"Your Highness, I can tell you everything you want to know, but I have something to ask you!"
"explain."
"The lower official...want to execute Lu Qinglin, the prefect of Jiangdu, with his own hands!"
"That's it? Don't you want anything else? For example, to clear your grievances and restore your innocence? To return to officialdom? To be a high-ranking official with a generous salary?"
"I only want Lu Qinglin's life."
"Okay! Then continue what Zhen'er said before and let me see your sincerity."
Magistrate Tao's eyes shifted from Su Zhen to the ministers and staff around Shangyu Chen. The resistance was obvious in his eyes.
"They are all members of our own family. Magistrate Tao can speak directly if he has anything to say."
"..."
Magistrate Tao thought about it for a moment and sighed, "Your Highness, I spent ten years studying hard and practicing martial arts since I was a child. Only then did I win the first prize in both civil and military affairs. I became famous all over the world in one fell swoop and had a smooth official career.
It's just that I was too frivolous at that time, and I offended many people in the court, and I deserved to be demoted."
"You were framed? You didn't complain at that time?" Tang Yinchen asked suspiciously, and suddenly his eyes lit up, "Could it be that you had a grudge against the imperial court, so you thought of destroying the relationship between the imperial court and Jianghu?"
"Of course we are complaining. At that time, we were drunk every day and fell into depravity for a long time before we came out with my wife and children. In the past six years, although we are not rich, we can still live by relying on the salary allocated by the court every year.
Have a happy life. But just a month ago, everything changed."
Magistrate Tao seemed to remember something that made him extremely frightened, and his pupils suddenly tightened.
"His Royal Highness, more than a month ago, on the riverside outside Liting Town, fishermen discovered an ice coffin from the water, with white mist surrounding it. There was no support underneath, as if there was no gravity.
, just floating so lightly on the water.
Without thinking much at the time, they used iron ropes and ropes to bring the ice coffin from the water back to the ground.
After the official heard about this, he immediately led his people there and sent people to work together to pry open the lid of the ice coffin..."
"County Magistrate Tao, what's wrong with the bones in there?"
Yang Huanzhi looked at his strange expression and asked.
"After examining the bones with several villagers in the town, we found that the body in the coffin had a human shape in the upper body, a fish tail bone in the lower body, and wings on its back."
Everyone was confused after hearing this, even Su Zhen and Gu Yunshu were stunned. They all looked at Shang Yuchen, who shook his head and said he didn't know.
Su Zhen suddenly remembered the strange scenes in her memory, which seemed to be very similar to the corpse that Magistrate Tao mentioned.
"Did you encounter a monster?"
Yuzhu, who was sitting quietly aside, suddenly said "Amitabha".
"Little Master Yuzhu, what do you have in mind?" Shangyu Chen said.
"Amitabha! Master once said that demons are originally the spiritual transformation of all things in the world. Good and evil are uncertain. Those who enter the evil way are demons. However, when the demon clan dies, the demon elixir breaks, and its body disappears into nothingness."
"Huh? Little Master, are you saying that the bones are fake?" Tang Yinchen said.
"Not really." Yuzhu nodded and gave a one-handed salute.
"It sounds ridiculous! Magistrate Tao, are you trying to fool us?"
Shang Yuchen, who had not had a good rest in the past few days, rubbed his swollen and painful eyes and said, "County Magistrate Tao, please continue."
"yes!"
Gu Yunshu, who had been by his side all the time, noticed his fatigue, raised his left hand and put the palm of his hand on his back shoulder.
Shangyu Chen felt that there was a strange white airflow in his body that was constantly rotating and rising from his lower abdomen, and the fatigue and sleepiness in his body seemed to have dissipated a lot.
"After the ice coffin was taken out of the river, strange things continued to happen in Liting Town. People often saw ghosts appearing in the field, but they disappeared after a few days.
In just two days, heavy rains fell in Luoqi. The heavy rains triggered a series of irresistible natural disasters, which broke down the dams, collapsed the houses, and destroyed the fields that the people relied on for survival.
What followed was a strange plague-like disease.
And those ghost figures keep emerging from the water."
"Magistrate Tao thinks all this is caused by the ice coffin?" Shangyu Chen asked.
"yes!"
"Then where is it now?"
"Back to His Royal Highness, the ice coffin was taken away by Lu Qinglin."
As soon as Magistrate Tao mentioned this person, his unstoppable anger burst out, he gritted his teeth, and veins popped out on his forehead.
"That beast sent people to steal the ice coffin. At the same time, in order to block the news, he ordered everyone who knew about the matter to tie huge rocks to their bodies and then fall into the river alive."
Tang Yinchen suddenly said in a hurry, "Wait! Wait! Magistrate Tao, I'm sorry to interrupt. On the way to Nanzhuang Village, we encountered monsters causing trouble. Could those be water ghosts?
.....Come to claim your life?”
Everyone was speechless. Yang Huanzhi, inspired by Shang Yuchen's eyes, covered his mouth and dragged him aside.
"Your Highness, as Mr. Tang said, I have also thought about it. So I sent people to investigate. But as we all know, there is something serious behind this matter. They arrested Xianguan's wife and children, and forced him to send people disguised as
The Jianghu people are going to calculate the relief money for the people of Jiangdu. In the end, they will kill all the Jianghu people captured and provoke them in one fell swoop."
What Magistrate Tao said was roughly consistent with their previous guesses, but the only strange thing was the ice coffin and strange bones he mentioned.
"Master Tao, do you know what they use the ice coffin for?"
"Raising corpses."
"Uh huh?!" Tang Yinchen took his big hand off his mouth and said impatiently, "What is this? Raising corpses? How to raise them?"
"One of the boys in the prefect's office is from our town. He was drunk and accidentally revealed that the ice coffin is a strange thing that can revive the dead, with flesh and white bones."
"Ah? So then, why didn't that bone in the coffin you mentioned come back to life? Isn't it ridiculous to say this?"
"It's not ridiculous, it's true, because I saw with my own eyes a woman in blue crawling out of the ice coffin."
"Ah? The woman in blue? Are you sure that's a dead person?"
"Yes! Before the ice coffin was taken away by Lu Qinglin's people, there was a corpse of a woman in blue on the bones inside. She had no pulse or breath, and her whole body was very cold. She was a dead person!"
"Does the girl have any other characteristics?"
"She has a stunning appearance, and the clothes, materials and accessories she wears are all in palace style."
"What? In the palace? Is that girl in blue a member of the palace?!" Shang Yuchen finally changed his expression, "Magistrate Tao! Where did that girl go?"
"He was rescued by a young man in black! However, the official seemed to have heard the young man calling the deceased girl his sister."
"Jing'er... Du Jing..."
"Look! Strange diseases are breaking out everywhere outside. We must find them this morning!"