ancient criminal minds

Hearing the guard's voice, Lu Zheng rushed over immediately, and found that in front of him was a rock with black oil oozing out. The expressions of the villagers present were full of surprise, and even the originally calm guards were talking about it.

Lu Zheng dipped a bit of it with a sweat towel, and put it under his nose to smell it. Sure enough, he could smell the familiar smell of gasoline and a pungent stench.Although he had never seen crude oil, he could guess that it was very likely to be crude oil, so he stopped dawdling immediately and hurriedly asked the Venerable Master to go inside.

Before they had gone far, they gradually smelled a more and more pungent smell.Those two villagers were unwilling to go inside no matter what, Lu Zheng also understood, after all, it is a common problem of human beings to feel timid about things they are not familiar with.The rest of the people continued to walk in.

If you have to describe the shape of this mountain, it looks like a ladder, narrow at the top and wide at the bottom, but the top is slightly sunken inward, forming a landform that is similar to a basin.

Lu Zheng and the others quickly saw the scene in the hinterland of the mountain. There were no tall trees here, only some short shrubs and tenacious weeds remained. Black oil stains slowly slipped from the broken rocks, leaving behind There is a black trail, and in the center, there are even a few pits filled with sooty oil.

Lu Zheng opened his eyes wide in amazement, no matter how bad his geography is, he can still tell that this is a rich oil field.

Doctor Wang took two steps forward, wanting to take a closer look, but was pulled back by Lu Zheng who reacted in time: "Doctor Wang, there may be poisonous substances in this oil, you should cover your mouth and nose before It's better to go and see."

Doctor Wang laughed and said, "Look at me, I'm not as calm as Mr. Lu."

Several people took the masks they made overnight. At that time, Lu Zheng also considered this situation, so he specially asked people to sew them, and now they really come in handy.

However, Li Zheng was obviously hesitant about the next action: "Mr. Lu, what are these things? We haven't encountered any birds or other animals during this journey. Have we been troubled by these things?"

Lu Zheng pondered for a moment before saying: "I didn't meet any birds or animals, it's probably because of the change of the environment, the soil layer on this mountain is cracked, so it's hard for plants to grow, animals have no food, so they will gradually leave here, but It should have something to do with this oil, which contains a substance called hydrogen sulfide, which is poisonous, and maybe the animals left this mountain because of it.”

"Then even if the ban is lifted, it will not help the people in our village." Li Zheng seemed a little discouraged. The reason why he agreed to Lu Zheng's coming to Houshan was that he hoped to lift the ban again and let the people in the village One more way to make a living, but besides these poisonous oils, there are no plants or animals in this mountain, so what's the use?

Lu Zheng shook his head: "Don't underestimate this oil, it has a great effect."

Because of time constraints, it was impossible for Lu Zheng to conduct the test on the spot. He asked several guards to fill crude oil with cowhide water bags, and prepared to return to the station to conduct the test.Of course, the most important purpose of their trip was to find evidence related to the previous arson case, and Lu Zheng didn't forget about it, so while the guards were refueling, he walked around a few times.

Although he didn't investigate very carefully, Lu Zheng still found clues very quickly. The first was a footprint. Compared with his own, Lu Zheng's feet were not very big, probably no more than 40 in modern times. The size of the shoe, but this footprint is smaller than his foot, which means that this person is either a teenager who has not yet grown up, or is short in stature, or is a woman.

Besides the footprints, Lu Zheng also found a rattan pannier behind a rock, in which was a rotten sweat towel and some wooden dolls.Lu Zheng took out the dolls and looked at them. The carvings of these dolls are very rough, and their heads are big and their bodies are small, but they don't give people a cute feeling. There is only a sense of incongruity and mystery. And the faces of these dolls The expressions are different, and men and women can even be barely distinguished from their hairstyles.

Lu Zheng took out all the dolls and placed them parallel on the ground. There are nine dolls in total.The first doll is a laughing man with something like a scarf made of grass around its neck. The second doll is a woman. It has no nose and mouth, only a pair of eyes that are much larger than ordinary people. Compared with the first doll, this doll obviously has to pay more attention to the eyes, because it not only has hair glued on the top of its head, but also wears clothes made of sweat towels.The remaining dolls are similar to these two.

After Lu Zheng looked around, he found that these dolls had no gender characteristics. What they used to distinguish between men and women were the differences in clothes and hairstyles. Men basically had no hair, while women had relatively delicate hair. hairstyle.

Lu Zheng suddenly rearranged the dolls as if he had thought of something, and now the doll ranked first has a sad face, with a big hump on his back.Lu Zheng remembered that the first house that was on fire was Zhang Shitou, he was a bit hunchbacked, and the second place was the woman without a nose and mouth, and the widow's house that was on fire in the second house, the widow only opened the door. slits, leaving only the eyes exposed.As for the puppet at the end, Lu Zheng was the first to hold it in his hand, the puppet with a sweat scarf around its neck.

The name Niu Da jumped into Lu Zheng's mind.

If these puppets belong to the murderer, then these puppets are the real reason why he set fire to the posthouse. He set fire to the posthouse not because of resentment towards Zhang Lin, but because of the posthouse's postman, Niu Da.

With this discovery, Lu Zheng immediately wrapped all the puppets carefully in handkerchiefs, and put them in the back basket behind him. At this time, the guards had packed all the crude oil and were ready to go back.

Doctor Wang came over with a solemn expression: "Did Mr. Lu find any clues?"

Lu Zheng recounted what he found the dolls, and said, "I don't know those people who are on fire, and I may have to ask Doctor Wang for help later."

Doctor Wang nodded: "It's natural, it's my duty to be old."

Li Zheng kept frowning on the way back. He took the risk to lift the mountain closure order. He originally hoped to give the villagers another way to make a living, but neither he nor Dr. Wang could see why, and Lu Zheng He refused to explain the use of this oil, but he didn't know how to explain it to the villagers and the elderly in the village.

Lu Zheng didn't know what to say. After all, in an era when the steam engine hadn't been invented, even if he knew the concept of a gasoline engine, he wouldn't know how to do it. Even if he said it, it would be useless, and it would only make Li Zhengbai happy.Now that the discovery of these crude oils, apart from finding the arsonist, the rest depends on whether it can help the battle in northern Xinjiang.

Back in the other courtyard, Rong Zhen had been waiting for quite a while. Seeing that Lu Zheng was not injured except for some dirt and grass on his body, he felt relieved and asked, "How? What can I gain?"

Lu Zheng nodded, and took out the doll wrapped in the handkerchief and put it on the table.

Doctor Wang has always been a free and easy person, but when he actually saw the King of Chu himself, his legs softened unconsciously, and he became more cautious in saluting.

Lu Zheng is now concentrating on the case. Seeing this, he quickly pulled Dr. Wang over, pointed to the puppets on the table and said, "Doctor Wang, can you please identify whether these puppets represent those whose homes were set on fire? people?"

Doctor Wang frowned when he saw this puppet.Although he is a doctor, traditional Chinese medicine pays attention to seeing, hearing, and asking. Wang is a very important aspect. Wang is not only to look at people's complexion and superficial symptoms, but also some related to metaphysics. Other people's handwriting can tell what kind of disease this person has.Of course, this is just a feeling in many cases, and requires a very rich experience of the doctor.

And Doctor Wang felt very uncomfortable when he saw this doll at the first sight. If he didn't want to help Lu Zheng solve the case, he would have destroyed these dolls long ago.

Doctor Wang quickly identified all these dolls and arranged them in order, one doll corresponds to a fire.He himself was stunned when he was expelled, especially when he held the doll wearing a sweat towel, his hands trembled a little.

"Master Lu, this..."

Lu Zheng nodded solemnly: "This should be carved by the murderer."

These dolls make people feel uncomfortable when they see them, and dolls are generally related to witchcraft or curses in ancient China, which shows that the murderer hates the prototype of these dolls, and according to what Lu Zheng learned about arsonists These people generally have extreme resentment and anger towards the society, but they are introverted, timid and accompanied by physical defects or mental retardation, so they cannot vent this resentment, so they use the method of setting fire. It takes too much technical content and physically demanding behavior to vent one's resentment against others.

And this murderer did not choose to set fire in an indiscriminate way. On the contrary, he had a purpose for the arsonist's house, and he was not only satisfied with the unskilled thing of setting fire directly, but used crude oil to Supporting combustion, at least through this point, it shows that the murderer is not mentally retarded, and he can often go in and out of this back mountain, so his limbs should be fine.But other than that, using puppets to express resentment is generally a common method used by children or women. So, is it a child or a woman who committed the crime?

This is somewhat in line with the footprints that Lu Zheng saw earlier, but even though the information about the murderer has been found, the expressions of everyone have not eased.

There was no other reason, because besides the dolls laid out by Dr. Wang, there was one doll left on the table.