Chewed flesh, bitten fascia, and torn bones, covered in blood and saliva, lay naked before your eyes.
This situation made the muscles on the faces of Zhang Yi and Zheng Tong tremble, and a series of retching sounds could be heard at the door.
Turn around and look.
It turned out that a group of policemen arrived late and were desperate. When they first entered the door, they were not mentally prepared at all and saw the scene in front of them.
Immediately, he vomited all over the place and staggered around. Only the young agent who took the lead, whom Li Changan vaguely remembered as Bo Ziyu, seemed to be more reliable. Even though his face turned pale, he still kept a straight face and tried hard to maintain his official dignity.
Li Changan murmured as he watched, thinking that this Xiaoshui police officer was too "pampered". He couldn't stand such a small thing? If he saw the smoked human flesh hanging between the monster pots and stoves, no one would restrain himself on the roadside.
Wouldn’t it be possible to faint from the giant’s remains?
He put down the remains of the baby's hand, pulled up the quilt and wiped the blood from his hands, and was about to talk to the policeman.
Suddenly.
A sharp howl was heard.
A skinny old woman suddenly jumped out from behind the door and went straight to the body of the deceased, crying and cursing.
"You're a loser! You're a rotten bitch! You're a bitch who won't be born again for eight lifetimes! How can you be so cruel? Those are your own flesh and blood, so you can give me my grandson's life!"
As he spoke, he bared his teeth and claws and tried to move forward to tear it apart.
However.
Before she could succeed, Tuzi Zheng grabbed her by the collar and pulled her back. Seeing that she was still yelling and scratching her face with her nails, he immediately raised a palm as big as a cattail leaf fan and slapped her twice.
He smashed it down and cursed angrily:
"You old godly woman, who do you want to show off to? If others don't want to get involved with you, a certain family won't tolerate it!"
Mrs. Wang was stunned by these two beatings. She covered her old face and said after a long time:
"Why do you, a butcher, still beat people?"
"You're the one I'm beating!"
Zheng Tuzi spat.
"Others don't know, but I don't know?"
He sneered:
"You are the most stingy guy. You only abuse your daughter-in-law on weekdays. Even when she was pregnant with a baby, you refused to give her a full meal. You starved her to death and went crazy. You even ate your own food.
flesh and blood."
Zheng Tuzi stared angrily and spat.
"Tell me! Didn't you have a share in this little kid's death?!"
The more Wang Po listened, the more frightened she became, and the more she listened, the more frightened she became. Finally, she quickly waved her hand and said:
"Butcher, don't talk nonsense! If this word spreads, how can the old lady go out to meet people?"
"Have I never mistreated her, or grudged a few mouthfuls of food? What she has in her belly is my family's flesh and blood. Even if I am willing to starve her, will I still starve my grandson?"
"In fact, during the past few days of giving birth, her appetite has been as big as a bottomless pit. She can't fill it up or feed her enough!"
Wang Po expressed her bitterness.
"Go and take a look at my rice vat and look over my bed board. There is not a grain of rice or a single copper. They were all used to fill her belly. It is the old dog that I have raised for more than ten years.
Kill them all and make soup for her to eat."
"Even so, I still can't feed her belly."
Wang Po pointed to the pillars supporting the wall.
"Look, she even chewed a piece of the bark. What can I, an old woman, do?"
She sounded miserable, but Zheng Tuzi didn't believe a word of it, he just grabbed her collar and sneered.
Wang Po became anxious, cried out "Wow", kicked her feet on the ground, and acted like a rogue.
"Hit people! Kill people! You bitch killed my grandson alive, and now you want your mistress to kill me!"
Zheng Tuzi felt like his veins were popping up when he heard this. No matter if there was an agent present or not, he was going to retaliate with an old fist.
However, he was restrained by the young policeman's calling hand, and he went straight forward, smiling at Li Changan but not smiling at all.
"Thank you, Director Li, for your hard work. Leave the rest to us."
…………
The three arrested officers, Li Changan, were half invited and half kicked out by the police.
When they arrived at the door, they found that the Zhang family brothers, the parallel swordsman and Feng Daoren had all arrived after hearing the news, but they arrived late and were not even allowed to enter.
When I saw three people coming out, I quickly came up to ask what was going on.
The Taoist priest did not hide anything and explained everything he saw and heard clearly.
When everyone heard this, some were angry, some were pensive, and some were confused.
The Taoist priest didn't bother to guess what they were thinking, he just looked at the small village in front of him.
…
The crowd of people watching in front of the courtyard had already dispersed.
The men carried hoes and returned to the fields to work; the women met to wash clothes in the ditch near the village; the boys chased and played with branches, and the girls pretended to be "Jiajiajiu" with mud and water; three or two old people were there.
On the roadside, there was a mischievous family; a few local dogs were sleeping in the shade of a tree; a child who had just come out of the field grabbed the dog's ears and barked "yah"...
There is order amid the chaos.
This is probably what country life looks like.
Just looking at the pastoral picture in front of them, who would have thought that someone died of homicide in the village? Even the body is still there, the blood is not dry, and the detective investigating the case has not left yet?
for a while.
The Taoist priest felt that the death of the Wang family's daughter-in-law was really insignificant. It was like throwing a stone into a pond. Although it caused some ripples, it calmed down again in the blink of an eye.
It seems that as soon as the fresh energy has passed, the people in the village have returned to their original life track meticulously.
The village became peaceful and quiet again.
But gradually.
The Taoist priest felt that the scenery in front of him seemed a little hazy.
It's like the lingering mist from the distant mountains has invaded the world, making everything appear blurry and dreamlike.
But in the blink of an eye.
The bright sunshine made everything in sight extremely clear.
The fresh, smelly air hit your nostrils.
Everything couldn't be more real.
…………
In the Wang Family Courtyard.
The detectives split up to look for clues, leaving two men, an old man and a young man, to examine the body.
The young man groped for the corpse's shoulder blade.
"hiss."
He jerked his hand away, as if he had been stung by something.
Cutting off the clothes on the corpse's back, he was surprised to find that there were some sparse short black hairs on the lower half of the corpse's back, which were as hard as needles.
"Grandpa."
He called the old man to do it.
"What's this?"
The old man glanced at it, waved his hand and said, "It has nothing to do with the case, so don't pay attention to it."
"But." The young man said unwillingly, "How come this thing grows on a human body?"
"I'm sick."
"What disease?"
"poverty."
“Why is poverty a disease?”
"Ah."
The old man smiled and said:
"People are so poor that they have all sorts of problems."
After saying that, he picked up the tools.
"Remember it, as usual, there were no other external injuries, and the cause of death was still a sword through the heart."
The young man obeyed and did as he was told, but in the end he looked at the corpse with his eyes wide open and pinched his fingertips that ached with pain.
Inexplicable.
A slight palpitation lingered.
…………
After this trip, Li Changan realized that he had not found any useful clues, so he returned to the city and the others said goodbye and dispersed.
The Taoist priest then returned to Didian.
Just watching the little girl from this family and the son from the wine shop next door having a fight in the corridor of the yard, or in other words, Amei beat the boy so hard that he ran away with his head in his arms.
The hostess was cooking in the kitchen and shouting hello.
In the courtyard.
The store owner and the owner of the wine shop next door sat around a stone table, one with a sad face and the other with a sigh.
When he saw Li Changan, the store owner's eyes lit up and he pulled the Taoist priest over without any explanation.
But there was nothing else on the stone table, only three cups and three jugs of wine.
The shopkeeper bowed his hands to the Taoist priest and started to explain.
It turns out that Xiaoshui has a festival that is not found elsewhere, called the "Bacchus Festival." The finale of the festival is to select the best pot of new wine from all the wineries in Xiaoshui and offer it to the God of Bacchus.
May the wine industry prosper in the coming year.
All wine shops in the city are proud of being selected.
The owner of the wine shop next door suffered a defeat the year before last, so he naturally wanted to avenge his defeat this year. However, he had good luck this year and produced three batches of good wine. Now he is in a dilemma, not knowing which pot to grow wine in.
"The Taoist Master is also a good drinker. Could you please help me identify him?"
Of course, a Taoist priest would not postpone such a good thing.
Each of the three pots of wine was poured out and they drank tea one by one.
As the two people watched eagerly, the Taoist priest closed his eyes and thought about it.
One is mellow, the other is refreshing, and the other is strong.
But to be honest, although Taoist priests like to drink, what they like is not the alcohol, nor the desire to get drunk, but the mood and atmosphere of drinking.
So drink these three glasses of wine.
I just feel that Xiaoshui deserves to be called a wine town, and these three kinds of wine are all fine wines. Although they have different tastes, Li Changan can't tell the difference in his mouth.
In the end, he just pointed to the three bottles of wine one by one and said three times in a row:
"Good wine. Good wine. Good wine."
Then he grinned, as if he had said it.
The two people on the opposite side scratched their heads and stared at the three bottles of wine with worry again.
The wine shop owner even sighed quietly.
"It would be great if Lao Qian is still here. Otherwise, with his wine tasting skills, he will definitely be able to tell which of these three bottles of wine is better."
"yes."
The shopkeeper, Lao Yu, also shouted.
"Thanks to me, I helped him pray for a peace talisman and ordered several baskets of cooking cakes for him to practice. Unfortunately, the talisman failed to keep him safe, and he didn't eat any of the pancakes."
Li Changan next to him was surprised when he heard this.
"The peace talisman has its proper meaning, but what's the meaning of this cooking pancake? Since Mr. Qian is a big drinker, why don't he use wine instead of pancakes to practice the ritual?"
The shopkeeper shook his head sadly and explained to the Taoist priest.
"Old Qian often transports wine between his hometown and Xiaoshui. Every year when he comes to Xiaoshui, he always stays at my shop..." He pointed to the wine shop owner and said, "Buy his wine."
"After all these years, the three of us have become inseparable."
"As the Taoist Master said, in previous years we used good wine to practice it. But this year..."
The shopkeeper smiled and poured a glass of wine for the Taoist priest.
"His stomach seems to be filled with a bottomless pit, and he can't eat enough. It has destroyed all the food stored in my store, so this year I am going to replace the wine with pancakes..."
Li Changan didn't like to hear other people's family stories and old stories from his adulthood. The shopkeeper talked about the past, and the Taoist priest also heard it in one ear and out the other in the beginning.
But.
Gradually.
The more he listened, the more solemn he became, and the more carefully he listened.
After the other party finished speaking, he frowned and asked:
"On the day Pindao moved in, the layman said that the food in the store was empty. Is it because of this old man?"
The shopkeeper nodded blankly.
"right."
Li Changan asked again: "Is this old money Qian Dazhi?"
"yes."
After pondering for a moment, Li Changan put down his wine glass.