"Brother Chang, have you ever looked at the bones of these victims?"

"During the excavation, I saw several of them, and because they were so corrupt, it was difficult to distinguish whether they were male or female, but they all had a common characteristic. All the victims were buried in the pit without clothes, not only without clothes, but also without hair. ”

Hair?

Xing Ruyi remembered what Yin Yuan said to him just now.

"I've heard from the housekeeper in Yunfu that the villagers in this neighborhood suspect that Hui Niang's in-laws are trading in relation to the dead, saying that they often strip off the clothes worn by the dead and sell them in Yunsheng's ready-to-wear store."

"Is that so?" Chang Tai's face sank: "It seems that what these two in-laws are doing is not a secret for a long time, but it is the thoughts of these insiders that are incomprehensible." Aren't they afraid that one day the murdered man will become themselves? ”

"Of course they were afraid, so they moved their families away from this small courtyard. Didn't Brother Chang notice that the houses near this small courtyard were all uninhabited empty courtyards? ”

"I noticed it, but Brother Chang was careless and didn't think of going here."

"The words that Steward Yun said are in line with what we saw at the scene tonight to a certain extent. It's just that whether the clothes that were stripped off were put in Yunsheng's ready-to-wear store still need to be carefully checked. ”

Xing Ruyi said, walked to the middle of the corpses, from far to near, from near to far, and looked around carefully.

"Judging by the degree of decomposition of the body, the length of time it was buried is also different. During the excavation, Brother Chang specially instructed those people to dig out some of the dead on each floor? ”

Chang Tai possessed, looked at the bones closest to him, and shook his head: "No!" I meant to get all the bones out of this courtyard, so I didn't give any special orders. It should be the villagers who were hired, so they excavated piece by piece for convenience, so that it saved us a lot of heart. ”

"Hmm." Xing Ruyi nodded, borrowed a torch, and squatted down to carefully examine the bones, "If we divide them according to the cause of the victim's death, the bones in front of us can be roughly divided into four categories, and these four categories also correspond to the degree of decay of the bones. ”

"Brother Chang, look at these!" Xing Ruyi pointed to two corpses that were close to each other: "The characteristics of these two corpses are relatively similar, and they should have been poisoned before their deaths." Although the flesh and skin have rotted, but fortunately there is still some evidence left, you can see these bones, the color is black, but this black is not caused by being buried under the soil for many years. ”

"When I was in the Yamen of the Beijing Division, I also heard the lecture of the Servant. It is said that if a person dies of poisoning before death, the whole body will be cyan after death, and the skin and flesh will still be there many days after death, and the degree of decay will be much slower than that of the normal deceased, and the skin and flesh will appear black. If a person has been dead for a long time, because the flesh and skin have rotted and only the bones remain, the white bones will also appear black, which is caused by poisoning into the bone marrow. ”

"Brother Chang, look at this one again, how do you think he died?"

Chang Tai stared at the corpse for most of the day: "The bones are intact, for a while, it is impossible to judge." ”

He was also poisoned, but the poison was not taken before he died, but was poured into it after death. If you look at his throat, the bones are yellowish-white, which is a clear sign of poison being poured into his throat after death. Hui Niang's in-laws don't need to hide the real reason for the deceased, the only possibility they can do is that they are worried that the victim is not completely dead. ”

Chang Tai raised his eyebrows and listened carefully to Xing Ruyi's words.

Not far away, the fox and Yin Yuan were also strolling among the corpses, and that posture was not like looking at the bones, but like walking in a sea of clouds.

"One, two, three, these three corpses are the most seriously corrupted, strictly speaking, there is nothing left except the bones, if they are taken out from here, it can be used as a standard for medical students to study the human skeleton, and from the bones, we have not found any special scars. Therefore, it can be concluded that the three victims were killed relatively early. ”

Xing Ruyi pointed to the bones of the victim who was injected with poison after death: "If you compare these three bones, I personally think that this one was killed earlier than the other two." The victim should have been killed unsuspectingly, possibly by suffocation while asleep with his mouth and nose covered, and the victim was not a vicious man.

You see that his leg bones are slightly deformed, but they are not caused by external force or trauma, but are left by years of heavy labor, so this victim is very likely to be a nearby villager or a hunter. I heard that in the early days, Hui Niang's in-laws were not doing murderous business, and no one was born a killer, so when they first killed someone, they would definitely be panicked and afraid.

When committing a crime, in order not to attract the attention of the victim, they should choose midnight or early morning, when the victim sleeps the deepest and is the easiest to start, in order to avoid the scene getting out of control, or the victim suddenly wakes up, so they generally do not bring any tools for the murder. The house here, when Brother Chang came, should have seen it, there are no superfluous furnishings in the room, so pillows and quilts are excellent tools for committing crimes, and when you move your hands, the movement will not be too big, and it will not attract the attention of the people around.

Hui Niang's father-in-law is a little inconvenient to move, although her mother-in-law is powerful, but in the final analysis, she is just a woman, and her strength is limited, so when she commits the murder, it must be two people together. After killing someone, because he was worried that his strength was not enough, he couldn't kill the other party completely, so he was poisoned twice. ”

"These are indeed very consistent with the psychological characteristics of the murderers who killed for the first time, but unfortunately, we don't know what kind of poison these two in-laws gave to the deceased."

"If Ruyi didn't guess wrong, it should be those!" Xing Ruyi pointed to a dry blade of grass in the corner of the wall.

"What's that?"

"Wild kudzu!"

"Wild kudzu? Is it poison? ”

"Wild kudzu, also known as hook kiss. Its roots are poisonous, are usually harvested in spring and autumn, and are commonly found on grassy slopes, roadsides, or open forests. When I was just in the back mountain with the fox, I also saw these wild kudzu. As for the ones on the side of the courtyard wall, it is obvious that they have been transplanted. Around Yekudzu, Huiniang's in-laws also deliberately fenced it with bamboo, the purpose of which was not to let the guests who came to stay notice these things.

Brother Chang, if you look at the small trees next to the bamboo forest, they should have been planted together with the forest, and looking at their growth, it will only be two or three years. By the way, those little trees are called hibiscus, and they are ornamental plants, and I also have them in my yard. I'm talking about the Ruyi rouge shop in Luoyang.

If they have lived here for a long time, they must have known that this wild kudzu is poisonous. After the first murder, in order to prevent the deceased from coming back to life after death, wild kudzu was collected and boiled into juice for the victim to take. Looking at the extent to which the medicine was soaked, the two perpetrators must have been very panicked at that time, so Brother Chang, you see, this poison has only spread here.

If you look at the two corpses next to you, the amount is obviously much larger, perhaps because Hui Niang's in-laws have realized that it is much easier to kill people with wild kudzu than to do it yourself. The reason why it is suspected that the owners of these two bones were killed earlier is because the bones are much more toxic than those who were poisoned next to them. And as time goes by, Hui Niang's in-laws must have mastered the exact amount of poisoning, so if you look at the one over there, the color of the bones is getting lighter and lighter. ”

"Suffocation, poisoning, we have found two ways to kill, so what are the remaining two?"

"As time goes by, Hui Niang's in-laws kill more and more people, and the poisoning methods are becoming more and more proficient, and this courage is getting bigger and bigger. So they are no longer satisfied with simply killing and plundering things, but have begun to try more methods of killing. When I first stepped into the grave, I also found the bones of some small animals, and found various murder weapons on the bodies of small animals, such as this one. ”

Xing Ruyi shook the hemp rope that was half the length of his thumb in his hand: "This is what I found in the corpse pit, and it should be the part used to tie the knot." The place next to the dirt has rotted and sunk into the dirt, which is the upper part. Twine is tied around the neck of the small animal. In addition to the hemp rope, I also picked up another, more interesting thing. Well, this thing in my hand looks like a part of a bone, but it's been artificially ground into a bone needle. I don't think Hui Niang's family is so poor that they need something as primitive as a bone needle. And Brother Chang, look, is the head of this bone needle also a little black? ”

"It's ...... Wild kudzu? ”

"That's right! The bone needle is soaked with the poisonous juice of wild kudzu, and it is precisely because of this bone needle that I guess that those victims who died of poisoning were also poisoned by this wild arrowroot. Also, this bone needle was found next to the skeleton of a small rabbit. It's a shame that my eyes are quite powerful, otherwise such a small bone needle is still hidden in the skeleton, and it is really difficult to find. ”

"Ropes, bone needles, it seems that these two in-laws have really tried a lot, but I don't know, what is used on these victims in the end?"

"The simplest and most effective one." Xing Ruyi pointed to another corpse: "Directly hacked to death with a knife, the one over there should be the victim of a new round of attempts, you see that the knife has penetrated deep into the neck, and almost even the victim's neck is about to be cut off." ”

Chang Tai followed the direction of Xing Ruyi's gaze, and sure enough, he saw the bones she said.

"It seems that they are not satisfied with this new round of attempts."

"Hair! Brother Chang, you just mentioned these two words. ”

Xing Ruyi raised the torch a little higher so that the light could shine on more bones, and repeated the word hair again.

(Education 123 Literature Network)