When we returned to the Chengjialing mine, it was already past eleven o'clock, but the small building of the mine office was still brightly lit. Team Cao had obviously just finished the meeting, leaning on the sofa and napping, I saw that he was asleep and was about to close the door and leave, but he bounced up from the sofa as if he had been pricked by a needle, stared at me with big confused eyes, and grabbed me.

"Where's the go, I've locked off the mines, and now no one can hang outside. ”

I turned around and introduced Curator Qi to him, and Team Cao shook hands with him warmly, "Curator Qi, you have helped us a lot in our work, and you came to share our weal and tribulation, I don't know how to thank you." "Team Cao immediately gave Xiao Duan a task, and put Director Qi well, and we will meet again tomorrow morning.

Seeing off Curator Qi, Team Cao pulled me to sit down at the conference table, and said with a bitter face: "Lao Chang, I and the people on the team have just been carefully screened, and it is estimated that there are no more people who have no contact with the dead miners. At present, there are 889 employees in the mine and the residents of the town, and we and the people of the provincial criminal investigation brigade have a total of 29 people. ”

"What do you say from the headquarters?" I handed Team Cao a cigarette, and the two of us smoked with our heads down.

"I have already reported from the headquarters that people from the epidemic prevention office will rush over tomorrow, a team of experts, bring in some equipment and medicines, a large number of personnel and materials will arrive in two days, the provincial health department and the public security department should have received the order by now, they are responsible for the blockade of the perimeter and the blocking of information, but the next plan requires us to come up with preliminary opinions as soon as possible. I've already set the backyard on fire, and if your judgment goes wrong, we'll have to be laid off to recuperate. ”

I glared at Team Cao, "Don't scare me, as soon as Xiao Zhong and Doctor Chen die, you will already realize the seriousness of the problem, I will be a pusher at most, tell me about Xiao Zhong and Doctor Chen's situation first, and then I will tell you what I know in Guangling." ”

"About six o'clock in the afternoon, Xiao Lei made an appointment with Xiao Zhong to talk about things in the mine in an office on the third floor, and he sat down for less than twenty minutes, Xiao Lei found that Xiao Zhong's consciousness began to be a little unclear, his face turned dark red, and he was a little puffy, his eyes began to be foggy, and he kept saying that he wanted to drink water, and gave him a teapot of water, but there was no relief. Xiao Lei was worried that he would have an old illness, so he ran out to find Dr. Chen, went down to the second floor, and met Xiao Lu of the Provincial Criminal Investigation Team, Xiao Lei asked Xiao Lu to go to the office to take care of Xiao Zhong, and ran to the infirmary. ”

Xiao Lu was holding a bunch of investigation materials, he first put things in the temporary office on the second floor, returned to the third floor, before and after less than three minutes, as soon as he entered the corridor on the third floor, he smelled a bad smell of mush, he thought that there was a fire in which room, so he checked from the staircase to room by room, to the office where Xiao Zhong stayed, there were four or five rooms in between, and it was about two minutes delayed. ”

When he entered the office, there was a cloud of smoke in the center of the office, but according to Xiao Lu, it was not the smoke of burning, but water vapor, which formed a column of air with a diameter of more than one meter from the ground to the roof, but there was no flame in the middle of the column. When Xiao Lu stepped forward, he realized that the temperature of the air column was very high, about a meter away, and his hands and legs were burned. After about a minute, the column of air dissipated, and there was a black circle on the ground, and Xiao Zhong and the chair he was sitting on were only half a shoe. ”

Xiao Lei didn't know about the office at that time, he ran to the small bungalow of the mine infirmary, he knocked on the door for a long time and no one opened it, pushed the door and went in to see, there was no one in the house, he entered the back of the disposal room, and found that there was a black circle on the ground in front of the medicine cabinet in the disposal room, only to understand that Dr. Chen had also suffered an accident. But according to Xiao Lei's speculation, Dr. Chen's death should have been about an hour earlier than Xiao Zhong, but no one saw the situation at that time. ”

After listening to Team Cao's introduction to the situation, the matter was basically the same as what I guessed on the road, so I told him what I learned in Guangling County and some speculations, and also told him the content of Zeng Qian's phone call with me.

Team Cao didn't speak, just smoked silently, and only raised his head and said to me after a while, "Lao Chang, you mean that there is some unknown virus in the mine, and the miners go up to the mine after being infected, because of their own physique, the attack is early and late, but after the attack, the virus will release powerful heat energy, and the body of the deceased will be vaporized instantly, and a black circle will be formed." This kind of thing has been done since ancient times, resulting in several mine closures during the Ming and Qing dynasties and the Japanese occupation period, in order to stop the spread of the virus. But the question is, what about the evidence?"

"And according to what you said, what did the virus spread? air, water, saliva contact? But obviously, this is not the case, if it is air and water, or saliva, then with the medical and health level of the Ming and Qing dynasties, there is no way to stop the spread of the virus, let alone Chengjialing, even Guangling County has long been full of corpses. And Dr. Chen, he is the only one who has never been infected by going down the mine, how did he get it, so aren't the people in the mine and the town all saved now? Also, the weasel we bumped into halfway through the mine that day should have also been infected, and it burned down in front of us, how many snakes and rats were in the mine, wouldn't it have spread a long time ago?"

"The main question is, why do there are so many cases of spontaneous combustion, and there is no witness to the whole process? There is only one possibility, that is, the infected person is deliberately avoiding it, and the infected person cannot do this, especially since they don't know what is wrong with their body. So it could only be that the virus is controlling the human mind, or that the virus deliberately chooses the infected person to be alone, so isn't it that the virus has intelligence and can manipulate the behavior of the infected, how advanced intelligent creature must this be?

I quietly listened to all the questions of Team Cao, and walked to the desk, where I remembered that there was a plan and section of the Chengjialing mine on the table. I found the drawings and spread them out in front of Team Cao, "Team Cao, first of all, I think that our current case is very different from ordinary cases, the previous cases were not so urgent, you can reason carefully, calmly layout, and may find clues to solve the case from a tiny detail, and the truth will be revealed." But this time, we not only have to find the truth, but also have to race for time, and we don't know how the virus spreads, so we can't be sure how destructive it is, or even whether it exists. So we don't have time to go along with it, but we have to rely on intuition, rely on inspiration, try every possibility, do you agree?"

Team Cao nodded and motioned for me to continue.

"Secondly, my experience tells me that there are absurd and unruly places in folk ghost legends, but more because people at that time could not understand and analyze some supernatural phenomena with the help of scientific means, and there are also some supernatural phenomena that actually exist and cannot be explained by scientific methods now. However, the three mine closures that occurred in history have shown that serious problems have occurred in the mines, and I don't need to say much about the significance of coal mines in history. The Ming Dynasty used spells, the Qing Dynasty used Feng Shui, and the Japanese used technical detection methods, but none of them worked, indicating that what is in the well is beyond our cognition. Do you agree with that?"

Team Cao nodded again and wrote something in the notebook at hand.

"Okay, Team Cao, I'll talk about the first evidence first. I pointed to the drawings on the table, "The mine pit of the Yuan, Ming and Qing dynasties, on the west side of Chengjialing, is actually in a canyon with a depth of two kilometers, and the mine of the Yuan Dynasty is in the northernmost part, but it was abandoned because of the war, and there is nothing special about it." The Ming Dynasty mine is about 500 meters to the south, although we can't go in to explore the field, but from the location of the mine and the direction of the mountain system, it should be in the direction of south-east. The Qing Dynasty mine has moved about 800 meters to the south, and it is not far from the mouth of the canyon, and the direction of the mine has changed to east-north. ”

"Then let's look at the pit dug by the Republic of China and the Japanese, they came to the eastern slope of Chengjialing, this time we have a detailed section of the pit, Cao team, you see, the last shaft of the Japanese mine closure is just on the front and back of the mine in the Qing Dynasty, but the direction of the roadway is to the northwest, and none of the mines in front of it are to the northwest. Looking at the No. 17 mine we dug in the nineties, it happens to be the southernmost part of all the mines, which is the front and back of the Ming Dynasty mine, and the direction is also different from other roadways, it is southwest. ”

"Then if we connect the mines with lines, we will find that they all point to a certain location at the bottom of Chengjialing Mountain, and if we dig along these tunnels, we will eventually dig through. I took a sip of tea and looked at Team Cao, who bowed his head and was silent.

"I agree, the reasoning is correct, this can show that the reason for the closure of the mine is the same in the past generations, they bumped into the same thing in the mine, although the accounts are different. In other words, it can be proved that the miners' deaths came from some unknown reason in the mines. Team Cao drew a pencil on the floor plan and nodded.

"Not exactly, Team Cao, there is also a problem hidden here that is not easy to find. I picked up his pencil and paused on the map on Well Seventeen.

"What's the problem?" Team Cao took the thermos on the ground, poured the herbal tea from my teacup, and refilled the hot water.

(Those who will squint, see the details first; those who will be deaf will be deaf, the first to smell the gnats flying; those who will be cool in the mouth, the first to distinguish Ziyi; those who will be suffocated by the nose, the first to feel scorched; those who will be stiff, the first to rush; those who will be confused, the first to know right and wrong: those who do not come to the object will not be reversed.) --"Liezi")