Three-pot porridge and naan

"The conscience of heaven and earth... We really didn't kill people, hey..."

After eating, Yan Twelve wailed. It was still raining heavily outside the temple. I don't know what time it was, but two of the three hunters guarding them were already asleep, and only one was struggling to stay asleep.

It was late at night, Wandong couldn't bear it any longer, and fell asleep leaning on Xiaobai, and Xiaobai slept soundly...

To Yan Twelve, these two brothers are heartless people, and they don't care about their own lives or the lives of others.

Probably only Yan Twelve was half asleep and half awake until dawn.

The next day, the ruined temple was bustling again.

"My God...why is this..."

The voices of the villagers talking came.

"Why did another one die?"

"Who is that dead man?"

"It has been peeled off, so no one can recognize it."

"The three people in the ruined temple did it again?"

"That's the strange thing. The three of them are stared at tightly, and they are also tied up. How can they kill people?"

"So they really didn't kill people..."

The more the villagers talked, the more scary they felt, until the village chief came, and the atmosphere eased a little.

"Village chief, are the three people in the ruined temple really murderers?" a villager asked.

The village head said to Orion who was guarding the temple: "Go and bring those three people to the village."

After the village chief finished speaking, he took the villagers and left, taking the new corpse with him.

Both corpses were placed in the courtyard of the ancestral hall at the entrance of the village and put into coffins. Only an old man surnamed Mu lived in the ancestral hall of the village.

Old man Mu is an old man in the village who specializes in helping with funerals. When he was young, he was a Taoist priest and knew how to draw talismans.

The old man Mu saw that the villagers carried another person into the ancestral hall, and before he had time to ask who died, he saw the skinned man lying on the wooden board...

Just like yesterday, seeing this old man with a bloody corpse made me dizzy again.

It wasn't until the village chief came in that the old man Mu went over and asked the village chief: "The village chief...why did this happen..."

The village chief sighed: "You should first save the dead."

The death of two people for two nights in a row has already caused panic. If there were still people who were interested in watching the fun yesterday, there are many fewer people talking loudly today.

The men in the village let the women and children go home, the village head and old man Mu went into the house, and the nearby villagers entered the ancestral hall one after another.

Most of the people who came out shook their heads: "I can't recognize it."

At the end of autumn, there were many people who went up and down the mountain to sell prey and grain, and not one or two people came out of the village recently, and the villagers could not recognize who the dead person was based on their stature alone.

"The one who died yesterday was about the same size as the Xu family's, but the Xu family's two brothers left the village in June and haven't come back yet..."

"Didn't Lu Liehu say that yesterday's corpse was most like Uncle Fang who lived in the hill? Uncle Fang went to help Zhou Dahu in the county at the beginning of September, so he should have returned. If Uncle Fang happened to come back the night before..."

All in all, what is certain is that the corpse yesterday was not short. If it wasn't for several villagers who were not in the village, it is very likely that the dead were also foreigners.

The villagers dispersed after a while, because they saw Lu Liehu escorting the three foreigners from a distance.

After the arrival of the three strangers, two bloody cases happened in the village. The second murder case today probably has nothing to do with these three people, but the villagers still took a detour when they saw the three strangers. It's bad luck.

Seeing that the villagers looked at them as if they were looking at some "filthy thing", Yan Twelve felt relieved.

The three were brought into the ancestral hall by the hunters.

In the ancestral hall, the village head and the youngest son of the village head, the only young man in the village who has studied in the county school for a year, and the old man who guards the ancestral hall are standing in the courtyard of the ancestral hall.

Bloody corpses lay in two sealed coffins in the yard.

Probably out of desperation, and probably because he was afraid that someone else would be killed, the village chief suddenly looked at the three strangers and expressed his thoughts.

The eldest son of the village chief invited people from the county yamen to go up the mountain, and it would take five days at the fastest. He didn't want to die during these five days.

"The village chief means to believe that we are not murderers?" Yan Twelve raised his eyebrows suddenly.

The village head nodded in silence for a moment, then looked at Old Man Mu again.

The old man Mu sighed: "The Orion in the village told me yesterday that the three of you should be good at martial arts. If you want to escape, they can't stop them. You didn't escape last night and you didn't hurt them. Besides, yesterday's re-homicide case has been confirmed and you three People don't matter."

Village head: "The three of you are from the bustling place in central Beijing, you must be more experienced and knowledgeable than us rural folks, please help us with the three knights..."

Wandong smiled: "Thank you so much for the village chief and the elders of the ancestral hall for trusting us."

Yan Twelve took Wandong's words and continued: "But we can't do anything about this case."

"No, I also ask the three righteous men to help us catch the murderer." Old Mu begged.

Xiaobai asked suspiciously: "You don't want us to wait in the ruined temple, do you? How could the murderer be so stupid to kill a third person near the ruined temple?"

Yan Twelve: "Xiaobai is right."

Even so, they agreed to the village head's request to stay here and wait for the people from the county yamen to go up the mountain.

It was also on this day that Wandong had the opportunity to touch the two skinned corpses.

"Before they died, they were drugged." Wandong said while rubbing his chin.

Yan Twelve was startled and said, "How did you know that??"

He didn't believe that Wandong's autopsy even knew that he had been hit by smoke.

Wan Dong said calmly: "The expressions on their faces when they were skinned...it means that they were all in a coma before they died."

"There is a kind of seven-star flower growing in the wild forest here. Its flowers can be dried and ground into powder to make magic medicine."

Mei Xiaobai's eyes lit up immediately, and he replied, "Then the murderer is a doctor?"

"Yes, or not." Wandong smiled.

"..." Mei Xiaobai was a little discouraged when he heard this.

"Aside from these, can we find out the identity of the deceased?" Yan Twelve asked again.

Wandong: "The former corpse looks like a hunter, this latter one..."

Wandong stopped and took another look at the second corpse, and suddenly his eyes darkened.

Wandong didn't finish his sentence, I don't know if it was intentional.

Today, the three of them still live in the ruined temple, and the three of them, Lu Liehu, guard the ruined temple.

Only Wandong and the three of them knew that the village chief asked Wandong to help catch the murderer, and the villagers were kept in the dark.

It's just that Lu Orion and the others no longer tied them up.

Because the two incidents happened near the ruined temple, the ruined temple became gloomy tonight.

Originally, the three Orion were not afraid, but Lu Orion murmured: "There won't be another accident tonight..."

When he said this, the others immediately felt furious.

It rained heavily again in the middle of the night, and no one could fall asleep right now, their minds were full of the bloody corpses they had seen during the day.

It was also at this time that ghost cries appeared outside the ruined temple.

The wailing sound was extremely strange.

Lu Orion sat up in shock from the haystack, ran out with his bow and arrow, and another Orion followed.

Wandong gave Yan Twelve winks.

Although Yan Twelve was reluctant in his heart, he quickly left without any hesitation.

The ghost screamed for a while and then stopped. After a quarter of an hour, Lu Orion and another Orion came back.

Nothing was found outside the temple, and Yan Twelve gave Wandong the same answer when he came back. He searched for a mile around, and there was no ghost.

There are no ghost shadows but there are ghost screams.

This continued for two days, until September 25th, ghost screams could be heard outside the ruined temple, and I went out to look for it, but I couldn't find any foreign objects.

On September 25, the daytime finally cleared up, and it didn’t rain at night, but the screams of ghosts could still be heard outside the temple at night.

In the middle of the night, Orion, who was watching the night in the temple, suddenly noticed a fire coming from the direction of the village, and immediately yelled.

There should be a big fire in the village, otherwise we wouldn't be able to see the fire from so far away.

It just so happened that it didn't rain tonight...

The Orions were already in a panic, and ran towards the village regardless. After all, it was their home.

"Go along." Wan Dong said.

Yan Twelve roared: "What if they blame us for the fire again?"

"The matter has come to this, so they can't let them say that we absconded in fear of crime, right? We didn't do it, and I don't want others to misunderstand." Wandong asked back.

Mei Xiaobai: "My cousin is right."

Yan Twelve didn't get angry, the two brothers were wearing a pair of trousers, and he, an "outsider", couldn't compete.

"Go help put out the fire first."

*

The place where the fire broke out was the ancestral hall in the village, so it seems that the fire probably started within a few hours, and some people were still awake earlier, but most of the people in the village fell asleep after a few hours.

If it was Zishi, the watchmen in the village would have found it in time, so the fire started between Zishi and Choushi.

The watchman said that there was nothing wrong with the ancestral hall when the watch was played.

The entire ancestral hall and three houses and trees beside the ancestral hall were burned down. The only good thing is that the ancestral hall is located at the head of the village, separated from the houses where the villagers gather by a pool where the villagers carry water.

At this moment, the water in the pool was almost dried up before the fire was extinguished.

The old man Mu who guarded the ancestral hall could not be rescued, and the two corpses were burned together. When the fire was extinguished, they had already become charcoal figures.

Although the fire was extinguished, the villagers who had been busy all night were standing or squatting in front of the ruins of the ancestral hall, their eyes staring at the ruins in front of them, either sad or speechless...

The ancestral hall in the village is a place where villagers offer sacrifices to enshrine weddings and funerals, and ask divination questions. Such a place was burned, which made them feel unknown.

In addition, so many people died for so many days...

Finally, some rumors spread from the nearby mountains.

The people in the neighboring villages said that in Laomiao Village, because the monk who kept the temple died suddenly ten years ago, the old temple became a ruined temple, so the wind and water were broken, and now they are punished by the mountain gods.

People will believe in ghosts and gods more and more when they are confused.

This statement was also accepted by most of the villagers. On the night of September 26, some villagers proposed to raise money to rebuild the ruined temple. Otherwise, the young people in the village would move away from Laomiao Village. If all the young people left, the old people in the village What should we do?

And this day, what Wandong wanted to know more was the story of the temple guard monk in the ruined temple.

The young man in the village who had studied in the county said that the monk mentioned by chance during the day that the monk was starved to death.

When Wandong wanted to ask in detail, the young man didn't say anything.