Chapter 9: Sequel "Blood Altar"
After Shen Liang's death, Bao Zheng returned to the academy to study soon. The academy invited Yang Daxueshi to guide a group of students.
At this time, Lu Yun found a name called Shishan Village from Shen Liang's relics. However, as a local, Lu Yun had no idea that Shishan Village existed. So he found clues about Shishan Village in the records of the county government and went to investigate. As a result, two days later, his body was found in a small forest outside the county town, and his death was very ugly.
After Bao Zheng heard about it, he went to the funeral home at night to check Shen Liang's body. Zhan Zhao pretended to be a ghost to scare Bao Zheng, but was exposed by Bao Zheng. So the two of them joined forces and decided to find the murderer.
According to the pollen on Lu Yun's body, Bao Zheng guessed that Lu Yun went up the mountain. The next morning, the two set out for the mountains near Luzhou. As a result, they found a cave on Shishan Mountain. There were a large number of stone statues in the cave, and each stone statue had a horrifying death. Lu Yun's death was exactly the same as one of the stone statues.
Obviously, someone killed Lu Yun in the same way as the stone statue did, and wanted to put the blame on the ghosts and gods.
Bao Zheng suddenly thought of the ghost murders that had been reported in Luzhou in recent years. The deaths of the victims seemed to correspond to these stone statues. After reaching this conclusion, Bao Zheng immediately proposed to check the case files in the county government, but Zhan Zhao wanted to search Shishan again to see if there were any other discoveries.
So the two separated temporarily, Bao Zheng attended classes during the day and went to the county government office to check information at night. A few days later, Yang Daxueshi was dug out of his heart and died, and his death was also consistent with a stone statue in the cave.
At this time, Mu Dutong came to Luzhou with his army and took over the case.
Bao Zheng could not get in touch with the case and could 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 the people who were killed. It turned out that these people had served in the army 20 years ago, and they were all under the command of Ying Ming, an academician of Mu Du Tonghe Academy.
After getting new clues, Bao Zheng went to find 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, who sent people to look for clues about Ying Ming. As a result, Ying Ming's body was found in a farmland outside the city. Ying Ming was holding a piece of paper in his hand. Mu Dutong took the paper off and found a sun character. Bao Zheng deduced that the murderer moved the body because he was afraid that someone would find the paper, which proved that it was someone who was committing the crime, not ghosts.
Mu Dutong sent people to check all the calligraphy and painting shops in the city, and recorded all the calligraphy and paintings that Academician Ying Ming had bought. After comparison, they found several landscape paintings. There were poems on the landscape paintings. Bao Zheng took a look at the titles of the poems and immediately deduced that it was He Zhizhang's "Returning to Hometown". The word "日" was actually the lower half of the word "音", and he immediately became suspicious of the college music teacher Meng Fang. However, when Mu Dutong sent people to arrest Meng Fang, they found Meng Fang's headless body.
Meng Fang's death caused the students in the academy to mistakenly believe that it was a curse and they spread the story as a murder by a ghost.
Just then, Zhan Zhao came back and said that a village called Shishan Village was found on Shishan Mountain. Bao Zheng went to the county government and asked the old master, only to find out that Shishan Village suddenly appeared more than 20 years ago and suddenly moved away a few years later. According to legend, the villagers of Shishan Village guarded a treasure. There were many people looking for the treasure back then. The people of Shishan Village may have moved away because they were overwhelmed. The master's words did not match what Zhan Zhao saw at all. 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 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, like some animals.
When they returned to Luzhou, they found that Mu Dutong's troops had withdrawn outside the city. Bao Zheng was very surprised, but immediately rushed to the military camp to report his discovery to Mu Dutong.
As a result, they didn't even get into the military camp. Mu Dutong's subordinates told Bao Zheng that Mu Dutong had been missing for three days.
At this time, a war horse returned to the military camp. Mu Dutong was sitting on the horse, but his head was caught between his waist. After checking the cause of death, it was found that Mu Dutong was torn into pieces by five horses, and his limbs were broken. He was only able to ride back on the horse by himself after being covered in armor and tied with ropes.
Zhan Zhao sorted out Lu Yun's belongings and found a case report about Shen Liang. He gave the report to Bao Zheng. When Bao Zheng saw the name Shen Liang, he immediately guessed that the pattern on the silk was the totem wolf head of the Liao Kingdom. Shishan Village was also related to the Liao Kingdom. Could they also be spies of the Liao Kingdom?
With this suspicion, Bao Zheng immediately sorted out the whole 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 something, involving the address, which later became the crime scene. So his previous suspicion was correct, Meng Fang should be the murderer. In this way, Meng Fang should have faked his death.
So Bao Zheng asked Zhan Zhao to hold Chang Yu hostage and lure Meng Fang out. In front of everyone, Bao Zheng explained his reasoning.
Mu Dutong, Ying Ming, and Yang Daxueshi led their soldiers to Shishan Village to search for treasures and killed all the villagers disguised as Liao spies. Chang Yu and Meng Fang escaped death and grew up with the help of Shen Liang. Shen Liang helped the two to find out the news, Meng Fang killed people, and Chang Yu helped to cover them and killed all the soldiers one by one.
Meng Fang had been hiding beside Ying Ming, just to find out the news about Yang Daxueshi and Mu Dutong. Yang Daxueshi suddenly arrived, and Meng Fang immediately killed him, but he didn't expect to attract Mu Dutong as well, so Ying Ming lost his role and was also killed by Meng Fang. Finally, Meng Fang used the news of the treasure to lure Mu Dutong to the piano room and killed him, and used his body to fake his own death, and then froze Mu Dutong's head in the ice cellar of the academy, placed it on other bodies, and sent it back to the barracks.
After hearing the reasoning, Chang Yu broke down and told the truth. At this time, everyone knew that Mu Dutong and others were not good people. If they had not killed the Liao spy by mistake, Mu Dutong and others would have killed and robbed. Although they did not find the treasure, this did not cover up the fact that they killed people.
After the adaptation, the plot of "Blood Altar" is more reasonable and the rhythm is more compact. Liu Hongmin was very happy writing it. He didn't take a break for three days and finished writing "Blood Altar" directly.
When I was in school, I wrote almost 50,000 words, and in these three days I wrote more than 40,000 words, so the whole article is nearly 100,000 words.
(End of this chapter)
