You Are My Dearest Nemesis

Chapter 2

A young speckled rooster crowed at the top of its lungs standing proudly on a wooden fence. The artistic golden sun rose up in the far distance slowly painting the dark sky into a bright blue sky. Birds simultaneously tweet out in a chorus, singing a soothing and melodic tune.

The villagers started their daily routines, except for one house that was weeping in agony.

"Why didn't you come earlier?! It's all your fault he died! You don't care about the lives of us commoners!" a young lady whose face was smeared in snot and tears yelled at the group of disciples of the GuangluQing sect.

The said disciples calmly observed the young lady as if they were used to this type of rude behavior. She was tightly restrained by two servants in order to avoid her from acting rashly. An old lady walked forward bowing in respect,

"Please pardon her actions sir. Her current state of mind is unstable. Why don't you have a seat first."

She turned towards one of the servants as she ordered, "Take my daughter to her bedroom. Make sure she doesn't leave the room. Also prepare some tea and sweets for our guests."

The old lady's puffy eyes looked exhausted. Her pupils held an incomparable sense of distress due to the sudden death of her beloved son. She weakly smiled at the group of youngsters and focused her dull pupils onto the young man who had the sect's seal in his clothing.

"Young master..."

"Qing Wu..." The young man interrupted taking a seat at one of the tables of the tea house. Qing Wu was a man in his twenties with an aura of a scholar. He had clean features giving outsiders the feeling of a calm yet resolute character.  

The rest of the disciples followed the same action. Once everyone had settled down, he gestured the old lady to continue on the incident.

The old lady whose name was Gu Mei described her son, Gu Ping's death in detail. Starting off with the numerous deaths that had taken place and how they abruptly stopped a month ago, she finished off with the abnormality of her son's death.

There was another important fact about the murders she specifically mentioned. Every incident took place on the second and the fourth day of every week. Even with the anomaly on the time and place, the two days had not changed.

Xiao Ming, a disciple in his teens eyed Gu Mei in doubt, "Does he always clean the horse stable? Why don't the servants do the job?"

The old lady gave off an awkward smile before answering, "We are well-known in this village as a wealthy family. Of course we have money but compared to the people in the city we work hard to earn through managing a tea house. We could only afford three servants. Two of them were accompanying my daughter-in-law just now. Those servants we have here work only for the tea house to serve the customers. My son has been taking care of the horse stable since he was a teenager. Every morning he wakes up at 5 o'clock to clean it."

"Were there any abnormalities in your son's behavior the day before his death?" Qing Wu inquired.

"No, t-there wasn't." Gu Mei's voice was shaking and tears started to pour out as she stammered, "Y-young master, p-please find the culprit before it's too late!"

Qing Wu didn't say anything. He stared at the lady for a few seconds and slightly nodded his head, getting up as he spoke to the other disciples, "Let's go."

The group of disciples decided to head towards the mountain at the back of the village. They discovered that there was another incident that had happened in the outskirts of the village at the said time of Gu Ping's death. The guards of the village who had their night duties around the mountain area were all unconscious but none of them were hurt nor did they remember why they were unconscious.