Chapter 28 Official

The amount of ice flows left over from the years in this inner prison was beyond Chen Ji's imagination... He had not expected that there would be so many ice flows in this inner prison!
He just walked in the corridor of the inner prison, watching the streams of ice flow into his body, and his dantian, which was blocked by four furnace fires, was crumbling.

The gray-white ice flowed like a dragon, roaring in this dim inner prison that no one else could hear, as if a wronged soul that had been trapped in a cage for a long time was unwilling to give up and wanted to devour all the traces.

They are the forces in this mysterious world that are superior to power and authority, but now they are being deprived bit by bit.

Chen Ji could feel the chill coming from his internal organs, but he didn't dare to behave in any way next to Yun Yang.

However, just as he and Yun Yang passed by a cell, they saw the Bagua diagram engraved on the base of an oil lamp on the wall.

Chen Ji suddenly remembered the Bagua formations under the oil residue lamps when he went down the stairs before... A lamp is a prison, and as long as the lamp is out, the people will not die!

He quickly took off the oil lamp and held it in his palm!

In an instant, the ice flow in Dantian slowly receded like a tide.

Chen Ji panted slightly, Yun Yang turned back in surprise: "What are you doing with this lamp?"

He responded: "This inner prison is too dark. I am not used to it."

Yun Yang sneered: "I didn't expect that someone who dared to bargain with me would be afraid of the dark?"

Chen Ji did not answer. He was just thinking about a question: Wouldn't the ice flow disappear after a person died? Judging from the amount of ice flow just now, it must have accumulated for a long time.

No matter how cruel and ruthless the Secret Service is, they would not kill so many people in such a short period of time.

This is the function of the Bagua formation!

The Internal Minister was worried that he had killed too many people and might be haunted by wronged souls, so he asked someone to use the Bagua formation to detain all these souls in the Inner Prison. This is how so much ice flow has accumulated over the years.

Chen Ji took a slow breath and said, "Lord Yunyang, please bring me the files. If you want to find clues, you don't have to look for them in the current case. Maybe there are still many secrets hidden in the past cases."

Yun Yang waved to the spy: "Give it to him!"

When the spies brought the files in, they filled more than a dozen large wooden boxes.

Chen Ji picked up a book at random and flipped through it while inspecting the inner prison.

Yun Yang sat at a table drinking tea and waiting, while the spy followed Chen Ji.

Chen Ji walked to a cell door and asked, "Cell No. 27, where was Liu Yaozu, the Tongzhi of Yuzhou, imprisoned before? Where is he now?"

The spy wondered how to address the masked young man in front of him. After a moment's hesitation, he whispered, "Sir, if it says in the file that they were released, they walked out of the prison alive. If it says nothing, they died in there."

Chen Ji was certain that Liu Yaozu had died in prison four years ago.

He walked to another cell door and said, "Cell No. 28, where was Chen Mingzhuo, the head of the Luocheng Craftsmen's Office, imprisoned?"

"Also dead."

After that, Chen Ji stopped asking questions and just kept repeating in his heart:

"Cell No. 52, Guide Prefecture Governor Xu Jiawen, dead."

"Cell No. 1, Ru'ning Prefecture Shangcai County Magistrate Tian Hailong, dead; Shangcai County Magistrate Xu Dehong, dead..."

If we count carefully, we find that one person died in some cells, and several died in others.

The more Chen Ji investigated, the more frightened he became. The file in his hand was like the Book of Life and Death in the Hall of Hell.

He looked through the files again and found that some gangsters and some officials hiding in the market had been imprisoned in this inner prison, but the cells where these people were held had never seen ice flows.

He took a deep breath and finally got the pattern of the ice flow.

Those who can produce ice flows after death have only one thing in common, that is: officials!
……

……

The inner prison buried underground is like a huge cemetery. Countless people have died in this dark place.

This is not the martial arts world, but the place where the martial arts world and the court are buried.

Chen Ji stood in front of the cell, with an open file in his hand and a dark cage in front of him.

It took him about an hour to finally finish reading all the files of cells A and B. The remaining files were C, D, E, F, G, X, R, and G, which he didn't need to read anymore.

Chen Ji even dared to make a bold judgment that the ice flow obtained by Wanxing Garden that night was indeed from Concubine Jing's fetus, and the royal bloodline was superior to others from birth.

At this moment, Chen Ji stood in this depressing inner prison and felt it was a bit absurd.

His way of cultivation actually stood in opposition to the entire Ning Dynasty. If he wanted to practice, officials and royal bloodlines must die!
The Ning Dynasty held all the power in the dynasty, from the emperor to the petty officials.

And do you want to be his enemy?
Yun Yang was right. I really couldn't let others know what my method of cultivation was... It was indeed very dangerous.

Yun Yang sat at a table, crossed his legs, and cracked melon seeds. Seeing Chen Ji in the corridor stop to think, he asked, "Have you found any clues?"

Chen Ji came back to his senses after a long thought: "Not yet."

Yun Yang frowned. "I went to pick you up in person, wasted an hour going back and forth, and now I've been waiting for you for another hour, and you say you have no clues?"

Chen Ji came for the ice flow and the files, and now that he had both, he couldn't just leave. He thought for a moment and asked, "How did Liu Shiyu die? Did you kill him?"

Yun Yang shook his head: "No, he couldn't stand the torture and hanged himself."

Chen Ji frowned: "Is his body still in the inner prison?"

"Yes, you want to see it?" Yun Yang became interested and threw the melon seeds in his hand on the table: "I'll take you there."

Yun Yang led Chen Ji deeper into the inner prison. They went down several stairs and passed through several floors before reaching the deepest part. Chen Ji could even hear the sound of a flowing underground river.

"Look, it's inside. There's only one body, Liu Shiyu," Yun Yang walked in holding a torch.

Liu Shiyu was about thirty years old, thin, with fair skin, a pale face, a sticking tongue, and incontinence.

This is a typical sign of death by hanging, nothing unusual.

When Chen Ji saw the corpse, he held his breath and felt uncomfortable.

Yun Yang joked: "I thought you were really omnipotent, how come you can't even look at a corpse?"

Chen Ji calmed down and said, "Master Yunyang, being able to look at the corpse of one's own kind indifferently is not something to brag about... Liu Shiyu did not commit suicide, he was murdered to silence him."

Yun Yang shook his head, "You are wrong this time. I have killed many people, so I have more experience in this matter. All the signs of his death are similar to those of being hanged. I have helped many people hang themselves, and the faces of the hanged people are pale, their tongues are sticking out, and they are incontinent. This is correct. You may wonder if he was strangled to death before being hanged. No, the faces of people who are strangled are crimson purple, and I am familiar with this."

"In theory, what Lord Yunyang said is correct," Chen Ji nodded.

"Huh?" Yun Yang was puzzled.

Chen Ji said: "But these can be forged."

The cause of death by hanging was that the carotid artery was blocked and the brain was deprived of oxygen.

Because the carotid artery is blocked instantly, the veins can still work temporarily, so people who die by hanging will have a pale face, while people who are strangled will have a crimson purple face.

The person who killed Liu Shiyu to silence him must have known the principle behind it, so he fabricated the illusion of death by hanging: the tongue can be strangled out, acupuncture can cause incontinence, and precise strangulation of the sinus artery can cause a pale face.

The other party was a killer who professionally faked suicides, but he missed only one detail: his feet.

Chen Ji explained: "When a person hangs himself, his toes are drooping, almost perpendicular to the ground, and he will develop rigor mortis after two hours. Even if the person is put down, he will still be in that position. But look at Liu Shiyu. Before he was strangled to death, his legs kicked hard because he struggled, and his two feet were fixed in different directions."

After hearing this, Yun Yang looked thoughtful: "Is that so... Let's go back to the A floor, bring a death row prisoner over, and give it a try and we'll know!"

Chen Ji and others returned to the upper level, where he watched two spies dragging a death row prisoner over.

The prisoner had wet his pants before he was hanged.

Yun Yang sat at the table, eating melon seeds while sneerfully saying, "This is the civil servant of my Ning Dynasty. On the surface, they look strong and unyielding, but in reality, they are vulnerable."

Chen Ji hesitated and said, "Master Yunyang, what is his crime?"

"He collaborated with the enemy and betrayed his country. He secretly forged household registration and road books for the Jing Dynasty spies," Yun Yang turned to the spies and said, "Hang him on the roof. I want to observe him!"

Chen Ji wanted to say something, but finally chose to keep his mouth shut.

The next moment, the spies put a rope around the prisoner's neck and hung him on the roof, kicking away the stool under his feet.

In just a few seconds, the death row prisoner was completely motionless.

Everyone just waited like this, with the corpse hanging in front of them, but Yun Yang was drinking tea and eating melon seeds as if nothing had happened, as if the person hanging was not a person but a pig.

Chen Ji just focused on flipping through the files to pass the time.

Two hours later, the spy took the body down from the roof, and just as Chen Ji had said, the toes were stretched straight.

Yun Yang clapped his hands and exclaimed: "Before, we just hung people up, but never took them down. I didn't even notice this detail!"

Chen Ji said calmly, "Someone wants to kill and silence the witness, which means there is a big fish behind Liu Shiyu. There is more than one person in the Liu family who is colluding with the enemy. Liu Mingxian, the second wife, and Liu Mingde, the first wife, are both suspects."

Yun Yang frowned and said, "Liu Gun will be back in Luocheng in a few days. If I go and provoke the Minister of Personnel without any evidence, wouldn't that be asking for trouble? Are you trying to trick me into jumping into the fire pit?"

In the room, Chen Ji held the oil lamp, the flame flickered in his eyes. "How could it be? I was counting on Master Yunyang to promote me. But Master Yunyang also said before that Jingchao's spies were harmful to the frontline soldiers. Why is he trying to protect himself now?"

Yun Yang sighed, "Every failure teaches you a lesson. I only knew how to kill people before, and I've only been in the position of the Zodiac for half a year. It would be a shame if I lose it... It's not easy to be in the officialdom."

Chen Ji looked at the other party and asked sincerely: "Master Yunyang, you and Master Jiaotu are good at killing people. Master Neixiang is extremely smart, why would he send you to do something you are not good at?"

Yun Yang was puzzled: "Yeah... Could it be that the Minister of Internal Affairs wanted to use our murderous nature to kill the Liu family? The Minister of Internal Affairs sent us here to kill people, so what should I do..."

He subconsciously picked up the teapot and wanted to pour a cup of tea for Chen Ji, but then he thought, no, he had only poured tea for the Prime Minister before!

He put the teapot back on the table. "But now even if we know that someone killed Liu Shiyu to silence him, it's hard to find evidence against the Liu family. How should I continue my investigation?"

Chen Ji shook his head: "There are too few clues at the moment, and I don't have any good suggestions. But, Master Yunyang, don't you think that Old Master Liu's death is too strange? As soon as he died, you were immediately put on the defensive. My master was invited to diagnose a disease, but the carriage he was riding broke down halfway, and he didn't see Old Master Liu at all."

A flash of thunder flashed through Yun Yang's mind: "Old Master Liu may not be dead!"

(End of this chapter)