Solving the mystery with knowledge and discovering killing intent
Inside the treehouse, Fang Yuan finds signs of long habitation: a soot blackened iron stove, still damp torn clothing hung to dry, weapons stained with dark blood, and against one wall a bamboo paper bearing his own painted face, pinned through the middle with a dagger. The scene makes the intent obvious: someone has been living in the treehouse with Fang Yuan as the target. ch. 74
Fang Yuan first suspects the target might actually be Fang Zheng, the Gu Yue clan’s only A grade talent nurtured in three years, since among the three clans on Qing Mao Mountain only the Bai clan’s Bai Ning Bing, now rank three, has ever been successfully raised to A grade, making Fang Zheng the kind of rival the Bai or Xiong clan might want removed before he matures. But he doubts a rival clan would plant so obvious a spy, since old man Wang lived at the mountain foot rather than inside Gu Yue village, and concludes the portrait is meant for him alone. ch. 74
Fang Yuan recalls three memories: Wang Er’s odd calm when he drew a bow on Fang Yuan while the other hunters begged for mercy, a hunter’s remark that Wang Er, nearing nineteen, refused to marry, and the hunters’ account that old man Wang’s elder son Wang Da died hunting on the mountain three years earlier. The same hunters add that Wang Da’s widow was afterward driven to suicide over rumors that she wanted to remarry, and that old man Wang always chased off young hunters who came seeking his guidance. Piecing these together with the three red circles old man Wang left off the bamboo paper he drew for Fang Yuan, Fang Yuan concludes that Wang Da never died. ch. 74
He reasons that Wang Da instead gained fortune enough, most likely from a dead Gu Master’s remains, to become a Gu Master in secret three years ago, and that his family faked his death and moved out of the village to protect him. They killed Wang Da’s wife when she would not go along with the deception, and used the red circles to mark three hideouts he could rotate through on the fringes of the three clans’ territory. Fang Yuan concludes that Wang Da must have returned home at some point, found his whole family dead, learned Fang Yuan was responsible, and pinned his portrait to the wall as a vow of revenge. ch. 74
Fang Yuan recalls killing Wang Er, old man Wang, and Wang’s daughter for the beast skin map without hesitation, and feels no regret now that a demonic path Gu Master has emerged from it. He reasons that killing the three quickly denied Wang Da the chance to learn of him through his father and left Wang Da working from stale information, and that two young hunters who also knew of the killings have likely already been silenced. ch. 74
