Obtaining Top Art on Family's Extermination Night

Chapter 338: Chapter 173: Framing

The lights of countless homes flicker on as cooking smoke rises. Another day of firewood, rice, oil, and salt has passed.

A person desires many things in life, yet the most fundamental is simply three meals a day.

But when it came time to prepare a meal, no smoke could be seen... Naturally, that was because they no longer needed to eat.

How can the dead eat?

Body after body lay exposed, right before the eyes of Fang Shuwen and Long Qingzhi.

They were the inhabitants of this village.

Long Qingzhi’s face was deathly pale. She stared at the scene before her in disbelief.

She had seen plenty of bodies, but they had all been those of Jianghu people.

People of the Jianghu live on the knife’s edge; death and injury are unavoidable. If you don’t want to die, stay out of the Jianghu.

But these were all decent, ordinary folk.

The times were harsh, and their lives were already difficult. Fang Shuwen and Long Qingzhi had seen many ruined villages on their journey, and mutilated corpses by the roadside were a common sight.

But seeing so many ordinary villagers’ bodies laid out before her was still something she couldn’t accept.

She subconsciously clenched her fists, a torrential fury rising within her.

"Who did this?"

Fang Shuwen wanted to ask the same question. He approached a body, his brow furrowed.

The body’s chest was caved in. From the looks of it, the person had been killed by a single punch.

Moving to another body, he saw this one had been killed by a palm strike.

He couldn’t identify the specific Martial Arts technique, but judging by the wounds, the moves weren’t sophisticated. The killer had simply used overwhelming Inner Strength to beat these villagers to death.

Fang Shuwen walked on, examining each body, trying to deduce what had happened from the wounds.

At the village entrance lay the bodies of several old men. They must have been sitting there playing chess. Some had died right next to the game board, while two others had fallen at the mouth of the street.

The last few bodies were scattered about.

It was easy to picture the scene. When the killer appeared, the two who died at the entrance must have approached to speak with him, only to be struck down without mercy. The others had been playing chess. Witnessing such a scene, they would have scattered in terror. Some tried to flee deeper into the village, while others were killed by the chessboard before they could even stand up. And those who tried to run didn’t make it, either.

"This wasn’t the work of bandits. The bodies aren’t mutilated, nor is it the work of someone practicing a Demon Technique."

Fang Shuwen paused.

"They came here specifically to kill.

"They only used their fists and feet, no weapons..."

"Brother Fang, what have you found?"

Seeing Fang Shuwen’s expression grow increasingly grim, Long Qingzhi couldn’t help but ask.

Fang Shuwen took a deep breath. They had reached the center of the village, which wasn’t large. Here, bodies littered the ground.

He held up a hand.

"Qingzhi, you and Dabao, wait for me here."

"Alright."

Long Qingzhi nodded.

With a turn, Fang Shuwen’s figure vanished, reappearing in an instant at the other end of the village.

Here too lay many bodies. Fang Shuwen’s gaze swept over them, and his pupils contracted when he saw the tiny corpse of a child.

The next moment, he took a deep breath and looked at the ground.

The footprints on the ground were clear.

They were the footprints of the villagers...

"Judging from the distribution of the bodies, they were terrified by the sounds of slaughter inside the village and tried to escape from here...

"Unfortunately, they didn’t succeed.

"Someone blocked them, forcing them to turn back, and in the end, they all died here.

"They erased the footprints of the person who blocked them, but this made the remaining tracks look abrupt and strange."

There was nothing in front of the bodies, yet the villagers hadn’t dared to take a single step forward.

It was as if they were facing an invisible wall. This was because someone had erased the tracks.

Others had sprinted back the way they came, but they too had met their end.

"This wasn’t the work of one person. It was a group, an organization.

"One person did the killing, creating the illusion that the entire village was massacred by an individual, while the others blocked the village’s other exits, stopping anyone who tried to escape."

Fang Shuwen slowly closed his eyes. When he opened them again, they were filled with a chilling glint. He turned and, in a flash, was back in the center of the village.

When Long Qingzhi and Fang Dabao saw him return, they both looked over. Long Qingzhi wore a complex expression as she asked cautiously:

"Brother Fang, did you find anything?"

"...Yes."

Fang Shuwen’s expression was impassive.

"It’s highly likely this was aimed at us."

Long Qingzhi’s already tense expression instantly filled with anger and grief.

She had suspected as much when she saw the innocent bodies in the village. Now, hearing Fang Shuwen say it, she believed his judgment, even without any proof.

And Fang Shuwen hadn’t made such a claim without reason.

First, this village was on the path Fang Shuwen and Long Qingzhi had to take.

Second, the killers only used their fists and feet, no weapons, which matched the characteristics of Fang Shuwen’s own Martial Arts.

Furthermore, the killers weren’t after wealth, nor were they practicing a Demon Technique. Why go to the trouble of slaughtering an entire village?

It was either revenge or a frame-up!

Finally, they could have attacked as a group, yet they deliberately made it look like the work of one person.

Though this left behind clues, in the current Northern Domain, who would bother to look that closely?

Taking all these points together, the only conclusion was that someone wanted to frame Fang Shuwen for the crime of slaughtering innocent people!

"These people... they’re dead because of me."