Daqing Criminal Division

Early the next morning, Zha Keshan, Duan Xiao and Fuchaerji led Duan Yuanbao down to eat breakfast at the inn, and then they were going to Jiangning Yizhuang later.

Zhang Santong's head, which was cut off and frozen once with a watermelon, is still there. If you want to see if there is any evidence left on the head, you have to go there yourself.

Fuchaerzi and Duan Xiao woke up first today.

When the two met at the bottom of the stairs, it was not yet full light, because Duan Yuanbao and Zha Keshan were still soundly asleep, so the two stood at the bottom of the inn and waited for a while.

During the period, because he had to come out early to open the door to welcome guests, the pockmarked waiter at the inn was also scolded by the old shopkeeper early in the morning and urged to come down to work.

When he ran up at a fast pace, he bumped into Fucha Erji and Duan Xiao who were stuck on the stairs.

When Fuchaerji asked him about the matter yesterday, he had already learned that his name was Zeng Ming, he was only fifteen or sixteen years old this year, he had no father or mother since he was a child, and he had a hard background of earning money to support himself.

Now that the two met again, Fuchaerzi lowered his body a little.

Lying on the stairs, he waved to Zeng Ming, and when he saw him, the little pockmark who was still lifeless and ungrateful became lively.

Then, holding two eggs from the kitchen in his hand, he ran up in a few steps, and he came up very loyally and stuffed an egg for Fucharzi.

"Yo, what is this? For me?"

Suddenly an egg was thrown up, and Fucharzi, who caught it with one hand, bowed his head and asked.

"Yes! It's for you! Brother Cha, hey, you eat, I'm going to work underground."

Xiao Mazi also laughed, although an egg is really worthless, there is no need to take it for a child, but Xiao Mazi who seems to have a good relationship with Fuchaerji is really warm-hearted, it would be a bit bad not to do it, Fuchaerji saw this But also accepted.

Seeing this scene, Duan Xiao, who was watching all this, hadn't spoken yet, Fuchaerzi threw the egg in his hand, and raised his eyebrows at him who was beside him, saying,

"See, this is what makes us successful as human beings. It's just that everyone loves us, and the flowers bloom when we see them. From ninety to eight years old, we are very attractive."

Fortunately, this person had the nerve to say such thick-skinned words.

Duan Xiao squinted his eyes and said nothing when he saw the little pockmarked brother Cha just now, he also felt that it was abnormal, so he squinted his eyes and replied to this 'brother Cha'.

"Did you drug him?"

"Hey, do I need to use such a despicable method?"

Fucharzi, who was talking a little bit, squinted his eyes and clicked his tongue when he heard what he said. He stood at the stairs and looked at the egg in his hand after he raised his hand and pinched his neck. Then he said slowly,

"Children from poor families are like this. They have good hearts, always remember the good of others, and pay attention to loyalty. I also have a younger brother. When I was young, my younger brother also liked to run after me. Besides, I am born Charming, people rush to beg me to be the big brother, can't they?"

"Okay, I admire it."

"It's good to admire, but don't be too envious. This kind of ordinary people can't learn it. If you are really interested, you can follow me and study hard."

Regarding this, Duan Xiao directly gave him a really thick-skinned look.

It didn't matter to Fuchaerzi, who didn't understand his 'unique personality charm', he lay on the stairs and slowly peeled the hard-boiled egg, and gave half of it to Duan Xiao.

His move was purely convenient, and seeing that the half-boiled egg was very tender, Duan Xiao, who had never shared food with others before, was not polite, and reached out his hand to pick it up without disliking others.

Duan Xiao: "Thank you, 'Brother Cha'."

Fucharzi; "You're welcome, 'Mr. Duan'."

Duan Ou Fucha Erji: "Hehe."

The two boring guys who said three sentences at a time when they didn't agree with each other even said a few words to each other.

When they were chatting here next to the stairs, and by the way, Zha Keshan had finished his work before coming down, the two of them shared half of each, and ate the eggs that Xiao Mazi sent.

Right now, it was finally dawn inside and outside the inn. At the small table downstairs, Duan Xiao and Fucha Erji were drinking porridge.

After waking up from sleep, Zakshan, who was hungry and eating steamed buns for breakfast, was also with them.

Under the inn, there were a few porters with white scarves tied around their waists, holding bowls of mung bean porridge and salty pickled melon. Most of them worked on the pier of the Grand Canal.

Or move some big goods, or do the laborious work of transportation for various ticket companies. Because Jiangning is a water town, rice is good, and a bowl of gruel is delicious just to drink it in such an empty mouth.

Most of the workers in this group were doing labor-intensive tasks, so they must have a better meal for the first meal of the day.

As I said before, Jiangning is the location of the well-known official ticket number in this province and even in the whole country - the Sun Moon Sheng Bank.

The ticket number has been there since the previous dynasty, and now after the internal reform, it began to issue universal bank notes to facilitate tax and bank transportation and people's savings.

At a glance in this inn, most of the people sitting there are dark-skinned porters who are exposed to the sun and are related to ticket numbers. It is these ordinary places like wooden pulleys in the building that constitute the Qinhuai River outside. prosperous scene.

Among them, Duan Xiao also noticed that there was an old foreman who seemed to be in his fifties or sixties, but both arms were full of muscles that were used to doing physical work. I still know each other.

He eats a lot, and there are three big bowls of porridge in front of him. The bowl of porridge he is drinking along the edge of the bowl is all eight-textured porridge cooked with less water and more rice. Apart from the pickled cucumbers that ordinary workers eat, he also has other I subsidized myself with two boiled eggs.

It was also when the old foreman, who was wearing a pair of cloth shoes and had one foot on the stool, put down his chopsticks to wipe his mouth, that Duan Xiao heard him suddenly say something to the old shopkeeper.

"Hey, Wu Erzi, this useless boy, was called to be scolded by the shopkeeper of the ticket office early in the morning. We have to start working without a break in this summer day. On such a hot day, the warehouse is so agitated that it is about to burst into flames... If San Tong He is still there, and he became an apprentice with me again, so I don't worry, this kid is much smarter than the second son."

"..."

"This kid Santong is good at everything, but he has a problem, a little bit of greed that can't be changed. It's a pity, it's a good thing to be smart and discerning, but greedy, you can't do what we do, and I don't know how he is. Once you go underground, do you still have this good porridge to eat?"

These words were originally said by the old foreman when he thought of the death of the waiter in the shop and felt a little sad.

Most of the people mentioned in the words were his own apprentices and Zhang Santong. It has been heard before that bank accounts don’t like greedy people, because they are most afraid of guards and self-stealing. If you want to enter the industry, you have to first check whether the three generations have theft experience. Iron-clad unchanging rules.

Since Zhang Santong was said so by the old man, it might not be because he had some dirty hands and feet in the past.

The old shopkeeper who sighed for a long time only waved his hand helplessly to signal him not to say too much. This person died without knowing why, and I'm afraid it would be useless to say anything.

It's just that it's just an ordinary sentence in the ears of others, but it's a little different in the ears of the three people next to it.

Afterwards, the three of them inevitably talked about what happened just now while walking on the road, but they couldn't figure it out.

The three of them are walking through Jiangning Mansion in the morning.

After dawn, the river in Jiangning Mansion was also very lively. Cargo boats and cruise ships were floating in the distance. When passing through a bridge that was being repaired, the three of them stepped on the splint of the boatman and crossed with pedestrians when they had to cross the bridge. river.

On the road, they passed by many pedestrians from various prefectures and prefectures, and the scenery of the Qinhuai River in the distance, which was like rubbings of real portraits, was vaguely seen by the two of them.

Just now, they had gone all the way from Meixiang Inn to Mancheng to inquire about any melon sellers in the city who had seen them in the past six or seven days.

They are all from the government, so it is more convenient to go around to ask questions and find out some things.

But because Zhang Santong's head was with a bunch of watermelons at first, in this hot season, the melon sellers who are most likely to have something to do with this murder case are the melon sellers you see everywhere.

However, the counties in Jiangning are only farmers who grow melons and sell melons in the sandy land.

In addition, there are countless melon sellers from other places who come across the water from various prefectures. It is really difficult to find any suspects who are particularly concerned, which makes this murder case even more shrouded. An unsolved suspicion.

In particular, Zha Keshan still seemed to be puzzled by the relationship between the theft of famous paintings, the disappearance of Liu Cen, and the death of Zhang Santong. Even on the way to Yizhuang with the three of them, he had constant problems.

"Hey, you two, tell me, are these three incidents related? What happened to Zhang Santong's death? How did the other end freeze? And, how did Liu Cen know so well?" Something will happen to the painting, and this Xiao Er will be in danger?"

"Then, last night, what happened to the ... that 'running up and down' Zhang Santong's corpse?"

Zach, who was walking backwards on Jiangning Street while crossing his arms and looking at the two of them while crossing his head, was fond of asking these questions, but in front of him, the other two people walking side by side with arms crossed also wanted to know this.

The so-called Zhang Santong who was 'running up and down' in the inn with half his body, such frightening rumors are probably even more unreliable than the watermelon head.

However, when they first arrived at the inn yesterday, the old shopkeeper, the cook Agui and Xiao Mazi Zeng Ming all gave this statement with certainty.

Let's talk about that night when Zhang Santong was murdered outside.

That day, because the business was slow in the middle of the month, seeing that no one came outside, the old shopkeeper ordered Xiao Mazi Zeng Ming to close the shop early.

According to the old shopkeeper, he remembered that Zhang Santong always liked to go out alone for some reason during the past month, and he suddenly became rich in food and clothing.

He often came back after dawn, tired and sweating profusely, with a pungent powdery smell, fell asleep and didn't work hard, but he couldn't control it.

At that time, the old shopkeeper only thought that Zhang Santong had found some kind of backer, so he made a fortune outside, and didn't want to continue working in his small inn.

Because he was not a native of Jinling.

It was a person who came from southern Anhui to Jiangning to find his way out since he was a child. It is normal for one or two fellows to look for him from his hometown.

As a result, on that night, the night when the head watermelon case happened, the three people who had slept in the inn early also encountered a strange and creepy incident.

Because according to usual habits, among the three people in the inn, only Xiao Mazi Zeng Ming and Zhang Santong slept on the bedding in the kitchen because of their young age.

The two of them are clever, and they can find out immediately if they get out of the water.

The cook, A Kuan, is big and always carries a kitchen knife with him. If he meets someone with a ulterior motive, he can prevent outsiders from breaking in. He lives in front of the lobby. As for the old shopkeeper, he lives in a separate wing on the second floor. I often rest late to read the account.

That night, it was already past the curfew, and those who were playing outside had already gone home.

But in the middle of the night, Zeng Ming, who was sleeping in the kitchen, suddenly had a stomachache. He got up in the middle of the night and squatted in the Yexiang Pit. When the bucket in the large water tank came down, he could vaguely feel a "yin energy" hanging upside down on his forehead just like that.

But Zeng Ming has always been a solid-eyed kid, and even with the Yexiang Pit in the middle of the night and the darkness surrounded by a few wooden boards, he couldn't see clearly.

At first he didn't take it seriously, but when Xiao Mazi Zeng Ming lowered his head and was about to pull up his pants and pull the matchlock again, he was stunned to see a 'figure' floating on his own shadow on the ground.

This frightened him until his back was covered with hairs, his arms and hands looked like they were covered with caterpillars, and Xiaopi was covered in fright.

Drenched in cold sweat, he was afraid, panicked, and didn't dare to yell loudly, so he carefully raised his eyelids and turned up, and maintained this posture of slowly standing up from the Yexiang pit, wanting to touch the top of his head with his hand to the bottom what is it.

But this touch made him touch a pair of wet and still stiff hands.

If he was overly frightened and looked straight up, his head was just touching the ground, a headless corpse floating in mid-air, with only the bloody, bowl-shaped broken neck facing him.

"Ah-ah! There are ghosts and ghosts!"

Xiao Mazi Zeng Ming's scream from the hut was immediately heard by the cook in the lobby.

The cook A Kuan actually didn't know what was going on at the other end of the kitchen, he just wanted to run to the corridor, only to see that half of the bloody corpse floating in the air and flying up the road.

Ah Kuan was so frightened that his eyes were tearing apart, his hands and feet became weak all at once, and he yelled and fell to the ground. At the same time, the old shopkeeper who happened to be in the upstairs wing room and pushed the door out also happened to witness This scene.

This timing is just right, because the floors they have been living in are different, so everyone has a chance to have a relationship with this 'Zhang Santong'.

Afterwards, the three of them lit the lamp overnight and searched upstairs and downstairs, but they couldn't find anyone. They were so scared that they were covered in cold sweat and dared not lie down to sleep, so they sat upright in the inn and waited for the dawn.

As a result, as soon as it was dawn, officials all over the city began to find someone to identify the body, saying that there was a frozen head mixed in a pile of watermelons on the side of the road, which was picked up and taken home.

When the three of Meixiang Inn heard this, their hearts turned cold, and the old shopkeeper hurried to the government to identify the person. As expected, it turned out that it was Zhang Santong himself.

Because of this incident, and the fact that the clothes on the body of the "resurrected" body returned to the inn that night were vaguely Zhang Santong, the three of them believed that the body floating in mid-air came to them from the underworld to express their grievances. .

But as a dead man without a head, it would be difficult for him to open his mouth and say something to a living person, so the old shopkeeper and the others didn't understand the reason for all this afterwards.

Because of this, the three people in Meixiang Inn were afraid that outsiders would know that they had been revived by a "dead man" here would cause extra problems, so they didn't dare to make any noise.

Afterwards, about the "floating" Zhang Santong, he had to be suppressed in this way.

Also this morning, Duan Xiao and the three of them chatted about this all the way and came to Jiangning Mansion Yizhuang again.

Zha Keshan, who was walking in the front, showed his Songyang County ultimatum and went inside to explain his purpose. After being led step by step by the examiner inside, they finally saw the watermelon with the head of the person who had been dead for many days.

As mentioned in the previous autopsy, the head was broken from the body with a hard object because it was frozen in a high-heat environment and then melted quickly.

Because of this, the edge of the neck of this human head is jagged, and the human head placed on the shelf rots vulgarly faster than usual corpses.

Although the Yamen of Jiangning Mansion has carefully taken anti-corrosion measures in order to preserve the physical evidence, and the cold water has been changed every day.

But when Duan Xiao and the others came in, and he uncovered a corner of the white cloth and covered his mouth and nose, he could still clearly see that the head was in a bad state when it died.

Now, it is necessary to find out why this headless murder happened.

And what is the relationship with the other two seemingly unrelated cases? One thing needs to be clarified first, that is, how Zhang Santong's head was frozen in such a strange way.

Visible to the naked eye, the upper eyelids of Zhang Santong's head were highly decayed, and the two bloodshot eyeballs protruded from external stimuli.

The flesh on the cheekbones was red, with signs of severe frostbite, and after rot, it began to show a corrugated form of necrotic skin tissue in the lower skin layer, so the entire skin hanging on the face was dead, only layers of pale skin. Brown dunes of rotting skin stuck tightly to the bones.

His lips had completely lost their body fat and were close to decay.

So only the root of the tooth was still exposed, and Duan Xiao, who came here just to see it with his own eyes, took the white cloth towel that had been smoked with herb, and put his fingers into his mouth to stir it.

This inspection was originally done by all operators.

So he opened his thin fingers, and used his knuckles to stir the mouth of the corpse.

There was nothing in the frozen head's original mouth, only something like a mixture of tear glands and blood dripped out of the head's eyes and nose.

Zha Keshan, who was helping to look at the corpse, was taken aback when he saw this, and only wondered why the dead man's head was still crying.

But in the next second, he met with a blank expression, as if he had already sensed something abnormal, Duan Xiao's hand had already gone all the way to the junction of the dead man's throat and severed head, and buckled it very hard.

This time, just listen to 'click'.

Duan Xiao, Fuchaerzi and Zha Keshan witnessed the deep part of the dead man's throat in the next second, and Duan Xiao's fingers were stuck to pull out something.

When Duan Xiao, who wanted to take a closer look at the physical evidence, put it aside, Fuchaerzi also took a white cloth for him and wiped the 'thing'. After wiping, the three of them discovered that Zhang Santong's throat before death the rest.

——It was actually a watermelon seed with a little bit of white powder on its surface.

The three of them saw that the watermelon seeds were stuck in their throats. It must be that Zhang Santong had eaten watermelon before he died, but why there is so much white powder on the watermelon seeds is a little confusing.

"Hey, look, this, this watermelon seed doesn't look like a Jinling local melon, but like a Wan pumpkin, but what are these white powders?"

Because I passed by many roadside melon shops just now, recalling the melon farmers I had seen, when Zha Keshan saw the round watermelon seeds thrown on the shelf, the surface was brown and dull, he let out a 'huh', and then Some doubts came to the sentence.

Hearing this too, the autopsy duo over there also smelled the residual white powder on the back of the watermelon seeds respectively, and finally came to a specific conclusion comprehendingly.

"Thanks to this watermelon seed, I think we have found the reason why this human-headed watermelon was frozen alive in Jinling City in Dog Days."

Fucharzi wiped his hands and said,

"what reason?"

Zach was stunned when he heard it, but he saw Duan Xiao who looked up at the other side of the three of them, and then continued the conversation between the two.

"Nitre."

"Water bandits and gangsters in the southern Anhui area specially use it to make gunpowder privately, but it can also quickly freeze the surface of objects with the addition of water."

The author has something to say: I’m back, I’m back, Chumi~

In order to make the text more attractive, I changed the copywriting, do you find it more attractive?If not, forget it, anyway, I really don’t know how to write a copy...Thanks to the little angel who voted for me or irrigated the nutrient solution for me~

Thanks to the little angel who cast [Mine]: Eat 1 meatball;

Thanks to the little angel who irrigated [nutrient solution]:

16 bottles of A Zang; 10 bottles of Xiefang and jr Damowang; 5 bottles of Qianqiu Sui and Wanzi Chichi;

Thank you very much for your support, I will continue to work hard!