The car was going very fast.
At first, we were worried that we might encounter something like being trapped in a maze and unable to leave the area.
We later realized we were overthinking it, and the car drove out of the west side of the city without any problems.
The three of us breathed a sigh of relief.
However, the initial joy of buying this comb has now vanished, replaced by a lingering sense of unease.
It's all that old hag's fault! She couldn't even speak clearly; she should have just kept quiet!
I couldn't help but curse inwardly.
"So, where do we go now? Should we go to the police station and have Zhou Wenxiu's hair combed? Didn't that old man say it works best on nights with heavy yin energy like this?"
Luo Tianhe spoke as he drove.
"No." I shook my head. "Go back to your place and rest first. We'll talk about it tomorrow. Zhang Qiang's probing results aren't out yet. Besides, it's the middle of the night, and suddenly you want to comb her hair? Even a fool could tell something's wrong. We need to find a suitable reason and proceed slowly, you understand?"
Luo Tianhe pursed his lips and stopped talking, focusing on driving.
When we arrived at Luo Tianhe's house, although it was late at night, we weren't sleepy at all, and we huddled together to study the Tongyou comb.
"Is this thing so strange? It can only be used to comb the hair of the dead, not the living."
Luo Tianhe asked, somewhat incredulous.
"Brother Luo, this is easy. Why don't you offer up your own head and see?" Li Huai chuckled, enjoying the spectacle.
Upon hearing this, Luo Tianhe glared at him and said, "Get lost! Why don't you use your brain to try it? You don't use your brain at all anyway, so I think it's perfect for you. I'm not afraid of any problems!"
"Alright, alright, stop arguing. This thing has a lot of yin energy..."
As we were talking, my phone suddenly vibrated. I picked it up and saw that it was Zhang Qiang.
It seems this case has really upset him. He used to have a very regular lifestyle, going to bed early and waking up early.
Now, however, he often stays up late, calling us in the middle of the night.
"Chen Yan, the results are in." Zhang Qiang's voice was weary. "The tests with chicken throat bone powder and grave soil were effective."
He described in detail the details observed by the policewoman: Zhou Wenxiu deliberately avoided the sachet containing chicken throat bone powder, and when she touched the mound of earth on the grave, she would abruptly withdraw her hand as if she had been electrocuted.
"By the way, didn't you say you were going to give her a physical exam and analyze her oral cavity or something?"
I had expected Zhang Qiang to say those things, so I asked about the parts that interested me.
"The preliminary analysis of her hair and oral mucosa is in, and it's a bit... strange." Zhang Qiang's tone was puzzled. "DNA testing shows that the DNA sequences of her hair and oral cells are highly consistent with Zhang Wei's DNA in the database, basically confirming that they are the same person. But,"
"But what?"
"But the forensic doctor discovered something unusual: her cells had long since lost their activity! They were practically lifeless! You wouldn't believe it, but forensic doctor Zhang thought I was joking with him, giving him cells from a dead person to test." Zhang Qiang's voice sounded somewhat helpless.
I stroked my chin. In other words, although she looked no different from a living person, she was actually a dead person and had not truly come back to life.
"By the way, Zhang Qiang, we recently got our hands on something good that might be able to get some information out of her."
I said excitedly, ready to tell him how we obtained the Tongyou Bi (a magical artifact).
“Chen Yan, I think you can shift your focus to something else,” Zhang Qiang said, seemingly finding it difficult to say.
"What is it? Given our relationship, you can just tell me directly."
"Here's the thing, there's a really strange case. The victim's family is making a scene. We were already struggling to handle Zhang Wei's family alone, and now there's another one. My head is about to explode."
My lips twitched after hearing Zhang Qiang's words.
This police station is so unlucky! The Zhang Wei incident hasn't even passed yet, and now an even more bizarre one has appeared, and just like Zhang Wei's parents, he's also causing a scene at the police station.
"What exactly happened? Shall we head over there now?"
"Don't rush, let me finish, and see if you have any ideas," Zhang Qiang's voice came from the other end of the phone.
“I initially thought it was nothing serious, but it was the police station that transferred the information. A young man had died in the mudflats downstream of the old reservoir in the south of the city. An old man who was fishing early in the morning found him, and he was almost scared to death.”
Hearing this, I was speechless. I remember seeing something online before that said most first witnesses to murders are either fishermen or people who walk their dogs early in the morning.
It seems that what they said is actually true.
“Speaking of which, it’s not uncommon for people to drown in reservoirs, right? It shouldn’t be enough to get them taken to the police station?” Li Huai, who was standing nearby, couldn’t help but interject. After all, he had worked carrying corpses before, and he had personally carried at least seven or eight, if not ten, of those who had drowned in reservoirs.
In fact, because he was a good swimmer and the pay for retrieving corpses was quite good, he went down to retrieve them more than once.
"It's not that simple. When his body was found, there was no sign of decomposition, and his skin was still elastic, even though he had been missing for a week!"
"Maybe he was wandering around outside for the first five or six days, and then fell into the reservoir and drowned on the last day. Isn't that also possible?" Li Huai continued to analyze.
"If only it were that simple. We checked the surveillance footage and found that he had been in the reservoir for a week. There are no convenience stores or anything in the reservoir. Even if he brought food and drinks, how much could he carry in his pockets? According to the surveillance footage we saw, he didn't even carry a bag!"
After listening to Zhang Qiang's explanation, we immediately realized that something was indeed wrong.
Zhang Qiang's meaning was very clear: this kid might die on his very first day in the reservoir!
"What's even stranger is that the body's hands were clenched tightly, and there was mud under his fingernails. When you pried his hands open, you found that he was also tightly clutching a handful of dark red mud in each of his hands. It smelled faintly of blood, which was not like the mud from the reservoir."
"What did the forensic doctor say?" I asked, still completely confused.
"The time of death was more than 72 hours. The cause of death was acute sudden cardiac death, which is a sudden heart attack. There were no signs of poisoning or internal or external injuries, and he had no history of heart disease before his death."
"A healthy young man died mysteriously in a mud pit downstream of the reservoir, clutching red mud of unknown origin in his hand. The case became a cold case for a time. His parents came to identify the body, crying and wailing."
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