Chapter 462: The Shoe Revealed
After hearing Sun Shaozong's seemingly simple yet miraculous inference, everyone's eyes fell on the feet of Jie Chen and Jie Xiu.
Jie Chen was quite efficient. He helped his apprentice beside him and quickly took off his shoes and socks. He then lifted up a pig's trotter that smelled sour and rotten.
"Look, look carefully! See if there are any marks on my feet!"
The smell choked everyone, even Sun Shaozong couldn't resist it. He covered his nose and simply looked at him for a few times, then hurriedly asked him to retract his magical powers.
Then, all eyes were focused on Jie Xiu, but his face was ashen and he didn't move for a long time.
Naturally, everyone became suspicious, and Le Chi even shouted, "Quit it! Take off your shoes and socks immediately!"
Jie Xiu gritted his teeth, bent down and took off his shoes and socks, revealing two feet with several red and swollen marks. However, he protested loudly amid the exclamations of the crowd: "So what if there are marks on my feet? Don't forget, on the night Jie Chi was killed, I was punished to kneel in the hall until dawn. How could it be possible..."
"Our masters have already seen through your trick!"
Qiu Yunfei interrupted him with disdain and sneered, "The monk Jie Ming was actually your accomplice. It was he who killed Jie Chi that day, but afterwards you two had a quarrel, so you nailed Jie Ming to death outside the mountain gate!"
Almost everyone in Shuntian Prefecture knew about this inference, but the monks in the hall were hearing it for the first time and immediately started discussing it in an uproar.
"That's right, that's right, Jie Ming has always obeyed Jie Xiu's orders!"
"But this is murder after all..."
"So what? When Jie Ming gets angry, he will kill people during the day, not to mention at night!"
"Amitabha!"
Seeing the chaos in the hall, Monk Liaochi shouted a Buddhist name to suppress the discussion of the crowd, and then narrowed his eyes and questioned Jie Xiu: "Jie Xiu, is what Master Qiu just said the truth?!"
Jie Xiu opened his mouth, intending to continue arguing, but when he saw Sun Shaozong's confident look opposite him, he felt that no matter how much he argued, it would be of no avail.
So he simply threw the jar into the air and roared in anger: "Yes, I killed all of them! But so what?! I am acting on behalf of heaven, I am clearing out the shameless scum who blasphemed the Buddha!"
At this point, he no longer cared about the hierarchy, and pointed at Lu Chi with gritted teeth, saying: "Originally, I didn't want to kill so many people , but it was you who didn't distinguish right from wrong and privately favored Jie Nian, which forced me to resort to this desperate measure!"
"shut up!"
“Bold!”
"rude!"
"How dare you..."
Before he finished speaking, several loyal monks who came to protect their master jumped out from both sides and shouted at him to stop.
After hearing this, Le Chi's face naturally became a little gloomy, but he managed to maintain the demeanor of a senior monk. He put his palms together and asked calmly: "Jie Xiu, you keep saying that you are doing justice for the heavens and exterminating the scum of Buddhism, but do you have any evidence?"
"evidence?"
Jie Xiu sneered, "I heard it with my own ears, how could it be false?! More than a month ago, when Jie Ming and I went to the city to do some work, we unexpectedly encountered..."
It turned out that more than a month ago, when the two were out, they accidentally met their childhood sweetheart. When they were about to approach her to chat for a few words, the woman turned around and ran away in a panic.
If this woman had really run away, there wouldn't have been so much trouble later.
But it just so happened that after she turned around and ran a few steps, she tripped over the hitching post and fell to the ground, covering her face and sobbing.
So Jie Xiu and Jie Ming rushed forward to support her and repeatedly asked her what had happened.
After listening to the woman's crying, I learned that she was unfortunately drugged and raped by the monk Jiexian when she was burning incense last winter. Later, she was "introduced" to become Jiezhi's exclusive Buddhist sister-in-law.
In fact, the reason why this woman became a pilgrim of Fayuan Temple was because two of her playmates of the same age became monks in Fayuan Temple.
Therefore, the two were angry and ashamed, and they went back and secretly spread the news, intending to let the Discipline Institute thoroughly investigate the matter. However, just as Jie Chen started to investigate, he was stopped by Jie Nian.
All the monks were silent when they heard this, except Jie Chen, who stamped his feet anxiously and said, "Since you have a witness, you can just call that woman to the Discipline Hall, but why do you have to..."
"Summon the witnesses to the Ordination House?"
Jie Xiu sneered disdainfully, "Let's not talk about whether she is willing to come forward and testify . There are hundreds of eyes in this temple. How can you guarantee that the fact that she lost her virginity to a thief won't become known to everyone?!"
"She now has a husband and children. Once this matter gets out, how do you expect her and her family to cope?"
"By then, even though the world is big, I'm afraid there won't be a place for her anymore!"
"Instead of doing that, it would be better for me to get rid of these evildoers myself. Firstly, I can let them atone for their sins with their death, and secondly, I can protect her!"
"Amitabha!"
At this point, he put his palms together and chanted the Buddha's name, revealing a sense of solemnity. He said with a dignified look: "The Buddha said that if I don't go to hell, who will? I am just a monk who protects the Dharma, and I am doing what I should do."
Awesomely impressed by the piety on his face, all the monks were dumbfounded and speechless.
At this time, Sun Shaozong laughed and said, "So, you are following the Buddha's will by getting rid of your closest friends?"
Hearing him talk about this, the solemn look on Jie Xiu's face suddenly turned into a ferocious one. He tilted his neck and hissed, "I didn't want to, I didn't want to kill him! But he...but he didn't understand the principle of eradicating all evil! He actually wanted to let Jie Nian, the culprit behind the scenes, go, and drag me away with him to escape from the capital!"
"When he saw that I refused to agree, he even threatened to surrender to the authorities!"
"I was forced to do so, so I had no choice..."
"So you killed him?"
Sun Shaozong asked curiously, "But even if you want to kill him, there's no need to go to such lengths to pierce his heart with an iron spike, right? Is there any special meaning in doing this?"
Seeing that Sun Shaozong didn't care about how he explained, he was only curious about his method of killing and what mystery was hidden behind it.
Jie Xiu's momentum weakened a bit, and he gritted his teeth and said, "I originally planned to write blood words next to his body, and use this opportunity to draw suspicion to Brother Jie Chen."
"But I didn't expect... I didn't expect that when Jie Ming found out that I wanted to kill him, he didn't even show any intention of resisting. Instead, he looked relieved as if he was about to be freed!"
"So after I killed him, I suddenly became flustered and forgot to write the bloody words."
Damn~
No wonder Sun Shaozong couldn't guess Jie Xiu's intention after thinking so hard. It turned out that the plan was aborted only halfway through!
