The Double

Before they reached the backyard, they smelled a heavy scent of blood. Feng Yutang suppressed the urge to vomit and continued forward. Before even reaching the center, he saw twenty neatly arranged corpses on the ground of the courtyard.

To call them corpses, Feng Yutang hadn’t even made out the details, but there was no need to see more. Due to the snow that had fallen all night, a layer of snowflakes covered the bodies, cold and stiff, long devoid of breath. The bloodstains had already congealed, and Feng Yutang stepped back, barely steadying himself against a pillar to avoid falling.

In his heart, he counted, three times in all, exactly twenty people.

Twenty people—he had sent out twenty of his own men, plus three of Princess Yongning’s. Now here lay twenty, but where were the other three?

Feng Yutang asked, "Where are the others?"

The subordinate who spoke first stepped forward, his voice still laced with uncontrollable panic, "My lord, a total of twenty. The other three are nowhere to be found; we couldn’t discover their traces."

If they couldn’t find them, perhaps they were still alive. Right, the people of Princess Yongning were highly skilled; they wouldn’t die so easily. Hope suddenly surged in Feng Yutang’s heart as he asked, "Is there any trace of them?"

The subordinate shook his head, "We found no trace of them, but in the Dark Forest’s swamp, we discovered their weapons... My lord, it’s more likely bad news than good."