Chapter 10 of Ming Niang Yang
Jie Qianchou tapped the ground with his knuckles and wiped the dust off with a rag. A crack appeared on the rough cement floor. Jie Qianchou followed the crack to the wall. He moved the nearby debris away and finally found a handle hidden in the corner.
It's called a handle, but it's actually more like an iron ring. One end of the ring is connected to the concrete floor, and the other end is locked to a protrusion at the base of the wall with an iron lock. It seems that this protrusion was built specifically to lock the ring.
Jie Qianchou cleared out a square area along the gap, which looked like the entrance to a cellar.
Yan Ran squatted down and knocked on the ground, imitating Jie Qianchou's behavior. A hollow sound came from below. She tried pulling the handle again, but the ground didn't move at all.
Jie Qianchou casually threw the rag aside and said, "This door is made of iron, it's already very heavy, not to mention it's locked."
Yan Ran stood up and said, "Why don't we call the police?"
Xie Qianchou pulled out a few thin wires from his bag, one of which was tied with a knot at the top. "To be safe, let's see what's inside first. What if this is where the butcher hid his passbook?"
After saying that, Jie Qianchou took the wire and started poking the keyhole on the handle.
Yan Ran saw that Qianchou was very skilled and couldn't help asking him, "You can also pick locks? You're not a habitual offender, are you?"
Before Yan Ran finished speaking, Jie Qianchou had already opened the lock nimbly.
Jie Qianchou threw the lock aside and asked, "Is it possible that skills like unlocking and untying are basic skills in our industry?"
Xie Qianchou meant that anyone involved in magic tricks needed to have some basic skills in "escape tactics." Yan Ran understood what he meant, but pretended not to understand.
Yan Ran: "It still sounds like a thief."
Xie Qianchou didn't want to pay any attention to Yan Ran. He pulled the iron plate open with force, and a dark hole appeared under their feet. Xie Qianchou shone the flashlight inside. The cellar looked bigger than he had imagined. The flashlight's light was limited, and he couldn't see clearly what was going on below.
Jie Qianchou looked around and saw a wooden ladder among the miscellaneous items. He moved the ladder over and lowered it along the entrance, which was just enough for one person to go up and down.
Xie Qianchou said to Yan Ran, "You keep watch up there, I'll go down and take a look."
Just as Xie Qianchou went down two steps along the ladder, Yan Ran grabbed his collar.
Yan Ran bit her lip and said, "Well, I'll go down with you. It will be easier for two of us to find clues."
Jie Qianchou paused and said, "I guess you don't dare to stay outside alone? ...Oh!"
Yan Ran kicked Jie Qianchou down. "Seeing through everything but not saying anything, this person is always so annoying!" Then she climbed down the ladder herself.
Yan Ran had just entered the cellar when the flashlight inside suddenly went out. Yan Ran froze in an instant, her feet still on the last step of the ladder, not daring to move.
Suddenly, a flashlight shone upwards, illuminating a pale face. It was Xie Qianchou, rolling his eyes and making a face to scare Yan Ran.
Yan Ran kicked again, followed by a scream, and then the world became quiet.
Yan Ran landed on the ground. She turned on the flashlight on her mobile phone, not understanding Qianchou, and observed the situation in the cellar alone.
"Click"
Jie Qianchou pressed the switch on the wall, and the tungsten filament lamp on the cellar ceiling lit up with a dim light.
"Why didn't you turn on the lights earlier!" Yan Ran rolled his eyes again.
Jie Qianchou shrugged, looking like he deserved a beating.
The tungsten filament lamp wasn't very bright, perhaps due to poor contact, and it would flicker from time to time. Yan Ran continued to use his phone's flashlight, carefully examining his surroundings.
The cellar was rectangular, approximately ten square meters in size. It seemed much drier than the warehouse above it, at least without the overpowering musty smell. Tools like hooks, shovels, and belts hung on one wall, and a half-meter-long chain lay on the ground across from them. The cellar floor was paved with a thin layer of cement, while the surrounding walls were painted with a simple whitewash.
Yan Ran looked around twice but found nothing else. Pointing at the tools on the wall, she asked, "Is this where they keep the tools used to butcher pigs? Building a basement just for these things is ridiculously extravagant. I thought it was where they hid their gold bars."
Jie Qianchou: "Will these be used to kill pigs?"
Yan Ran: "Don't ask me, I've never killed a pig."
Xie Qianchou walked to the wall, holding up a flashlight and checking the tools on the wall one by one. He stared at the iron hook for a while, then leaned in to smell it carefully.
Jie Qianchou: "What a strong smell of blood."
Yan Ran followed and said, "Nonsense, how can the tools used to kill pigs not be stained with blood?"
Jie Qianchou ignored Yan Ran. He bent down almost lying on the ground, constantly fiddling with the flashlight and adjusting various angles, trying hard to find something.
Yan Ran didn't know what he was doing and asked, "You don't really think there's gold hidden here, do you?"
Jie Qianchou felt the ground with his hands, slowly searching for something: "Don't you think it's too dry here?"
Yan Ran: "Dry? What does that mean?"
"Found it!" Xie Qianchou pointed at some white powder in the corner and said, "See? It's slaked lime."
"Cooked...lime?" Yan Ran didn't understand what Jie Qianchou meant.
Jie Qianchou continued to search while lying on the ground, explaining, "Quicklime becomes slaked lime when it comes into contact with water."
Yan Ran was silent for a moment. "So, what's the problem with people using quicklime to keep the basement dry?"
"What's the point of dehumidifying a basement with only a few tools in it?" After a while, Xie Qianchou had already found a large amount of slaked lime. He straightened up and continued, "Don't forget, quicklime, besides absorbing water, also has another function—it kills bacteria."
Yan Ran really wanted to say, isn’t it normal to disinfect the basement?
After Xie Qianchou stood up, he held up his flashlight and searched for something on the cellar ceiling. He licked his finger and then raised it above his head. His finger kept changing its position like a radar, as if sensing something.
Yan Ran looked at Xinqi: "What are you doing again?"
"Here!" Xie Qianchou's flashlight focused on a corner of the wall, where there was a hole the size of a mask. This hole was right in the shadow of the tungsten filament lamp, and it was difficult to see without careful observation.
Yan Ran walked over and looked at it for a long time: "This is..."
Jie Qianchou: "Ventilation hole."
Yan Ran: "It's nothing to be surprised about if they leave a gap for breathing, right?"
Xie Qianchou walked over to the iron chain, squatted down, and looked at the whitewashed wall in front of him. He stroked the wall with his hand, and a subtle touch passed through his fingers.
Jie Qianchou turned around and called Yan Ran: "Come and see what this is."
Yan Ran walked over to Jie Qianchou and pointed her phone's flashlight at the wall. She followed the line of Jie Qianchou's finger and saw tiny scratches. Yan Ran's finger traced the scratches, gradually outlining a word.
Yan Ran: “Yes?”
Jie Qianchou nodded: "Look again carefully."
Yan Ran adjusted the flashlight to an angle so that he could see the marks on the wall more clearly. As the flashlight light continued to move, a wall densely covered with the word "正" (positive) reappeared before Yan Ran's eyes.
Yan Ran suddenly felt her scalp tingling, and she unconsciously took two steps back: "Why did he write so many correct words on the wall?"
Jie Qianchou's eyes were deep. He pointed to a scratch on the wall with only two strokes written on it. "These are not words. This is a calendar. One stroke is written for each day that passes."
Yan Ran felt that he could not understand what was happening before his eyes. Xie Qianchou continued, "These were not written by Zhu Tuzi either."
"What are you talking about?" Yan Ran felt that Jie Qianchou was imagining things and exaggerating them.
Xie Qianchou's flashlight pointed at the iron hook: "A bloody tool," then moved to the air hole in the corner: "A hidden vent." He shone the flashlight on the scratches on the wall: "The whitewash on the wall was applied later to cover up these marks." The flashlight then fell on the slaked lime: "The iron chain, and the quicklime on the ground that can kill bacteria."
Xie Qianchou turned off the flashlight and looked at Yan Ran: "What do you think this cellar looks like?"
"Like..." Yan Ran became more and more frightened the more he thought about it, and finally said the two words "prison cell".
Xie Qianchou turned back and continued to look at the wall in front of him. He took out an unlabeled homemade spray from his bag and sprayed it twice at the wall.
Yan Ran leaned over and asked, "What is this?"
Yan Ran, who had just approached, was pushed away by Jie Qianchou: "Luminol. This thing is poisonous, stay away from it."
After spraying, Jie Qianchou pulled Yan Ran back a few steps.
Jie Qianchou said, "Western magicians often use this to perform development magic or color-changing magic. For example, they can turn clear spring water into blue water. As a descendant of Eastern magic, I naturally have to study some of their methods."
Yan Ran asked curiously, "Why did you spray this on the wall? Turn it blue? I don't see any change."
Jie Qianchou: "Luminol is not a blue paint, it's a developer. It reacts with iron, and iron is present in human blood."
As if to echo Jie Qianchou's sorrow, pale blue marks slowly emerged on the wall sprayed with luminol. Gradually, as time passed, these fluorescent blue marks transformed into twisted and deformed words: Save me, I want to go home, You must not die well...
These words overlapped, squeezed, and screamed, filling the entire wall. The blue fluorescence emitted by the fonts looked strange and sinister under the dim tungsten light.
Yan Ran seemed to have thought of something horrifying. The crushing sensation of the cellar made her feel dizzy. Even when she saw the Skeleton Bride murder someone, she hadn't felt the same wave of palpitations as she did now. However, what she saw before her was a basement filled with nothingness.
"Let's call the police." After a long moment, Yan Ran finally calmed herself down. She grabbed Jie Qianchou's hand and said quickly, "This is most likely where Zhu Li was murdered. The words on the wall were written in Zhu Li's blood. The butcher imprisoned Zhu Li here, burned the flesh off his face with quicklime, and then tortured him to death. And the hooks on the wall and the chains on the ground..." Yan Ran didn't dare to think any further.
Jie Qianchou shook his head: "More than that. Look at these words, some of the fonts are obviously different. Maybe more than one person died here."
Yan Ran controlled his emotions and looked at the wall again. Just as Jie Qianchou had said, the handwriting was different. And the "正" characters they had found earlier looked like marks left by someone scraping their fingernails against the wall. Some of the characters even glowed blue. Yan Ran knew it was blood, left behind by fingers clawing at the cold, rough wall.
Jie Qianchou pulled Yan Ran's hand and said, "Let's go up quickly. If we run into Zhu Tuzi, we don't know what he will do to us."
At this moment, Yan Ran felt a turmoil in her heart. A feeling of nervousness and uneasiness grew stronger and stronger, as if her chest was being pricked by needles and cut by knives. On the other hand, a sense of excitement at discovering the truth was vaguely rising in her heart.
Xie Qianchou thought Yan Ran was frightened and stupid, so he pulled Yan Ran up the ladder and quickly got out of the cellar. After the two of them came out, they didn't bother to put the lid back on, just wanted to get out of here quickly, at least to avoid being blocked in the house by Zhu Tuzi.
As soon as he ran out of the Zhu family yard, Yan Ran took out his mobile phone and looked around for a signal.
Jie Qianchou pulled her along as they ran, saying, "It's no use. The cell phone signal here is very weak. Locals all use landlines."
Yan Ran put away his phone: "This butcher is really good at pretending. Who would have thought that the female ghost was actually a rough man pretending to be a ghost?"
Jie Qianchou said, "If that's true, then he's probably a master of magic. Back at Gao's house, he pretended to be tricked by me and left town on the pretext of something to give himself an alibi. Then he sneaked back in the middle of the night and killed Gao's wife. What a calculated plan, so insidious."
Yan Ran: "Where are we going to find a landline now? Where are we going?"
Xie Qianchou suddenly slowed down his pace, only to pull Yan Ran away from Zhu the Butcher's yard, not knowing where to go. No one knew if butcher Zhu Shun was committing the crime alone. If they accidentally ran to the home of Zhu Shun's accomplice, wouldn't that be a trap?
It was already dark. Few people walked around the town after dark, but the mountain breeze blew, casting shadows on the trees, and Jie Qianchou felt a chill.
Suddenly, a dark shadow rushed out of the woods and grabbed Jie Qianchou's hand!
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
