When the book-traveling little detective meets the two-faced prince

The words fell.

Expressions of surprise and disbelief appeared on everyone's faces.

Guan Ziheng emerged from the fog with his own eyes.

He Yu believed what he saw with his own eyes and said in disbelief: "How is this possible?!"

Lin Lezhi lowered his eyes slightly and said, "Not only has he always been by our side, but he also appeared earlier. He was already here before we came to Lake Island."

What was said before was already unbelievable, and before it could be explained clearly, Lin Lezhi's new words shocked everyone even more, even to the point of making people panic.

Meng Dafeng frowned, unable to figure it out, and even more unable to comprehend, "Guan Ziheng is Jiang Guitan's friend. Before coming to the lake island, he was indeed always by everyone's side, and was almost inseparable from Jiang Guitan. He even disregarded his own life and drove the boat away from the fire with Jiang Guitan. But... after that, he left and did not come to the island until the next morning."

"Everyone, please look at this."

As he spoke, Lin Lezhi took out a leaf from his arms.

After a few days of this, and with the leaves kept stuffed in clothes, they had completely lost their moisture, turned extremely dry and yellow, and cracks appeared around the leaves.

But oddly enough.

There were clearly cracks on the leaf, and Lin Lezhi did not pinch those cracks, but the whole leaf was held together and did not fall apart.

next second.

Lin Lezhi then turned the other side of the leaf towards everyone, and there was an obvious, small black dot on the leaf.

"This leaf was found at the bottom of the coffin on the day we landed on the island. The whole leaf was stuck to the bottom of the coffin."

Lin Lezhi's words just solved everyone's doubts and explained why the leaf cracked but did not fall apart.

Zhu Yang stared at it for a while, and suddenly a trace of surprise flashed across his eyes. He said, "This mark is almost exactly the same as the one on the ship, but..." He looked puzzled and puzzled again and said, "The leaves are stuck to the bottom of the coffin, there shouldn't be any marks on the deck."

"Brother Zhu is right. The marks on the leaves and the deck are indeed from the same place, both from the bottom of the coffin. The reason why the leaves and the deck are left with the same sticky substance is because there was a misalignment when the coffin was moved."

"dislocation?"

Lin Lezhi hummed lightly and responded, "On the day I landed on the island, I found this leaf at the bottom of the coffin. I helped the coffin to get the leaf from the bottom. I did this because I was surprised that it was stuck to the bottom, and this leaf did not belong to the island."

"Afterwards, when we arrived at the courtyard where the smoke was set off, I took the opportunity to ask a soldier why there were so many leaves in the coffin. He told me that the general was afraid of disturbing the people's rest, so he did not move the leaves from Wu Sanshan's house that night. He guessed that the leaves in the coffin might have fallen in through the wide gap on the coffin lid."

Lin Lezhi looked at the withered yellow leaf in his hand, and turned the side covered with sticky substance towards himself again.

After seeing the black, irregular dots, Lin Lezhi's eyes couldn't help but darken a little, and he said slowly: "The coffin has been soaked in water. It's not just the lid that has wide cracks, there are large and small cracks all around the coffin."

He speculated: "That day, when the coffin was moved from the deck to the shore, it had to move, and the coffin was shaking. During the movement, a few leaves must have fallen out from the gaps at the bottom of the coffin."

Lin Lezhi once again showed the side of the leaf with the adhesive to everyone, and said with certainty: "And this leaf happened to fall on the bottom of the coffin when the coffin was moved to the bow and parked temporarily. A coffin weighs at least 60 kilograms, so it is so heavy that it can stick this leaf firmly and prevent it from falling off."

Cheng Su frowned and said in a deep voice: "It's just a piece of sticky stuff, what's so strange about it?"

"I have to thank the general for this."

"Thank me?"

"If the general had not been so generous and sympathetic to the people's hardship, and had not insisted on continuing to requisition the burned ship despite the damage to the hull, I'm afraid I wouldn't have been able to solve the case so quickly."

Cheng Su was not deceived by Lin Lezhi's praise. He went straight to the point and asked, "What do you mean?"

Lin Lezhi no longer kept the secret and reasoned truthfully: "The adhesive can stick to both the deck and the leaves, which means that the adhesive on the bottom of the coffin was not stuck before boarding the ship, but was on the deck from the beginning, and then attached to the bottom of the coffin as the coffin was placed. If it was stuck to the bottom of the coffin from the beginning, it should have been stained with mud and lost its stickiness after being moved from Haibei Village to the tent for several hours."

"So what, what does it have to do with this case?"

Cheng Su frowned and asked, the urging in his tone becoming more and more obvious.

"When Magistrate Chang handed the boat to the general, he must have sent someone to carefully check the boat and confirmed that there was nothing wrong before handing it over to the general. Then the general's personal soldiers also carefully checked the boat and kept it for use after confirming that there was nothing wrong. If the adhesive was already at the bottom of the coffin, it should have lost its stickiness. Similarly, since the adhesive is still sticky, it must have been attached shortly before departure."

Lin Lezhi's eyes were as sharp as arrows, quickly sweeping across the crowd and accurately landing on a few people.

"And the only ones who boarded the ship before departure were Guan Ziheng, Liu Yunhe, and..." Lin Lezhi's gaze fell on the last person present, "Luo Zhifeng."

When his name was suddenly called, Liu Yunhe couldn't help but panic for a moment, but he was mostly confused, as if he couldn't guess what Lin Lezhi wanted to do, and there was also a hint of curiosity in his eyes.

"In addition to the three people present, there were two frightened civilians, and the civilians that the general had found to urgently repair the boat. However, because the damage was on the left side of the boat, he returned to the shore to repair the boat after mooring it at the shore."

At this point, Lin Lezhi looked at Feng Yuan who was sitting on the ground and asked, "Brother Feng, do you know what materials are generally used to repair ships?"

Because he had been scolded by Cheng Su before, Feng Yuan didn't dare to speak since then.

When Lin Lezhi suddenly called him, he didn't react at first, and then he realized that he was the only one with the surname Feng among so many people, and he immediately looked frightened.

After calming down, he glanced at Cheng Su's serious expression and nodded with fear still in his eyes.

"We who make a living by fishing all year round know that boats are bound to get damaged, and it is more convenient to repair them ourselves than to find someone to do it. We usually use hemp silk, tung oil and lime, mixed in a certain proportion to make hemp boards, which are then filled into the damaged parts of the hull to prevent water from entering the bottom cabin."

"Besides this, is there anything else?"

Feng Yuan shook his head and said, "No more, these are the ones I usually use."

"Thank you, Brother Feng."

"Detective Jiang Gui, you're welcome."

After saying that, Lin Lezhi turned to look at the crowd and said, "First, although tung oil itself has strong viscosity, it will produce a very pungent paint smell when it is first used, and the smell will take a long time to dissipate. Second, the people who repaired the hull that day did not board the ship. Third, after tung oil is completely dry, it will become very smooth and dark brown."

Lin Lezhi raised the dead leaf in his hand again and said, "But the leaf in my hand has no pungent smell and is black. This means that the sticky substance on the deck is not tung oil, but something else."

Cheng Su's cold eyes swept over Liu Yunhe and Luo Zhifeng who were present, and asked with deep eyes, "What is it?"

Lin Lezhi looked at Cheng Su, avoiding answering for the time being, and said with a firm look in his eyes: "This small patch of irregular black sticky substance has not only appeared on the deck, the bottom of the coffin and the leaves, but also appeared in another place before the Lantern Festival. General, do you know where it was found?"

"Say!"

"A guest room at the River Inn."

Upon hearing this, everyone present was shocked again.

It takes at least five or six miles to walk from Jianghe Inn to the lake, and even further to the pier.

How could these things appear together in such far-flung places?

Not to mention.

One on the boat and one in the inn.

There is no way to connect them together at all, it feels even farther apart than the two villages of Haibei and Hainan.

Lin Lezhi paused and said something even more shocking.

He looked calm and said in a firm tone: "The other place is on the pillow of the bed in my room."