Chapter 299 - People Involved (1/2)

Shi Junhe stood blankly three meters away from the bed and seemed to be nailed, unable to move a bit. He just fixed his eyes on the dead body on the bed.

“Father.”

Shi Qingxue’s low voice dragged Shi Junhe back to reality and also attracted Zhang Qiuyan’s attention.

As soon as she saw Shi Junhe, Zhang Qiuyan suddenly got up and rushed to him, crying, “You bastard. It’s you. You caused my husband’s death. It’s your fault.”

Her unreasonable denouncement made Shi Junhe in a daze. Zhang Qiuyan even waved her fist and wanted to punch him.

Fortunately, Shi Baojing was swift-handed and stopped Zhang Qiuyan in time, shouting angrily and anxiously, “Mother, stop!”

Shi Baojing summoned some servants and stopped Zhang Qiuyan from making a scene.

Zhang Qiuyan would have accused this daughter of her husband’s concubine of disrespecting her in the past, yet now Shi Baojing was the second prince’s fiancee. An unfavored prince was more powerful than an ordinary person. Zhang Qiuyan waved her hand but didn’t dare to slap Shi Baojing while seeing her silent and indifferent face.

Under Shi Baojing’s glare, Zhang Qiuyan withdrew her hand resentfully but didn’t show mercy while speaking. “I know that you want to make up to your uncle. Don’t forget that the one lying on the bed is your biological father. Will you ignore your father in order to gain wealth and glory?”

She was fierce both in look and voice while criticizing the girl and mentioned the crucial point.

If somebody with evil intentions made use of it, Shi Baojing would suffer a lot.

However, Shi Baojing still looked calm and wasn’t panicked or irritated as Zhang Qiuyan expected.

After Zhang Qiuyan said that, Shi Baojing just responded indifferently, “If you want to find the murderer and avenge Father, please keep your voice down, Mother.

“If you kick up a fuss, you may wrong good people, which is insignificant. If the murderer runs away because of this, can you take the blame?”

“I…” Zhang Qiuyan still wanted to use lame arguments and perverted logic and say that Shi Junhe had killed Shi Junfeng, but she was clear that she said that because she thought that if they hadn’t broken up the family and Shi Junfeng still lived in Duke Shi’s mansion, something like this wouldn’t have happened today. So she put the blame on Shi Junhe for Shi Junfeng’s death.

In fact, Shi Junhe was busy with Shi Baoning’s wedding yesterday and went to the Wenren family’s mansion this morning, so he didn’t have time to commit a crime.

Zhang Qiuyan finally quieted down. Although she still didn’t give in, she wanted more to find the murderer. So she stopped causing trouble and just shouted furiously, “Since you are so awesome, hurry up and find the murderer to avenge my husband. If you can’t, you should take responsibility for his death.”

In the end, Zhang Qiuyan just acted like a rascal.

However, Shi Baojing promised Zhang Qiuyan something in order to placate her and prevent her from making a spectacle of herself. She had told somebody to report to the government and the governor of the Capital Bureau would come later. Then Zhang Qiuyan left after Shi Baojing comforted her.

As for the others in the mansion, Shi Baojing pacified them all and they didn’t create a disturbance.

When the governor of the Capital Bureau Zheng Liangcai arrived, Shi Baojing could arrange the servants in the mansion in an orderly way to cooperate with the people from the government in investigation.

Although Shi Junfeng was a lowly official, his elder brother was a Rank-1 official, so Zheng Liangcai didn’t dare to neglect this case but trembled and brought the post-mortem examiners and runners.

They cordoned the crime scene off, examined the dead body and asked the related people…

Shi Junhe waited in the main hall for the news in the company of Shi Baojing.

During the period, he was in a trance all the time and it seemed that he hadn’t come to his senses from the sad news of Shi Junfeng’s death.

Shi Qingxue held Shi Junhe’s arm worriedly and asked cautiously, “Father, are you okay?”

Shi Junhe smiled with difficulty and wanted to say that he was fine, but he couldn’t speak a word after opening his mouth.

At last, he gave up his plan to conceal it and sat in a chair under Shi Qingxue’s support. He rubbed his furrowed brows and sighed in a low voice. “No, I am not fine at all.”

Shi Qingxue was not familiar with her uncle who was a fence-sitter and didn’t have a sense of presence, so she didn’t have feelings after he died.

However, Shi Junhe and Shi Junfeng had been brothers for so many years, and they were almost at the same age and had grown up together since childhood, so he loved this younger brother deeply.

Even though Shi Junfeng was timid, to some extent, Shi Junhe worried about him less than Shi Juncai.

But unexpectedly…

Shi Junhe raised his hand and covered his face, concealing his fragility which was revealed unconsciously.

After a long time, he asked in a deep voice, “Baojing, has anything unusual happened in your family recently? Did your father become anybody’s enemy?”

Shi Baojing was intelligent by natural endowments and good at observing.

In the past, because of her identity as a concubine’s daughter, she had to pretend to fall asleep even when she was “awake”, yet after she became Mo Junwen’s fiancee, she knew that even if she stayed out of it, she couldn’t jump out of the vortex.

She was innocent, but it was her fault as she was talented.

So these days Shi Baojing always consciously learnt more knowledge about the current situation.

As Shi Junhe asked, she answered in an instant, “Father is always cautious and never offends others randomly. Moreover, the political situation is unstable now, so he doesn’t want to offend anybody. It is impossible for him to make enemies.”

Shi Junhe nodded to show that he believed it.

The situation at the imperial court and in the whole country was unstable recently, and even Shi Junhe restrained himself a lot. Shi Junfeng wouldn’t be so stupid as to stand out and be a target.