“Martial Kim, you need a damn break.”
“Like I said, my dear, evil never sleeps.”
“You’re just showing off at this point! S-stop wobbling!”
Fae Fae was stable, but Martial Kim had pushed himself to the brink, using his inner mana to revive her. Normal humans would have collapsed, or even died on the spot, but as a martial artist and magical cultivator, all he need was a week of rest to recover.
Still, he couldn’t stop; there were loose ends to tie up.
Martial Yellow Sister helped him to the Constabulary prison, where they found a once-rich scholar, Noonien, now stripped of his title, chained, and disheveled. Hair out of place from his hair bun, clawing all over his face like cobwebs; his once glorious robes replaced with the dirty fabric of prisoner garments; and filthy chains bounding his slender hands that were clean of any hard labour.
When they entered his cell, Noonien spat out, “What more can you do to shame me?”
Martial Kim ignored his exhaustion, "I came to thank you on behalf of the Palanquin Bearers. You finally did the right thing and told the truth. Most likely they’ve returned to their families by now."
Noonien wanted to muttered back, but paused. Where had he seen Martial Kim before? The scholar started to panic "Who are you? Guards! Guards! R-remove this stranger!"
Martial Yellow Sister snapped, "Shut up! This is all your fault! You don’t have the luxury of anyone saving you!"
Martial Kim calmed the tension, "I am simply a tavern owner passing by." He sighed, "I still have to say: it was cruel to burn the palanquin. It held a lot of the memories of Fae Fae for the Palanquin Bearers."
Noonien scowled, "Why do you care? My life is ruined anyway." As he came up with another insult, he then noticed something.
Martial Kim was holding onto a silver sword with a long red sash tied to the handle.
The very sight of it made everything clicked in the scholar’s mind. “I-it was you! Th-the ghost in the court room! The villagers from Three Lily Hamlet! Even the Judge trapping me out of the blue! It was your doing...Why that’s it! Y-you’re that damn doctor’s nephew back in North Cloud City! You knew about me from the start, everything!”
Martial Kim chuckled, controlling his energy to stay conscious. "More like we had an educated guess about you. Again, we didn’t have much solid evidence. However, thanks to you we have the answer today."
"I didn’t kill Fae Fae!"
"Betraying her was no different than running a real sword through her.”
Noonien sagged, torn between denial and guilt. "I swear I didn’t murder her! Yes, I paid her to stay away from me, but I wouldn’t have killed her!"
"Only the dead can keep a secret," Martial Kim replied cooly.
Noonien’s despair deepened as he realized his life was over. “...Does, my wife and father-in-law know about this?”
“Why don’t you ask them yourself,” Martial Yellow Sister rummaged into her sleeve and tossed a letter at the scholar’s knees with a flat look. “This came in the mail for you a while ago. Ink still wet.”
Noonien grasped at the letter and opened it...it was when he read halfway, a doomed smile cracked on his lips, “Hah...hahahaha...Divorce papers...Custody of our daughter... Even my beloved father-in-law has removed my name from the Turquoise Family ledger... Hahaha...Hahaha...He always told me, I was his favourite...”
Martial Kim simply shook his head, "The guillotine has yet to touch your neck and already Noonien Turquoise is dead to the world.”
Noonien laughed bitterly. It was in this moment he realized the pain he felt, must have been exactly what Fae Fae felt. Oh, the divine irony in all of this. Over 10 years to achieve the right of Imperial Scholar, only to lose in in barely half the time.
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The realization alone was enough to send his heart into a pit of despair. Resigned to his fate, he simply borrowed an ink brush to sign his name on many papers.
It was in this moment, Martial Kim had this strange feeling gnawing at him from the back of his mind. Like a robin pecking on the nape of his neck, trying to tell him something. But what? What was so important about Noonien right now.
Martial Yellow Sister didn’t pay much attention and simply went, “Why don’t you write your official confession while you’re at it. Perhaps if you make it convincingly sorry enough, they may chop your head faster to make it painless.”
“I didn’t murder Fae Fae,” Noonien continued to write without a care, his hand shaking and quivering across the papers, “I was no where near the Capital or Green Lion Valley when she was reported missing.”
Martial Kim chanced to ask, “You claim innocence, but you never mentioned an alibi.”
Noonien realized what he just said...and he had mixed feelings about it. “Morning Glory.”
Martial Yellow Sister raised an eyebrow, “The flower?”
“The brothel.”
Martial Yellow Sister slapped the scholar in the fact, making him drop his ink brush and make a mess across the papers and letter.
“YOU BASTARD!” she shouted with fury, “YOU HAD A WOMAN GIVE UP HER BODY TO FEED YOU! YOU EVEN WENT BEHIND HER BACK TO POP OUT A FULLY FUNCTIONAL FAMILY! HOW ARE YOU NOT SATISFIED!?”
“Y-you don’t understand a thing!” Noonien screeched back and defended himself with his other hand, “Young Lady Turquoise has a devil of a temper! Anything out of place, she takes it out on me!”
“THAT IS NO EXCUSE TO GO THREE TIMING YOU—”
“Martial Yellow Sister, wait!” Martial Kim cried out. He grabbed at Noonien’s hand out of the blue to examine it, feeling the joints and the bones, “Get my needle kit. Now!”
Something came up in the prison cell, but the answer was not clear. Not until Martial Kim thoroughly examined Noonien’s arm from the wrist to elbow, using his acupuncture methods to diagnose a problem only he saw. When he finally had an answer, he reported it to everyone in the Judge’s office.
The Judge himself immediately passed out in his chair.
“WH-WHAT DO YOU MEAN WE GOT THE WRONG MAN!” The Judge hollered the second he came back to life through the power of smelling salts, “M-Martial Kim! Pl-please explain to me what did I miss in all of this!?”
The young master of Moon Tavern revealed his findings with a flat tone, “Noonien’s right arm is crippled.”
“What!?” Inspector Lee quickly seated the Judge before the old man collapsed again. “He’s been a scholar all his life, writing more papers than I’ve had birthdays. How can he be lame?”
“His right arm is injured,” Martial Kim explained. “An old injury from his journey to take the Imperial Examination. He spent years recovering and retraining to regain control but even now he can barely write with a brush or hold chopsticks. He’s physically incapable of stabbing anyone six times with a hairpin.”
“No way!” Inspector Lee was fuming! “You’re saying he’s not Fae Fae’s killer? What about his left arm? Surely he can still do some damage with that!”
“Fae Fae’s wounds were made by a right hand, with great force,” Martial Kim confirmed, “Even if Noonien’s left arm is not crippled, he barely used it to develop the necessary strength to pierce through bone. Furthermore, I found no traces of either hands having a bad reaction to Deadwood worm toxin even if he found the right medication. Glove or not, Noonien truly couldn’t kill Fae Fae.”
“Damn it!” Inspector Lee erupted, throwing and kicking bookshelves across the office in frustration. “After weeks of investigation, another dead end!? No. Not like this! And there is no way I’m letting him go scot-free! Not after what he did to Fae Fae all these years!”
Martial Yellow Sister interjected, “Noonien’s a villain! He caused this tragedy! He must pay for his actions! For abandoning Fae Fae and treating her like garbage!”
“He will pay,” Martial Kim assured. “He’ll lose his Imperial Degree and place in the Order. Even the Turquoise Family completely abandoned him. There is no way to socially recover from all this. Noonien is ruined through and through. However, we cannot execute him as a killer.”
“BUT MARTIAL KIM!”
“Do you want the real murderer to walk free?” Martial Kim asked, causing his disciple to fall silent.
Understanding her pain, the young master had to play the devil’s advocate and be clear about all this. “Whether we are members of law and order or wandering heroes of the martial arts world we all fight for one thing: justice. We have a code to live up to: always do right to the people and redress wrongs. We cannot afford to abuse our power and bias beliefs to frame people we think are villains no matter how much we hate them!”
Martial Yellow Sister wanted to deny it all and just rip Noonien a new hole or two...but...she bowed her head, forcing her to accept the reality of it all. Seeing her pain, Martial Kim pulled her into a one sided embrace to console her, like a father cheering up her daughter. She hit him a few times, but ended up hugging back, defeated.
“Noonien may have escaped execution,” the young master cooed to calm his disciple, “But he won’t escape any punishment. You’ve done everything you could for Fae Fae, you didn’t fail her.”
Martial Yellow Sister said something, probably something snippy. But her response was muffled in Martial Kim’s stomach, so she just let it be with a buried pout.
After a long silence, the Judge stood up to his wobbling feet. “Martial Kim is right. We can’t close this case so hastily. We must ensure the exact truth. If Noonien isn’t the one who stabbed Fae Fae, this means someone else is involved.”
“But who!?” Inspector Lee groaned at it all, “We have to restart our investigation, but we checked everywhere. All nooks and cranny! It took us nearly a month to narrow it onto that bastard Noonien! What did we miss? Martial Kim, who else could be the killer!?”
Martial Kim...wished he had an answer to that.