sbdcsierra Chapter 156 The Mystery of the Mortuary
Chapter 156 The Mystery of the Mortuary
Chapter 156 The Mystery of the Mortuary
The mortuary was only twenty li from the county seat, and given Lin Fei and Jiang Zhilan's walking speed, they would arrive in the time it takes to drink a cup of tea.
However, the constable Wang kept stopping every three steps, as if there were some poisonous snakes or ferocious beasts ahead. Since the two didn't know the way, they could only follow behind him. They finally arrived at the mortuary around midnight.
This was only possible because Jiang Zhilan kept urging and threatening us; otherwise, we probably wouldn't have reached our destination even if we had walked until dawn.
……
Pushing open the gates of the mortuary, a stench of decay assaulted their senses. Officer Wang lit a lamp and followed closely behind the two, as if afraid that if he lost sight of them even for a moment, he would be ambushed and harmed by the demons lurking in the darkness.
“From left to right, these are the bodies of the victims from the past two months.” Chief Constable Wang pointed to the row of neatly arranged bodies: “On the far left is Butcher Sun, and all the way to the far right are the victims who were discovered just a few days ago.”
Lin Fei stepped forward and lifted the white cloth covering Sun the butcher's corpse. The corpse looked incredibly lifelike, even having a rosy complexion, as if it were asleep. It wouldn't be surprising if it suddenly opened its eyes and got up from the ground.
However, the stench emanating from the corpse clearly indicated that the person had been dead for some time.
Lin Fei stretched out his finger and gently touched the corpse. A large patch of skin suddenly collapsed, as if it were a layer of rotten paper. With a gentle poke, a large hole appeared.
"Ugh!" Wang, the head constable standing to the side, couldn't help but gag and turned his head away, not wanting to see such a scene anymore.
Lin Fei, however, showed no discomfort whatsoever. He pondered for a moment and said, "Officer Jiang is a man of great experience. In your opinion, whose methods do you think this is?"
"It's hard to say." Jiang Zhilan shook her head: "This body has been dead for too long, and there's no clue to be found just from the corpse. Let's look down; maybe we can find something."
The two men then began by uncovering the white cloth covering the bodies of Sun the butcher, who was the first to be killed, and began to look down.
These corpses all had one thing in common: there were no obvious wounds on their bodies. And although their bodies were already decomposed inside, they looked as if they were still alive from the outside.
Judging from the external features of the body alone, there is nothing wrong with it.
Lin Fei and Jiang Zhilan examined each body one by one, and it wasn't until they saw the tenth corpse that they noticed something amiss.
"Officer Jiang, look," Lin Fei said to Jiang Zhilan, pointing to the corpse's hands.
To an ordinary person, the corpse appeared no different from the previous ones. However, to a master with opened eyes, it was clear that traces of residual true energy could be seen between the corpse's fingers.
"You have a good eye, buddy." Jiang Zhilan couldn't help but praise him. Being able to notice such subtle differences, Lin Fei didn't seem like someone who was handling a case for the first time.
Take Officer Wang over there, for example. He's known as a veteran in criminal investigations and has been a constable for over a decade, yet he was already panting heavily on the sidelines.
Jiang Zhilan frowned and said in a low voice, "Stop vomiting and come here right now. I have something to ask you!"
As the saying goes, "one thing subdues another." This Constable Wang admires Jiang Zhilan, who is quick to threaten people with her life and fortune.
"What questions does Your Excellency have?" Officer Wang wiped the residue from the corner of his mouth and quickly came closer.
"Tell me," Jiang Zhilan asked, pointing to the tenth corpse, "who was the owner of this body? Was he a martial artist?"
"What martial arts?" Constable Wang scoffed. "This man's surname is Zhao, and the people in the county call him Honest Zhao. He's a genuine farmer. If he knew martial arts, pigs would be flying high!"
Lin Fei and Jiang Zhilan exchanged a glance, both seeing the doubt in each other's eyes. Judging from the time of death and the residual true energy at the fingertips, to have so much true energy remaining after so long since death, this person must have been at least a master of the Body Tempering Realm or higher in life.
However, according to Constable Wang, the deceased was clearly someone who knew absolutely nothing about martial arts.
Lin Fei immediately lifted three more white cloths and found that there was more or less residual true energy on the fingertips, and the closer the time of death, the more true energy remained.
"Could it be that someone used their true energy to control the deceased, allowing them to continue moving after death?" Lin Fei gathered his true energy at his fingertips, controlling it to form threads that wrapped around the deceased's limbs.
Suddenly, the deceased sat up from the ground, startling Officer Wang who was standing nearby.
“That’s not right.” Lin Fei used his true energy to control the dead body for a moment, then immediately abandoned his idea: “Although using true energy to control the dead body can allow them to move after death, they can only move stiffly and cannot speak or eat. According to Constable Wang’s description, some of these dead bodies were chatting and laughing with others just before they fell to the ground, and some were even drinking in a restaurant.”
“Simply using true qi to control it is naturally impossible for a person to move freely after death as they did in life.” Jiang Zhilan seemed to have thought of something, and said while thinking, “However, I have heard that there are some secret methods in the evil path that can control a person’s mind, so that even after death, they can still move as they did in life. These are called ‘corpse refining techniques’.”
Lin Fei had also heard of the art of corpse refining, a secret technique that could control the dead. It could even control highly skilled martial artists and make them work for him.
However, the method of refining corpses is extremely complicated, and refining corpses is ultimately an external thing, which cannot compare to one's own solid cultivation. Therefore, even among the evil sects, very few people use it.
"As far as I know, even among the eight evil sects, there is no sect known for its corpse refining techniques," Lin Fei said after thinking for a moment.
“That’s right.” Jiang Zhilan nodded and said, “Because the method of refining corpses takes a long time and is prone to backlash from corpse poison, even the most unorthodox sects are unwilling to learn this kind of secret technique where the effort and reward are disproportionate.”
Lin Fei didn't know much about the art of corpse refining. The Jade Emperor Sect was a prestigious and righteous sect, and there were no records of such a vicious secret technique in the sect. However, Jiang Zhilan had been in the Heavenly Gate for many years and was very knowledgeable. She thought for a moment and then said, "There are records of this corpse refining technique in the Heavenly Gate's files. The most recent and most famous one should be the Yan family of Jiangxi Prefecture. However, even the Yan family completely disappeared fifty years ago, and their whereabouts are unknown. This corpse refining technique has not appeared in our Southern Tang Kingdom in recent years."
As the two were talking, they seemed unaware that a thin layer of mist was quietly rising inside the mortuary.