The missing hint

"Should we put him on the bed and cover him with a blanket?"

"If you want to then do it," Hua Tianshu spoke as he revealed, "We have already changed the situation. Due to our presence, he escaped faster."

"Huh?"

"He was supposed to stay here till the morning because according to the maid and the two guards that had seen Jie Fu Lian leaving, he had left in the morning."

"So he killed him and stayed here till the morning before escaping?" Jie Fu Lian frowned as he asked.

Hua Tianshu nodded his head, "Since the blanket hadn't been soaked in blood when the maid had first arrived, it is safe to assume that he was placed on the bed and covered with the blanket in the morning, right before the maid arrived."

"But why would he wait like that?" Jie Fu Lian asked as he moved closer to the corpse and stared at it.

"Even though the situation was changed, the memory can't be altered. The maids and Guards would still testify the same even though the scene of the murder has changed. We have till morning to figure out why the murderer stayed. That's five hours from now. Five hours should be enough for us to examine the corpse."

Jie Fu Lian nodded his head as he heard this, but instead of looking at the corpse, he first looked at the surroundings as he asked, "Could he have been searching for something in the room?"

"No," Hua Tianshu shook his head as he revealed, "Nothing was stolen from the room but..."

"But?"

"When he was found, Bai LiuXian's spiritual core was missing."

"Isn't that natural? Since he died, it should have disappeared."

"It should have disappeared but it wasn't present because it had been ripped out while he was still alive."

Jie Fu Lian's eyes widened a bit and he immediately stopped looking around the room. He moved towards the corpse and examined it carefully.

Somebody had clearly tried to frame Jie Fu Lian but framing him was probably not the only reason why the murderer had killed Bai LiuXian. To say that he had killed the boy just to steal his spiritual core would also be wrong since the boy's spiritual core wasn't that great.

Although he had practiced cultivation a little, his cultivation level wasn't even enough to be accepted as a student by a small cultivation sect. His spiritual core was also probably at the starting stages of formation and had nothing special about it.

So why would the killer take the spiritual core...?

Unless of course, there really was something special about the boy's spiritual core that Jie Fu Lian wasn't considering!

"Are you sure that's the only thing missing?" Jie Fu Lian asked with a smirk but without waiting for an answer, he added, "Because his soul also seems to be missing."

"Huh?" Hua Tianshu looked to be a little surprised at this sudden revelation.

In most commonly recorded cases, after the death of a person, the soul was scattered into seven parts and aimlessly drifted around the murder scene before disappearing.

Bai LiuXian had been killed just half an hour ago and that too, in front of their eyes so the pieces of his soul should have still been floating around.

"He stole the soul as well?" Hua Tianshu asked with his eyebrows furrowed together in confusion.

Jie Fu Lian shook his head as he spoke, "It isn't that easy to collect a soul. If he had wanted to collect the soul, we would have noticed it."

"Then?"

"He destroyed it completely," Jie Fu Lian revealed, "He stole the boy's spiritual core, killed him, and destroyed his soul."

Hua Tianshu frowned as he heard this and immediately looked at Bai LiuXian's corpse with a complicated gaze.

"Either the murderer had a very deep grudge with this boy or there was a specific reason why he simply could not let this boy live."

Jie Fu Lian's words were quite accurate and believable.

The reason why the murderer killed Bai LiuXian was either out of deep hatred or because he had no other choice.

"I find the latter explanation to be more believable," Jie Fu Lian added with a sigh as he pointed over at the two empty cups of tea, "After all, if he really hated him, he wouldn't have the patience to sit down and have a cup of tea nor would he have the patience to wait around the corpse till morning before leaving."

Hua Tianshu had always felt that there was something weird about this case, but now, he felt as if this case had been carefully planned beforehand with motives that couldn't be understood by others through a simple investigation.

"He destroyed the soul and stole the spiritual core. If he stayed around till morning, it couldn't have been to simply tuck the corpse in bed. He was probably looking for something else as well. This means we have something in front of us that was supposed to be taken by the murderer. It could be evidence as to why this boy was killed."

"Do you want my help or would you examine his body alone?" Hua Tianshu asked as he looked at Jie Fu Lian.

Jie Fu Lian pursed his lips into a thin line as he looked at the gruesome corpse and spoke, "I would not enjoy examining his body but let me try it alone first. If I need your help, I'll call you."

Hua Tianshu obediently nodded his head as he heard this and quietly walked over to the door and watched Jie Fu Lian working.

Jie Fu Lian started checking the corpse carefully. First, he checked whether all the organs were there, then he checked whether all the bones and teeth were there. He checked the veins, the hair, and even the skin.

When he figured out that most of them were intact, he smiled as he started checking for any abnormalities in them.

He didn't know what he was looking for but he was sure he'd know what it was once he'd found it.

Two hours passed and Jie Fu Lian finally figured out what the murderer had failed to collect.

"It was blood!" Jie Fu Lian enthusiastically exclaimed as he called Hua Tianshu over.

"What happened?"

"Blood!" Jie Fu Lian exclaimed as he raised his head to look at the man and asked, "You said the blood soaked through the blanket, didn't you?"

Hua Tianshu nodded his head, "That's right."

"But was there any blood on the floor?"

Hua Tianshu shook his head.

"It's because the blood was cleaned up and replaced completely!" Jie Fu Lian pushed himself off the ground and he showed Hua Tianshu his palm that was smeared with Bai LiuXian's blood, "The murderer stayed till morning to drain out and clean the blood before replacing it with somebody else's blood."

"How can you be sure?"

Jie Fu Lian smirked as he heard this question and confidently replied, "Because this blood belongs to a demon."

Hua Tianshu's eyes slightly widened and he looked to be a bit taken back by this sudden piece of information.

In the first place itself, the blood of demons and humans was very different from one another. The color and consistency were all the same but while human blood had no spiritual energy contained within it, a demon's blood had demonic Qi mixed with it.

The demonic Qi mixed with the blood was pure and could only be detected by a high-ranking demon or a cultivator who had achieved at least the peak stage of the Sage realm.

Jie Fu Lian, as the demon king could clearly detect the demonic Qi mixed with Bai LiuXian's blood but since it was unexpected to find such a truth about Bai LiuXian, Jie Fu Lian took over two hours to actually try sensing any demonic Qi mixed with the blood.

"In the official investigation, there was nothing noted about the demonic Qi mixed in his blood so it must mean that the blood was not his," Jie Fu Lian confidently continued with a small proud smirk, "So we can safely assume that what the murderer wanted to erase was Bai LiuXian's demonic heritage. He swapped out the blood so as to not let the demonic Qi be found out, stole the spiritual core because it was a spiritual core of a demon, and destroyed the spirit so that Bai LiuXian's spirit could never be summoned to speak the truth."

"The murderer was also related to demons," Hua Tianshu spoke up as he added, "He used the art of controlling spirits."

"That's right," Jie Fu Lian nodded his head as he spoke, "The murderer was a demon who killed another half-demon named Bai LiuXian and framed me, a half-demon as well. Since his one crime targeted two people who just happened to have a connection with the demonic realm, it would seem that his hatred for demons is quite strong."

"But why try to hide Bai LiuXian's demonic traits?" Hua Tianshu frowned as he asked.

The fact that the murderer killed a demon and framed another demon clearly indicated his hatred for demons but wasn't he a demon as well?!

If he truly hated demons, then why would he try to make sure that Bai LiuXian wasn't revealed to be a demon?

"The answer is actually pretty simple," Jie Fu Lian sighed as he spoke, "It's because of me."