## Chapter 712 – #142_The Witch Of The Golden Flower (8)
#712
1.
Tiredness, hunger, pain.
Ominousness, a sense of crisis, vigilance.
These negative emotions and sensations are alarm systems designed for human survival.
And Linne, with her cursed body, could sense threats and crises faster than anyone else.
“……”
The sense of smell is a process where odor particles inhaled into the olfactory mucosa are converted from chemical signals to electrical signals.
The key is that smells are ultimately particles.
These particles remain undiluted for longer when they are adsorbed onto something rather than floating in the air.
Linne immediately dropped to the floor like a hunting dog.
She closed her eyes and followed the trail of the blood-red scent that tickled her nose.
Soon, she was able to find a pool of scent particles, much denser than those floating in the air, that had formed into small droplets.
As expected, Shin Siwoo’s blood had been scattered on this ground.
However, the amount was not large.
At most, it would be a nosebleed level of bleeding.
Linne, crawling on the floor, encountered the scent of blood that stimulated her olfactory nerves again.
This time, it was not Shin Siwoo’s, but someone else’s entirely.
Most likely, it was Rosie’s.
“……!”
Linne’s shoulders stiffened as she stuck to the floor, tracking the scent.
The location was at the end of the wall.
Linne slowly raised herself to her knees and looked at the spot like a detective inspecting a crime scene.
A seasoned investigator like Linne could reconstruct the situation by looking at how the blood droplets had spread.
Combining the data extracted from her sense of smell in her brain, she looked again.
She could see the crimson floor and wall.
Blood droplets spread out radially, as if a soft, overripe tomato had been thrown onto the floor.
A pool of blood at the center.
The droplets had splattered quite high up the wall, so violent was the impact.
This pattern suggested that the cause was not a sharp weapon, but a blunt one.
“……”
Assuming that Siwoo’s main weapon was a spear, Linne clenched her fist.
Then, she made a motion of forcefully striking downwards.
That was it.
Whether she was conscious at that point was unclear, but Rosie had likely been executed in this manner by Shin Siwoo.
And if the amount of blood was simply compared, Shin Siwoo would have sustained minor injuries compared to Rosie.
“…Why?”
Linne pondered deeply.
She had mentioned that acts of violence were prohibited in Hexennacht.
She had also conveyed that in that case, Clifort, who effectively held the city’s administrative power, would directly take action.
Unlike his gentle appearance, Shin Siwoo was not a fool.
She knew that he could distinguish between his outward appearance and his true intentions, that he was capable of reasoning, and that he was the type to subtly scheme.
The reason why he would have done such a thing without any countermeasures.
Two possibilities emerged here.
First, Shin Siwoo had killed Rosie, taking advantage of a gap in the surveillance, and attempted to escape from under Linne’s wing.
If so, erasing the scent and disposing of Rosie’s body was an attempt to destroy evidence.
Thinking calmly, the first case was unlikely.
The rough bloodstains that had splattered all the way to the wall proved it.
What Linne read from these bloodstains was two forceful downward strikes, completely consumed by rage.
However, Shin Siwoo was not the type to lose his reason due to the excitement of battle.
Rather, he had the qualities of a strategic fighter who became calmer and more composed as the concentration of adrenaline in his blood increased.
He had maintained a clear mind even when facing Linne, a 22nd-level fighter, so why would he become unnecessarily agitated with Rosie, who was a relatively easy opponent?
This was unlikely to happen.
If it had been a premeditated murder from the start, he would have handled things much more calmly and cleanly.
Then, the weight shifted to the next possibility.
Second, he had killed Rosie due to some accidental conflict, and after realizing the seriousness of the situation, he had fled.
In this case, he had run away, assuming that Linne would not cover up his wrongdoing.
As this explanation gained more weight, Linne felt an inexplicable sense of disappointment.
She thought they had built a bond of sorts.
They had strived together daily towards strength, and they had even shared a bed.
She had never treated him poorly, and she had even learned to cook for him.
She had even resolved to dedicate the rest of her life to him if it meant she could escape her cormorant-like existence.
But Shin Siwoo did not trust Linne at all.
That was a greater psychological blow than the fact that he had committed an accidental murder within Hexennacht.
Of course, this line of thinking was not something Linne would normally do.
Having discovered for the first time an existence that provided her with stability rather than just the need to pursue strength, Linne was immersed in extreme excitement and extreme ways of thinking.
Her desire to marry him and her learning to cook as part of her bride training were also in the same vein.
However, Linne did not look at the truth that she could have seen if she had just calmed down a little.
Linne’s concentration, once focused on one thing, even excluded the calm voice within her.
The reason was simple.
Linne’s life had always been focused on one point.
Multitasking, doing two things at once, had always been an excessive luxury for Linne.
Her hazy goal became clearer.
“I must find him.”
The situation was more serious than she had thought.
The circumstances did not matter.
He had committed murder in Hexennacht.
Even if it was inside the mansion, there were surveillance devices placed throughout the outside of Hexennacht, so his entry into Rosie’s mansion would have been observed.
Rosie was a witch who frequently engaged in external activities, so in a day or two, people would start to question her sudden disappearance.
She had to find him and protect him before that happened.
If Linne had done the same thing, she would at least have stood before a fair trial.
She would have had the opportunity to defend herself, to explain who had attacked first and why the battle had occurred, resulting in unavoidable bloodshed.
However, Linne had long since understood the nature of the public arena, having rolled around in its cracks.
Shin Siwoo was a male witch, a trophy that anyone would covet.
In a situation where people would create false charges just to claim him, there was no way there would be a fair trial.
Not to mention the fact that Hexennacht had become a battleground between the moderate and hardline factions.
It was expected that a search would be launched, not at the level of individual great witches, but by an elite force consisting of at least dozens of great witches.
“……”
After completing an additional search of the mansion, just in case, Linne eventually left Rosie’s mansion, having found nothing and still feeling an inexplicable unease.
A gut feeling that she had missed something flashed through her mind.
The intuition that warned her by filtering out information she had unconsciously missed was one of the sixth senses that Linne trusted greatly.
She reviewed the situation again.
“Something’s off.”
There were still points that didn’t add up.
If Shin Siwoo had cleaned up the scene, it would have been to delay the pursuit.
This was evident from the fact that he had erased the bloodstains, disposed of the body, and used cleaning magic.
To reiterate, cleaning magic definitely had difficulty removing all scent particles.
However, he, who had reached the level of a great witch, was capable of preparing for it.
To overlook and leave behind the scent particles from the spot where the corpse had been lying?
It was somewhat clumsy.
Rather than a device to conceal the incident…
It felt like something he intentionally wanted to show.
Then, why would Shin Siwoo have subtly left behind evidence that he had murdered Rosie?
No.
Was it really something Shin Siwoo had left behind?
Linne considered the possibility that a third party had intervened in the incident.
“……”
At this point, Linne realized that she was caught in confirmation bias.
She simply wanted to believe that Shin Siwoo had not run away because he did not trust Linne.
Ignoring that inner whisper.
She gathered only the visible evidence and listed the results that could never be obtained through rational judgment.
-Shin Siwoo killed Rosie.
-But Shin Siwoo’s disappearance was not because he did not trust Linne and ran away.
-A third party intervened and hid Shin Siwoo.
-In order to confuse the reasoning up to this point, they left behind some manipulated evidence instead of completely destroying it.
No matter how much she trusted her intuition, this scenario was not a deduction, but the work of a shaman walking on a tightrope.
It was nothing more than a foolish blind faith that had abandoned rationality.
However.
Linne would believe in Shin Siwoo.
Even if it was irrational.
Even if it was nothing more than a bundle of absurd delusions.
The virtues of a wise wife were not just about serving warm and delicious meals.
The most important thing was trust.
A wise wife should send her husband endless faith, no matter how suspicious the circumstances may be.
Linne’s wandering goal was clearly reset.
Instead of thinking that her husband had caused an accident and ran away out of fear of being scolded, she would assume that he had fallen into a wicked scheme and was seeking help.
If that was the case, the most likely possibility was that either the moderate or hardline factions had captured him.
If it had been the hardliners, there would have been no need to go through the troublesome process of secretly smuggling out a criminal.
They could have executed him under the pretext of establishing the rules of Hexennacht and at the same time, provoked Tiferet’s anger to induce war.
Based on this belief, the most likely possibility was the moderate faction, that is, the Solidus Merchant Guild.
Linne moved.
Rescuing Siwoo, who had committed a crime in Hexennacht, was tantamount to turning her back on Hexennacht itself.
But it didn’t matter.
Even if it meant turning the entire Hexennacht against her, she would rescue Shin Siwoo.
That was all she thought about now.
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This is a small mother-in-law illustration. Thank you.
