Ch 137: Sir Ye Guceng, This Is A Slap In Your Face!

Li Zhaoting’s face turned green with anger.

Jiang Yuyan giggled, covering her mouth.

It must be said, the suspicions are very reasonable.

Li Zhaoting, since his debut, his identity and origins have spread throughout the martial world. His family is impoverished, yet he constantly enjoys luxuries. Where did this money come from?

Li Zhaoting also has something to say about this.

“Where did the money for the house come from?”

“I helped Min Zi Hua once, and he gave it to me.”

“Where did the money for decorating the house come from?”

“I helped Hua Manlou once, and he gave it to me.”

“Where did the money for going to Fan Lou come from?”

“I earned it from painting.”

“Where did the house in the capital city come from?”

“It was a reward from the Emperor.”

“Where did the gold on my person come from?”

“The Liancheng Treasure; I took a bag of gold.”

Every penny has a plausible source.

But, the people of the martial world don’t know that!

Experts adept at using willow branches and bamboo, besides Bashan’s Returning Wind Dancing Willow Sword, isn’t it Li Zhaoting?

When Li Zhaoting first debuted, he had no divine weapons to rely on. He used willow branches and bamboo as weapons, or casually broke a branch and twisted it into a wooden sword.

It’s only natural that people would suspect him.

If no one suspected him, that would be unnatural.

“Young Master, did you really go robbing?”

“I rescued a little girl.”

“Ah? Wouldn’t the little girl be very miserable?”

“Very miserable. She has to make the bed, fold the quilts, wash clothes, sweep the floor, chop wood, fetch water, and cook every day!”

“Oh~~”

Jiang Yuyan nonchalantly snorted.

From childhood to adulthood, she did these things every day.

She had already gotten used to it.

When she was with Ke Baisui, she ate the leftovers of her masters. Now, they eat together; Jiang Yuyan eats whatever Li Zhaoting eats.

Most importantly, Li Zhaoting is handsome.

Far more pleasing to the eye than that old geezer Ke Baisui.

Someone is framing Li Zhaoting. Li Zhaoting can’t travel slowly. Jiang Yuyan can’t ride a horse, and the carriage is too slow, so she directly rides with Li Zhaoting. Old Wine’s endurance is excellent, and the speed isn’t affected.

Jiang Yuyan weighs over ninety pounds, about the weight of the Overlord Spear. With Old Wine’s stamina, he can completely support Li Zhaoting using the Overlord Spear to charge for a hundred rounds.

Without incident, they quickly returned to the capital city.

When Li Zhaoting arrived in the capital city, the Four Great Constables had not yet returned. It is said that experts along the way wanted to rob Gu Jianhun, but they were all repelled by the Four Great Constables.

If it were Tie Shou and Zhui Ming handling the case, they would be relatively more lenient and sometimes make things easier.

Leng Xue stated, “I’m not a public toilet; I don’t provide convenient services. Either scram or die.”

As for Wuqing, needless to say, his killing qi shocked Zhuge Zhengwo. When handling cases, he often kills criminals under the pretext of resisting arrest. I don’t know what’s wrong with those people; they always try to provoke Wuqing.

Wuqing, with his disabled body, became the senior brother of the Four Great Constables, making his junior brothers completely convinced. Do you really think he’s a vegetarian? Even Guan Qi doesn’t dare to underestimate him!

……

“Wife, I’m back!”

Li Zhaoting skillfully shouted.

No one came out to greet him.

After asking the maid, he learned that Feng Suzhen went to the palace to see the Empress Dowager, Lan Fenghuang and Tianxiang went shopping, Meizhu took the Five Rats to the Daxingguo Temple snack street, and the house, besides empty rooms, only had a freeloader left.

A four-browed starving ghost.

He almost emptied the wine cellar!

Li Zhaoting threw the reins to the maid: “Take Old Wine to the stable. This is Jiang Yuyan, my personal maid. Arrange her accommodations.”

After speaking, Li Zhaoting went straight to the living room.

Lu Xiaofeng was eating and drinking heartily in the living room, dirty from head to toe, as if he had rolled around in the mud eight hundred times. He held meat-stuffed flatbread in one hand and a wine jug in the other, his mouth stuffed full.

Seeing Li Zhaoting, Lu Xiaofeng was excited, but choked on the meat-stuffed flatbread. He continuously drank half a jug of wine before swallowing it, then contentedly belched.

“Wonderful! Damn wonderful!”

Lu Xiaofeng patted his chest and complained, “You don’t know what I’ve been through lately! I practiced my backflip skills for half a month to compete with Si Kong Zhaixing, but that old monkey also practiced for half a month.”

“And then?”

“I lost, two backflips.”

“Did you go digging for earthworms again?”

“One thousand and eight earthworms. I searched in the mud for ten days and nights, finally gathering the number, but the old monkey, in front of me, casually threw them away.”

“That was his goal: to make the elegant Lu Xiaofeng dig earthworms in the mud, and when you’re covered in dirt and have finally gathered the number, to dump them in front of you. Guaranteed to make you furious.”

“Sigh~ The old monkey is getting more and more mischievous.”

“Do you know how I’ve been lately? First, I witnessed the duel between the Immortal Fairy and the Demoness, then I fought Gu Jianhun twice, and my Ziwei Soft Sword is almost broken.”

“The Ziwei Soft Sword needs maintenance, so you temporarily have no weapon, so you only use green bamboo as a weapon, creating dozens of blind people and robbing 800,000 taels of escort silver.”

“800,000 taels isn’t enough to spend!”

“There are also Hua Yu Xuan’s seventy volumes of priceless calligraphy and paintings, a batch of high-quality goods from Zhen Dong Bao, 90,000 taels of gold leaves from the Jinsha River, and eighteen strings of pearls from the Eighth Prince’s treasury. Isn’t that enough to spend?”

“Gold and silver jewelry is fine, but what good are antiques and paintings? My paintings are worth more. I set up a stall at the entrance of Fan Lou to sell paintings; I can earn 5,000 taels in a morning.”

“Your paintings only resemble the originals; they lack the essence. The paintings collected in Hua Yu Xuan are all masterpieces: authentic works by Gu Kaizhi, Wu Daozi, and Yan Liben; wild cursive scripts by Zhang Xu and Huai Su; all priceless treasures. It’s said that deep within the storehouse, there is an authentic work by Wang Xizhi.”

Lu Xiaofeng looked at Li Zhaoting mysteriously, rubbing his hands: “To be honest, although I don’t know anything about calligraphy and painting, hearing these names, I suddenly want to do business with Si Kong Zhaixing.”

Li Zhaoting waved his hand: “You’re wrong. In the black market business of disposing of stolen goods, calligraphy and painting have the lowest value. The target is too obvious, and the difficulty of disposal is too high.”

Stolen gold and silver can be spent directly.

Stolen calligraphy and painting must be sold for money.

Sell them to whom?

Who doesn’t know that your paintings are stolen?

Stolen things will definitely be crazily underpriced.

The disposal of jewelry and jade is roughly a 50/50 split, but calligraphy and paintings are either a 30/70 or a 20/80 split. If you’re in a hurry, it might even be a 10/90 split.

Unless it’s for some collectors who hire flying thieves to steal at a high price, but that’s not disposing of stolen goods, it’s earning money from skills, measuring the thief’s skills.

Spending 100,000 taels to hire Si Kong Zhaixing to steal a famous painting isn’t because the painting is worth 100,000 taels, but because Si Kong Zhaixing’s skills are worth 100,000 taels.

After Hua Yu Xuan loses these paintings, they will definitely report it to the Six Gates, providing a specific list. All large pawnshops and black markets know which paintings Hua Yu Xuan has lost. If someone brings the paintings to dispose of them, they will definitely lower the price drastically, at most giving 20% of the price.

To dispose of stolen paintings, you must delay for two years, until Hua Yu Xuan goes bankrupt, until the heat dies down, and then, through black market brokers, find a few collectors and sell them to them. This way, the disposal is slow, but the price is stable, and the safety is higher.

Or send them to the Western Regions or overseas to dispose of them.

Lu Xiaofeng’s eyes glazed over from Li Zhaoting’s long analysis. He complained, “Did you really used to be a robber? Why are you so familiar with disposing of stolen goods?”

“My father taught me in Dali.”

“Dali doesn’t care?”

“My father is now the Song Dynasty’s envoy to Dali, the Song Dynasty’s mascot. Dali doesn’t care about my father.”

“What do you think of the Green Bamboo Thief?”

“Intentionally provoking me! This guy is desperate for money; he has a great hatred for me and wants to kill two birds with one stone.”

“Do you have many enemies?”

“Few!”

Li Zhaoting spat out two words decisively.

Li Zhaoting truly has few enemies.

He basically takes revenge the same day.

Revenge doesn’t wait for Chs or pages!

Li Zhaoting doesn’t have any enemies?

His overt enemies are all dead.

Covertly, who the hell knows?

Like Gu Jianhun and Ou Feng, Gu Jianhun would never have imagined that the root cause of his being plotted to death was because he casually bullied a medical clinic apprentice.

Li Zhaoting is really strange. Jin Jiuling doesn’t hate his superiors who didn’t promote him, nor does he hate the Four Great Constables whose promotions are skyrocketing. Why hate me?

I just stole your limelight twice!

Jin Jiuling has been in the government for thirty years. Why is his temper so bad? Is he going through menopause?

Li Zhaoting sighed, “Lu Xiaofeng, do you know what the most dangerous thing is now? It’s not the Green Bamboo Thief continuing to commit crimes, but that…”

“Copycat crimes!”

Lu Xiaofeng clenched his fist tightly.

He remembered when he was in Peach Blossom Fort, Li Zhaoting’s brilliant deduction of the Iron Shoe Thief.

Twin tricks, copycat crimes…

The harm of copycat crimes lies not only in producing more victims but also in disrupting the situation. The more copycat crimes there are, the more chaotic the situation becomes. The original Green Bamboo Thief concealed the heavens and crossed the sea, perfectly hiding his tracks.

Lu Xiaofeng had no doubt that if the killer were caught in two or three months, there would be at least twenty or thirty copycat crimes in the meantime, all of them real killers!

The Green Bamboo Thief is too easy to imitate.

Big red cotton-padded jacket, big beard, green bamboo…

Anyone, regardless of age or gender, can imitate it.

This outfit is designed for easy imitation. The more copycat crimes there are, the easier it is to muddy the waters.

Lu Xiaofeng anxiously scratched his head.

Li Zhaoting curiously asked, “Lu Xiaofeng, didn’t you go digging for earthworms? The Green Bamboo Thief’s case only broke a few days ago. How do you know so much?”

“I… this… hehe…”

“Tell the truth! Or get a beating! I just learned Buddha’s Palm; do you want to try it?”

“Don’t you dislike fist and kicks?”

“I transformed the nine palm techniques into sword techniques, creating nine moves of Buddha’s Light. Really, I can’t wait to see if Lingxi One Finger can withstand Flicker Sword Qi.”

“I don’t want to try!”

Lu Xiaofeng’s face turned green and purple.

“Who told you about the case?”

Li Zhaoting made a flicking gesture.

“It was me!”

A voice came from outside the door.

Jin Jiuling stood elegantly at the door, holding a folding fan, a thousand-tael masterpiece. Compared to Li Zhaoting’s fan, it was only slightly inferior.

Can “slightly inferior” be considered so?

There’s no way!

Li Zhaoting’s fan came from the Southern Tang Treasury, a treasure of the imperial palace. From the fan ribs to the fan surface and the calligraphy and paintings on it, everything is worth thousands of taels.

Even if Jin Jiuling wanted to buy it, he couldn’t.

There are simply no similar works on the market.

Even if Jin Jiuling spent a lot of money to have Zhu Ting or Yue Qing make a copy, they would find that they couldn’t gather the materials.

In terms of the folding fan itself, Jin Jiuling’s fan is definitely top-notch. It can be used for pressure point striking, grappling, and capturing thieves; it’s a very useful weapon.

“It’s Police Chief Jin. Please sit.”

“Young Master Li, you really worried me to death. Rumors say that you are the prime suspect. I really don’t want to be enemies with you.”

“I was at Emei when the incident happened. Unless I can split myself, how could I have committed the crime?”

“Of course, it was in the style of the Iron Shoe Thief. You asked Lu Xiaofeng to help. Your builds are similar. Lu Xiaofeng’s Lingxi One Finger is perfect for attacking the eyes. He and Si Kong Zhaixing and Hua Manlou are good friends, and they’ve got all the channels for theft and disposal. The two of you working together, who can catch you?”

Jin Jiuling looked at the two with a worried expression.

Li Zhaoting said seriously, “Lu Xiaofeng wouldn’t do that, especially not blinding people.”

“Why?”

“Because Hua Manlou is blind. Friends should learn to empathize. Lu Xiaofeng knows Hua Manlou’s pain. How could he do such a thing?”

Li Zhaoting patted Lu Xiaofeng on the shoulder.

The two exchanged knowing smiles.

Jin Jiuling laughed heartily, “What great loyalty! Worthy of the famous Lu Xiaofeng. I admire you!”

After a pause, Jin Jiuling asked, “Young Master Li, can you use this kind of move? Don’t misunderstand, the Green Bamboo Thief uses green bamboo. I’m just doing my job.”

Li Zhaoting said one word: “Yes!”

“Aren’t you and Hua Manlou friends?”

“Of course, we are friends. Lu Xiaofeng empathizes with pain, I empathize with hatred. I believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth. If I met the Green Bamboo Thief, I would definitely destroy his eyes!”

“Young Master Li is righteous.”

Jin Jiuling poured Li Zhaoting a glass of wine.

Li Zhaoting thought, “What nonsense.”

After a moment’s thought, he asked, “I just heard Lu Xiaofeng explain the case. One of the victims was the Eighth Prince? With the Eighth Prince’s personality, who would dare to provoke him?”

The Eighth Prince, named Zhao Yuanyan, was Zhao Guangyi’s eighth son. Zhao Guangyi loved him very much and began giving him titles from a young age, calling him “Twenty-Eight Tai Bao.”

During the reign of Song Zhenzong, Zhao Yuanyan served as a governor, a chancellor, a grand tutor, and a governor, and was ennobled as the Prince of Jing.

When Song Renzong ascended the throne, he was promoted to grand marshal, grand tutor, governor of Yangzhou, and was ennobled as the Prince of Jing.

Zhao Yuanyan was a genuine imperial uncle, the same level as the Eighth Prince. There are always some disagreements between uncles and nephews; one must be careful.

Zhao Zhen was kind and gave Zhao Yuanyan many rewards. Zhao Yuanyan had no shortage of money. He recruited many experts and formed a guard team in his mansion.

He often had martial artists practice.

Although most of them were a rabble, at most third-rate, there were also several martial arts experts.

Even if there weren’t any experts in Zhao Yuanyan’s mansion, who would dare to rob a prince’s mansion?

Robbing Hua Yu Xuan or hijacking a carriage is banditry.

Robbing the Eighth Prince or hijacking a prince’s mansion is rebellion.

The former doesn’t necessarily require solving the case.

The latter must be solved within a time limit.

Also, there is a great expert in the mansion.

Half a year ago, Ye Guceng, the City Lord of White Cloud City, was hired by the Eighth Prince to be the young prince’s swordsmanship teacher.

Li Zhaoting asked with a smile, “Police Chief Jin, I’m curious about one thing. How did the Green Bamboo Thief blind the Guard Captain Jiang Chongwei under Ye Guceng’s nose and steal the jewelry and jade?”

Lu Xiaofeng looked at Jin Jiuling in confusion.

Several days ago, Jin Jiuling, in order to get Lu Xiaofeng involved in the case, asked his senior brother, Master Bitter Melon, to lure Lu Xiaofeng with vegetarian dishes and use reverse psychology to stimulate him. Lu Xiaofeng subconsciously agreed and saw the complete case files.

This part was not recorded in the case files.

Bypassing the mansion guards isn’t difficult.

Bypassing Ye Guceng is pure nonsense.

Ye Guceng’s unique move, “Flying Immortal,” is the essence of both swordsmanship and light body skill. Being able to use “Flying Immortal” in the name suggests his incredibly high light body skill.

Ye Guceng dislikes managing mundane affairs, but if someone robs his mansion in front of him, if he doesn’t do anything, would Ye Guceng still have any face? What would the martial world say about him?

Jin Jiuling explained with a wry smile, “Ye Guceng wasn’t in the mansion at the time. Someone asked him to appraise a sword.”

“Who could invite Ye Guceng?”

“Me!”

Jin Jiuling gritted his teeth.

With this statement, he became the prime suspect.

Jin Jiuling didn’t want to do this.

But he had no choice.