Li Changan took a walk around the house before and after he arrived.
When returning to the courtyard.
Yu Mei has dug out all the corpses from the soil.
There are fourteen people in total, men, women, old and young, rich and poor, and the whole family is lined up neatly under the eaves.
She looked over the body carefully and asked without looking back:
"How? What does your nose say?"
It was as if he had noticed the strangeness of the Taoist priest's nose.
However, Li Changan didn't deliberately conceal it, so he didn't care at all and just told the truth about his discovery.
"My nose told me that there was a trail of muddy water mixed with evil spirits, leading from the yard to the back door, and finally submerged into the waterway behind the house."
"I speculate that the monster sneaked into the house through the water channel and broke into the house through the back door."
He pointed to a corpse whose clothes were still intact.
"For some unknown reason, this family gathered in the main hall most of the night, and they were all killed by the monster."
Yu Mei nodded and called Li Changan over.
Then, right in front of the Taoist priest, he picked up one of the female corpses.
Li Changan had some impression that this corpse was the owner of the hand that he first discovered.
She was probably sixteen or seventeen years old. Even though she was trapped in the mud, she could not hide her fair complexion and beautiful appearance. She was probably a lady who was raised in a pampered manner.
However, at this moment... Yu Mei pressed her face to the female corpse, and her once plump and supple cheeks immediately sunk into a hollow, turning a bluish-white-gray color; she opened the female corpse's eyelids again, revealing her eyes that once had the sparkling autumn waves.
Already dull and turbid, her eyes were like black hairy moons that spread out, making the whites of her eyes dirty. She then roughly grabbed her cloud-like hair on her temples, and the hairs immediately curled up, like withered and intertwined weeds in winter.
"What can you see?"
Yu Mei suddenly spoke.
"The eyes are scattered, the complexion is pale and white, and the hair is withered. He must have been eaten to death."
Li Chang'an responded with a frown, then leaned over and used a bamboo stick to poke into the ear hole of the woman's corpse, scraping out some rotten mud.
"What now?"
The Taoist priest rolled his eyes silently. If you have noticed something, just say it, it's like a top-notch detective drama, wandering around asking a hammer, which one of your eyes can tell that I, Taoist Li, have the ability to investigate cases?
?!
He finally figured it out. Although Yu Mei asked him for help openly, secretly he was quite provocative and demonstrative.
I don’t know if he was unhappy because he chased her down a few streets the night before. Or, because the miasma was exposed today, he was deliberately demonstrating to save some ground.
However, the Taoist priest didn't bother to guess. Quan pretended that he didn't notice and took over the conversation.
"Eating blood essence is usually a method used by ghosts, but there are also many demons, so it is not enough. But this demon can drive the soil..."
He held up the bamboo stick and smelled it, and an unmistakable rancid smell surged into his nostrils.
"And the rotten mud left on the body of the deceased must be the kind of monster whose birth or habitat is related to mud. As far as I know, swamp monsters, mud monsters and even earthworms that have become monsters are all compatible."
Li Changan rubbed the stubble on his chin and recalled the clues he had found before and after.
"This monster can suck essence and blood, has the ability to drive away earth, is surrounded by rotting mud, and buries the dead in the mud. I just checked and found that there were traces of mud wherever it passed. And when it launched an attack in the courtyard
, there is a 'churping' sound..."
Li Changan's words suddenly stalled.
Grinning at Yumei.
"I see!"
He took out a "Chonglong Jade Talisman" and offered it to the nose god.
He lay down on the ground and sniffed carefully, and finally came across a corpse under the eaves.
The belly of this corpse was as big as a basket. It was a pregnant woman, or it looked like a pregnant woman.
The Taoist priest drew his sword in his hand, said "apologise", and then went straight forward to cut open the belly.
Normally, the bloody scene did not happen.
There was no blood, no dead babies, and even no internal organs.
In the empty abdomen, there was only a giant strange fish covered in red spots.
He had already been struck to death by Yu Mei's Yin Thunder in the belly of the corpse.
The Taoist picked it out with the tip of his sword.
"Zu ghost."
…
Zugui.
Although the name contains the word "ghost", it is actually not a ghost, but a kind of fish-turned-spirit monster.
"Lu Yi Zhi" contains:
In Yuzhang County, there is a special kind of fish, which looks like a mullet and has red spots. It lives in the sludge pond all year round. If it is not cleaned, the fish gradually grows, and when it reaches hundreds or thousands, it is easy to be born.
A kind of monster called "Zu Gui".
The ghosts can make the fields around the sludge pond more fertile. But if you want to farm, you must make offerings to the ghosts. Even so, the monsters will ask for more offerings year by year until the fields are no longer as rich as the offerings.
.If you abandon the land, or even start farming without warning at first, you will die quietly at home.
At first, when Li Changan read this, he thought that one of his ancestors had made it up to satirize a wealthy landlord in Yuzhang. But whether it was true or not, most of the demons and monsters came from human suffering anyway.
Ran out.
All in all, this monster is greedy and can walk on land at night. However, it will leave traces of mud wherever it passes; wherever it goes, a "churping" sound can be heard.
…
The true face of the murderer was revealed.
Li Changan was not very happy.
All the people were dead, the monsters were also killed, and the corpses were collected by relatives and friends.
There is nothing much to say about what happened here.
Compared to the corpse in front of him, he was more concerned about the demonic transformation mentioned by Yu Mei and the culprit behind the scenes.
It wasn't that Li Changan completely believed the other party, but so far, only Yu Mei's explanation was the most reasonable.
So, he had a lot of questions ready to ask.
But before he could speak, a series of noises were heard outside, and then someone knocked on the door.
"The Yamen is handling the case, please open the door quickly."
It turned out that the detectives were late again.
Li Changan turned to look at Yu Mei, but unexpectedly, half of the person was missing and he had already fled away.
…………
"Crunch."
The door opens again.
Outside, a group of government officials were holding fire, looking tense.
Somewhat unexpectedly, the leader of the team was not Capt. .
Li Changan opened the door calmly, but the policeman who knocked on the door was startled.
"You...Daozhang Li? Why are you here?"
"Monsters harm people, and I kill them myself. Is it strange?"
"But...but where is the owner of this family?"
"died."
"How many?"
"The house is full."
With that said, the Taoist priest casually greeted the gang of government servants to come in.
"The body is in the yard. You will know it when you see it."
But after saying that, there was no movement outside for a long time. The Taoist priest turned his head and saw that everyone's face was full of fear, but no one dared to step into the door.
until.
"What are you afraid of?"
A voice sounded from behind the team.
Er, a young face squeezed through the crowd.
It was none other than Bo Ziyu. The young policeman had no dealings with Li Changan before, but after the Taoist priest rescued Mr. Xing, his attitude changed drastically.
No, when I entered the door, I bowed to the Taoist priest first, and then cursed at a group of servants:
"Since the Taoist priest is here, the monster must have been killed, and there is no danger inside the door. Why do you still act in such a panic, just to make people laugh!"
After saying that, he angrily went to the courtyard.
A group of government servants were left looking at each other in disbelief. Finally, under the supervision of the leader, they followed in (harmony).
A group of government officials entered the courtyard.
First, he was shocked when he saw the mud in the garden; then he was shocked when he saw a row of corpses; finally, the Taoist priest pointed out that the big fish was the monster himself, and he almost lost his mind.
The Taoist priest didn't want to see their ugly behavior any more, so he gave a few instructions, put the finishing touches down, and left.
But before leaving the house, Bo Ziyu called him.
"Taoist Master."
"What's the matter?"
The young detective frowned.
"Something is wrong."
"where?"
"Fewer people died..."
He explained quickly.
"My uncle once took me to investigate a theft case at this house. I found out that the owner of this house is named Zhou, and he is a famous heirloom of poetry and calligraphy in the city. There is a scholar named Zhou Huai in the family, who is quite famous nearby. I just identified it. After passing those fourteen corpses, the Zhou family, father and son, and several relatives were not among them."
This is a bit strange.
The Taoist priest stopped, pulled Bo Ziyu over, and asked him carefully.
His suspicions were indeed justified.
For example, if the Zhou family and his son went out to visit friends or attend a banquet, they could escape the disaster. But which family would visit friends where the father brought his daughter and the son also brought his concubine?
On the other hand, Zhou and his son were also at home at the time and were also attacked. The reason why they were not among the fourteen corpses...either they escaped by chance and are now hiding somewhere; or they were caught by monsters and were simply moved elsewhere.
But the chances are slim.
"Is it..." Bo Ziyu said hesitantly, "There is another monster."
The Taoist priest's thoughts changed rapidly.
It is true that when he was walking around the house, he only smelled the smell of "Zu Gui", so he didn't think anything of it. But who said that there was only one "Zu Gui"?
Couldn't it be that two of them appeared together, and after the murder, one stayed in the Zhou family, while the other took away the Zhou family, his son and others, and went to enjoy it elsewhere?
Li Changan held the hilt of his sword and turned back to the court.