Miss Huaizhi suddenly spoke up, interrupting him. She spread her hands and told him, seriously and solemnly, "These are obviously two completely different matters."
Inu River was stunned for a moment, then nodded. "I'd like to hear the details."
"I… cough, cough, had a friend who once told me this: beheading and agleam are not the same thing."
Huai Shi raised a finger and said seriously, "It's not just about whether you completely cut it off, or leave a little bit still attached. Even the way you strike and the whole line of thinking are completely different.
In your eyes, is there really only one way under the sun to chop a neck?"
"Even if you put it like that…"
Mr. Yamada was about to speak, but got interrupted again.
"Listen up. What I'm telling you is—between beheading and agleam, there's a decisive difference!"
Huai Shi said coldly, "What we call beheading is a very clean, very satisfying method that doesn't drag on all sticky and tangled… when it's time to cut, you cut. You get that?
It's the simplest, most straightforward way to put an end to something."
"Its purpose is to kill something, make something disappear, let something say goodbye to this world so its toxicity doesn't spread endlessly.
You just need to find the right spot, then one stroke, and everything is over. Anything beyond that is unnecessary.
That's why you need to be all the more cautious—examine your goal, examine your own bias and ideas. If there's a second way to solve it besides this, then you shouldn't be using it.
Because a human life only comes once; there's no taking it back…"
What the fuck kind of ridiculous crap are you spouting.
Mr. Yamada really wanted to shoot her down like that.
But when she said these things, her expression turned solemn and grave, as if she were stating some irrefutable Truth. And she clearly wasn't going to let anyone cut her off.
"But that Agleam Murder Demon bastard is different."
Huai Shi narrowed her eyes and suddenly said, "If I didn't see wrong at the scene—some of those people were tormented before they died, right?"
She recalled again the corpse she had seen in that alley.
The brutal ravaging that took place before the beheading…
"For that guy, the focus isn't the beheading, but what happens before the beheading… The victim experiences pain, and that final agleam is just a bit of mercy he's gifting you.
From the very beginning, it's run completely counter to the basic idea of beheading."
Mr. Yamada flew into a rage, glaring at her. "You think that kind of wordplay with fuzzy concepts is going to work?"
"I'm just voicing some of my own thoughts. Weren't you the ones who asked?"
Huai Shi shrugged and spread her hands helplessly.
But as she looked over their faces, she couldn't help but smile. "Honestly, I don't know why he insists on killing this way, but I think he wants you to pay a price.
Could it be that among you… someone's got a guilty conscience about something?"
Silence. No one spoke.
Only Mr. Yamada's face grew darker and darker.
Inu River still kept his silence, as if he hadn't heard a thing.
Bingo.
It was as if Huai Shi could actually hear some illusory notification chime.
.
.
It wasn't long before the brief questioning finally wrapped up.
They hadn't managed to clear away the suspicion. Not that Huai Shi would believe them anyway, even if Deer's Sing Hall claimed they believed Huaizhi Sushi couldn't be the Agleam Murder Demon.
The final decision was that although she was a suspect, the suspicion wasn't strong.
During the investigation she wasn't allowed to leave the Li Jian family's estate or go out—basically a house arrest in another form. Maybe that earlier little excursion where she went out and killed like crazy had left some psychological trauma on the old men of Deer's Sing Hall?
Huai Shi didn't care about "personal freedom" anyway. She was just hired to cook; once the Chef Demon trial match ended and Zhenxi's affairs were settled, she'd just walk away. Was Deer's Sing Hall really going to dare stand in her way?
After she escorted her out, even Amber felt like she was about to collapse from exhaustion.
"It was just for show. Why do you have to keep tempting fate?"
"Heh, if they could handle me they'd just drag me off directly. Since they can't, they put on a show instead. Good cop, bad cop, they want all the lines for themselves at Deer's Sing Hall…" Huai Shi sneered, not buying the slightest bit of those old geezers' fake solemn act.
"You'd better be careful. Those old guys might be planning how to dispose of you once the match is over." Amber shook her head. "What do you think of the Sublimators in Deer's Sing Hall?"
"Mediocre. Just about reliable enough to Maintain public order. But when it comes time to actually do something, they're trash to the core, can't get anything done."
Huai Shi commented, "If you're honestly counting on that lot to capture the Agleam Murder Demon, you might as well hope they die somewhere they won't cause trouble for anyone else."
"That's normal. The Left, Right, and Center magistrate offices are nothing more than agencies Deer's Sing Hall uses to coordinate with the MPD to Maintain social order. The ones who really have Ability were long ago drafted into Huo Fu Gai Department and Thief Change Department, not to mention the 'Seat,' the elite imperial guard that nominally serves only the Former Emperor."
After casually giving a few warnings, Amber asked, "From the sound of it, you seemed to have gotten some kind of lead back there?"
"Maybe it's just me judging others by a petty man's heart, doing some reverse-engineering based on my shallow criminal experience."
Huai Shi thought for a long moment and said seriously:
"I think there's something wrong with your family."