NABC Chapter 458 A Still Striving Push
Chapter 458 A Still Striving Push
Chapter 460 A Still Striving Push
Blueberry has both good news and bad news.
The good news is that someone successfully rolled a [Great Success] die with a score of 98 while trying to extract fingerprints.
This allowed him to bypass the cumbersome procedures of accessing royal documents and, with only rudimentary tools such as charcoal ash and a brush, successfully extract clear fingerprints left by Hugo XVI in the court of the United States five hundred years ago.
He even used these fingerprints to completely recreate a typical day in the king's life: the formal morning prayers, meals alone, browsing unimportant books, stamping pre-prepared memorials, receiving visitors arranged by the count, and finally, a walk in the garden.
The bad news was that all the fingerprints he found along the way matched the ten fingers on the headless corpse.
This can only mean one thing—whether it's the king who can only play the role of a puppet in the palace day after day, or Hugo XVI who met with visitors yesterday, or the cold corpse lying in the temporary morgue right now, from beginning to end—it's all the same person.
Hugo XVI, is probably indeed dead.
The headless body was placed on a carved wooden bed that served as a makeshift mortuary. It was clear that an Ice-type Pokémon had performed embalming on it, as the skin still retained an unnatural bluish-white color and had not yet begun to rot.
The headless body lay stiffly on the bed. Because the face was not visible, it was impossible to tell whether Hugo XVI's expression was peaceful. If it were the Hugo that Yueju knew, he would probably die with his eyes wide open in disbelief.
"—Could I have guessed wrong?"
Looking at the severed neck that appeared to have been brutally cleaved by an axe, the mage instinctively wrapped his arms around his neck, letting out an incredulous groan, as if a chill had swept over him.
"If you've come to this point and still hope to uncover the truth behind His Majesty's murder through conjecture, I advise you to give up now."
Lopa, the bodyguard who had always been by his side, scoffed disdainfully. "Even if we assume, in your imagination, that His Majesty could conjure a scapegoat out of thin air, like a Pokémon using the 'Substitute' move, how would this substitute infiltrate the heavily guarded royal gardens? Why would it willingly come to its death? And even if such a person did exist, how would His Majesty, having faked the corpse, disappear from the scene?"
"These problems aren't really problems—the kingdom is so big, as the king of this country, isn't it easy for Hugo to find someone to be a scapegoat?"
Lingju sighed reluctantly.
"As for the method of disappearance—whether it's 'teleportation' or using a Flying-type Pokémon, there's always a way. Anyway, this is Unova 500 years ago, and there aren't even any security cameras around. The so-called 'perfect locked room' is simply impossible, which is why I tried to bypass the locked room itself and look for a breakthrough from physical evidence or corpses."
"I knew you chose the detective route because you were looking for shortcuts," Lopa scoffed, his tone laced with sarcasm that seemed to refer to no one in particular. "Looks like your forensic investigation has failed miserably. So—what brilliant ideas do you have for autopsies?"
"That's rather intriguing."
Yueju pointed vaguely at the corpse in front of her, as if she had an autopsy report in her hand, and said in a recitation, "Look at the cross-section of this head. Although it was obviously chopped off with an axe or some other weapon, the cross-section is relatively flat. Brutal, but not crude—I mean, the wound is mainly a vertical slash, with almost no trace of lateral pulling."
"What does this mean?" The guard frowned, looking puzzled.
"This means the executioner wields the axe from top to bottom," the magician gestured, mimicking the action of tilling the land with a hoe.
"The axe cleanly and efficiently split the cervical vertebrae using its own weight, rather than cutting back and forth like a throat cutter."
This means that when the victim's head was severed, they were already lying flat on the ground—either dead or unconscious. This also explains why there was far less blood on the front of the body than expected. Typically, victims who die from a slit throat will have a large amount of blood splattered on their front; if the torso had been upright, that blood should have remained primarily on the front, but in this case, more blood was deposited on the back.
"What's the problem with that?"
"Two questions." The magician, like a lobster soldier who had just molted, proudly held up two fingers—
"First, since the body was lying on its back when it was beheaded, the axe marks left on the tree trunk must be faked. In addition, the splattered blood on the bark must have been left by someone when the body was moved to the ground."
"No, that's impossible." Lopa's face was full of doubt. "Your reasoning is too far-fetched. Can you really conclude that His Majesty wasn't killed under the tree just because there were no tearing marks on the slash marks? We saw it with our own eyes."
"A striking image always leaves a preconceived bias in people's minds, which is why we need evidence and reasoning." The magician shook his finger in a pretentious manner.
"Besides the suspicious points on the body, there is another piece of evidence." He pulled out a piece of paper from somewhere, on which was a simple diagram of the marks on the tree trunk.
"Wanlong never includes useless clues in mystery plots. Therefore, these three seemingly random parallel scratches must hold the key to solving the case."
The magician turned the blueprints to the guard. "If you firmly believe that the decapitation occurred under the tree in the center of the garden, then perhaps you should temporarily put yourself in the killer's shoes and answer me honestly: once your first axe has split His Majesty's neck, where would the second axe land to completely sever that noble head?"
"—"
Lopa stared silently at the three diagonal lines of varying lengths on the drawing.
"Let me tell you!" Yueju said without waiting for a reply. "After the first axe blow, the head, now without skeletal support, will tilt to the other side of the cut. Regardless of whether this causes the body to topple, if the killer insists on continuing to decapitate the head, subsequent blows will inevitably be angled to sever any remaining muscle tissue—and the closer to complete separation, the more the axe blade will deviate from its intended point of impact."
He emphasized the diagram with his fingertip: "In any case, such behavior could never have left these three almost parallel marks! The reason why there are such illogical chopping marks on the tree trunk is because they are fake! Someone I initially suspected was His Majesty, but it turns out to be someone else's murderer, cleverly carved these preconceived 'axe-cut marks' on the tree trunk in an attempt to mislead our investigation towards this fruit tree!"
6
"I still can't fully agree with your reasoning."
The bodyguard, Lopa, took a few deep breaths, his tone regaining its businesslike calm. "Ultimately, my duty is merely to monitor your actions. Whether your conclusions are correct is ultimately for Count Leclerc to decide."
An awkward silence followed his words. After a moment, he looked back at the magician. "I remember you discovered a second problem, didn't you? What was it?"
"It's nothing serious," Lanju shrugged, relaxing. "After realizing the first suspicious point, the second anomaly should have been obvious."
"You don't need to act like you've already found the culprit, playing hard to get and keeping everyone in suspense," the guard said sarcastically. "Besides, you're not a real detective; at best, you're just a homeless intermediate-level mage."
"Identity doesn't mean everything. Whether you're a true detective or a king of high rank, you can be momentarily at a loss for what to do. The problem is..."
The magician Yueju stepped forward solemnly. "Since the axe marks and bloodstains on the tree trunk are likely fakes, and the body was indeed lying flat somewhere when it was beheaded, then where exactly was this dismemberment atrocity? You see, although there were disordered footsteps inside the garden, apart from under the fruit tree where the body was, there were no large areas of bloodstains left anywhere else."
"Are you implying—" Lopa caught a horrifying conclusion from Blueberry's narrative.
"That's right," the magician said decisively. "I believe King Gojong VI was not murdered in the garden at all!"