After transmigrating into the book, I helped my mother reconcile with her divorced husband.

Chapter 046 Anomaly Found

Inside the guest room, Physician Jiang was treating Xie Chaoyun's injuries. Their conversation reached Lu Zhiyuan's ears through the window. Judging from their conversation, they were very familiar with each other, but not in the way that a physician and a marquis's wife would be. Rather, they were childhood sweethearts, inseparable since they were little.

Captain Ma clutched the wound medicine Lu Zhiyuan had given him, dabbed it with the tip of his little finger, and gently applied it to his face.

"I heard that the Jiang family and the Xie family are old friends. Physician Jiang is a few years older than Madam and watched her grow up. Physician Jiang is very talented and is no less so than the young and successful Vice Minister Xie. In addition, there is the Empress in the palace. Everyone thought that Physician Jiang would follow the Jiang family's wishes and be ennobled and appointed as prime minister. Unexpectedly, at the age of fifteen, Physician Jiang studied medicine against all odds."

"Perhaps it's because the Emperor is wary of the Jiang family."

Just like their Xie family, because their maternal grandfather held military power, their second maternal uncle entered officialdom at a young age, and their eldest and youngest maternal uncles, to avoid the limelight, one became a third-rate merchant and the other a wandering knight who never left home.

Commander Ma shook his head, tucked the small porcelain bottle into his arms, and gently pressed it: "At first, everyone thought so too. The interference of maternal relatives in politics has existed since ancient times. The emperor was wary of the Jiang family, and it was understandable that the Jiang family would avoid court disputes to reassure the emperor. However, it wasn't until the lady went to the battlefield and Physician Jiang had a big argument with the Empress before going with the army that everyone realized that Physician Jiang was treating the lady."

"Doctor Jiang likes my mother?" Lu Zhiyuan turned to look at Commander Ma: "If he likes her, why doesn't he come forward to propose marriage? Why does he just watch my mother marry my father?"

Commander Ma scratched his head: "Perhaps it's because Physician Jiang is bad at talking."

It wasn't that he was bad at talking, but rather that he wasn't good at expressing himself. Just listening to his conversation with his mother, it didn't sound like a man talking to a woman, but more like an older brother talking to a younger sister. His feelings for his mother were restrained. In his mind, they should have been together day and night, and things would have naturally progressed. Who knew that a Cheng Yaojin would suddenly appear and turn his mother from a Xie family girl into a Lu family lady.

She rubbed her fingers together and asked curiously, "Is Physician Jiang married? Judging from his age, his children should be about my age by now, right?"

"He has never been married, but he did take a concubine. The concubine came from a poor family and was not accepted by the Jiang family. She was kicked out after less than half a year. Knowing he had wronged her, Physician Jiang took her in as his sworn sister and arranged another marriage for her, sending her off as her elder brother." Commandant Ma lowered his voice: "This matter caused quite a stir, and everyone in the capital knew about it. There was also a rumor that Physician Jiang took the concubine for his wife, and that he didn't like the concubine at all, and that their relationship was completely innocent. Some people even said that Physician Jiang preferred men."

Judging from Captain Ma's eyes, the claim that Physician Jiang prefers men is probably nonsense, but his previous statement was quite profound.

Leaving it at that, Commander Ma didn't gossip any further, and Lu Zhiyuan didn't press for details. Instead, she walked to the guest room and gently knocked on it.

Inside the room, Xie Chaoyun was trying to persuade Physician Jiang with a helpless tone: "I know you're angry, but they are the people of my Beiliang, the people my father was willing to protect with his life. How can I use the martial arts my father taught me to point my fists at them? You can see for yourself, they're just superficial wounds, they'll be fine in a few days."

As he spoke, he walked to the door and opened it, and was slightly taken aback when he saw Lu Zhiyuan.

"Yuan'er?!"

"Seeing that my mother had not returned home for a long time, I was worried that something had happened to her, so I went to the clinic with Lu Yun to look for her. We ran into people from the Commandant's Office, so we came here." He curtsied to Physician Jiang: "Greetings, Physician Jiang. Thank you for treating my mother's injuries."

"No need to be so polite, I just happened to be here." Doctor Jiang looked at Lu Zhiyuan and felt that the child had changed and was different from before.

After confirming that his mother was alright, he steered the conversation to the clinic. Physician Jiang had also come for this matter. He had reviewed the prescription; it contained commonly used painkillers, and based on the dosage, it would not be fatal.

"Has Physician Jiang examined the old man's body?"

"I've seen it, and it's the same as the initial diagnosis from the doctor at the clinic," said Physician Jiang. "The old man is very thin, with dry hair and yellowish skin, which suggests long-term malnutrition. Bruises of varying degrees were found on his head, neck, back, and abdomen, proving that he was indeed beaten. In addition, his right leg is fractured, an old injury."

What did her family say?

"Her son said she was picky about food and difficult to please, while her daughter-in-law said she was a wicked mother-in-law who had injured herself to extort money. As for her leg injury, her son and daughter-in-law had the same story: she fell while going out to collect firewood in the winter despite objections."

"And what about her relatives and friends? Their accounts are the same as her son and daughter-in-law's?"

"They said they live far away and don't know much about the old lady's life at home, but they all agree that the old lady's son is very filial and the daughter-in-law is sensible and wouldn't mistreat her mother-in-law." Captain Ma shook his head as he spoke: "I had someone check, and it's just an ordinary family, dealing with daily necessities, bumps and bruises, and all sorts of things, whether true or false, it's normal."

"Does the Commandant's Office have a coroner? What were the autopsy results?"

"No obvious cause of death was found." Captain Ma touched his nose. "We cannot rule out the possibility that it was related to her own illness and the painkillers she took, because the symptom of bleeding from the mouth and nose is very similar to poisoning, but the coroner did not find anything related to poison on her body. In other words, every medicine has some toxicity, and she may not have been poisoned to death by poison, but by painkillers."

“That is indeed possible.” Lu Zhiyuan pinched her chin: “Simply taking painkillers will not kill a person, unless it conflicts with her own illness, or she cannot take a certain type of drug.”

Xie Chaoyun pursed her lips: "So, it's really possible that she was killed by the clinic?"

Lu Zhiyuan said thoughtfully, "May I go and see the old man's body? An autopsy might be necessary."

"Dissection...?" Commandant Ma looked at Physician Jiang, who shook his head.

He was an imperial physician, not a coroner. Even the well-informed Commandant Ma didn't understand the word "dissection," so he certainly didn't.

In ancient times, the primary duty of a coroner was to examine the corpse and report injuries. Under the traditional belief that one's body is a gift from one's parents, internal autopsies were not performed. Even if the death was unusual, they would only infer from the deceased's external features.

For example, when trying to determine whether a person was burned alive or burned after death, they would not perform an autopsy on the deceased, but instead test on two live pigs to see which pig's condition was more similar to the deceased's.

The Commandant's Office has a special morgue, and there is only one corpse in the morgue, which is that old woman's.

Lu Zhiyuan didn't look at anything else, but placed her hand on the old woman's abdomen. Due to rigor mortis, her abdomen had become unusually soft.

There are many causes of abdominal pain, such as acute inflammation of the solid organs in the abdominal cavity, organ rupture or torsion, peritonitis, and gastrointestinal diseases. Some diseases require opening the abdominal cavity to confirm, while others can be detected by palpation, such as the stomach of an elderly woman.

Her stomach is bulging!