I
Two common sense related to Old Cao are: everyone in the town wants to know his secret; Everyone who tried to discover the secret died.
Old Man Cao moved to Dong'an Town on a rainy winter day, and his arrival did not attract people's attention at first. This town, located in the north of Vietnam, was once an important mining area. Every day, it was bustling with traffic and lights at night. But since the nearby Wujin mine was completely mined, it was no longer prosperous and dilapidated to almost desolate. For more than half of a year, it seemed to be enveloped in the endless rain water in Vietnam. Those who are a little skilled have moved away. Those who still stay here have nowhere to go, or they have made mistakes to avoid disaster. It is not unusual that there are not many or many visitors from afar like Old Man Cao every year.
But after a long time, people began to notice the unusual things about old man Cao. He built a small yard near the abandoned mining area, which was far away from the town and lived in seclusion. He seldom went to the town. Every once in a while, Aunt He, the vegetable seller in the town, would send him some basic supplies, including rice, noodles, vegetables, oil, salt, soy sauce and vinegar, and then would talk to the neighbors when he came back.
"He has three attendants with him, big and small!" Aunt He said, "but after calculation, the food he bought from me is not enough for one person!"
"Old Cao is so thin, he must eat less than ordinary people." Neighbor A said, "so those food may be prepared for him alone."
"What about the servants? Don't they eat?" neighbor B asked.
"Then I don't know." Neighbor A shook his head deeply. "Those who don't eat in this world are either monsters or dead people."
Whether it's a monster or a dead person, Old Man Cao and his three attendants finally aroused everyone's curiosity. Different people use different perspectives to observe and gradually piece together more pieces.
——Nobody has ever seen old man Cao make money. He just keeps spending money.
——In addition to basic diet and other daily necessities, Old Man Cao buys most hardware tools such as chisels, axes and saws. Some are bought from the townspeople, some are sent by the postman at a high price, and many of them are fine machines or small parts that can be processed by the river network, It even includes an expensive ant mirror that can only be found on the black market. Through this unique mirror, people can see very small objects.
——Unconsciously, a lot of woodlands near the old man Cao's home were felled. If there were only three attendants around him, the efficiency of these attendants would be quite high, which could be up to ten or twenty young laborers.
——More than one miner who tried to take a chance met Old Man Cao in an abandoned mining area. According to the various purchases made by old man Cao, he obviously doesn't need to live by collecting garbage in the waste mine. Then why is he so interested in this exhausted black gold mine?
——In the middle of the night, you can often see the eye-catching flames from the direction of the old man Cao's house, and you may smell a strong and pungent smell of burning when you get close. People in the town have lived in the mining area all their lives. They have never eaten pork, but they have seen pigs run. It is easy to judge that the old man must have built a blast furnace at home and smelt something - coke is also something that Old Man Cao buys in large quantities.
Putting these clues together, we can roughly draw a guess: Old Man Cao came here to find and refine something in Wujin Mining Area. Judging from his daily expenses, most of the things he wants are very valuable. On the other hand, people also speculated about the identity of the three young people who followed him.
"That could be three dead people!" someone guessed, "They don't eat and have much more strength than normal living people. Maybe they are three walking corpses! Old Man Cao must be a corpse dancer who manipulates dead people to work for him!"
Although this is only a conjecture without evidence, the mysterious profession of corpse dancers has aroused more associations among the townspeople. Some people who have heard a little about the corpse dancers claim that they will extract power from medicine and minerals with their half knowledge. Maybe there are some special treasures in the waste mine here, which can benefit old man Cao greatly.
"That thing must be valuable!" Everyone came to the conclusion with one voice, "Maybe he can extract gold from waste!"
"And even if old man Cao didn't extract gold, he also had a lot of money!" This is another obvious conclusion.
In Dong'an Town, where the emperor is far away, money is the driving force, the original sin, and the origin of all tragedies. When everyone treats Old Man Cao as a treasury, naturally someone will want to do something.
Then they began to die one by one.
The first person to die was Miyi, who opened a butcher shop in the town. People thought that the meat cutting and bone cutting work was very suitable for him, because when the mine was still booming, Miyi's specialty was to cut people for the mine owner. After the gold mine in Urumqi dried up, he once left Dong'an to go somewhere else, but it seemed that there were a lot of people who wanted to kill him, so he hid again. There is no doubt that the money in old man Cao's hands has a strong temptation for him.
Of course, Miyi is not just a brute force player. When he was in the mining area, he was never good at carrying a knife. He was also worried that the three attendants were really powerful walking corpses, so he chose a dark and windy night to sneak into Old Cao's yard.
The next morning, Miyi's body was hung on the hook of his own butcher shop. On the thick iron hook that should have hung a local black pig, Miyi was covered in blood, his face was filled with despair and fear, and the sharp hook point pierced his chest.
This is obviously a warning to make an example of others. In a place where the officials are too lazy to step on it, Old Man Cao hung up the body to make it clear that he was threatening others: mind your own business.
However, the villains in Dong'an Town are not so easily frightened away. They have to go on and on to try the water before they are willing. After Miyi, the second person standing out was Mr. Lao from the pharmacy. Unlike Miyi, Mr. Lao can't play with knives and guns, and his meat is not much more than that of Old Cao. All those who are good at it are nothing but various poisons. When the Wujin Mine is not exhausted and all mine owners are still fighting for it, there are no fewer people who died under Mr. Lao's poison than under Miyi's knife. Mr. Lao also has a way to deal with some people who can't be cut down by Miyi.
He believed that the fate of Old Cao would be the same.
On a day when Aunt He was delivering vegetables to Old Cao, Mr. Lao secretly mixed poison into a bag of tea. This is a kind of unique poison that he is very good at. It is basically colorless and tasteless. As long as old man Cao takes it to make tea, he will not drink even one mouthful. As long as he inhales the steam of tea in his nose, there will be no remedy.
The next day, Mr. Law did not open the door as early as usual. At noon, several acquaintances realized that something was wrong. They climbed over the wall and entered Mr. Lao's house, which was connected to the pharmacy. They found Mr. Lao sitting in a rocking chair in the yard, his body already stiff, and his skin faintly showed an ugly orange color, which was exactly the symptom of his unique virulence.
After that, a few people continued to try unswervingly, and their fate was similar to that of Miyi and Mr. Law. After several lives, the villains in Dong'an Town finally understood that Old Cao is a more vicious, vicious and dangerous existence than they are. It's better not to offend him.
Old man Cao's life was quiet again. He never expressed any opinion on the dead, as if all the events had nothing to do with him. He still took three non eating attendants away from others, still kept looking for something in the mining area, still kept lighting the blast furnace in his yard, and he would never make trouble if no one bothered him.
Aunt He, the vegetable seller, died of illness a few years later. Her son took over her mother's business and still regularly sent Old Man Cao food that was only enough for one person. The days passed slowly.
In the seventeenth year after arriving at Dong'an Town, Old Man Cao finally came to the end. It was not someone who killed him, but his life naturally ended. He was old and weak. It was a miracle that he had lived in such a harsh environment as Dong'an Town for nearly 20 years. It was at this time that people realized that Old Man Cao was still a mortal after all. Although he could control the life and death of others by all kinds of magical means, he could not escape the last day.
On that day, Aunt He's son went to deliver the goods to Old Man Cao as usual, but found that for the first time in ten years, Old Man Cao's attendant did not wait at the gate on time to receive the goods. He clapped at the door and shouted for a long time, but there was no response. He suddenly realized what had happened. The legend related to old man Cao that had not been cut off in recent years came to his mind, making him make a bold decision to cross the wall and enter.
He became the first person to enter the old man Cao's house in 17 years. The courtyard is not as magnificent as he imagined. On the contrary, there is almost no redundant furnishings, but it is filled with various mechanical tools: wood cutting, metal forging, ore smelting, solution mixing... This is not so much a human courtyard as a trial workshop of the river.
"What the hell is this old man hiding here for?" Boss Xiaohe murmured, "Can you really make gold from waste?"
This speculation made him have some expectations, but he did not forget the danger he faced. He crept around the yard for several times, but did not find any trace of the three followers, so he bit his teeth and slipped into the house.
In the midst of the strong medicine smell and the indistinguishable fishy smell, an expensive whale oil candle that was about to burn out made Boss He find Old Cao. At the moment, the old man is half on the bed and half on the ground, as thin as a skeleton. It seems that he has no strength to climb back to bed. He did not notice the intruders at all, and his white eyes were trying to stare at something on the floor in front of the bed. It may have tumbled down from the bed like old man Cao, but he didn't even have the ability to reach out his arm to retrieve it. He could only look at it with resignation.
"Seventeen years... seventeen years!" Old man Cao was so angry that he still kept talking to himself with his last little energy, just like a madman who lost his mind, "Why can't I get what I want even after seventeen years? I'm going to die soon, but I still can't succeed..."
Boss He could not understand what Old Man Cao was talking about, but he could see that it was so important to him that he could not forget it when he was dying. He didn't even bother to look for old man Cao's money first, so he quickly squatted down. He was a little surprised.
There is a dark thing with irregular shape on the ground. It can be seen clearly only after careful discrimination. It is a very rough and ugly metal box. He picked up the box, and it was easy to judge that it was an ordinary iron box, which might be mixed with some black gold that was once found everywhere in Dong'an Town but had been mined out. Although black gold is an important industrial material, especially in the hands of Heluo, it can often be used brilliantly, but because there are considerable reserves in all parts of Jiuzhou, it is not difficult to mine, and it cannot be considered as a particularly valuable metal, not to mention that it is only an alloy that is mixed in the iron box, almost in the form of impurities. Obviously, Old Man Cao values the things in the box - maybe it's the "treasure" that everyone has been speculating and coveting.
The box was not locked, but was buckled loosely. Boss He opened the box without much effort, and with the help of the last candle, he could see clearly the contents of the box. The horror he saw in his eyes made him cry. When he loosened his hand, the box fell to the ground, and the contents rolled out.
That is a broken palm. A large severed palm of an adult male human.
At the same moment, the candle burned to the end and went out. In the dark, in addition to his nervous breathing and heartbeat, Boss He could hear the last words of Old Cao in the world.
"I'm not reconciled... I'm not reconciled..." Old Man Cao snorted. "Is the thing I've been pursuing in my life... just a ridiculous dream? Seventeen years... I'm not reconciled..."
II
Lianfang is a place full of ghosts.
Even though he has been a house keeper in the Yamen for more than 20 years, Juxun still doesn't like this place. At the beginning, he would even have nightmares all night long, dreaming that those fresh, convergent and fragmented corpses sat up suddenly from under the white cloth sheet, their eyes drooped down from their sockets, and stared at him with flashing green luster. Because of this unlucky job, people around him always look at him with strange eyes. Even getting married and having children were several years later than his peers, so he had to frequently explain: "I am just the guard of the storeroom, just a guard and body registration job, and I am not responsible for the autopsy - that is the work of the grave digger."
But I got used to it after a long time. It sounds unlucky for the guards to collect houses. In fact, they don't work hard, and they are even quite idle in many times, and their salaries are acceptable. It was nothing more than making a living. Juxun said to himself that it didn't make much difference to deal with the dead or the living. Sometimes he is on duty in the daytime and sometimes at night. He works on time and gets off work on time every day. He is neither late nor stays much. He lives more accurately than the clock in Heluo. He still doesn't like to collect houses, and he doesn't like the dead bodies that pass in front of his eyes every day, but he doesn't like the salary he gets.
This year, the winter in Nanhuai City came earlier than usual, and October was not over yet. There was already a kind of grim atmosphere in the air. The experienced resident had prepared a small stove and charcoal fire early, otherwise the day would be fine, and it would be really hard to stay on duty at night in that bleak hut.
Another night on the night shift. Lintian still came to the storeroom with a pinch. Liu Hu, the colleague waiting for handover, had lit a fire for him and lit the stove. After seeing him enter the door, he stood up and handed him the record of the handover.
"What's the matter with you? You don't look well. Are you sick?" Ju Xun asked.
Liu Hu shook his head and said, "No. The newly delivered corpses today... are a bit disgusting. I didn't eat dinner, and I vomited a lot."
"Young man, it's normal for people who are not used to dying too miserably." Juxun patted him on the shoulder, "Go back to rest quickly. You will get used to seeing more."
"In fact, it's not too sad, but... it's strange." Liu Hu still looks pale, "you can see by yourself. The record is also very clear."
Liu Hu fled as quickly as he could. Juxun was slightly stunned and opened the handover record of the day. After a glance, he understood what was the situation of those bodies that frightened Liu Hu so much. A chill ran through his body in an instant, and he subconsciously tightened his skirt.
"Winter is really coming." Juxun whispered to himself.
After hesitating for a while, Juxun still walked into the morgue. As expected, the two men did not work on the grave work. They were still busy walking around the corpse. It seems that they might have to stay up all night.
"Here we come." Jin Yongkang, one of the grave works, is an old acquaintance of Juxun. He just nods to say hello, but his eyes still don't move away from the corpse.
Juxun came forward and began to observe the four corpses sent today. There are three men and one woman. The body is highly corrupt. It is estimated that they have been dead for a long time. The four corpses had neat incisions, each missing some important organs such as heart, lung lobe and liver, while on the other table, there were several bottles containing viscera.
"These viscera... were taken out from these dead people?" Ju Xun asked.
"Yes, when the corpse was found, every person's guts were placed beside them. Although they were pecked by birds and beasts, they could still be identified at any rate." Jin Yongkang said, "When Wu Zuo has been working for so many years, murderers with abnormal minds have also seen a lot. This is the first time I have met such a crazy person. He is very precise, and the incision is not very big. It is just like that we dig out the viscera of the dead, and then put them in order. "
"It's like setting up a stall on the market to show." Juxun frowned.
Jin Yongkang curled his mouth and said, "No, it is not. Now the autopsy has not been finished, and the captors have come here several times. Although those grandchildren can be lazy in ordinary days, they are lazy and don't take the lives of the people seriously, but this killing method is simply to show off their skills and provoke them. No matter how thick the skin is, it can't stand it."
"Where was the body found?" asked Lintian again. "It was so rotten that it should be in a hidden place."
"In the valley to the northwest of Nanhuai City," Jin Yongkang replied, "there are no products there, the scenery is ordinary, and there are not many people who usually go there. She was still a rich woman who ran away from home and hid there. Then she accidentally found the body. At the time of discovery, four dead people were almost lying side by side, and it was too bad to distinguish their appearance and age. After my autopsy, I can probably tell that three men are old, the youngest is about 40 years old, and the oldest is estimated to be over 60 years old; The female victim was only in her twenties. "
"Is the cause of death clear?"
"Not yet." Jin Yongkang looked very tired. "In addition to the wounds he had taken out his internal organs, the body was also eaten by birds, animals and insects in the valley. Whether it was because of the internal organs that he died, or whether the criminals did this immoral thing after their death, we need to carefully investigate. We can't go home tonight."
"You've worked hard." Juxun said sympathetically, "I feel uncomfortable just looking at these dead people. Fortunately, I'm just a doorkeeper."
He went back to his cabin, wrapped up the blanket he had already prepared, and began to play chess with himself to kill the boredom of the long night. The few corpses I saw just now are shocking, but it's none of my business after all. I don't want to think much about them after sighing.
The time slowly came to the beginning of the year. It was the early morning when everything was quiet. The experience of searching by residence was also the most likely time to fall asleep. He lifted the blanket and stood up, ready to brew a pot of strong tea to refresh himself. Just as he opened the tea jar, he heard a noise in his ear.
The sound came from the wall on the east side of Lianfang, as if someone was tapping the wall gently. This kind of voice was heard by Juxun in the past. When he ran out to check, he found that it was just a prank of naughty boys showing off their courage. He was too lazy to answer, but the voice continued to ring, and the sound became louder and louder.
"Damn you!" Juxun scolded bitterly, lifted the warm blanket, first mentioned the copper stick distributed by the Yamen, thought about it and threw it down, then picked up a piece of firewood. He angrily ran out of the door with the wood in his hand and ran towards the direction of the sound.
That's right. It's the same wall where the little bunnies played tricks last time. In order to show their courage among their companions, those bastards made an appointment to sneak out of the house in the middle of the night and get together to play the trick of detecting the house at night. It happened that the body of a wealthy businessman suspected of being murdered by his family was collected in the room that day. When the voice sounded, Juxun thought that the murderer had sent someone to rob the body, and he was so nervous that he almost wet his pants.
This time, I won't be scared by you again, Ju Xun thought. He walked quickly to the wall, knocked on the wall with the wood in his hand, and roared: "You little bastards! If you dare to make trouble again, I will..."
He didn't finish what he said. The wall suddenly cracked, and a thick shadow flashed before his eyes. Before he could see what the shadow was, he felt a huge impact on his chest, and his whole body flew backwards. At that moment, Juxun had a strange illusion that he seemed to be a feather man, flying in the middle of the sky.
Then the unlucky temporary feather man crashed into an old tree in the yard and fainted.
When I woke up, I didn't know when it was. Before he opened his eyes, he felt pain in every bone all over his body, especially in the hit part of his chest. He couldn't help moaning loudly.
"Constable Tong! He's awake!" said a man's voice.
"Let the doctor see him." Another man replied, "If the physical condition allows, we will hurry to start asking."
Constable Tong? Juxun was stunned. Tong's surname is not common in Nanhuai City. If a constable is added, it can only be one person: Tong Tong, the constable of the branch office that deals with special affairs according to the procuratorial department.
This special affairs branch, usually called the Evil Things Department, is used to deal with various difficult cases that go beyond the routine. Behind these cases, there are either some ancient organizations that are not easy to provoke, or some strange people that are unknown to ordinary people, and even supernatural supernatural forces - although such so-called "supernatural" will usually be proved to be only human - ordinary case handlers can hardly cope with it.
Is there really a significant article behind that bizarre murder case? Juxun guessed and slowly opened his eyes. After getting used to the glare of the light for a while, he saw the person standing in front of him clearly. It was Tong Tong.
"You don't need a doctor, just ask if you have anything." Juxun bared his teeth and said, "I can stand it."
"Thank you very much." Tong Tong was also impolite. "Four nights ago, when you were attacked, did you see the face of the attacker clearly?"
"I have been in a daze for four days?" Juxun was stunned. "The grandson was very dark... I didn't see clearly. At that time, I heard something moving outside the wall. It seemed that someone was knocking. I went to have a look. The wall suddenly cracked. I saw only one person's shadow and was knocked away."
"Suddenly it cracked..." Tong Tong thought, "Is the enemy unarmed? Or is there any weapon hard enough?"
"I really didn't see it clearly, I'm sorry." Lintian said, "It happened suddenly. I didn't see anything except the black shadow, and I didn't see what hit me."
"What about the action and posture? Is there even a little vague impression? For example... is the action hard or not, like a living person?" Tong Tong was still unwilling and continued to ask.
"I have already said, nothing at all." Juxun shook his head difficultly. "What's the matter, Constable Tong? Why is that guy so important? And why do you ask me if he looks like a human? What does this mean? What kind of ghost is that?"
Tong Tong hesitated for a moment and slowly said, "Four days ago that night, a murder occurred in the storeroom. Except you, two Wu Zuo, one handyman and three night watchmen who arrived at the scene were killed. Several corpses that had been collected the day before were also robbed."
Lintian unconsciously wanted to sit up with support, and then a pain from his waist to his shoulder forced him to stop: "So, Lao Jin and his disciples are dead? And you said that the bodies were taken away, are they the ones whose viscera were taken out?"
"That's the four." Tong Tong said, "So together, there are ten lives - you almost become the eleventh."
"Then I have to thank the gods for their help." Juxun smiled bitterly, "but Constable Tong, if it was just an ordinary murder, it would not disturb you. This matter... has anything to do with ghosts and demons? Is it the evil sacrifice of the four people's death?"
"It's not because of that." Tong Tong shook his head and said, "The nature of ghosts and evil cults is very strict. It can't be determined by seeing a few corpses. However, the reason why we are involved in this case is really because of something so strange that it rarely appears in people's eyes."
"Extremely weird?" Ju Xun thought for a while
Tong Tong sighed: "After the Lianfang was bloodwashed, the captors cleared the scene and found a deadly thing. If that thing is confirmed, some of our common sense may need to be rewritten."
As he said this, he took a wooden box, opened its cover and brought it to Juxun's eyes. Juxun looked down and saw that there was a broken palm in the box. For a guard in the storeroom, such a broken hand was not new at all. But he knew that what Tong Tong wanted him to see must be unusual, so he tried to bear the pain in his neck and look down.
It is obvious that this is a male human hand. It is thick, full of hair, and has many thick calluses. Judging from these calluses and unusually prominent joints, it should not be an ordinary rough man working hard, but a martial artist.
"This is the palm of a man," said Juxun muttered. "What's so special about it?"
"Let me help you to change the direction, and you can have a look again," Tong Tong said, turning the wooden box to make the fracture of the palm face towards Juxun.
Lintian gasped, "ah", and his hands shook uncontrollably. If the wooden box was held in his own hands, Juxun believed that he would drop it to the ground.
"This... this is not a human hand!" Juxun tried to control his trembling voice, "this is not a human hand! It is not a human!"
