Wang Zilin and Song Youliang came to the ruins of the warehouse, where there is now only one old official as a gatehouse, and the old official introduced as he walked: "Before the warehouse of the state capital was burned down, it could be regarded as heavily guarded, and there were many young men guarding it every day, and now it is burned to ashes, and I am an old man~"

Song Youliang asked: "Do you know about the granary fire that night?" ”

"Of course the little one knows, I was on duty in the concierge at that time, and I was almost scared to death." The porter said with some palpitations, "I slept in a daze that night, and I heard the water outside~!" I was so scared that I got up, put on my clothes and ran out of the room to see, good guy, the smoke was billowing out, and the ashes drifting down the wind choked my nose. As soon as I ran to the granary, I saw that the roof of a granary had burned through, and the red flames were screaming and rushing upward, which scared people to death! The fire is big, even Da Luo Jinxian has to be burned~"

Song Youliang stopped, looked at the old servant and asked, "Did you see the roof burned through?" ”

"Yes, there was smoke coming out of the roof, and then the flames came out of the roof, and it burned bigger and bigger, and then it spread to all the granaries, and burned from late night until dawn, and finally it was extinguished."

"Are the granaries all next to each other?"

"No, one building after another, only about ten steps apart, there are more than ten buildings in total, all full of grain transported to put grain, what a pity! If it is far away, maybe there will be some left~" The old official shook his head and sighed, and said: "Fortunately, the yamen lobby and the house are far away, and the water dragon team arrived in time to fight the fire, so the yamen was saved, but so much food~ It's a pity, if it is released to the people, how many hungry people can be saved." ”

"yes!" Wang Zilin also sighed, "Governor Chen was so angry and anxious that he collapsed at that time, and finally recovered, so he arrested the guards who caught fire and said that they would be punished and beheaded." But those kudin all died in the fire, and they deserved it, but what was the use of that? ”

"Where, remember, you saw the fire burning through the roof?"

The old servant lowered his head and thought about it, and said, "It seems that the second granary in the south was the first to catch fire," thought about it again, and shook his head, "No, no, it seems to be the third ......, he is old and has a poor memory, anyway, it's either the second or the third~"

After listening to the old servant's words, Song Youliang nodded thoughtfully, and asked again: "Do you remember that night, when it was windy?" In what direction is the wind blowing? ”

"Scrape! It's windy! How can it not be windy in the summer, as for what kind of wind it is~ By the way, it was a south wind blowing at that time, and in summer, it was naturally a south wind~" Speaking of this, the old official was a little strange and asked: "My lord, what are you asking these ......?"

"It's nothing, just ask casually~~ I want to know how my food was burned?" Song Youliang said casually

"Yo, the old man has eyes and doesn't know Mount Tai, you are Song Qianhu, the god of wealth in Haiyang?" The old servant hurriedly saluted

As they spoke, they came to the burned granary. The granary was surrounded by a wall more than a foot high. When I entered the inside, I looked up, and sure enough, there was a large piece of ruins and broken walls, and the wooden shelves that had not been completely burned were lying there in the dark. Song Youliang asked the old officer: "Where did you see the first fire at that time?" ”

The old servant pointed to the remains of a broken wall to the north: "That's it, the roof of the second granary counted from the north was burned through, and then the roof of the third building was also burned through. ”

Song Youliang came to the wreckage of the granary in the south, touched his chin and pondered for a while, and said to the old servant with a smile: "Call a few more people to help, Wang Tongzhi and I want to have a look around here." ”

Song Youliang walked to the ruins and instructed the guards to carefully remove the layer of tiles above the ruins of the second granary, which the old servant said was the first to catch fire, revealing the blackened wood below, first carefully observe the cracks, and then use a dagger to scrape open the charcoal on it. After Song Youliang instructed the officials to carefully clean up the tiles and bricks near the bottom of the log, he squatted down and carefully gouged off the upper layer of ashes, revealing a few unburned woods, picked one up, looked at it, and nodded. Then he removed the tiles from the ruins of the third granary, and after careful inspection, he went on to inspect the ruins of the granary elsewhere, but the inspection was quicker. By the time all the tests were done, it was already dark.

Wang Tongzhi didn't know what tricks Song Youliang was playing, but seeing that he was full of posture, he quietly watched him busy from the sidelines. When he was done, he asked, "Brother Song, is there anything wrong?" ”

Song Youliang patted his dirty hands and said, "It's not that you were negligent and accidentally caught fire, I'm afraid someone deliberately set the fire~"

"Huh? Arson? All of them were taken aback. Deliberately setting fire to disaster relief food? This is a capital offense. Wang Zilin cautiously asked, "Brother Song, are you sure?" ”

"You can't be wrong. Tongzhi came to see. Song Youliang walked to the ruins of the granary where the fire first started, and pointed to a section of charred wood: "The fire was first ignited from here. ”

"How do you know that so much charred and rotten wood came from here?" Wang Zilin was puzzled

"Look, is the wood here different from other places?" Song Youliang pointed to a piece of charred wood, which was a large round pillar. It looks like a pillar in the granary, which fell to the ground after it burned down. Wang Zilin found a small stick and poked the charred log, turned his head and looked at Song Youliang suspiciously: "Forgive Wang for his clumsiness~"

Song Youliang went to the ruins of other granaries on the south side and casually picked up a piece of charred wood, put the two pieces of wood together, and asked, "Please look again~"

Wang Zilin carefully looked at the two scorched trees, which were covered with blackened cracks. Seeing no difference, he shook his head. Song Youliang pointed to the blackened cracks on the surface of the wood and said, "The first to catch fire in the granary is a shallow degree of black charcoal on the surface of this log. The wood burns and carbonizes, and the degree of charring on the surface increases as the fire gradually increases. The carbonization of the wood in this granary is significantly lighter than that of other granaries, so it can be judged that this is the fire point, and the fire will get bigger and bigger the further back it goes~"

"The cracks formed by the scorching wood around the ignition point are shallow and relatively fine, and that is because of the time when the fire at the ignition point ignited. The fire was relatively small and the fire was not large, and this log was relatively thick and could not be fully burned, so only the surface was burned. The moisture in the wood is ejected by the heat, which is what forms this shallow, thin crack. As the fire grows, the wood burns stronger, and the cracks form thicker and deeper. After the fire started, the part under the column was not fully burned because the granary was hollow and the fire burned mainly on the upper part of the roof. When the roof was burned through, the beams were burned, and the heavy tiles that were covered on it collapsed, and because there was no air, the column could no longer burn, so it retained the original appearance of the fire that had been burned at the time of the fire. Song Youliang pointed to the piece of wood that the servant held after he came: "This one is different, this is only burned after the fire is very large, the heat is very high, the fire is very fierce, and it burns very quickly, so that this deep and thick crack will be formed." ”

Wang Zilin understood a little: "Brother Song, are you saying that if you find this kind of wood with relatively small and fine cracks, it is the place where the fire started?" ”