Chapter 9 Sequel "Blood Altar"
After Shen Liang's death, Bao Zheng returned to the academy to study not long after. The academy invited Bachelor Yang to mentor a group of students.
At this time, Lu Yun discovered the name of Shishan Village from Shen Liang's relics. But as a local, Lu Yun didn't know the existence of Shishan Village at all. So he found clues about Shishan Village in the county government records and went to investigate. As a result, two days later, his body was found in the woods outside the county town. The appearance of his death was very ugly.
After hearing this, Bao Zheng entered Yizhuang overnight to check on Shen Liang’s body. Zhan Zhao pretended to be a ghost to scare Bao Zheng, but Bao Zheng exposed him. So the two teamed up and decided to find the murderer.
According to the pollen carried by Lu Yun, Bao Zheng speculated that Lu Yun had gone up the mountain. The two set out early the next morning to go to the mountains near Luzhou, and found a cave on Shishan Mountain. There were a large number of stone statues in the cave, and each stone statue had a creepy death appearance. Lu Yun's death state was exactly the same as one of the stone statues.
Obviously, someone killed Lu Yun according to the stone statue death method, and wanted to blame the ghosts and gods.
Bao Zheng suddenly thought of the murders by ghosts and gods that had been reported in Luzhou over the years. The death conditions of the victims seemed to correspond to these stone statues. After reaching this conclusion, Bao Zheng immediately proposed to check the county government case information, but Zhan Zhao wanted to search Shishan again to see if there were any other findings.
So the two separated temporarily. Bao Zheng went to class during the day and went to the county government to check information at night. A few days later, Academician Yang's heart was dug out and he died. The condition of his death was also consistent with that of a stone statue in the cave.
At this moment, Mu Dutong led the army to Luzhou and took over the case.
Bao Zheng has no access to the case and can only wait for news from Zhan Zhao. At night, he looked at the information he got from the county government and decided to look for clues about these murdered people. It turned out that these people had all served as soldiers twenty years ago, and they were all under Ying Ming, an academician of Mudu Tonghe Academy.
After getting new clues, Bao Zheng went to academician Ying Ming the next day. However, when Bao Zheng arrived, he did not find Ying Ming, but saw a lot of blood on the ground. Bao Zheng immediately went to find Mu Dutong. Mu Dutong sent people to look for clues about Ying Ming, but Ying Ming's body was found in the farmland outside the city. Ying Ming was still holding a piece of paper in his hand. Mu Dutong took the paper off and found that it was a day. Bao Zheng concluded that this was the body that the murderer moved because he was afraid that someone would find the piece of paper. This proved that someone was committing the murder, not ghosts and gods.
Mu Dutong sent people to check all the calligraphy and painting shops in the city and recorded all the calligraphy and paintings bought by Academician Ying Ming. By comparison, he found several landscape paintings. There were poems on the landscape paintings. Bao Zheng glanced at the titles of the poems and immediately deduced that they were "Occasionally Returning Hometown" by He Zhizhang. The Japanese character was actually the lower half of the character "音", and he immediately became interested in Meng Fang, a music teacher at the college. Suspect. However, when Mu Dutong sent people to arrest Meng Fang, they found Meng Fang's headless body.
Meng Fang’s death made the students in the college mistakenly believe that a curse had occurred, and spread the incident as a ghost murder.
At this moment, Zhan Zhao came back and said that he found a village that was burned down by fire on Shishan Mountain, called Shishan Village. Bao Zheng went to the county government office and asked the older master, only to learn that Shishan Village suddenly appeared more than 20 years ago and suddenly moved away a few years ago. According to legend, the villagers of Shishan Village guarded a treasure. There were many people looking for the treasure at that time. The people of Shishan Village may have moved away because they could not bear the disturbance. The master's words were completely inconsistent with what Zhan Zhao saw. Bao Zheng immediately went to Shishan Village with Zhan Zhao. Sure enough, an important clue was found there. All the people in Shishan Village were killed and then buried on the spot. On the wreckage, Bao Zheng found traces of fire. Later, half-burned silk was found in the house. The silk was blackened, and some patterns could be vaguely seen, which seemed to be some kind of animal.
When they returned to Luzhou, they found that Mu Dutong's troops had withdrawn outside the city. Bao Zheng was surprised, but immediately rushed to the military camp to report his findings to Mu Dutong.
As a result, they didn't even enter the military camp. Mu Dutong's men told Bao Zheng: Mu Dutong had been missing for three days.
At this moment, a war horse returned to the military camp. Mu Dutong sat upright on the horse, but his head was caught in his waist. After checking the cause of death, it turned out that Mu Dutong was quartered by five horses, with all his limbs broken. He was only able to ride back on his own after being put in armor and tied with ropes.
Zhan Zhao sorted through Lu Yun’s belongings and found a case report about Shen Liang. He took the report to Bao Zheng. When Bao Zheng saw the name Shen Liang, he immediately guessed that the pattern on the piece of silk was the wolf head, the totem of the Liao Kingdom. Shishan Village is actually related to the Liao Kingdom. Are they also spies of the Liao Kingdom?
With this suspicion, Bao Zheng immediately sorted out the entire case. He found that all the dead seemed to be related to this village and Shen Liang. He remembered that Shen Liang asked him to inform Meng Fang of some things, including addresses, which later became murder scenes. So his previous suspicions were correct, and Meng Fang should be the murderer. In this case, Meng Fang should have faked his death.
So Bao Zheng asked Zhan Zhao to take Chang Yu hostage and lure Meng Fang out. In front of everyone, Bao Zheng explained his reasoning.
Mu Dutong, Ying Ming, and Yang Da Shi led their soldiers to Shishan Village to search for treasures and killed all the villagers pretending to be Liao spies. Chang Yu and Meng Fang escaped death and grew up with the help of Shen Liang. Shen Liang helped the two of them investigate the news, Meng Fang took action to kill, and Chang Yu helped cover up, killing all the soldiers one by one.
Meng Fang has been lurking next to Ying Ming, just wanting to find news about Scholar Yang and Mu Dutong. Academician Yang suddenly arrived, and Meng Fang immediately killed him. Unexpectedly, Mu Dutong was also recruited, and Ying Ming lost his role and was also killed by Meng Fang. In the end, Meng Fang used the news of the treasure to lure Mu Dutong to the piano room and kill him. He used his body to fake his own death. Then he froze Mu Dutong's head in the ice cellar of the college and placed it on other corpses. Returned to the military camp.
After listening to the reasoning, Chang Yu broke down emotionally and told the truth. At this time, everyone knew that Mu Dutong and others were not good people. If it weren't for the fact that the Liao spies were killed by mistake, Mu Dutong and others would have committed murder. Although they did not find the treasure, this did not cover up the fact that they committed murder.
After the adaptation, the storyline of "Blood Altar" is more reasonable and the rhythm is more compact. Liu Hongmin had so much fun writing that he finished "Blood Altar" without much rest for three days.
When I was in school, I wrote almost 50,000 words. In the past three days, I wrote more than 40,000 words, and the whole article is nearly 100,000 words.
(End of this chapter)