Chapter 139: Returning to Work

Dongsheng watched as the entire skull became covered in mud, gradually taking on the shape of a human face. He couldn't help muttering to himself that no matter how hard one squinted at this lump of dark mud, it was impossible to make out a human face. Did she think she was playing house, molding clay figurines like a child?

After shaping a nose out of mud and pressing it into place, Wen Jing wiped her hands and waited quietly for the mud to dry.

Unlike Dongsheng, who was filled with doubts, Ji Changge appeared completely confident, seemingly placing full trust in Wen Jing.

Once the mud had dried, Wen Jing took a knife and carefully shaved away the excess clay from the facial area, carving out the contours of the facial features. Slowly, a human face emerged before them.

However, the features of the sculpted face were extremely vague. The soil was inherently rough, and the dark lump made it impossible to discern clear traits. Naturally, this was also due to Wen Jing's clumsy mud-sculpting skills. She was not a professional sculptor; she was merely treating a dead horse as if it were still alive, resorting to a makeshift method she had thought of on the spot.

Yet, Wen Jing was quite satisfied with her creation. She looked up at Ji Changge and Dongsheng, who both wore blank expressions.

"Such a clear face, can't you see it?"

Dongsheng was left speechless. Such a "clear" face? Was he blind?

He glanced at Ji Changge, who wore a look of detached contemplation, his eyes fixed on the bridge of his nose. It seemed this wasn't just his own illusion.

The two men shook their heads in unison. Wen Jing felt rather helpless. In her view, given the current conditions, that face was already clear enough. It was one thing for that blockhead Dongsheng to fail to see it, but even Ji Changge couldn't make it out—why on earth was that?

"Come in, all of you." Ji Changge said towards the doorway.

Before his voice had even faded, seven or eight guards trotted in.

"My Lord. What are your orders?"

"Can you tell what this... person looks like?" Ji Changge pointed at the clay sculpture, momentarily struggling to find the right word to describe the facial creation.

The guards stepped forward and stared at the bizarrely shaped mud sculpture for a long time.

"This subordinate thinks it looks a bit like Magistrate Liang." One guard said, scratching his head.

"How on earth does that look like Magistrate Liang? It clearly looks like Old Madam He who sells sweet bean curd on Changning Street." Another guard chimed in.

The guards began arguing back and forth, completely unaware of Wen Jing's increasingly darkened expression.

"You may all leave now." Ji Changge said, raising an eyebrow.

"Yes, My Lord." The guards filed out in a gust of wind.

Wen Jing was speechless. How on earth did that face resemble Magistrate Liang's fat and ugly mug in the slightest?

However, the important thing wasn't who she thought it looked like, but rather that the Daoist nuns needed to be able to recognize whose face it was at a glance. If the guards couldn't recognize it, it meant the clay sculpture lacked sufficient recognizability. How could she vividly present the appearance of the woman in her mind to everyone present?

"It seems that something sculpted from mud falls far short of a real person, after all. If it could be drawn, people would surely be able to tell who it is at a glance." Dongsheng said with a hint of pride. Back then, as soon as Daoist nun Mingzhi gave her description, he had been able to draw Zhu Chengde. He had always been quite confident in his artistic skills.

A drawing? A thought flashed through Wen Jing's mind. How could she have forgotten about this?

"Go get your brush and paper quickly. I'll describe it, and you draw." Wen Jing's eyes shone with light as she said excitedly.

Dongsheng nodded and hurried outside.

Taking advantage of the time it took Dongsheng to prepare, Wen Jing proceeded to make clay head sculptures for the rest of the skulls. Before she even finished the second one, Dongsheng was fully prepared.

"The first deceased person: round face, slender eyes, indistinct eyebrows, small mouth, neat teeth, indistinct nose."

As Wen Jing spoke, Dongsheng rapidly sketched on the paper. Soon, the outline of a face took shape.

While Dongsheng was drawing, Ji Changge had already dispatched men to fetch a few Daoist nuns.

"Take a careful look. Do you recognize the person in this drawing?" Wen Jing placed the finished sketch by Dongsheng in front of the nuns.

Dongsheng looked at the nuns with eager anticipation, almost believing that in the next second, one of them would blurt out a name.

The nuns stepped forward, inspected the drawing closely for a few minutes, exchanged glances, and all shook their heads.

"Take another close look. Can you really not tell who it is?" Dongsheng asked anxiously. With the drawing rendered so vividly, how could they not recognize it unless they had never laid eyes on this person before?

Mingyuan looked closely once more, a troubled expression on her face. "This humble Daoist truly has not seen this person. If she were someone from our Daoist temple, this Daoist would definitely recognize her."

Dongsheng was just about to flare up when Ji Changge stopped him. With a wave of his hand, Ji Changge dismissed the nuns.

Wen Jing and Dongsheng looked at each other in dismay. Where on earth did the problem lie?

She racked her brain to recall the facial reconstruction techniques she had learned in the past. Because advanced three-dimensional computer facial restoration technologies had already existed by then, traditional manual reconstruction methods were merely taught as general knowledge. Wen Jing never could have imagined that she would end up transported to an ancient era where technology had regressed by several centuries, forced to do this kind of grueling manual facial reconstruction labor.

Looking back at the clay sculpture and the portrait, Wen Jing seemed to understand where she had gone wrong.

Watching Wen Jing wash the dirt off the skull all over again, Dongsheng said with a deflated air, "Qiniang, are you going to try again?"

"This clay is wrong."

Without answering Dongsheng's question, Wen Jing spoke more to herself. With that, she hurried away, leaving a bewildered Dongsheng and Ji Changge behind.

"Aren't all soils the same?" Dongsheng asked Ji Changge.

Ji Changge spread his hands; he had no idea what Wen Jing meant either.

They watched as Wen Jing returned carrying another bucket of grayish-white clay, into which she added some dye and water.

"Find some small bamboo sticks and paste." Wen Jing said while mixing the mud.

Ji Changge instructed the guards to fetch the items Wen Jing requested.

"If we had plaster, we could make a model of a head and insert nails directly into it. But clearly, there's no time to find plaster and make a model now. Time waits for no one; we can only use paste to stick bamboo sticks onto the bone to simulate the thickness of the skin tissue." Wen Jing explained. Although Dongsheng and Ji Changge still wore baffled expressions after the explanation, the mistake she had just made was presumptuously applying modern facial features. The facial parameters of ancient people were not entirely identical to those of modern people. Because she had been in a rush to reconstruct the face earlier, she hadn't followed the proper steps, resulting in twice the effort for half the result. Indeed, haste makes waste.

Wen Jing measured each bamboo stick with a ruler, cut them into small pieces of varying lengths, applied paste, and inserted them into the skull at the forehead, temples, cheekbones, bridge of the nose, cheeks, jaw, and lips.

Looking at the skull bristling with bamboo sticks, Dongsheng couldn't help asking, "Qiniang, this isn't sugar-coated haws on a stick. Why are you stabbing so much bamboo into it?"

Sugar-coated haws... The corners of Wen Jing's eyes twitched. She really wanted to slice open Dongsheng's head to see what was inside. At a time like this, the only one who could still think about food was probably this blockhead.

"This is to fix the thickness of the deceased's facial muscle tissue. In this way, the deceased's face can be restored to the greatest possible extent." Wen Jing explained.

"So that's how it is. Qiniang's method is brilliant." Ji Changge walked over to Dongsheng and said.

*Plop.*

Two bamboo sticks suddenly fell off. Dongsheng couldn't help covering his mouth and laughing, "Brilliant, truly brilliant."

Ji Changge's expression turned slightly awkward; this flattery had landed squarely on the hooves of a horse.

Wen Jing's eyes twitched a few times. She muttered inwardly that this was all because of the primitive conditions forcing her to use such a backward method. If she had used plaster to make a model and driven nails directly into it, it would have been much more stable. The paste hadn't dried yet, so naturally, things were bound to fall off.

"Lord Ji, has the owner of that sword been found? The owner of that sword must be the murderer. To slaughter over a dozen people in one go—truly ruthless and vicious." Wen Jing suddenly said to Ji Changge.

"The owner of that sword is definitely not the murderer!" Dongsheng sprang to his feet, quite agitated.

Wen Jing smiled slightly. "How does Young Master Dongsheng know that?"

Ji Changge looked at Wen Jing's teasing gaze, knowing she was mocking Dongsheng again.

"This... how could a murderer possibly leave their murder weapon at the crime scene? This is clearly someone deliberately planting it there to frame the owner of the sword. Such a simple logic is something even a ten-year-old child could see."

"Why would the murderer want to frame the owner of the sword?" Wen Jing continued to probe.

"Because... how would I know that? I'm not the murderer."

Wen Jing turned to Ji Changge. "Those dozen or so people, aside from arguing with the guards at the gate, only saw me and Ruan Qinglian before they were killed outside."

"Ruan Qinglian indeed has motive. However, it's unlikely she could have killed more than a dozen people in such a short time. She probably had accomplices." Ji Changge said.

Lian Cheng possessed formidable martial arts skills, and that sword was very likely thrown there by him. He had all along wanted to frame Dongsheng. It was entirely possible that he and Ruan Qinglian were accomplices. In that case, Qingliu must have been killed by Lian Cheng. He had originally thought she sent Qingliu to plant false evidence and hide the sword inside the Daoist temple, but discovering that Qingliu intended to throw the sword away instead, he killed her in a fit of rage, took the sword back, hung Qingliu's body from a tree to fake a suicide, and then slaughtered the merchants, leaving the sword behind there. Wen Jing thought to herself—the only thing that couldn't be explained was why Lian Cheng went to the trouble of staging Qingliu's death to look like suicide. Was he afraid she would suspect him?

"We have no evidence right now. Even if we arrest Ruan Qinglian and interrogate her, she won't utter a single word. When the Abbess and Mingqing died, she had an airtight alibi. Her disciple, Xuanyu, can testify that she stayed inside Qinglian Residence the entire time and never went out." Ji Changge said.

"Xuanyu could be providing false testimony. She is Ruan Qinglian's disciple, and furthermore, Ruan Qinglian is well-versed in various poisons and homicidal arts. Judging from the corpses of the Abbess and Mingqing, the killer possessed a thorough understanding of human anatomy, and was both bold and meticulous."

"Yet you said at the time that the killer was a rather plump woman." Ji Changge countered.

"What if there were two people? For instance, Ruan Qinglian and her disciple Xuanyu."

Ji Changge fell silent. What Wen Jing said was not entirely impossible. Ruan Qinglian also had a motive for murder; she had always been at odds with Mingqing, and as for the Abbess, the conflict most likely stemmed from an uneven distribution of spoils. (To be continued...)