Lu Jiuchuan escorted the savage out of the tree house and said, "Which is the shortest way to the mass grave? Help us lead the way."
A flash of fear flashed in the savage's eyes: "What are you going to do in the mass grave?" That look clearly said, you don't want to kill me and then dump my body on the spot in the mass grave, right?
Lu Jiuchuan smiled and patted him on the shoulder: "Don't worry, we have no enmity with you and we won't kill you. Just lead the way."
Tang Ci took the initiative to take out a piece of silver from his pocket and handed it to him, saying, "This is the reward."
The savage looked at the two men suspiciously. He really didn't understand the origin of these two people. They suddenly appeared and stepped on the trap he had set. He tied him up with ropes, threatened him and asked many strange questions. Now let him
Leading the way to a mass grave and offering to give money?
The savage muttered in his mouth, reluctantly took a few steps forward, and said, "There are two roads to the mass graves. One is the path in the front mountain, and the other is on the cliff in the back mountain. Which one do you want to take?"
?”
Tang Ci looked at him doubtfully: "The cliff is so high, is there a way up?"
The savage explained: "There are vines that can be climbed up, but it is very dangerous. I have lived here for more than ten years. Once I chased a wild boar to the back mountain and found a long hanging vine there. I climbed along the vine.
You can go directly to the top of the mountain.”
Lu Jiuchuan nodded and said, "Please show us both ways."
The savages took them to Qianshan first.
There is a path at the end of the woods that leads directly to the top of the mountain. This path is winding and winding. Fortunately, the road is relatively flat. There are also many footprints left by pedestrians. This should be the path that residents in the small town usually take to go to the mass graves.
path.
The other road is relatively hidden, bypassing the woods and coming to the back mountain. Right at the bottom of the cliff, there is a large area of rocks with different heights and strange shapes.
The cliff towers into the clouds. It is difficult to see the top of the mountain from the bottom, and the view will be blocked by thick white fog.
As the savages said, there was indeed a vine hanging down from the top of the mountain. They were standing on the edge of the cliff last night. It was late at night and the light was too dark, so no one noticed the existence of this vine.
Lu Jiuchuan and Tang Ci looked at each other. Lu Jiuchuan temporarily tied the savage to a tree and said, "Thank you. Let's climb up and have a look. We will let you go when we come down later."
It's not that he wanted to embarrass this stranger, but he was afraid that if he let him go now, it would be troublesome if this guy attracted hunters. Lu Jiuchuan simply slashed with his knife and knocked the savage unconscious to the ground.
He grabbed the vine and pulled hard, then whispered to Tang Ci: "I'll climb up. You wait here for me to teleport."
Tang Ci said: "I'll go up with you."
Lu Jiuchuan shook his head: "Climbing along the vines is too dangerous. Besides, there are many sharp rocks on this cliff. What if you bump or touch and get injured?"
Tang Ci still wanted to argue, but Lu Jiuchuan stopped him with a smile and gestures: "Xiao Tang, you are here to watch this Orion, and use the voice headset to communicate at any time if there is any need."
Tang Ci had no choice but to give up and warned, "Then you should be careful."
It is not easy to climb a cliff with a height of 3,000 meters, but Lu Jiuchuan has been fond of the sport of "rock climbing" since he was a child and is very interested in the cliff in front of him. In fact, he can fly up directly on a Suzaku. The reason why he climbed it himself
, I want to verify whether I can successfully reach the top of the mountain by following this vine.
If it can, it means that someone deliberately placed this vine for escape.
Lu Jiuchuan quickly tied a ring with the end of the vine and put it around his waist. He grabbed the vine with both hands and kicked his long legs on the cliff, climbing up quickly. The man was extremely agile. Tang Ci looked up and in a blink of an eye,
He had already climbed dozens of meters high.
Tang Ci held down the earphone and said, "If you go up directly like this, what if someone cuts off your vines at the top of the mountain?"
Lu Jiuchuan smiled and said: "Then I will escape on the Suzaku, or simply return to the Peach Blossom Spring. Don't worry, I know what's going on."
Tang Ci raised his head and looked at his back. Soon, the back turned into a small black dot in his field of vision.
Gradually, Lu Jiuchuan's figure was obscured by the white mist and disappeared. However, a lot of gravel was trampled by Lu Jiuchuan and fell into the valley.
I don’t know how long it took, but Lu Jiuchuan’s voice came from the earphones: “I’ve reached the top of the mountain, and something is not right.”
Tang Ci's heart tightened and he said hurriedly: "If it's dangerous, retreat first."
Yu Hanjiang also asked in the voice channel: "Are you surrounded by zombies? If there are too many zombies, retreat and think of a solution."
Lu Jiuchuan shook his head and said: "It's not that there are too many zombies, it's that there are no zombies at the top of the mountain."
Everyone was stunned when they heard this. Xiao Lou was the first to react: "Have they returned to the mass grave? Or is it that this time there will be a crisis in the secret room only at night?"
Lu Jiuchuan said: "Maybe something happened at night. I'm in a mass grave now, and there are rotting corpses everywhere. These things have not mutated, and I didn't see those tombstones from last night."
He placed Li Qingzhao's mark nearby and said, "Wait for five minutes and I'll pull you over."
Five minutes later, a teleportation prompt appeared in front of everyone. Xiao Lou said to his teammates: "Everyone will stay at the inn for now. Han Jiang and I will go to the mass grave. After checking the clues, Mr. Shao will use another Li Qingzhao to drag us together.
Come back."
Shao Qingge said: "I understand, be careful."
The screen flashed, and Xiao Lou, Yu Hanjiang, and Tang Ci were instantly teleported to the top of the mountain.
Xiao Lou took a closer look - as Brother Jiu said, there were indeed no traces of zombies here, but there were many rotting corpses randomly discarded on the ground. Some of the corpses were eaten by hawks and dogs to the point of being unsightly, and they were scattered everywhere.
The smell of rotting corpses.
Compared with the zombie swarm last night, the mass graves during the day were not much better. The only advantage was that these things would not actively attack them.
Tang Ci covered his mouth and nose with his sleeves and said, "Is this what the mass grave really looks like? What we entered last night was another copy?"
Yu Hanjiang said: "It seems that this secret room alternates between day and night. During the day, everything is normal. At night, zombies will crawl out of the mass graves, and the town will turn into a ghost town... The challenger is forcibly transported into the survival dungeon."
Xiao Loudao: "It's much better than I thought. If there are no zombies, it will be easier for us to investigate and collect evidence."
Looking at the corpses on the ground, Xiao Lou stepped over them with a calm expression.
There were no rubber gloves in the ancient world. He used scissors to cut Yu Hanjiang's white silk cards and temporarily made two pairs of white cloth gloves. Lu Jiuchuan joked beside him: "Professor Xiao can not only make hand warmers and parasols, but also sew?"
Xiao Lou was helpless: "I was forced."
He put on his cloth gloves, picked up his clothes and walked quickly into the mass grave, looking for his target.
What he is looking for is the wedding team from three years ago. These people are all wearing bright red clothes, which is easier to find. There are not many corpses in the mass graves wearing red clothes, but dozens of red clothes gathered together are very eye-catching.
.
Yu Hanjiang pointed not far away and said, "Over there."
The four people walked quickly, and dozens of red-clothed corpses were thrown together like rubbish. Among them, the one wearing a phoenix crown and dressed up in costumes should be Zhao Ze'an, the bride of the Zhao family.
Xiao Lou squatted beside him and roughly looked at the surface of the corpse.
"Judging from the decomposition of the body and the appearance of body spots, the time of death is three years ago, which is consistent. As for the cause of death, I have to check in detail." He motioned to Yu Hanjiang to help turn the body over and inspect it carefully.
Ichiban said: "There are no marks of stab wounds on the body, no signs of poisoning, and it doesn't look like he was strangled..."
A group of people walked to the mass grave in the middle of the night as if they had lost their souls. This fact itself is weird.
Now that the body has been found, the cause of death cannot be determined, which makes Xiao Lou very puzzled.
He frowned and said: "The corpses were dumped in mass graves, exposed to wind and sun for three years, and were eaten by wild animals. The evidence has long been destroyed... But judging from the expressions of some corpses with well-preserved faces,
, most of the deceased looked horrified, as if they had seen something that terrified them before they died."
Lu Jiuchuan interjected: "Could it be that you were scared to death?"
Xiao Lou carefully analyzed: "When a person is strongly stimulated, the sympathetic nerves will produce a stress response, and the body will release a large amount of adrenaline, causing a sudden acceleration of the heartbeat, arrhythmia, and an increase in blood pressure... Theoretically, it is possible for people to be
Scared to death. But usually, people who are scared to death have basic cardiovascular diseases. It is difficult for healthy people with normal hearts to be scared to death. When they are extremely frightened, the most they can do is faint."
Yu Hanjiang nodded in agreement: "So many people were scared to death at the same time, and there were many young people among them. It shouldn't be a problem."
Lu Jiuchuan asked doubtfully: "Then what will be the cause of their death?"
Xiao Lou looked at the corpses on the ground and suddenly remembered a key clue in his mind - the origin of the mass grave.
The famine 20 years ago caused many people in the town to starve to death, and their bodies were randomly discarded on the mountains, forming this large area of mass graves.
If the murderer killed people in mass graves out of a "revenge mentality," would he also let these people starve to death?
Thinking of this, Xiao Lou whispered: "Hanjiang, help me. I want to dissect the best-preserved corpse to see if I can find the cause of death."
Lu Jiuchuan: "..."
Xiao Lou was really brave enough to dissect corpses in mass graves.
Yu Hanjiang was accustomed to Xiao Lou's behavior. He put on Xiao Lou's own gloves and calmly carried a female corpse to the ground next to him and placed it there - this corpse was the one he was chatting with in the town last night.
That maid was wearing a pair of red embroidered shoes that Xiao Lou was very familiar with.
Because she was covered by other corpses, she was not eaten by wild beasts, and was the most completely preserved.
Xiao Lou took out a dagger and quickly cut open her abdomen.
The blood of the body that had been dead for three years had long since dried up. Xiao Lou skillfully cut the skin and opened her internal organs. Sure enough, the stomach was empty, without any remaining digestion.
Yu Hanjiang also noticed something was wrong. He often saw various corpses when handling cases. After most autopsies, there would be digestive residues in the stomach. This is because normal people eat every day, and gastric emptying itself takes a long time. If
The deceased ate some indigestible food before death, and it is possible that intact food can still be found in the stomach after death.
Once a person dies, the gastrointestinal tract will stop moving.
In other words, as long as a person dies after eating and the food in the stomach has not had time to be completely digested, residues will definitely be found in the stomach of the corpse. For some people who died of poisoning, they can also be found in the stomach residues.
Produce evidence.
But in this corpse, not only the stomach but also the duodenum were empty.
It's like you haven't eaten in days?
To be sure, Xiao Lou found another relatively well-preserved corpse for autopsy, but the result was still the same.
He looked at Yu Hanjiang and said firmly: "I know the cause of their death - these people should have been controlled by the murderer after being led to the mass graves, and then starved to death. Frightened, coupled with hunger, so
That's why they have such expressions on their faces, and the bodies are generally thin."
Yu Hanjiang nodded and said: "It seems that there was indeed a problem with the famine 20 years ago. The murderer deliberately led so many people to mass graves to starve to death, which was obviously revenge. Could it be that he has a relative who also died 20 years ago?
Have you ever starved to death?”
Lu Jiuchuan sighed helplessly and said, "Isn't it too difficult to investigate? There were so many people who starved to death 20 years ago, and thousands of corpses were piled in mass graves. Whose descendants came back to take revenge?