Murder

Chen Yunyue was 14 years old when she came to Qingpingyu, and she was also 14 years old when she married Liu Qiao.

Two years later she gave birth to a daughter, three years later Liu Qiao died of illness, and Chen Yunyue became a widow.

Half a year later, she remarried Liu Qiao's elder brother Liu Feng as his concubine.Another half a year later, when Liu Feng took her out, he encountered a bandit and was stabbed to death by random knives.

Another half year passed, and she became Liu Junfu's concubine.However, in less than three months, Liu Junfu died of a sudden illness in his room.

Later, it was Liu Junyong who wanted to accept her.

Chen Yunyue's tone was very calm, and she finished talking about what happened in the past seven years in less than half a stick of incense, but the hand holding the few pieces of rope kept trembling, and the back of her hand bulged with white knuckles.

Standing in front of her, Chi Yebai saw the woman's glance after she finished speaking.

Palpitations, panic, embarrassment.

Chen Yunyue quickly lowered her eyes, still calm.Chi Yebai lowered his head slightly, and spoke to her softly.Sima Feng couldn't hear what he said, only saw Chen Yunyue trembling all over suddenly, tears streaming down his face.

She was indeed very thin. The Liu family had heavy hands when they tied her up. Her shoulder was injured, and Bai Sensen's bones could be seen.Sima Feng asked the police to go to Taoyuan to find Song Beiyan, a medicine apprentice, to get the wound medicine.

"Where's your child?" Sima Feng asked her.

"In Pengyang." Chen Yunyue whispered, "Learning together at her cousin's house."

When she mentioned her daughter, a little blood appeared on her face, and her expression immediately softened.But Sima Feng's next question immediately made her tense again.

"Why did the people of the Liu family ask you to remarry? According to the law, widows are not restricted by the age of marriage. Is someone forcing you?" Sima Feng stood in front of her, blocking the view around the hut.

Chen Yunyue's eyes sharpened, she gritted her teeth and said, "They said...there are too few girls on Qingping Island, since we have one at home, don't waste it..."

There are indeed more men than women on Qingping Island.Most of the women married to Pengyang, and the men who stayed on the island were all married, and they were not young.Sima Feng understood immediately, and seeing Chen Yunyue suppressing her excitement, she patted her on the shoulder to calm her down.

Chi Yebai stood beside him and looked at Chen Yunyue.Although this woman was excited, she was extremely excited.After she calmed down a little, she immediately said again that she had no strength to kill.While talking, Song Beiyan also arrived, with a medicine box on his shoulder, because he was thin and small, he was dragged by the box and couldn't walk straight.He bandaged Chen Yunyue's wound, and looked at Chi Yebai hesitantly.They detained Chen Yunyue as usual, and temporarily locked her in the room of the ancestral hall, with two patrolmen guarding outside.

"What did you find?" Chi Yebai asked him.

He and Sima Feng took Song Beiyan outside before asking.

"That woman also smells of dipterocarp." Song Beiyan said, "It's exactly the same as Master Liu's."

"There is a motive and physical evidence. She is the most suspect." Sima Feng thought, "But how can she kill a strong man like Liu Junyong as a thin woman? And whose corpse was the human face lamp stripped from? If That is really the lamp hung by Chen Yunyue, she knows how to dissect a corpse?"

"Skinning..." Song Beiyan suddenly grabbed Chi Yebai's hand, "I know someone who was skinned!"

Sima Feng pulled his hands away: "Who?"

"A son of the Liu family!" Song Beiyan couldn't hold onto Chi Yebai's hand, so he simply hugged his arm, "Oh, my mother scared me to death. The boatman told me when I first came to the island. I thought he was deliberately scaring me and my adoptive father."

It was Liu Feng who was skinned after his death.Two years ago he took Chen Yunyue to Pengyang to see a play, but after three days he still hadn't seen the movie.On the fourth day, Chen Yunyue went home and brought back a bloody dress.

Liu Feng and her encountered bandits on the mountain in Pengyang. Liu Feng was stabbed seventeen times and died on the spot.Chen Yunyue fell down the hillside in a panic, which saved her life.When she climbed up again the next day, Liu Feng's body was skinned by the bandits, and it was lying on the road in a bloody mass.

Chen Yunyue couldn't bring him back, so she had to bring her clothes home and ask for help.The Liu family cried and howled. They heard from Chen Yunyue that the bandit was vicious and vicious, so they didn't dare to report it to the officials. They just collected the body and took it home for burial.

"I heard that Liu Feng's head, face, hands, and feet are intact, but the skin all over his body has been peeled off." Song Beiyan hugged Chi Yebai's arm tightly, and Sima Feng couldn't remove it at all. Now I don’t dare to turn on the lights when I sleep at night.”

"Chen Yunyue is lying." Chi Yebai was pulled back and forth by the two people, and he still said in a very good temper, "Pengyang started to wipe out bandits 20 years ago, and then the bandits in three counties, six towns and eighteen villages in Pengyang All species are extinct. If it is really a bandit, just kill people, steal the money and run away, why bother to skin them?"

"What if bandits like to skin them?" Song Beiyan said.

Sima Feng: "Are you stupid? Bandits and bandits, since they are thieves, money is the most important thing. What do you want human skin for? It's not fox skin or bear skin. Can you sell it?"

"Perhaps the purpose of peeling is to make a lamp." Chi Yebai rubbed his chin, "It's too much trouble, and besides, it's been two years, so it's been a long time."

"What if the murderer likes Jiu?" Song Beiyan said again.

"Sima, go and look at the lamp." Chi Yebai ignored him with a very good temper, "As for you, go home."

Song Beiyan refused to leave, and followed Chi Yebai to pull and pull, but Sima Feng couldn't pull him away, so he also wanted to rush to pull him, but Chi Yebai stared back a few steps, not daring to move.

The human face lamp is stored in the ancestral hall, surrounded by a few pieces of talisman paper, to deter evil.

It couldn't be seen clearly at night, but now under daylight, this lamp was not much different from an ordinary leather lantern.The skin covering the skeleton of the lantern was clean and tidy. Sima Feng carefully lifted the lantern with gloves on and looked around twice, but he didn't find anything like a belly button.

The human skin was sewn to fit the size of the lantern, and a few places were hollowed out on the skin, which were exactly where the eyes, ears and mouth would be.

If you light a candle in the lamp at night, at first glance, it seems that you are being stared at by this face.

Song Beiyan couldn't care less about hugging Chi Yebai any longer, and moved over curiously to have a look.The tassels under the lamp have all turned black, and there are solidified blood clots on them, which will fall down as soon as they are rubbed.

"It's indeed human skin." Sima Feng said, "It's no wonder they couldn't find it out. This leather has been processed several times. There are no tools and inspection materials here. It would be hard to tell if it wasn't for years of dealing with this thing."

The three of them were studying the human skin, when they suddenly heard the chaos outside the ancestral hall, someone shouted something like "dead again".

This time it was a fisherman on the island named Liu Laogou who died.

He lay dead in his own boat, with deep strangle marks on his neck, and his face and chest were bloody and bloody from the sharp weapons.

The person had been dead for two or three days, half of his body was soaked in the stagnant water in the boat, his skin and muscles were wrinkled and smelly, and the scene was very messy.

The boat and the corpse were moored by the small abandoned pier on Qingping Island, which is very close to Taoyuan.Because the river beach here at the pier is too shallow, no one will use it after the new pier is built on the island. In addition, the river beach is full of debris, and fewer people come back here.If someone hadn't come to clean up today, there would be no way to find Old Dog Liu covered by the dense grass.

"The exact time of death can't be checked." Sima Feng's face was covered with a cloth, only his bright eyes were exposed, "...Xiaobai???"

Chi Yebai and Song Beiyan stood far away in the crowd, not by his side as usual.

Sima Feng: "..."

He immediately understood that the corpse was too smelly and dirty.

Death loves cleanliness.He snorted, and continued to examine the wounds of the corpse with a knife.

Liu Laogou is a person who has only returned to Qingpingyu in recent years. It is said that when he was young, he was a ruthless character who went out to venture into the rivers and lakes.How ruthless he was, people can't tell clearly, they only know that when he came back he was penniless, with wounds on his face and body, which were caused by beatings in prison.

When Sima Feng got up after inspecting the body, he suddenly saw a gray-brown thing floating on the water under the boat.He picked up a branch to pick it up, and found that it was another lamp with a human face.The lamp has been soaked in the water for a long time, and the human skin has lost its original color due to the dirty river water.There are still hollowed-out outlines on the lamp, with empty, expressionless eyes and mouths.

Liu Laogou's body was found, and it seemed that the suspect should not be Chen Yunyue.

Chen Yunyue resented the Liu family and Liu Junyong, but she had no reason to resent Old Dog Liu.When she married, Liu Laogou had not returned to Qingpingyu, and Liu Laogou was fishing by the river on weekdays, and had no contact with the woman in the deep house compound.Besides, Liu Laogou's physique is stronger than Liu Junyong's, but he was strangled to death and then mutilated his body. If the murderer had no strength, he would definitely not be able to do it.

The patrols managed to catch a possible prisoner, only to be overthrown immediately, moaning and moaning.

"If you and I were not here, they might treat Chen Yunyue as the murderer and close the case directly." Chi Yebai said, "Chen Yunyue has no relatives here, and the Liu family hates her, no one will speak for her. No one can find it." Someone more suitable than her."

Sima Feng nodded, frowning and writing on the ground.

It was already late at night, and the two stayed overnight at Song Beiyan's house, but neither of them felt sleepy, so they lit a lamp and sat in the yard chatting.

Song Beiyan rummaged through the herbs in the room, flicking the grass leaves with his fingers, making a soft rustling sound.

Sima Feng wrote for a while, then looked up to see Chi Yebai staring out of the yard in a daze.Green peaches were also planted outside the courtyard, and a branch stretched out across the wall. There were several pink and white peach blossoms on the branch, trembling in the moonlight.

"Xiaobai." Sima Feng said suddenly, "Let me tell you a story."

Chi Yebai was a little absent-minded: "What story?"

"A ghost story." Sima Feng laughed. "The Jiuniang who lived on the peach branch I mentioned last time, she has other sisters. Every spring, she entangles the tree roots and turns into a human form, specially to seduce the men who pass by... "

"Stop talking." Chi Yebai frowned, "Boring."

"Sister Jiuniang, it's not enough to seduce a man. If she is not satisfied, she will cut him open and eat him. Wow, it's spectacular. When I wake up in the morning and look up, oh, there are bloody sausages hanging on the peach branches darling……"

Sima Feng continued to talk, but Chi Yebai punched him before he finished speaking.He was about to speak again, when his back suddenly stiffened, it was because someone had tapped his acupuncture points.

Chi Yebai held the lamp in his hand and stood up, looking down at him: "Mr. Sima likes ghost stories so much, go enjoy them yourself."

Sima Feng: "..."

If I didn't know you didn't like it, I wouldn't say it.he thought angrily.After thinking about it, he looked at Chi Yebai again, and felt that his angry and nervous appearance was really beautiful.

Just as Chi Yebai was about to turn around, he was taken aback for a moment, and then immediately bent over with the lamp in hand to illuminate the patterns Sima Feng had just drawn on the ground.

"Where did you see this?" He turned around and asked Sima Feng.The hair on the sideburns brushed against Sima Feng's face, making it itchy.

Sima Feng gestured for him to release the acupoints with his eyes, and then let out a sigh of relief: "Old Dog Liu has many tattoos on his body, this is one of them."

Chi Ye looked at the pattern without blinking: "I see. There is a grudge between Chen Yunyue and Old Dog Liu."

"What?" Sima Feng immediately became interested, "What hatred?"

"This is the marking tattoo of Huazi in Huainan." Chi Yebai put down the lamp, stretched out his finger to trace the shape of the pattern in the air, "If I guessed correctly, Chen Yunyue was kidnapped by Liu Laogou and sold to the Liu family Daughter-in-law."