Chapter 66 Corpse Sac Cloth "You might as well just kill me."...
The villagers had all vanished without a trace, leaving only Zhou Yaren alone. He tore off a piece of cloth, carefully wrapped the severed arm, and put it in his pocket, intending to hand it over to the authorities for investigation the next day.
Now that he could no longer pinpoint the location by sound, Zhou Yaren used his bamboo cane to probe the ground and made his way through the burial mounds alone. Since the severed arm was here, the body should be nearby. After calming down, Zhou Yaren quickly made a judgment: since he did not know the whereabouts of Bai Yuan for the time being, perhaps he could look around for the severed arm and the body.
Zhou Yaren wasn't sure if what Lao Zhang said was true, but she felt there must be something fishy about it, and perhaps the disappearance of the coachman and Doctor Ding last night was related to this matter.
Zhou Yaren's mind raced, filled with doubts, yet he found no clues to support them. Just then, his bamboo cane poked something that was both soft and hard. He crouched down and touched the rough, prickly fur. It was the emaciated carcass of a wild dog, long dead and stiff.
Wild dogs tossed aside the soil nearby, pulling out several white human bones.
Zhou Yaren slowly stood up. There was a faint rustling sound coming from somewhere. When he listened carefully, he could only hear a cold wind blowing through the withered branches and leaves of the mass grave.
Zhou Yaren had no suspicions and continued forward, tapping her bamboo cane.
A woman stood in the shadows several feet behind him, silently watching his every move.
"Knowledgeable by the wind?" the woman murmured dismissively. "His hearing doesn't seem to be working very well. Didn't you say he was very capable?"
As she spoke, she turned her head and looked at Lu Bing, whose mouth and nose were being tightly covered by the masked man. He was staring wide-eyed at Zhou Yaren's receding figure with a red face and thick neck.
Yaren——
Yaren——
With his mouth and nose blocked, he could only hysterically scream inside.
Yaren——
Chen Ying watched with amusement as Lu Bing, seeing an old friend but unable to call out, his veins bulging and eyes brimming with tears, said, "I think he's blind and deaf, he doesn't even know his old friend is right beside him. But he just turned around, and we're right in front of him, it's a pity he can't see us."
Tears streamed down Lu Bing's face, dripping onto the back of the hand that the masked man was using to cover his mouth and nose.
Chen Ying squatted down to look Lu Bing in the eye and exclaimed in surprise, "Oh, you're crying! You were half-dead the whole way here, like you'd lost your soul. Are you getting all excited to see an old friend now? Don't look, he's already gone far away. He didn't come here to find you. Why are you so excited?"
Lu Bing's tendons were severed, leaving him paralyzed and unable to move. He could only stare in agony and despair in the direction Zhou Yaren had left until she disappeared from sight. He never imagined that he and Yaren would miss each other in such a way.
Before Lu Bing suffocated, the masked man released his grip, silently watching him collapse to the ground, and murmured hoarsely, "Ya Ren..."
Chen Ying raised a finger and wiped away the hot tears from his temple: "How pitiful. Instead of relying on him, you should come and beg me."
Lu Bing glared fiercely at Chen Ying. If looks could kill, Chen Ying would have been torn to pieces by Lu Bing long ago.
She wasn't annoyed at all; on the contrary, she was extremely pleased: "I like your eyes. Ah Cong, look at him, does he look like a jackal or a tiger?"
Ah Cong glanced at her while wiping the wetness off the back of his hand, ignoring her absurd habit.
Chen Ying didn't mind at all. She pinched Lu Bing's chin and turned his face to face. She thought his face was really handsome and strong. She had been in Bei Qucheng for nearly half a year. How come she had never seen him before?
Pretending to be a law-abiding citizen means you rarely have to deal with government officials.
Chen Ying scratched Lu Bing's cheek with her fingernail, her palm getting wet: "They say men don't easily shed tears, but that's only because they're heartbroken..."
Lu Bing, unable to contain himself any longer, demanded, "What exactly do you want?!"
His voice was extremely hoarse.
"Are you asking about now? Or later? I have so many things I want to do, I don't know which one to tell you," Chen Ying said casually. "If it's now, I want you to beg me."
"Keep dreaming," Lu Bingning said defiantly, "You might as well just kill me with one blow."
"It would be such a waste to kill you. You have such a beautiful appearance, I certainly can't let you go to waste."
Lu Bing couldn't understand her ramblings.
Chen Ying laughed and said, "If you make me unhappy, I'll turn you into a shroud."
Lu Bing stared at her in astonishment: "What did you say? What shroud?"
“Officer Lu, isn’t this a case you personally supervised? Just like the Shen family, once their flesh and blood are hollowed out, I can make a shroud.”
Lu Bing suddenly thought of the dead man whose flesh and blood had been sucked dry by leeches, leaving only bones and skin, and who had suddenly come back to life overnight: "What are you doing this for?"
"You don't know this, but there's a group of water ghosts at the bottom of that river, and they need this kind of shroud to get ashore."
Ah Cong, who had been observing coldly, gestured to her, and Chen Ying said, "Isn't Wangxiang just a water ghost? What's the difference?"
Ah Cong clearly disagreed, so Chen Ying compromised and said, "Alright, alright, it's Wang Xiang. Why are you taking it so seriously?"
Sure enough, she was the culprit behind all of this! Even though Lu Bing had suspected it for a long time, he still found it hard to believe that this woman, who was as ruthless as a snake and killed without hesitation, could be so cruel.
So that night, when her father saw Chen Ying return to the Shen family at 9 PM, it was to retrieve the body bag.
"It really is you! You're the Gu Master?!"
Chen Ying looked slightly surprised: "I didn't expect that a mere constable like you would be so knowledgeable. Who told you I'm a Gu master? That blind man who just passed by, did you hear the wind?"
Although Lu Bing didn't answer, she knew it was the blind man: "He's really not simple. He actually figured out my identity. What else did he say?"
Lu Bing refused to reveal a single word to her, and angrily rebuked, "Shen Yuanwen is your husband, and that is your husband's family. How could you turn them all into shrouds?"
Chen Ying snorted coldly: "I don't care who he is. If he dares to mess with me, isn't he just asking for death?!"
"Why...why are you..."
"Don't you know why?" Chen Ying retorted. "Officer Lu, I thought you had already found out most of the truth, otherwise why would you have colluded with those stinking Taoist priests from Taihang Mountain to make me hide here and there?"
Chen Ying leaned down, brushed aside Lu Bing's disheveled hair, and looked directly into his tear-reddened eyes. Seeing him so close, she suddenly felt a pang of sympathy and softened her tone, saying gently, "I thought I'd married a perfect husband and could spend a few days of blissful romance with him. Who knew that Shen Yuanwen was such a dissolute playboy, a scoundrel inside and out? My sincere feelings have been wasted. His parents protect him and actually told me to endure it, or they'd call me a jealous woman. Young Master Lu, tell me, how dare they, young and old, do this? Who gave them the audacity? Just because they're so powerful and wealthy, does that give them the right to bully me like this?!"
"So you killed their whole family?!" Even if Shen Yuanwen was a bastard, the Shen family didn't deserve to die.
Faced with Lu Bingzheng's righteous and awe-inspiring question, Chen Ying said weakly, "Young Master Lu, don't you sympathize with what I've been through?"
He should sympathize with the seven members of the Shen family who died at her hands.
Chen Ying put on a pitiful victim's act: "Young Master Lu, I've met the wrong person and been deceived in my feelings. Shen Yuanwen dared to betray me, so all I'm doing is making him pay with his life."
Lu Bing felt that this person was ruthless.
Chen Ying reached behind Lu Bing's head and suddenly grabbed his hair, forcing him to look up at her. "And you too! You, a mere constable, dare to surround me like this?!"
These words alone brought tears to Lu Bing's eyes again. He thought of his father and grandmother lying in pools of blood. Lu Bing clenched his teeth tightly to hold back the tears welling up in his eyes.
"Don't you know that women are not to be trifled with? You people really don't understand my temper." Chen Ying spoke in the gentlest tone, slowly torturing Lu Bing. "If you hadn't been in the way, blocking my way and delaying my exit from the city, and letting those stinking Taoist priests from Taihang Road block my path, would I have been hiding like a coward with nowhere to hide?! You let them search house to house, and I couldn't find peace no matter where I hid, so I decided to come to your house for a visit. Why didn't you search your own house?"
Lu Bing almost gritted his teeth and lunged at Chen Ying, but she grabbed his hair and yanked it hard, then slapped him across the face.
She didn't hold back with that slap, swelling half of Lu Bing's face.
Chen Ying straightened up, stepped on Lu Bing's head, and looked down at him condescendingly: "Am I being too polite to you?"
Ah Cong couldn't help but make a few hand gestures at her.
Chen Ying said nonchalantly, "If he dares to resist, I'll cut off his hands and feet; if he dares to bite me, I'll pull out his teeth."
Acong continued to communicate with her using hand gestures.
Chen Ying said, "He's so stubborn, he definitely won't die. If he does, I'll make him into a mortuary sack and feed his tough bones to the dogs."
After venting her anger, Chen Ying moved her foot away from Lu Bing's face, feeling a little better. She then spoke gently and kindly, "Officer Lu, now that you've fallen into my hands, you should be prepared to be a stray dog. Don't easily provoke me, understand?"
Lu Bing lay on the ground without uttering a sound.
Chen Ying wasn't about to let him off the hook: "I'm talking to you, are you sure you want to play dumb with me?"
Lu Bing remained unresponsive.
Chen Ying, who had just calmed down, was about to burst out again: "You should think about the consequences of going against me."
Could things get any worse? Lu Bing had already lost all will to live: "Kill me or torture me, it's up to you."
As soon as Lu Bing opened his mouth, she felt that this person was somewhat interesting: "You are tough and not afraid of death, but you also know my temper. If anyone offends me, I want to kill their whole family."
These words were no joke when applied to Chen Ying. Lu Bing, whose entire family had been killed, suddenly opened his eyes.
This reaction pleased Chen Ying again; she loved to provoke him, to stab him in the heart: "You probably don't have any family left, but you still have old friends, right? That guy Tingfengzhi just now, what did you call him again, Yaren..."
Lu Bing, on his deathbed, sat up in shock and said fiercely, "You dare touch him!"
Chen Ying took a half step back: "If you don't let me touch him, you should obediently listen to me."
To Lu Bing, the woman in front of him was a complete madwoman, a devil.
The devil grinned at her, his laughter revealing countless swords that had pierced him.
Lu Bing couldn't understand why she didn't just kill him outright, but instead brought him along, turning him into a cripple and going through all that trouble. What was she trying to achieve? Was she perhaps trying to use him to blackmail Zhou Yaren?
Lu Bing really couldn't think of any other reason.
Chen Ying had already turned around and instructed Acong: "These villagers are really causing trouble. Even though people are dead, they still insist on pairing up for ghost marriages. Where do all these customs and beliefs come from?"
Lu Bing couldn't understand A Cong's sign language, but after secretly observing him all the way, he could confirm that A Cong was a mute who disregarded human life and was specifically responsible for aiding and abetting evil, helping Chen Ying fight and kill.
Chen Ying said, "We didn't choose the right place back then. It's only been less than three years. It seems we can't wait any longer. Acong, dig up Huang Xiaoyun's body tonight."
Ah Cong kept gesturing, clearly quite worried.
Chen Ying was rather impatient: "What can we do whether it works or not? If I hadn't been there, Huang Xiaoyun's grave would have been dug up by that couple last night. I didn't expect them to bring so many people here today, all of them here to cause trouble. And that blind man from Chang'an, he has already guessed my identity. If he discovers the magic incantation, it will be exposed. Not only will it not work, but it will also cause countless troubles."
Ah Cong types extremely fast.
Chen Ying said irritably, "Do you think it's all filth everywhere? I've traveled all over the years to find such a feng shui treasure. Stop nagging and go dig up Huang Xiaoyun's grave."
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