In other words, the theft and homicide case of the Ion Mountain Tomb finally ushered in the final chapter with the unremitting efforts of Zhao Zimeng and others.

All the stolen cultural relics from the Ion Hill Tomb have been recovered and handed over to the cultural relics department.

With the approval of the Provincial High People's Court, Rao Zhan, Jie Wenjiang, and Li Dasen were executed.

Prior to this, Cai Yaohui was sentenced to one year in prison by the Municipal Intermediate People's Court for his major meritorious service.

Huo Wangting was sentenced to three years in prison for reselling cultural relics, and the illegal gains and some of the cultural relics seized by the police were handed over to the state treasury along with the case.

As for Ning Shangzhi and his two subordinates, the city bureau has handed them over to the Haizhou police for a separate case.

The cracking of this bizarre case has added new merit to the medal book of the "Condor Brigade", and Zhao Zimeng and the others finally breathed a sigh of relief.

However, within a few days, at half past nine in the morning of October 17, the criminal investigation team received a report from the Nanlinhu Police Station in Nancheng District.

The contents of the report are as follows:

When restoring a clay bodhisattva in Lengyue Temple, an ancient temple in the city, craftsmen found a pair of human bones in the bodhisattva's belly.

The craftsmen and masters present were shocked, and they immediately called the abbot of the temple - Xiu Neng.

The abbot of Xiu Neng immediately sent a duty officer, Master Kongyun, to go down the mountain to report the case.

Forty minutes later, three police cars stopped at the foot of Huishan.

Zhao Zimeng and his entourage of ten people got out of the car.

Zhao Zimeng and Xiang Daimo walked in the front, Xiang Daimo was carrying a criminal investigation box in his hand;

Xiao Changsong, Feng Yiming and Cheng Qiushui walked in the middle of the team, and Cheng Qiushui carried a forensic box in his hand.

The group walked for seven or eight minutes, climbed over two mountains, passed through three villages, and walked straight for most of the day, before the mountain gate of Lengyue Temple appeared in everyone's sight.

It is an ancient temple with a long history, and the architectural cloak of the temple has faded and faded.

The group was getting closer and closer to the temple, Zhao Zimeng raised his eyes and looked at this ancient temple in the mountains, and suddenly felt a sense of desolation in his heart.

From time to time, people ran into the mountain gate, and when they passed through the village, they were followed by many curious people.

The women who were originally picking autumn tea in the tea garden also put down their baskets and followed behind the team.

There were two policemen standing on the steps in front of the mountain gate, one was Liu Zhengfeng, the director of the Nanlinhu Police Station, and the other was Chang Bing, the head of the public security unit.

After Zhao Zimeng and the two of them exchanged simple greetings, the two of them led the group into the mountain gate.

As soon as you enter the mountain gate, you will see a square pond, the surrounding of the pond is made of stones, the pond is very deep, and the water surface is at least two meters from the stone bank.

There is a pavilion in the middle of the pond, and a promenade connects to the pavilion in the south, east, west, and north.

The pond is littered with dead lotus leaves and bent rhizomes, and most of the plants begin to wither at this time.

On the north side of the pond is a stone staircase, and on the staircase is the Yingxia Hall.

Yingxia Hall has three gates on the left, middle and right.

Passing through the Yingxia Palace, you will see the tall and majestic Daxiong Treasure Palace, and the left and right sides are double-layer ear rooms.

There are two gates under each of the transepts, and the words "East Zen Temple" and "West Zen Temple" are written on the top of the door.

The East and West Temples are where the monks live.

Many people gathered on the front steps of the hall, some of them pilgrims and tourists, and the rest of them were villagers near the temple.

The crowd of onlookers piled up, and this originally deserted temple suddenly became lively.

A cordon has been put up four or five meters outside the door of the Daxiong Treasure Hall, and several people in uniform are standing inside the cordon to maintain order.

The crowd automatically moved out of the way.

Director Liu and Chief Chang led the group into the hall.

There is a sign at the entrance of the main hall that reads, "Shakyamuni Buddha is undergoing a major repair, please do not approach." ”

In the middle gate of the main hall stood two monks, one was the abbot Xiuneng Zen Master - an old man about eighty years old.

The other is Master Jueshui, a supervisor, who is about 60 years old.

Facing the main entrance of the main hall is the seated Buddha of Shakyamuni.

Pull a rope on either side and in front of Shakyamuni Buddha.

The incense case has been removed, the incense has been extinguished, and there is incense in front of the bodhisattvas on the left and right sides of the entire hall.

In addition to this Shakyamuni Buddha, other bodhisattvas can be visited.

Shakyamunian sat on a one-meter-high platform.

Shakyamuni Buddha was surrounded by scaffolding that had been erected, and the curtain behind him and the cloak on his body had been removed.

The paint on Shakyamuni Buddha's face and body has been mottled, and some places have fallen off.

Under the high platform stood several grizzled, terrified craftsmen.

There is a wooden staircase on the right side of the platform, and Master Jueshui leads Director Liu and Zhao Zimeng, Ling Hu Yunfei and Xiao Changsong behind Shakyamuni - the gap between Shakyamuni Buddha and Guanyin Bodhisattva.

Behind Shakyamuni Buddha is Avalokiteshvara.

Shakyamuni Buddha faces the south gate of the main hall, and Avalokiteshvara faces the north gate of the main hall.

At the bottom of the steps lay baskets of clods of soil, which contained fibrous plants such as straw stalks, wheat straw and straw, and some filaments, which were cotton, were attached.

These clods were freshly pried off the back of Shakyamuni Buddha.

The space on the high platform is limited, and scaffolding is erected, so it can only accommodate a few people.

The situation behind Shakyamuni Buddha was very bad: in addition to the dampness, many places had fallen off.

Master Jueshui said that due to the rain leakage and seepage on the roof of the temple, the mud tire slowly fell off under the long-term erosion of the rain, and no one usually cared about it because of the cover of the curtain and cloak.

If it weren't for the fact that the water on the mud tire on Shakyamuni's back had penetrated into the front half of the body, causing the painted paintings to peel and peel off, and if it weren't for the fact that the wooden platform had begun to rot due to long-term erosion, the temple would not have undergone this major repair.

The monk said that fifteen years ago, the monastery had just undergone a complete overhaul, so this overhaul was limited to Shakyamuni Buddha.

The head of a craftsman was invited to the high platform, and the foreman's name was Hu Jialiang.

Hu Jialiang saw that he was a person who had reached the age of knowing the destiny of heaven.

This person is slightly chubby, bowed, and wears a yellow military uniform.

It is said that he took a dozen craftsmen with him to work in the monastery.

He has followed his father since he was a child, and after his father passed away, he led a group of people to continue to do his old job.

Shakyamuni Buddha has an irregular square hole on his back, and the side of the square hole is about 90 centimeters long.

Inside the square cave is a checkered wooden frame, and several wooden pillars are faintly visible inside the wooden frame.

The wooden pillars and checkered wooden frames are supposed to constitute the brackets of the bodhisattva, and the clay is attached to the brackets.

The scaffolds were also stained with straw stalks, wheat straw, straw and cotton.

On the scaffolding above the square hole hung two horse lanterns.

Hu Jialiang took down a horse lantern from the scaffolding, led Zhao Zimeng, Ling Hu Yunfei, Liu Zhengfeng and Xiao Changsong to the square cave, brought the horse lantern to the square cave, pointed to the bottom of the bracket and said, "The corpse is in the standing bones." ”

The "standing bone" is the wooden support.

Ling Hu Yunfei turned on the emergency light and shone in the direction of Hu Jialiang's finger.

All four of them saw it: there was a corpse inside the stand!

The corpse was in the shape of hands on its knees, and more than a dozen loops of rope were wrapped around the corpse.

The corpse was in the stomach of the Bodhisattva, this kind of scene Zhao Zimeng had never heard of before, and several people looked at it again and again.

Zhao Zimeng judged that this was definitely not an ordinary case, such a method of hiding corpses had never been seen before, and a strange cold feeling hit Zhao Zimeng's heart.

If it weren't for the rain leaking from the roof of the temple, this Shakyamuni Buddha would probably never have undergone such a major repair.

Hu Jialiang pointed to the standing bones and said: "You see, this part of the standing bones is connected, and the standing bones are originally a whole. ”

The four of them looked at Hu Jialiang's fingers, up, down, left, and right, and the traces of the connection were very obvious: the connection was fixed with iron wire, and there were traces of sawing at the joint.

According to this master Hu Jialiang, the murderer sawed a square hole in the standing bone of Sakyamuni's back, and then hid the body in Sakyamuni's stomach, connected the sawn square to the standing bone, smeared it with plastic clay, and finally painted it.

Zhao Zimeng knew: In this way, the murderer is quite accomplished in clay sculpture architecture, and his craftsmanship has a high technical content.

Hu Jialiang said that at first, they did not know that the Bodhisattva had a corpse hidden in his stomach, and when he and the craftsman pried a piece of plastic clay on the Bodhisattva's back, a very strange smell suddenly emerged from the Bodhisattva's stomach.

When he pried open a few pieces of plastic clay and shone a horse lamp into the skull, he saw a corpse.

When human lives were at stake, Hu Jialiang instructed everyone to stop quickly, send someone to invite the supervisor of Jueshui and the abbot of Xiuneng, and at the same time protect the scene, because there were still many pilgrims and tourists in the main hall.

At the request of the monastery, the craftsmen pulled a rope in front of Shakyamuni Buddha and on the left and right sides.

After Lin Di took a few photos, Zhao Zimeng asked Hu Jialiang and others to remove the wooden lattice attached to the bones.

The two masters used a vice to unscrew the wire at the junction.

After unscrewing the last wire, Hu Jialiang took out a wooden lattice fixed with wire from the square hole.

Zhao Zimeng and Linghu Yunfei found that the wooden lattice attached to the standing bone was originally sawed off from the standing bone, and the murderer connected a wooden strip on top of the wooden lattice.

After the murderer hid the body of the deceased in Shakyamuni's belly, he attached the square to the standing bone, then attached the clay and smoothed it, and then painted it when the clay was dry.

Leave no trace!

With the help of Hu Jialiang and another craftsman, Ling Hu Yunfei fixed two lights on the scaffolding on the upper left and upper right of the square cave, and aimed the pillars of light at the square hole, on which the light was too dim.

Under the pillar of light, the corpse inside Shakyamuni's stomach was very clear, and the upward part of the corpse was stained with some mud.

Mud, to be exact.

The mud on the corpse's head is most noticeable, and the mud does not completely cover the entire skull, so some black hair can be faintly seen.

Because of the leakage of rainwater, the rain dripped some mud on the bones and on the head.

The mud did not cover the deceased's hair, which shows that the deceased's hair was still relatively dense.

Undoubtedly, the deceased was not a member of the monastery, and the people of the monastery were hairless.

Zhao Zimeng and Ling Hu Yunfei observed: The space in Shakyamuni's stomach is really not small, and at least three adults can be hidden in it.

Zhao Zimeng took a lamp from Xiang Daimo's hand and drilled through the scaffolding, causing Hu Yunfei to follow.

Zhao Zimeng squatted at the entrance of the square cave, and swept the light pillar of the lamp in Shakyamuni's stomach a few times, and the light pillar stayed at the bottom for a long time, and he looked intently.