After the fairy disappeared

Chapter 1325 Zhuangzi was attacked
He Lingchuan asked him: "Is it seven or eight?"

"Seven! Oh no..." Lieutenant Li recalled carefully, "Eight, definitely eight!"

"Lead the way."

The place where the accident occurred was called Chenjiazhuang, located in the suburbs of Liu County, more than a mile away from the nearest rural road.

If you want to go to Chenjiazhuang, you have to take the fork in the road and go into the mountains.

In the barren mountains and remote wilderness, rabbits and mice can occasionally be seen in the long grass.

"What are the products of Chenjiazhuang?"

"Food, oranges, wool, mutton... and so on." Lieutenant Li thought for a moment, "Our farms here basically produce these. There are mountains behind Chenjia Village."

“What is the production volume?”

"That's not clear." Lieutenant Li scratched his head, "I don't care about that."

He Lingchuan looked around: "It's in a remote location, and it's a bit far from Liu County."

It is not very convenient to transport goods from here to Liu County.

"Yes." Lieutenant Li pointed forward, "We are here."

He Lingchuan himself had owned a manor, and he knew that many of the manors in the suburbs were inhabited by families, with walls built and weapons prepared to defend against foreign enemies.

The same is true of Chenjiazhuang in front of us. There are five or six hundred descendants of the Chen family living here, and when the doors are closed, it looks like a small county town.

After the incident, the Chen family still lived here and guarded the gate of the manor, not allowing outsiders to enter or leave.

If County Lieutenant Li had not cleared the way, He Lingchuan would not have been able to come in openly.

The village is mainly composed of residential houses, with granaries, livestock sheds, workshops, warehouses, wells, and even taverns and restaurants. It is really not much different from a small county town.

Everyone observed carefully and found that many buildings showed signs of attack. For example, they just passed a farmhouse with three deep claw marks on the wooden door.

When the head of the Chen family heard that Lieutenant Li was accompanying the provincial inspector to investigate the case, he immediately went out to greet them.

According to him, the day of the crime was a quiet night with stars but no moon, and the light was very dim. Suddenly, several monsters appeared in the village and pounced on anyone they saw.

More than forty strong men from the Chen family's village defense group grabbed their weapons and rushed over, but they were no match for the monsters and seventeen or eighteen of them were bitten to death in a blink of an eye.

There was chaos in Zhuangzi, and the head of the Chen family had two sons killed.

Others had no courage to resist, and the high walls of the manor became an obstacle to their escape.

The remaining people thought they were dead, but the monsters suddenly howled, jumped out of the wall and went west.

Once they left, they never came back.

The Chen family has just recovered from the shock and has been on high alert ever since.

He Lingchuan listened carefully and asked a question: "How many monsters are there?"

"I saw three of them," said the head of the Chen family, "but some of my clansmen said they saw five, and some said they saw seven. It was too dark and chaotic that night, and they were moving so fast that no one could see them all." Moreover, the monsters were of different sizes and appearances.

"What do the three-headed monsters you saw look like?"

"There is one that looks like a tiger, but its tail is black and hairless, like a big pair of scissors, and it can also attack people."

He Lingchuan thought of the claw marks on the wooden door. He glanced at Dong Rui, who shook his head, saying he had never heard of such a monster.

"anything else?"

"There's another one that rolls around in a round shape, but it's covered with thorns. I've seen a strange plant in the south called a cactus, and it's a bit like that one." Clan leader Chen turned around and went into the house. After a while, he took out five sharp thorns and handed them to He Lingchuan. "It's this kind of thorns, it can be shot out to hurt people!"

He Lingchuan took it in his hand, and several people came over to observe it.

The shortest thorn is seven inches long, the longest can reach three feet, it is black and white, and has a barb on the top. Just imagining what it feels like to be stabbed is terrifying.

Chief Chen also said: "It hurts the most people. The treatment afterwards is extremely painful."

To remove the thorn, you have to cut the flesh first, which is another painful experience for the injured person.

"There is also one that can burrow into the ground and pop out from underground."

"You have high walls and access control here, how did the monster get in?"

"Over the wall." The Chen clan leader smiled bitterly, "I asked the guards on duty that night, and one of them saw with his own eyes the tiger running out of the forest, climbing over the high wall like a monkey and attacking the guards."

"According to what you said, these murderous monsters must have been lured away by something, so you were able to save your lives." He Lingchuan pondered, "Before that, were there any strange people or things happening inside or outside the manor?"

The Chen clan leader shook his head: "No, our village has always been peaceful."

"Has any outsider been here?" This kind of place should be very exclusive. Once an outsider enters, the Chen family must know about it.

The Chen clan leader thought about it carefully this time and shook his head: "No."

He Lingchuan looked out the window at the livestock pen below and asked, "When was the last time your farm sent out goods?"

"Just came back five days ago." The tribe leader said, "Ship out a batch of wool and fruit."

"Did you encounter any accidents or strange things on the way there and back?" He Lingchuan asked him, "Maybe these monsters were also lured here."

"Everything is normal." The Chen clan leader was slightly angry. "If someone really led monsters to attack Chenjiazhuang, that would be insane!"

He Lingchuan asked a few more questions, but still found no clues, so he asked, "Do you have all the information about the deceased?"

“Yes.” More than a month later, the Chen family recovered from their panic. “But there are only a few details, such as the names, ages, addresses, and the number of people in the family. They are all written on a piece of paper and put into the family tree.”

He Lingchuan looked out the window and saw that it was already dark. "I'm going to stay at your house tonight. I'll take a look at the information, too."

The head of the Chen family had no objection and cleared out a small courtyard for him and Dong Rui to live in.

That night, He Lingchuan and Dong Rui took out the fluorescent spores and began to look through the records of the deceased.

It goes without saying that 60% of the people living in the manor are relatives by marriage. But other than that, the victims killed by the monsters seemed to have no commonalities.

After reading for almost an hour, Dong Rui couldn't help rubbing his eyes, and Lingguang handed him a small bottle of eye drops. "Why do these people write like ghosts?" Reading is too eye-straining.

"In the countryside, it's good enough if someone can read and write." He Lingchuan urged him, "What did you figure out?"

"At first glance, these monsters seem to kill people at will, and eat as they kill. Even a grizzly bear that just ended hibernation doesn't have a big appetite like them." When Dong Rui was performing an autopsy in Liu County, the officers nearby vomited countless times when they saw the incomplete corpses.

These monsters completely treated the humans in Chenjiazhuang as food and tore them apart, and only ate the nutritious internal organs.

"Until I had an idea to summarize the locations of the victims." The two sat in the yard, and Dong Rui casually drew a map on the sand. "This is the approximate topographic map of Chenjiazhuang. This is where the victims are located. Can you see anything?"

He poked dozens of small holes in the sand, each representing the residence of a victim. It was late at night when the incident happened, and most people were sleeping in their rooms. Even if they ran out in fear, they were not far from home.

He Lingchuan came over to take a look: "Well, the monster jumped over the wall from the east, but it ate more people on the west side of the village, and hardly went to the south and north... Are there people living on the east, north and south sides of Chenjiazhuang?"

The last sentence was directed to Old Man Chen beside him.

The Chen clan leader specially assigned him a local expert to answer the censor's questions. The old man looked wrinkled and a little hunched, but he was actually agile, sharp-eyed and quick-witted.

Old Man Chen didn't know how high of an official the "Caichashi" was, but since he was sent by the government to investigate the case, he just cooperated and said, "Yes, there are several large grain drying grounds in the west, so there are more people living in the east than in the west."

"So the monsters didn't stay in the east where there are more people, but went to the west to kill people?" He Lingchuan pointed at the sand map and said, "In the end, they all left from the west."

All monsters are like this, so it becomes a common trait.

"So, there really is something in Zhuangzi that attracts them."

Dong Rui said proudly: "It's your turn. After looking for an hour, you won't get nothing, right?"

His discovery was incredible. Although it was worthless, it was a test of intelligence to deduce this clue from a pile of messy information and a pile of tattered paper, right?
He has been with He Lingchuan and has seen countless cases, big and small, and he is no longer the same person he was before.

He Lingchuan smiled and took out a stack of notes: "Li Xianwei's information is wrong. The number of people who died peacefully is not seven or eight, but five. Here, these are the five people."

While everyone else died miserably, the fact that these few people died peacefully stood out.

"They are all men, aged between 25 and 53." He asked the old man Li beside him, "Old Li, do you recognize these five people?"

Old Li couldn't read, so he nodded after He Lingchuan finished reading out the five names: "I recognize them all. These three are bachelors, one has a wife, and the other's wife died a long time ago."

The 25-year-old has married and has children, the others are bachelors, and the 53-year-old deceased is a widower whose wife has been dead for ten years.

"Do these five people live west of the village?"

"No, no, only Chen Fuang, who had a wife and children, lived in the west." The other four dead were two in the east and one in the north and south.

The sample is too small and not representative.

He Lingchuan pondered for a long time before asking, "What is the relationship between these five people? Who among them has been away from home recently?"

"The three Chen Fuangs who are close in age are cousins. The other two always drink with them and go out to do some small business." Old Man Li explained, "Everyone who lives in this village is more or less related to each other."

Most of them have the surname Chen, and they were from the same family decades ago.

"Have they left Chenjiazhuang recently?"

"I'll go ask." Old man Chen said, and then left the yard.

A quarter of an hour later, he came back and said:

"The three brothers Chen Fuang basically followed the convoy from the village and came back with the convoy. They just came back a few days ago."

Chenjiazhuang just made a concentrated shipment of goods a few days ago, selling wool and fruit.

(End of this chapter)