Merchant of the Underworld

I dragged my exhausted body onto the police car, took the water handed over by Zhang Xiaoai, drank half of it, and fell asleep directly.

When Zhang Xiaoai pushed me awake again, the police car was already not far from the funeral parlor.

"Looking at how tired you are, I really can't bear to wake you up." Zhang Xiaoai glanced at me guiltily: "But you also know that the situation is very urgent now. If we solve the case one day later, maybe another life will be saved. !”

"It's not one day, it's six days!" I corrected with certainty: "From the time Mang Niu was killed until Zhang Kai was killed early this morning, there were a total of twenty-four days, and one person would die every six days." The death dates of Tou and Wang Meng were also six days apart!"

"How did you know?" Zhang Xiaoai exclaimed in surprise: "You just found out last night that Mang Niu was killed twenty-three days ago. How did you know the dates of other people's deaths?"

"That's right. If I guessed correctly, the Yin Spirit will kill six people in total. Now four are dead, and there should be two left!" I said.

"There are two people left, why?" Zhang Xiaoai asked in surprise.

"It's just a guess now, but it will be confirmed soon!" I replied.

At this moment, I was very conflicted. I hoped that my guess was right, which would bring me one step closer to the truth. At the same time, I also hoped that my guess was wrong, so that two fewer people would die.

Although Zhang Xiaoai's face was full of doubts, seeing my gloomy expression, she didn't ask any more questions.

The police car quickly stopped in front of the funeral home. We both got out of the car and went straight to the morgue.

Luo Yang, who was as tall as an iron tower, moved a chair and leaned against the door of the morgue, his eyes widened. The eyes were bloodshot. It can be seen that he stayed here all night without moving at all.

"Did something happen last night?" I asked.

"There was no movement at all." Luo Yang shook his head: "But around three o'clock in the morning, I had some hallucinations."

"Hallucination?" I was suddenly shocked: "What hallucination?"

"I saw what seemed to be a figure on the top of the big tree outside, and I kept looking here. At that time, I was really a little scared, so I took out my gun, and then the figure disappeared." Luo Yang recalled.

"Which big tree?" I asked.

"It's the tallest locust tree outside the courtyard." Luo Yang pointed outward from a distance.

I ran over quickly.

Zhang Xiaoai didn't know what I had discovered, so she followed closely.

There is a big locust tree growing in the yard outside the morgue. The tree is very thick, but it is curved, so it is not very tall.

I climbed up on the branches and searched carefully.

It rained heavily last night, and the tree trunks were washed clean, but there was a trace of mud that spread from bottom to top to the top of the tree.

Then, I found two more pieces of mud. The mud was very wet, as if it had just been fished out of the water. One side was extremely smooth and slightly curved.

"What are you looking for?" Zhang Xiaoai looked up and asked curiously.

"A mouse, a mouse that was smoked black and covered in mud!" I replied.

"Mouse?" Zhang Xiaoai became even more puzzled.

"Yes!" I jumped down from the tree, took out the compass, measured the direction, and looked along the southwest corner.

There were signs of the grass falling forward, and there was wet mud on it, which was obviously left behind after heavy rain.

I followed the trace for forty or fifty steps and finally found a long line on the edge of a puddle.

Pulling the string, a tattered mouse suddenly emerged from the water.

"How did you know there was a mouse here?" Zhang Xiaoai asked.

"This mouse belongs to the Internet cafe where Zhang Kai was killed. I was chasing it for the rest of the night!" I said calmly.

It was three o'clock in the morning when Luo Yang had hallucinations; it was also three o'clock in the morning when Zhang Kai was killed; the mouse stained with yin energy ran to the west of the city; the funeral parlor was also in the west of the city...

The combination of these points is no accident!

"We are getting closer to the truth! Let's go inside and have a look." After I said that, I strode forward towards the morgue.

With a creak, the big iron door of the morgue opened, and a blast of cold air rushed out. The three of us couldn't help shivering at the same time.

I immediately looked at the lonely big iron bed.

The iron bed and Wang Meng's body were both intact. When I walked in, I saw that there were no signs of damage to the cinnabar array.

The straw and radishes were all the same, except for a layer of white frost on them.

The little piggy was dead, but he wasn't frozen to death.

Its whole body was pitch black and its tongue was hanging out. It was obvious that its soul had been taken away by the Yin Qi.

The paper man was also split in half, also broken into two pieces at the neck.

When I left yesterday, I put a piece of Wang Meng's hair on each item. Now I saw that they were all broken, but the things under the hair were not damaged at all, and even the position of the hair was not changed. Pass.

Zhang Xiaoai and Luo Yang followed closely behind me, looking at me with confusion, waiting for my explanation.

I looked at them both, took a deep breath and said, "The murderer of this serial murder case should be a knife, a butcher knife specially used to kill people."

The two of them looked at each other, as if they didn't quite understand.

I pointed to a few things on the ground and explained to them one by one: "From the first moment I saw the photo, I concluded that this case was probably related to a felonious object! That felonious object may be an extremely powerful weapon. A sharp butcher knife or a giant axe, but I can’t tell what it is yet.”

"The things I laid out yesterday are all very specific. The straw corresponds to the hatchet, the white radish corresponds to the kitchen knife, the piglet corresponds to the butcher's knife, and the paper man corresponds to the killing knife. Now you have seen it, and the other items are fine. , only the paper man’s head was chopped off, so it can be seen that this evil object was specially used to punish prisoners in the past, and it only cut off the head!”

"The executioner's ghost-headed knife?" Zhang Xiaoai blurted out.

"Well, almost, it falls into this category." I nodded and continued: "And these hairs were all chopped off, without any damage to anything other than the hair, exactly the same as those of the victims. "

"This kind of technique is simply not something that humans can do. The evil thing behind it must be extremely powerful! As long as it recognizes you as a criminal, when the time comes, no matter where you are hiding in the world, it will come and take away your head. .”