It was already dusk. In order to make the most of their investigation, the six of them skipped dinner and split up to visit different parts of the town. Long Sen and Qu Wanyue were in charge of the northwest area, Lao Mo and Liu Qiao were in charge of the southeast, and Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang went to the Lin family's house.
They were acting by the lake earlier, and the female corpse Long Sen pulled out was that of the missing Lin family girl, named Lin Wanru. Judging from the typical gigantism on the body, she must have died within the last three days. Everyone in the town knew that Miss Lin had mysteriously disappeared on the Ghost Festival. Now that her body had been found in the lake, Xiao Lou wanted to see her family's reaction.
Yu Hanjiang and Xiao Lou secretly infiltrated the Lin family.
Surprisingly, after Ms. Lin's body was returned to her family, the elders had no intention of burying her. Normally, when a daughter's body is found, her parents should at least prepare a coffin for her, right?
However, there was no coffin in the Lin family's large courtyard. Instead, there was a burlap sack in the corner, and judging from its appearance, it likely contained Lin's body. Yu Hanjiang and Xiao Lou, lying on the roof, exchanged a glance. Xiao Lou used Telepathic Connection to say in his mind, "They just wrapped Lin's body up in a burlap sack. Are they planning to dump it in the wild?"
Yu Hanjiang frowned and said, "Even if they didn't have a good relationship with their daughter, now that she has died unjustly, it's one thing that they don't dare to investigate who the murderer is, but they can't even give the body a proper burial. How can there be such parents?"
Xiao Lou looked into the courtyard and saw that the middle-aged man was pale and the woman's eyes were red as if she had just been crying. She walked to the tree, glanced at the sacks piled up beside her, and choked up, saying, "Are you really going to throw Wanru into Mass Grave?"
The man quickly made a "shh" gesture to his lips and lowered his voice, saying, "Her death was so bizarre that burying her in the Lin family ancestral grave would be too unlucky. People who die unjustly in this town are buried in Mass Grave, so that they won't give others cause for gossip."
The woman's face showed a look of reluctance, her eyes red as she looked at the sack. Finally, she gritted her teeth and said, "Throwing her into Mass Grave to be eaten by wild dogs and crows is worse than burning her. It'll be the end of it all. I just hope my poor daughter can be reborn into a better family in her next life."
After speaking, she fetched a jug of wine from the house, poured it onto the burlap sack, and set it on fire. The raging flames quickly engulfed Lin Wanru's body, and the air was filled with the acrid smell of burning flesh. The middle-aged man and woman stood by the fire with complex expressions. Moments later, the fire died down, leaving only a pile of black ash under the tree. The man sighed softly, turned, and went back into the house, preferring to ignore it. The woman bowed to the ash, her eyes red, and followed him.
Inside the house, two people could be heard talking: "Pack your things, we need to leave Qingfeng Town as soon as possible."
The woman's voice was shrill and mournful: "You think you can escape? Everyone who's fled Qingfeng Town over the years has met a tragic end elsewhere. Qingfeng Town must be cursed! What sins have you committed?"
The man shouted angrily, "Don't talk nonsense!"
The couple began to argue fiercely.
Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang were listening to their argument from the rooftop and their heads were spinning.
Yu Hanjiang frowned slightly, quickly sifting out the key information from the argument between the two. He said to Xiao Lou in his mind, "Strange things have been happening frequently in Qingfeng Town over the years. I've always wondered why the town's residents don't just move away when so many people have gone missing. Now it seems that those who left the town all died tragically in other places, as if they were cursed. So, they don't dare to move away casually."
Xiao Lou said, "In other words, Qingfeng Town has become a semi-enclosed space. Those who stay here and have done bad things are always at risk of being retaliated against by vengeful ghosts; while those who have committed thieves and want to move away from the town out of guilt cannot escape the murderer's pursuit."
Yu Hanjiang asked, "Is this family surnamed Lin related to that robber named Lin Xiaofeng from back then?"
Among the five sworn brothers from the year of the famine was a woman surnamed Lin. Upon hearing this, Xiao Lou immediately took out the drone left behind by Tang Ci. The drone captured images of the register in Qin Feng's cabinet, containing information on every household in the town. Xiao Lou quickly found information about Lin Wanru's family and, after reviewing it, said, "Lin Xiaofeng, who participated in the murder of her mother-in-law during the famine, is the sister of the middle-aged man Lin Feng, and thus Lin Wanru's aunt. However, Lin Wanru's death doesn't seem to be the work of the ghost murderer. It's very likely that the ghost murderer didn't have time to take revenge on the Lin family before another murderer killed Lin Wanru first."
The culprits in the ghost case are Qi Ran, whom Granny Sun adopted years ago, and Xue, the Second Sister-in-law who lied and said she had "remarried and moved away." Han Ningshuang.
Their method of revenge was to lure the enemy's entire family to Mass Grave and torture them to death. Once these two took action, they would wipe out the entire family without leaving a single survivor; their methods were extremely cruel.
The murderers who dressed the girl in red and dragged her to the bottom of the lake were clearly not Qi and Han.
However, the Lin family had committed numerous evils and happened to offend two groups of murderers. Qi Ran and Han Ningshuang were probably planning to wipe out the entire Lin family, but before they could act, another murderer couldn't wait and killed Lin Wanru, the daughter of the Lin family.
Yu Hanjiang said, " I remember Lin Xiaofeng's name was marked with a red cross on Qin Feng's roster."
Xiao Lou found the page in the roster from Drone and nodded, saying, " The five people that CEO Shao investigated are Zhao Lang, Chen Yu, Xue Ming, Lin Xiaofeng, and Lu Cheng. Among them, the Zhao and Chen families disappeared three years ago; the Xue family died even earlier, probably after Han Ningshuang married Xue Zhao; as for the remaining two, Lin Xiaofeng and Lu Cheng, they just got married but had no children. Their names are crossed out with red, so they should be dead."
Yu Hanjiang said, "So it seems the culprit in the ghost case has already eliminated all five people who killed my mother-in-law back then. Those still alive on the list are all their collateral relatives, Qi Ran and Han..."
Ning Shuang has become so depraved that she wants to exterminate nine generations of her family and kill all people with the same surname.
Lin Feng and Lin Wanru's names were also on Qin Feng's register, but there was no red cross on them yet. This means that Qin Feng guessed that Qi and Han's crazy revenge was to exterminate all of these people's relatives and descendants.
The other murderer specifically targeted Lin Wanru, but spared her parents. This is definitely not related to the famine 20 years ago. The murderer's motive is still unknown. Seeing that it was getting late, Xiao Lou pressed the microphone and said, "Time is of the essence. Everyone, hurry back to the inn to meet up. We will be teleported to Ghost City again after dark."
Liu Qiao and Qu Wanyue said in unison, "Received."
A moment later, the six met at the Fulai Inn, and Xiao Lou pressed the voice headset to start an analysis meeting.
Qu Wanyue told his teammates what he had found out: "Two years ago, a strange thing happened in the town. A bride hanged herself in her bridal chamber on her wedding night."
Liu Qiao said, "I heard the same thing. We visited some families in the town, and they all said that this was the only wedding that had gone wrong. The groom's name is Long Yan, the son of a wealthy businessman in Qingfeng Town. Everyone calls him Young Master Long the Third. He often goes to other places to do business. The bride's surname is Lin, and she is a local."
Xiao Lou and Yu Hanjiang immediately became alert.
Xiao Lou asked, "What is the bride's relationship with the deceased Lin Wanru?"
Qu Wanyue said, "Her name is Lin Wanqing, and she is Lin Wanru's cousin."
Yu Hanjiang asked, "This Lin Wanqing, she hanged herself on her wedding night?"
Qu Wanyue said, "That's what everyone in town says. The third young master of the Long family is very rich and generous. On his wedding day, he invited many people from the town to his wedding banquet. At that time, there were more than twenty tables of banquet in the backyard of the Long family, and it was very lively. According to the custom of Qingfeng Town, after the bride and groom pay their respects to each other, they are not immediately sent to the bridal chamber. Instead, the bride is sent in first, and the groom continues to entertain the guests outside and toasts them."
Liu Qiao said, "It is said that for nearly an hour, the groom and the guests were drinking and making merry in the courtyard, and no one noticed whether anyone had gone into the bridal chamber. After the guests had all left, around dawn, the half-drunk groom was helped to the bridal chamber. As soon as he opened the door, he saw the bride hanging from the beam with her hair, already dead."
Xiao Lou looked at Yu Hanjiang and said, "The bride definitely didn't commit suicide; the murderer did it."
Yu Hanjiang nodded in agreement, "This bride surnamed Lin was the first person the killer in the Sunken Lake Case killed, which may also be closely related to the killer's motive."
Xiao Lou sighed softly, "Unfortunately, the bride's body can no longer be found, so I can't confirm the killer's method for the first murder through an autopsy. But we can speculate that the killer likely strangled the bride first, then staged it as a suicide, hanging the body from a beam with her hair. The killer's ability to freely enter and leave the Long family's wedding banquet suggests they are an acquaintance of the Long family."
Yu Hanjiang asked, "Xiao Liu, on the day of the wedding banquet, is it mandatory for anyone with an invitation to enter the backyard?"
Liu Qiao said, "Yes, the Long family is a prominent and influential family in the area. Ordinary people don't even have the right to attend the wedding banquet of the third young master of the Long family. It is said that the Long family has many guards at the gate, and without an invitation, you can't get in at all."
Yu Hanjiang said, "If the murderer could scale walls and sneak in, with so many people at the lively wedding banquet, they would easily be discovered. Therefore, it is more likely that the murderer walked in openly with an invitation."
Xiao Lou suddenly asked, "By the way, where is this third young master of the Long family?"
"He died too. However, he drowned in the river three months after his bride hanged herself." Liu Qiao's expression turned serious as she said this. "It seems that this Third Young Master Long was also killed by the murderer. I don't believe there could be such a coincidence."
The bride hanged herself at the wedding banquet, and the groom drowned in the river three months later.
Furthermore, the fact that the female corpse in the Sunken Lake Case was dragged into the lake indicates that the killer was an excellent swimmer, which easily leads one to believe that the third young master of the Long family was not dragged into the river by the killer when he went out.
Xiao Lou said, "The guest list from the Long family's wedding banquet might still be on the list; the murderer could very well be among them."
Yu Hanjiang thought for a moment and said, "The Long family's wedding banquet was held two years ago, while the world where Ninth Brother and the others are from is three years ago. Ninth Brother has no idea about the Sunken Lake Case, so he probably won't wait a whole year in that world. It seems we'll have to figure out a solution ourselves."