All was silent. The weirdo buried the madman, the witch, and...
Zhou Han fully demonstrated his humanitarian spirit, took a small shovel from Liu Yufu, squatted beside Xiao Liang without saying a word, and accompanied him to dig.
Perhaps Wen Zichuan's imitation of his ancestors' reminder worked, or perhaps he was just a kind-hearted person. Xiao Liang just glanced at him and continued digging without any other action.
Han Zhao and the Liu brothers ran to the body while Xiao Liang was not paying attention, covering their noses as they checked and took pictures.
Cheng Sizhou and Wen Zichuan collected the information on the stone tablet, and then looked at the location where Xiao Liang dug the pit. They immediately thought that it must be a female corpse - she was the successor of Wu Heng, and if the Wu clan had not been massacred, she would have been the next clan leader.
Actually, "she" is the second member of the Wu Clan to appear, and the secrets of the Wu Clan seem to have not yet been fully revealed.
The two of them sighed and walked down the hill to meet Han Zhao.
The body has not undergone a forensic autopsy, so no complete conclusion can be given.
But from the current situation, it can be seen that she is probably in her thirties, with bruises and swelling on her face and limbs, new injuries overlapping old ones. She must have experienced an extremely brutal beating to become like this.
Wen Zichuan felt so depressed that he didn't know what to say for a moment.
The Wu clan relied on wisdom passed down from generation to generation to survive for thousands of years, and the successor to the clan leader needed to acquire a wealth of knowledge to be competent. If she had escaped the massacre by the tomb-robber gang, how could she have died in a violent attack more than 20 years later?
When Cheng Sizhou was chatting with Mo Ming, he heard that Mutao Town was very poor in the early years. There were many bachelors who could not afford the bride price and could not get married. If they found a mentally disabled person, locked him up at home, had children with him, they could make do with it.
If they are disobedient and want to rebel, the whole family and even the entire village will help to "discipline" them. No matter whether she is a clan leader or a saint, who cares?
"These bastards!" Han Zhao cursed in a low voice, and everyone knew who he was scolding.
Huaili is a mountainous and impoverished region, so police must consider not only legal principles but also public sentiment when handling cases. For those couples who are already de facto married and have a lot of children, forcibly separating them is not a good idea.
Therefore, Mutao Town has long maintained the ethos of "officials will not correct if the people do not report". As long as the town is relatively stable and no major cases of murder or arson occur, the police's intervention will be limited.
"Let her rest in peace first." Cheng Sizhou let out the anger in his chest.
"Brother Zhou, I'll go help him." Wen Zichuan also took a shovel and went over to dig together.
Seeing this, everyone took action. Those who had shovels took them, and those who didn't had them found a plastic board or a wooden stick. Soon, they dug a square pit at the end of the central axis of the cemetery.
Xiao Liang was indeed wary and cautious towards them before, but after discovering that the other party really had no ill intentions, he stopped attacking them aggressively.
The pit was dug, and Wen Zichuan wanted to help him move the female corpse, but Xiao Liang disagreed.
He refused everyone's help, picked up the scarred and rotten corpse himself, and placed it in the square pit with great piety.
Perhaps for the religious people of the Wu clan, there are established rituals for life and death. The others silently stepped back a few steps to leave enough space for Xiao Liang.
However, Xiao Liang did not chant or pray. He just dug out an old wooden box with a simple square shape from the pile of stones next to him.
He took out an old linen cloth with a white background and red patterns from the wooden box and covered the female corpse from head to toe.
Then came the backfilling and burial. Handfuls of yellow soil were pushed into the pit. Xiao Liang remained calm, but his eyes showed the loneliness of an endangered animal watching the last of its kind die.
The sky darkened and the mountains became quiet. Xiao Liang sat by the grave and remained silent for a long time.
Wen Zichuan wanted to comfort him, but he couldn't find a reasonable identity. Although they were not enemies at the moment, they didn't seem to be friends either.
Xiao Liang saw his hesitation, but he ignored him, picked up the wooden box and left.
Everyone was afraid that the clue would be lost, so they followed Xiao Liang closely, while at the same time being on guard to see if he would trick them into a trap again.
"He's done what he wanted to do and won't target us anymore." Wen Zichuan said calmly, "In fact, all his actions are logical. He's not stupid."
The appearance of the female corpse gave him a lot of inspiration.
For example, Xiao Liang suddenly went to find Mo Ming because he remembered that Mo Ming had taken him to see a doctor that year, and the clan leader in his mind was seriously injured, so he wanted to ask Dr. Mo to treat her.
But he didn't know the etiquette and rushed into Dr. Mo's house, only to find that there were other people there.
In other words, there is still a group of strong men.
He would never dare to provoke such a situation, and when he was discovered by Xu Jiaxuan, he had to run away.
"Brother Zhou, do you think Xiao Liang has met my parents?" Wen Zichuan had a guess that the reason why Xiao Liang treated him a little differently was probably because he looked a lot like Wen Duo.
"Your parents only stayed here for three years. Even if they met him, it was when he was still a baby." Cheng Sizhou vaguely felt that there was something he had not thought of.
Wen Zichuan was a little tired, his thoughts racing as he walked: "If my parents hadn't left, I would have grown up here and become a little savage, and would have had to call Xiao Liang brother."
Cheng Sizhou paused, remained silent for a few seconds, and then whispered, "Are you that desperate for a brother?"
Wen Zichuan didn't hear clearly, but it didn't matter anymore. They followed Xiao Liang and walked to the village.
It is called a village, but in fact it is a barren plain with houses collapsed and toppled over. Only from the distribution of the broken walls and ruins can we tell that they were once arranged in rows according to some rules.
The crowd walked through the ruins. There was a high platform on the edge of the cliff facing north and south. Judging from the degree of weathering and decay of the steps, it could be seen that it had been standing there for a long time.
I don't know who inserted a wooden stick diagonally into the side wall of the platform. A piece of red silk was tied to the end of the stick, fluttering in the wind like dancing.
Wen Zichuan and Cheng Sizhou tacitly paused to look at the piece of red silk.
"Brother Zhou, why do you say we need to wear red silk?"
"Because of the wind, people in the past could predict the weather and phenology based on the wind and the stars."
"I think so too, so Xiao Liang is really not a fool."
"Do you want to persuade him to return to Mutao and live a normal life?"
"Brother Zhou, I want to... bring him back to Dengyuan."
Cheng Sizhou understood that Xiao Liang was the key witness in order to completely solve the case of the robbery of the ancient tomb of the Witch Clan. It would definitely be more appropriate to take him back to Dengyuan for thorough treatment than to keep him in Mutao.
He was just worried that a mentally unstable person with aggressive behavior would take up a lot of their time and energy, but this was his own business and should not affect Zichuan too much.
While they stopped to talk, Zhou Han made a new discovery.
The residence of the chief of the witch tribe was built with better wood. Although the beams have collapsed now, half of the house is still available for living.
Xiao Liang lives in the triangular space created by the horizontal beam.
Wen Zichuan ran over in a hurry and saw that the house was even dirtier than the shantytowns in the urban village. The bed was made of door panels, and the bedding was torn and greasy black. The cabinet next to it was missing a door and was shaky. Next to the cabinet was an old plastic basin and a small wooden stool with dirty dishes and chopsticks on it.
Xiao Liang sat on the bed, holding the wooden box, without saying a word.
Cheng Sizhou looked at the wooden box carefully. The surface of the box had ancient patterns and was inlaid with jade stones of different colors. Its exquisiteness was out of tune with the surrounding environment. It was obvious that it was a very precious item.
There was not enough space for so many people to stand in the cramped triangular space. Wen Zichuan charged his phone and asked everyone else to wait outside for a while.
Xiao Liang's leg was broken by the man in the foster family. He was afraid of strong men, let alone such a mature and experienced men with weapons.
Among this group of people, only Wen Zichuan is different. To him, Wen Zichuan is the least aggressive.
Wen Zichuan sat down on the ground without hesitation and comforted her softly: "They are all gone. If you want to cry, just cry."
Xiao Liang's fingers stroked the patterns on the box, shaking it like a wronged child.
"She... is not only the next clan leader, she is also your sister who protected you. She was also chosen by clan leader Wu Heng and is your nominal wife..." Wen Zichuan can always figure out deeper relationships from some very small details.
Xiao Liang stopped shaking. He stared at Wen Zichuan intently, tears welling up in his clear yet weathered eyes.
Wen Zichuan wanted to wipe his tears, but he turned his head away and wiped them with his sleeve.
Then he opened the wooden box, and inside was a pair of eye-catching birthday cards written by Wu Heng herself, with his birthday and her birthday recorded, as well as some childhood toys, even though they were broken or rotten, they were placed inside and properly preserved.
Wen Zichuan looked at him and took out the things one by one. In the end, the one at the bottom of the box was a five-inch black and white photo!
There are five people in the photo: a man and a woman are sitting in the front row, holding a baby together, and they look unfamiliar; there is also a man and a woman in the back row, and the woman is holding her slightly bulging belly with her left hand, but he looks so familiar with her!
"My dad and my mom...!"
As Lin Hanzhen said, he and Wen Duo looked very similar. Now when he saw the photo of Wen Duo left in the Wu clan, he instantly understood what it meant to be carved from the same mold.
This photo was kept in a wooden box, which was most likely left to Xiao Liang by Wu Heng. It can be inferred that the man and woman in the front row should be Xiao Liang's parents - and the photo was also with Wu Heng.
When Xiao Liang saw the photo, his feeling of loss immediately turned into excitement!
He made a gurgling sound in his throat and clenched his fist and swung it towards Wen Zichuan, but it seemed that he was just gesturing at him and had no real intention of hurting him.
Wen Zichuan recalled all the situations in which he met Xiao Liang, and finally caught some clues in his chaotic and disorganized movements.
The "frame" that Xiao Liang gestured to should be the photo. He was willing to get close to me in Mutao Town because he regarded himself as Wen Duo in the photo.
If the "frame" gesture represented a photo...
In the ancient tomb, Xiao Liang also made this gesture when describing the massacre of the Wu clan.
Back then, Destan brought a dozen people and wanted to successfully enter the witch tribe’s settlement. At least they gained the witch tribe’s trust for a short time.
If they had shown Wen Duo's photo to Wu Heng, would it have been possible to deceive them in that era when communication was not well developed?
As long as they can deceive people for a while, they will achieve their goal. They will sneak into the Wu tribe and poison the drinking water, greatly reducing the Wu tribe's combat effectiveness...
Wen Zichuan suddenly had a splitting headache. In his mind, the grand scene of Wu Wen clearing the mountains and forests and building his home overlapped with the lonely and brave scene of Wu Heng leading the people to fight to the death. Although they were separated by a thousand years, he witnessed the growth and demise of a lost civilization almost at the same time.
Cheng Sizhou saw him holding his forehead with a painful expression. He wanted to go in but was hesitant.
"Brother Zhou, things have come to this point. We have to take Xiao Liang back and ask a mental expert to take a good look at him." He put aside his inappropriate thoughts and followed Wen Zichuan's idea.
"Well, we have to protect this key witness." Zhou Han also agreed.
"Then let's rest for a few hours and then set off as soon as possible. Don't we have to pick up the other two?" Liu Yufeng reminded them that they had no signal in the mountains and didn't know whether Lin Hanzhen and Xu Jiaxuan had returned safely.
"You guys rest here, I'll keep watch for a while." Han Zhao was not sleepy, so he lit a cigarette and went to a far place to be alone.
Night falls on the mountains and forests, crows stop flying, and crickets stop chirping.
Cheng Sizhou leaned against the door and saw that Xiao Liang seemed to have completely let down his guard. Like a young animal, he fell asleep on Wen Zichuan's knees.
Zichuan gradually overlapped with Wu Wen in his dream. His eyelashes were like feathers, his eyes were lowered, and he gently and compassionately healed all living beings.
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