The rotten-faced Taoist priest turned his attention to me, and after looking at me from head to toe, he asked me why I was looking for a split-lip Taoist priest. Zhao Da listened, and shook the police officer card in his hand again: "Old Taoist, we are police, come to handle the case, please cooperate, you shouldn't ask, don't ask more!" ”

The Rotten Face Taoist sighed, picked up a candlestick, and walked slowly and leisurely towards the outside of the main hall, Zhao Da and I immediately followed, and the Rotten Face Taoist seemed to be taking us to the person we were looking for. Sure enough, the grim-faced Taoist priest led us to the front of the brick houses.

A few criminal policemen were guarding here, and as soon as we came over, they reported the situation to Zhao Da. They said they had already inquired and there was no one in the brick houses. When I looked, the doors of these brick houses were not locked, but only half-hidden. The grim-faced priest pointed to one of the rooms and motioned for us to follow him in.

Zhao Da asked everyone to continue to stay outside, and no one was allowed to debut for the time being. The rotten-faced Taoist priest heard this, and laughed dryly, "This Taoist temple, I am the only one left, except for those things you can't see, how can anyone go out......" The grim-faced Taoist priest's face looked more cautious under the candlelight in his hand.

It happened that a gust of wind blew, and the candle flame in the hand of the rotten-faced Taoist priest flickered and almost went out. Zhao Da looked around, stammered and shouted at the bad-faced Taoist priest: "Old, old Taoist, don't pretend to be a ghost!" ”

The bad-faced Taoist priest ignored Zhao Da and pushed the door straight in. His words have already cooled my heart a lot, and the split-lip Taoist priest is probably no longer in this Taoist temple. Zhao Da and I followed the rotten face Taoist priest into the brick house, originally I thought that this kind of damp brick house on the mountain would have a bad smell, but as soon as I walked in, a burst of scholarly fragrance came to my nose.

It smelled so good that I couldn't help but take two more puffs. The rotten-faced Taoist priest put the candlestick on the wooden table in the brick house, and we saw the layout of the brick house clearly. A bed, a set of tables and chairs, and books neatly piled on the floor and table, nothing else.

"This is Xiong Wancheng's room, he is gone, but he said that there will definitely be police coming looking for him." The grim-faced Taoist priest opened a few books on the bed and sat down. Zhao Da panicked and wanted to step forward to ask clearly, but when he saw the face of the bad-faced Taoist priest, he stopped.

Zhao Da swallowed a mouthful of saliva, "Old Taoist, Xiong Wancheng is a split-lip Taoist?" Where did he go? ”

The rotten-faced Taoist priest shook his head and said that Xiong Wancheng left yesterday, and he left in a hurry, neither saying where he was going, nor when he would come back or whether he would come back, only that there would definitely be a police officer coming to him and asking him to bring the police to his room. The rotten-faced Taoist priest had the same tone from beginning to end, and it didn't seem like he was lying.

The words of the bad-faced Taoist priest made me even more sure that the split-lip Taoist priest named Xiong Wancheng had something to do with the recent murder. I asked Xiong Wancheng for more information, and the bad-faced Taoist priest was very cooperative this time and told me everything he knew. The rotten-faced Taoist priest said that there were originally many Taoist priests in this Tiemu Temple, but since fifteen years ago, the Taoist priests have left one after another, and by the year before last, there were only two Taoist priests left in the Tiemu Temple, he and Xiong Wancheng.

The time that the rotten-faced Taoist priest said suddenly reminded me of the fire in Shen Nuo's house, and the time that Shen Nuo said was fifteen years. Under careful questioning, the bad-faced Taoist priest really said that Xiong Wancheng went to practice for a burned family fifteen years ago, and it can be determined that this Xiong Wancheng is the master who did the Fa for the Shen family fifteen years ago.

I felt like my mind was choked by something, and I had a lot of things in my head, but I couldn't figure it out. Shen Nuo's family suffered a fire fifteen years ago, and everyone said that Shen Nuo was dead, but Shen Nuo appeared, and he was also involved in the case of the woman in red, and the split-lip Taoist priest who did it for Shen Nuo's family fifteen years ago now seems to have something to do with the woman in red case.

I rubbed my temples, puzzled, and at this time, another sentence from the rotten-faced Taoist priest shocked me even more. He said that this is not the first time that a police officer has come to look for him, a few years ago, another policeman surnamed Zhong came to Xiong Wancheng, as for how many years ago, he can't remember.

"That policeman, is it called Zhong Yudong?" I immediately asked back, Zhao Da didn't expect that the policeman mentioned by the bad-faced Taoist priest would be Zhong Yudong, and when I asked him this, he also opened his mouth in surprise. The bad-faced Taoist priest thought about it, shook his head and said that he couldn't remember clearly, the policeman seemed to have only reported his surname at that time.

But he gave me a rough description of the policeman's appearance, height and age, and I can roughly surmise that the policeman is Zhong Yudong nine times out of ten. Zhong Yudong resigned abruptly a few years ago, and then became mentally abnormal, and I have always suspected that he has some evidence in the case of the woman in red.

Zhong Yudong also came to Xiong Wancheng, coupled with some other seemingly coincidental facts, Xiong Wancheng is indeed very suspicious. The most important thing is that several migrant workers who came up to the mountain to pay homage can testify that Xiong Wancheng "predicted" the time of the case before the woman in red case occurred, which made Xiong Wancheng unable to clear his suspicion.

The grim-faced Taoist priest stood up, "I'll wait outside the door first, Xiong Wancheng asked me to bring you here, there must be something to give you, so I won't bother you." After the grim-faced Taoist priest finished speaking, he went out, and the moment he turned around, he laughed faintly twice.

I have always thought that the rotten face Taoist priest is very strange, except for combing the hair of the Taoist priest and wearing a Taoist robe, his words and deeds do not look like a Taoist priest at all.

Seven or eight criminal policemen were guarding the door, and Zhao Da and I were not afraid of any tricks played by the bad-faced Taoist priest, so we searched the room carefully. Zhao Da was very smart this time, and when he came, he thought that we might have to collect evidence, so he brought special gloves and storage bags. As we cautiously paced around the cramped brick houses, I discovered that the books that were almost piled up in the brick houses were all about the so-called "Taoist thaumaturgy."

There are these things in Taoist temples, but they are also said in the past, so I didn't put my doubts on these books. I rummaged through the drawers of the bed and table and found nothing suspicious. At this time, Zhao Da, who was searching in the corner, suddenly called me.

I ran over and saw Zhao Da holding a piece of paper in one hand and pointing to the ground with the other. On the ground, there was a small puppet lying quietly in the corner, it was originally pressed by the book, Zhao Da moved the book away, and it was exposed. This little puppet looks very familiar, and it looks very similar to the little puppet found in Shen Nuo's room.

But the puppet was a little smaller, its head and limbs were all removed and scattered aside, and its body was scarred by a knife. After taking a look, Zhao Da handed me the paper, which was a piece of rice paper, and after spreading it out, we saw a few words written on the rice paper.

"If you are not a person in the Daomen, no one can solve this case."

Zhao Da's face changed when he saw it, this word should be left by Xiong Wancheng, his meaning is very clear, only people in the Daomen can solve the case, naturally about gods and ghosts.

"Li, Professor Li, this ......" Zhao Da was speechless for a long time.

"It's just a ghost." After I answered Zhao Da, I stopped talking, because I also saw a bright red in the lower right corner of the rice paper. It was a red cracked lip print, I put it in front of my nose and smelled it, it was a woman's lipstick smell. From the shape of the split lip alone, I have no way to directly determine whether this lip print is the same as the one found at the crime scene, but I can only say that the two lip prints are very similar.

I carefully put the rice paper into the storage bag brought by Zhao Da and asked him to take the paper back for identification. I called the Rotten Face Taoist Priest in, and with his help, I found the words that Xiong Wancheng usually wrote. After returning to the police station, there are many identifications to be done, in addition to extracting the fingerprints on the paper, the lip prints on the paper and the lip prints at the crime scene have to be identified, and the handwriting on the paper has to be compared to determine whether Xiong Wancheng left it.

Two hours had passed since he had finished recording the questioning of the Rotten Face Daoist. The grim-faced Taoist priest sent us to the door of the Tiemuguan and asked us if we were sure we were going down the mountain overnight. Zhao Da and I didn't hesitate, we decided to rush back overnight, we just found an important clue, we can't waste time here.

The rotten-faced Taoist priest held the candlestick in his hand, "There is a rumor on Xianglin Mountain that ghosts and people are in the middle of the night, and the statue in the Tiemu Temple is used to suppress ghosts." "When the Bad-faced Taoist priest said this, I finally understood why the people we met when we went up the mountain were in a hurry to come down the mountain, they were going to drive down the mountain before it got dark.

Since these people came up to the mountain to pay homage, they must be people who believe in ghosts and gods, and they naturally look strange when they see us going up the mountain when it is almost dark. Zhao Da pouted, but there were many of us, so he was bold, and he learned my tone and said, "It's just pretending to be a ghost." ”

On the way down, we walked very slowly, and I had a very strange feeling in my heart, but I kept thinking about the latest developments in the case and didn't think much about it. Zhao Da was carrying the rice paper and scattered puppets brought back from the brick house, and cursed in his mouth, saying that he had forgotten the flashlight after preparing for so long. Luckily, the moonlight on the mountain was bright enough not to make us lose sight of the road under our feet.

At night, the temperature in the mountains was very low, and several people gasped as they walked. The stone steps were overgrown with weeds on both sides, and a sparse sound came from the dense grass, as if something was crawling back and forth in the grass. The accompanying criminal policemen looked nervously at the grass on both sides all the way down, and they didn't know who said what the bad-faced Taoist priest reminded us again.

"If you talk nonsense again, believe it or not, Lao Tzu asked you to write a review!" Zhao Da scolded angrily, and the person who spoke immediately shut up. Everyone looked at each other, and I glanced at everyone, and finally knew what the strange feeling in my heart was when I went down the mountain.

Detective Xiaogang didn't go down the mountain with us......