Tianchang Town is a very small town, and a small river flows through the middle of the town, dividing the town in two.

There is an old stone bridge in the town, and the houses on both sides of the river are arranged in a staggered and neat manner.

Tianchang Town is not so much a small town, but it is not much bigger than a small town in the traditional sense, and you can walk around the town in about ten minutes.

Tianchang Town is only a little more than an hour's drive from the downtown area of TB City, but because there are several large mountains not far from the town, the town is located in a valley, so the population is not large.

The surrounding mountains have been a natural barrier since ancient times, so there are well-preserved ancient buildings here. Coupled with the beautiful natural scenery around Tianchang Town, it has become a good place for urban people to relax on holidays.

On holidays, parking lots outside the town are always filled with all kinds of vehicles, and the town's houses have been converted into shops, restaurants, and small family hotels.

Despite this, Tianchang Town still retains a lot of rural idyllic atmosphere. There are large areas of farmland and fruit forests around the town, and many of the town's residents still work this beautiful land like their ancestors.

With the prosperity of the tertiary industry represented by tourism in recent years, traditional agriculture has long lost its competitiveness. The farmland and orchards in Tianchang Town are not for agricultural output, but purely as a sideline for tourism.

For example, if people from the city come here for leisure, they can go to the orchard or farm to experience rural life, or even plant their own vegetables and fruit trees, and entrust the villagers to take care of them.

Every season when fruits and vegetables are ripe, there are more tourists who come to Tianchang Town, and everyone eats all kinds of pastoral fruits and vegetables, so comfortable.

……

To the east of the town is a large banyan tree that is hundreds of years old, and its trunk requires four or five people to hug it.

The huge shade of the old banyan tree forms a natural pergola, and in the summer, tourists in the town like to drink tea and chat under the banyan tree on a hot afternoon.

Around the banyan tree, there are also several tea stalls, offering everything from tea and drinks to snacks and barbecues.

It's not summer, but it doesn't stop the townspeople from coming here to play cards and have fun.

The tea stall has been turned into an open-air mahjong parlor, where locals are playing and tourists are playing, and there is a lot of noise about playing cards.

While the adults play cards, the children play around the banyan tree, which has several holes and is perfect for children to hide and seek.

Although there are many people who play cards, there are also those who do not play cards and only drink tea. Since Tianchang Town is a tourist and leisure resort, it is also a very pleasant thing to make a pot of tea under the big banyan tree, chat with relatives and friends, brag, and sit idle for an afternoon.

Among these tea drinkers and chatter, there is one person who seems a little different.

The tea guests at the side table are always in groups of three or five, but this man is alone, with a pot of tea on the tea table in front of him, and he is lying on a rattan chair, as if he is closing his eyes to recuperate.

He is Lin Lei.

Naturally, there are a lot of topics for people who play cards and people who are chatting, but Lin Lei's eyes are closed, but his ears are pricked up, and the topics that everyone chats about enter his ears word for word.

The place where the "Headless Ghost Case" took place is here - Tianchang Town.

The case happened five years ago, which can be regarded as a backlog of cases.

One night five years ago, a headless corpse walked from east to west along the main road in Tianchang Town.

It was about 12 o'clock in the middle of the night at the time of the incident, and a total of three people saw the headless body swaggering through the market.

One of them was Li, a resident of the town who returned from night fishing, and he was the first to see the "headless ghost", and he collapsed to the ground in fright......

A little later, on the same road, Wang, a tourist who returned late from a midnight barbecue, also saw a headless ghost.

The last person to see the headless ghost was Lu, a resident of the town. That night, Lu's son had a high fever and was in a very serious condition, so Lu had to drive his son to the city to see a doctor.

None of these people dared to rush forward to find out, after all, it was late at night, and it was normal for people to be helpless when they suddenly saw such a terrifying scene.

In the early morning of the next day, a headless corpse was found in an orchard near Tianchang Town.

Soon a large number of police arrived at the scene - a headless body, which was clearly a murderer's case, and it was quite a bad nature.

While the police carried out the on-site investigation, they also carried out a large-scale investigation visit.

In the process of investigation and visit, the police actually found three witnesses, who invariably reacted that they had seen the headless corpse in the town in the middle of the night before, and what was even more terrifying was that they said in unison that the headless corpse had actually flaunted the market!

This......

The police quickly investigated the relevant backgrounds of these people in detail, and proved that the tourist Wang and the residents Li and Lu did not know each other, and the residents Li and Lu were only residents of the same town and did not have any deep friendship.

The deceased was an out-of-town tourist named Gu Changlin.

Gu Changlin, who is in his forties, came to Tianchang Town with a few friends and stayed in a hotel.

After dinner on the first day, Gu Changlin said that he went out for a walk, and then disappeared.

Several friends who traveled with Gu Changlin naturally became the focus of the police investigation, but these people did not leave the hotel after dinner, and they also played cards and entertainment with other hotels in the same hotel at night, all of which had alibis.

The witnesses of the case and the people who accompanied the deceased, after repeated investigations, the police finally ruled out their suspicion.

As a result, the case became an unsolved case.

Like all unsolved cases, as time passed, this headless ghost case gradually faded into obscurity.

Until recently, the situation took a 180-degree turn.

The "Unsolved Case" weekly in the United States did not know where to get the relevant information about the case, so it reported the case in detail in the magazine, which attracted the attention of all parties.

……

It turned out to be an old backlog.

Lin Lei has a headache with this kind of old backlog, and there is no way to find it at all.

The success rate of solving old backlog cases is less than 30%, and even in these 30%, all of them have ironclad evidence such as murderer's DNA or fingerprints, so that the case solving rate can be solved.

If there is no ironclad evidence, I am afraid that there will be no one-tenth of the old backlog of cases that can be solved -- the environment has undergone earth-shaking changes, and the scene of the year has long since ceased to exist.

Despite this, Lin Lei decided to come to Tianchang Town to have a look.

Although the local police have done a lot of work, it is difficult to ensure that there is nothing missing, let's take a look at the situation.

Inspector Chen wanted to come to Tianchang Town with Lin Lei at that time, but Lin Lei refused.

Lin Lei stated that this case should not be reported too much, and he would come over to take a look. When you don't have a single word, you make too much movement, if you can't solve the case in the end, won't you wait to be slapped in the face?

So, Lin Lei came to Tianchang Town as a foreign tourist......

"Sir, do you want some boiling water?"

Just as Lin Lei was sitting with his eyes closed, the voice of the tea stall owner came into Lin Lei's ears.

Lin Lei opened his eyes, glanced at the boss, and bowed slightly.

This boss looks like he is in his sixties, not tall, dark-skinned, and at first glance he is the image of a local farmer.

The old man added boiling water to Lin Lei's teapot and asked Lin Lei diligently, "Sir, have you ever been to Tianchang Town before?"

Lin Lei shook his head with a smile and replied, "No, this is my first time here." ”

The old man said softly, and then said: "Wow, that sir, you are really lucky, it is better to choose a day than to hit the day! Tomorrow there will be our town's five-year 'General Zheng Sacrifice Ceremony', you are really blessed!"

"General Zheng's sacrifice ceremony?" Lin Lei repeated, his eyes narrowed slightly: "General Zheng......?"

The old man smiled and said, "Sir must know General Zheng Chenggong, but it is not him that we are sacrificing. General Zheng Chenggong is called the national surname in our place, and he should be honored as General Zhu......"

Lin Lei is no stranger to history, Zheng Chenggong was given the surname Zhu by the Southern Ming Dynasty, so he is also called Zhu Chenggong, and the surname of the country is Ye.

It's just that later generations generally still call him his original surname, Zheng Chenggong.

"Uncle, what you are talking about General Zheng's sacrificial ceremony is—" Lin Lei asked.

The old man saw that Lin Lei was very interested in this topic, so he moved a bench, sat next to Lin Lei, and began to tell Lin Lei the ins and outs of this matter.

It turned out that when the Qing court was conquering T, Zheng Chenggong's son Zheng Jing committed suicide in defeat, and one of Zheng Jing's distant brothers retreated to the mountains near Tianchang Town with more than 1,000 people.

At that time, the roads in Tianchang Town were impassable, and there were mountains all around, although it was very close to TB, but the Qing army also had a headache with this general Zheng who fought guerrilla warfare.

General Zheng repeatedly thwarted the "sweeps" of the Qing army and killed many Tartars.

Later, due to the betrayal of traitors, General Zheng was captured by the Qing army. The Qing army demanded that General Zheng surrender, but General Zheng refused to obey.

The Qing army later beheaded General Zheng for public display, and before leaving, General Zheng said that he would not let go of the Tartars as a ghost, nor would he let go of the villain who betrayed him.

Naturally, no one dared to hold any sacrificial ceremonies in the former Qing Dynasty, but after the Republic of China, the locals built a temple of General Zheng to worship the beheaded general.

And every five years, the temple will also hold a special sacrifice ceremony, attracting many tourists to visit......

After the old man finished babbling, Lin Lei chuckled in his heart, and his brows furrowed tightly.

Behead?

Headless?

Five years?

Didn't that headless ghost case happen exactly five years ago?

Could it be ......

Just when Lin Lei was pondering, someone at the side table greeted the tea boss, so the old man said goodbye, turned around and left with a boiling water bottle.

Looking at the back of the old man leaving, Lin Lei immediately took out the relevant materials of the "headless ghost" case five years ago from the briefcase he carried with him, and looked at it carefully!