really annoying..."

What he didn't say was that it was precisely because he was very familiar with the scene back then that there had been no changes over the years, and it was impossible for him to change careers or travel.

Gu Yue nodded: "Then please tell me, big brother, which places did the people who came to investigate pay more attention to?"

The yamen runner said, "Of course it was the main room in front of us, the study room in the backyard, and the room where the young master lived. But those people found nothing, because according to the analysis of the adults who investigated the case at the time, someone set fire to many places, and these places were the most important. All the papers and books inside were burned clean, not a single hair was left."

"Have you found any secret room?" Gu Yue asked.

"No." The bailiff shook his head.

Gu Yue asked Shen Wumou: "Did you, the Hidden Dragon Guards, investigate thoroughly? There can't be any secret room that hasn't been discovered in ten years, right?"

"It's impossible." Shen Wumou frowned. "To make a secret room, there must be a mechanism in the wall or the secret compartment of the bookshelf. Over the years, the house has almost collapsed. If there is a mechanism, it will definitely be discovered."

Gu Yue nodded: "After the fire was put out, how many bodies were found in Prince Shen's mansion?"

The yamen runner replied, "There are thirty-six bodies in total. After checking, except for the two bodies that were hanged, Gu Shen, the Prince of Shen, and Su Huaiyue, the rest are servants in the mansion."

"All the servants, or some of them?"

The bailiff was stuck.

"Prince Shen's mansion is quite large, there should be more than thirty servants." Even the small mansion of the Duke was staffed with more than fifty people. Gu Yue complained in his heart.

"We really don't know, because the box with the indentures that could have confirmed the number and identities of the servants should have been burned and not found," said the bailiff.

"Where were the bodies found?" Gu Yue asked.

"The bodies of Prince Shen and his wife are in the main courtyard, and the bodies of the rest of the servants are mostly gathered in the servants' rooms in the backyard." The bailiff replied.

Gu Yue felt that his words were not very precise: "Mostly? That means some of them are not in the servants' quarters. Where are they?"

"Uh... there was one person in the firewood room in the backyard, three people in the young master's room, and the rest were in the open space in front of the servants' rooms." The bailiff recalled and said.

"Were all the people burned to death?" Gu Yue asked.

"Yes." The bailiff said, "It was all burnt black, how could he not be burned to death?"

Gu Yue didn't say anything. He had read novels and knew that there was a difference between burning a person alive and burning a body after death, but this Beiqin coroner might not know that. He hadn't studied whether experiments similar to Zhang Ju's burning pigs had ever happened before.

The fact that so many servants died in the yard in front of their rooms does not seem to indicate that they were burned to death.

"Then how do you know that Prince Shen and his wife were hanged to death? Weren't they burnt?" Gu Yue pointed to the main room in front of him: "This room is like this."

The roof of the main house had collapsed, and it was obvious that the beams and pillars were almost burned.

"When they were found, the house had not collapsed yet, and the couple were hanging. How could they not have committed suicide?" said the bailiff.

Gu Yue felt uncomfortable. Fortunately, it was not Gu Xu who came over and heard the description of the yamen runner in person.

He walked up to the pile of ruins, took out his dagger and moved the tiles on the upper layer, and soon the beams of the house were exposed.

The beams were almost carbonized, which is why they had not weathered or been damaged in the ten years since they were placed here. Weeds had grown on the ground below, and the stone bricks were blackened by the rain water that flowed through the carbonized beams.

The beams were badly burned, but Prince Shen and his wife were still able to hang on them steadily...

Hanged with wire? Gu Yue sneered.

"Did the coroner perform the autopsy? What was the result?" Gu Yue asked.

The bailiff replied: "He just hanged himself."

It seems that the coroner either took money or was not serious.

Gu Yue said to Shen Wumou: "Move all the case files here. I want to see the results of the autopsy."

Shen Wumou frowned: "His Majesty asked you to find clues, not to solve the case."

"If we can't recreate the scene of that day, how can we find clues? Just rummage through the ruins bit by bit?" Gu Yue did not give in at all. "You Hidden Dragon Guards have searched a lot, but have you found anything?"

Shen Wumou sighed.

The bailiff looked at him timidly, and Shen Wumou turned and left.

Gu Yue said: "Take me to the backyard where the servant died."

The yamen runner nodded. He was also very familiar with this ruin, and walked around it, mostly on flat ground.

After passing the Shadow Moon Gate in the backyard that had not collapsed, a row of intact houses appeared before us, but the roofs had collapsed and the window frames were in tatters.

The bailiff pointed at the ground in the yard. There were still burn marks on the stone bricks in the shape of a human, which looked very scary at first glance.

"There was a pile of bodies here."

Gu Yue walked into the row of houses and looked around. Shi San followed closely, not letting him out of his sight.

"Where is the woodshed?" It had obviously been searched repeatedly, but nothing was found.

The bailiff said, "It's the house behind this row of houses."

Gu Yue walked out of the ruins of the row house and continued walking to the back, stepping on the bricks, tiles and stones beside him.

The woodshed didn't seem to have many signs of being burned, and even half of the roof was still hanging there, not collapsing, but the house was already overgrown with weeds.

The yamen runner said, "A servant died here."

Gu Yue keenly noticed that the woodshed was located in the corner of the entire mansion. There was no courtyard wall outside, but a path facing the lake outside the mansion.

"Where did he die?" Gu Yue asked.

"Here." The bailiff pointed to the corner of the woodshed.

"Was there firewood here at that time?" Gu Yue asked.

"Yes, but not much. The officer investigating the case believes that Prince Shen and his wife moved the firewood away to make the fire bigger," said the bailiff.

Gu Yue did not speak. He knew that Prince Shen and his wife did not commit suicide, but he did not intend to tell this yamen runner who did not know the details.

He winked at Shi San and walked into the woodshed. Shi San stood at the door, seemingly protecting him, but in fact blocked most of the yamen runners' view.

Gu Yue stood still in the weeds of the firewood room. He had seen the floor plan of the Prince Shen's Mansion from Gu Xu. According to the layout on the map, this firewood room seemed to be a place with weak defenses, and outsiders could easily enter the mansion through the windows here.

He bent down and looked carefully at the floor of the woodshed.