hell [suspense]

Ye Yu was taken aback: "Four rooms surround one?"

"Yes, no one lives there, and there's nothing in it except burning candles."

Qin Yan also felt that such an arrangement was a bit strange, so he checked it carefully, and there should be no mistake.

Ye Yu frowned, and threw the black mask into the basin: "Do you know the exact location? Draw it out and show me."

There were no pens, inks, papers and inkstones in the inn room, and they did not bring them with them. Qin Yan took a look, took out Ye Yu's mask and twisted it until it was half dry. roam.

On a hot day, the water fell to the ground and dried quickly. Ye Yu stood beside him, his mind following Qin Yan's hand gestures. Qin Yan drew a few strokes, and he then added strokes to his mind. When Qin Yan finished, the previous drawing was already dry. Most of it.

"How is it?" Qin Yan threw the face towel into the basin and asked while washing his hands, "Do you recognize it?"

Ye Yu didn't answer directly, but asked instead: "Are you sure you didn't make a mistake in the drawing? Is the arrangement and position of each room correct?"

Qin Yan thought for a while: "It can't be wrong. When I left, I deliberately looked down in mid-air, that's it."

When Ye Yu asked this question, he probably had already seen the clues, but judging by his solemn expression, he probably wasn't a good thing.

"Old Qin, have you ever heard of such a thing as 'Jiu Shou'?" Ye Yu asked.

"Ji Shou?"

"Yes, as the name suggests, it means cumulative lifespan."

"I've heard of it, but..." Qin Yan understood, and looked at Ye Yu with a little surprise, "You mean, the Chen family is accumulating longevity?"

Ye Yu: "It should be, but most of the people who do this kind of thing are charlatans or half-baked."

"How to say?"

"The emperor wants the foundation he has accumulated so hard to last for hundreds of thousands or even thousands of generations. You know, if you want to live forever, you will do many weird things, and longevity is one of them."

Ye Yu said while drinking water, there was obvious dissatisfaction and sarcasm in his words: "But you see, the facts have proved that those are just tricks to deceive people, and I haven't seen any emperor who will live forever."

"Go ahead and talk about longevity." Qin Yan knew that Ye Yu never liked this kind of thing, especially when it involved other people's lives. His thoughts were the same as Ye Yu's, but right now he still focused on the business.

"The houses in the middle are Chen Hu's own house, that is, the people who have accumulated life, and the four huts on the side are the houses of the people whose life has been taken away. They are built according to certain rules, and they are called storage houses. In the room where the lives of those people are stored, the arrangement and distribution of the candles in it is based on the birthdays of the people whose lives were taken away, and each candle is replaced with a new one before it is almost burnt out, ensuring that it burns day and night without interruption."

Qin Yan heard the clue this time: "You mean to accumulate the lives of four people together and give it to the same person?"

"That's it. Of course, everything is conserved. If this person's lifespan increases, the other four people's lifespan will decrease accordingly."

Ye Yu was very interested in these gods and ghosts since he was a child. He found various ways to read books and research by himself. Learned old gentlemen and so on, in short, Ye Yu is interested in anyone who has something to do with these things.

But it was another chance for him to understand these incredible things so clearly.

Qin Yan's face was not very good-looking: "Take the life of others and add it to yourself, what kind of bullshit logic is this?"

"You're swearing." Ye Yu teased half-jokingly, and immediately became serious, "This kind of thing has always happened, the Chen family is so rich, Chen Hu must hope to live longer, this is not the same as those who want to live forever The Emperor is an idea."

Qin Yan's mouth moved, but he had nothing to say: "In your opinion, is this arrangement really useful?"

"It's hard to say, unless you can see the arrangement of candles in the room." Ye Yu shook his head, paused for a while, and then smiled again, "I think it's probably useless. There are so many scammers in the world, and among a thousand people There may be only one person who has the real information, and Chen Hu's life and death are unknown now, so he shouldn't have a long lifespan, right?"

Serious nonsense, but it makes sense when analyzed in detail. Since childhood, Qin Yan has sincerely admired Ye Yu's ability to rambling and making sense. This is also in another sense. You can speak eloquently.

After pouring tea and drinking water, Qin Yan thought of something again after being quiet for a while: "Also, when I went to check the house, I smelled something."

"What is the taste?"

"The smell of medicine is very strong. It's the same medicine in Chen Hu's house, in the house of wives and concubines, and in the houses of young ladies and young masters."

Ye Yu suddenly thought of when they were eating cantaloupe: "The kitchen is also very strong, do you remember?"

At that time, the two hid in the kitchen, and the smell of medicine filled the whole kitchen, but the Chen family is such a big family with so many people that eating whole grains would inevitably cause discomfort, so they didn't think much about it at the time.

"So, when I entered that young lady's room, I also smelled the smell of medicine." Ye Yu lay on the table and looked at Qin Yan, feeling that his expression was a little strange, "Why do you have such an expression?"

Qin Yan looked at him coldly: "I always have this expression."

Ye Yu felt a little awkwardness from Qin Yan's tone and expression, and became even more curious. He wanted to ask a few more questions, but Qin Yan had already turned his head away: "What's the explanation for the smell of medicine?"

"What explanation can there be? Maybe the whole family has a cold."

Ye Yu yawned. Today is really tiring. I have searched a lot of messy information since I set off early in the morning, but I can't find a few that are really useful: "Why don't we rest? What's the matter? Say more."

"You should rest first." Qin Yan seemed to have some plans, stood up and took his mask, "I'll go out for a while."

Ye Yu was taken aback: "It's so late..."

"Draw the arrangement of the candles in the hut, and bring back the dregs of the medicine they boiled." With a pull of the mask, Qin Yan's quiet figure came muffled from behind the cloth, "This is just one of the missing cases." Where the incident happened, we still have other cases to investigate, so we cannot delay."

Ye Yu sighed in his heart, knowing that this person's desperate efforts would not change, Qin Yan went to work, how could he sleep alone: ​​"You... I will go too."

Reaching for the face towel in the basin, Ye Yu remembered that it was his face towel that Qin Yan was drawing on the ground.

Ye Yu; "..."

Qin Yan was given the task of drawing the arrangement of the candles. Ye Yu slipped into the kitchen, scraped some medicine residue from the medicine jar, sniffed it under his nose, and narrowed his eyes slightly.

When I came here for the first time, I just ate cantaloupe and didn't pay attention to the smell. I smelled it carefully, and it felt familiar, as if I had smelled a similar medicinal smell somewhere.