Chapter 178 The Truth
Upon hearing this, Lin Baozhu, clutching the box, tiptoed back to her room...
Lin's mother then plunged into the kitchen, busy as a bee.
She baked the flatbreads until they were golden brown and crispy on both sides, and then filled a large jar with savory and rich meat sauce. Soon, the stove and the floor were piled high with all sorts of essential items for going into the mountains: a neatly rolled-up hammock, a thick cotton quilt, a small and lightweight iron pot, a military water bottle filled with water... all sorts of things, crammed into two huge backpacks, as if she wanted to stuff the whole house inside!
In the courtyard, Lin Sanlang sat on a small stool, intently wiping his old homemade gun. His rough fingers lovingly stroked the dark barrel, his eyes and brows brimming with barely suppressed excitement, his mouth practically stretched to his ears—this was a real weapon, capable of hunting rabbits in the mountains!
Lin Baozhu quickly helped organize the things, carefully stuffing the dry food, clothes, and medicine prepared by her mother into the corners of the basket, packing them tightly.
At this moment, the courtyard gate was pushed open, and Qin Haifeng and the captain walked in together.
The brigade leader immediately noticed the two bulging, almost bursting baskets in the yard, and couldn't help but twitch his lips, jokingly saying:
"Oh my goodness, sister-in-law! Are you... going to move all your belongings into the deep mountains and forests?"
Lin's mother was patting the flour off her apron with a rag when she heard this, and immediately began firing off a barrage of words like a machine gun:
“Captain, what are you saying! My daughter and son are going into a den of wolves! How can I not prepare more? Trauma medicine, hemostatic powder, bandages! Food and water! The cold in the mountains at night can freeze you to death, so we must bring thick cotton-padded coats! And, in case it rains…”
Seeing that she was going off on a tangent, as if she were preparing clothes for all four seasons, the captain quickly raised his hand to interrupt her:
"Alright, alright! Bring them! Bring them both! Anyway, your two kids are as strong as calves, they can carry them! Hehe, they can carry them!" He shook his head helplessly.
The three were finally ready. The captain gave them a thorough review of the precautions for entering the mountains, emphasizing in particular:
"Remember! Take the shortcuts, avoid being seen! Go early and come back early, and be careful!!"
Lin Baozhu, Qin Haifeng, and Lin Sanlang, carrying incredibly heavy, oversized baskets on their backs, trudged deeper and deeper into the mountains. The further they went, the more densely packed the rabbit holes on the ground became, like the mesh of a sieve.
Even more suffocating was the strong, nauseating stench that filled the air—the smell of a dead rat rotting in a confined space, a stench that assaults the brain.
Lin Baozhu covered her mouth and nose, suppressing the churning in her stomach, her sharp eyes scanning the surroundings. Suddenly, she stopped abruptly, then strode towards the back of an ancient tree that was so thick it would take several people to encircle it—
"Come and see!" Her voice carried a barely perceptible tension.
Qin Haifeng and Lin Sanlang immediately followed. After bypassing the gnarled tree roots, a huge, deliberately dug pit was suddenly revealed before them!
The scene inside the pit was chilling!
Layer upon layer of highly decomposed animal carcasses were piled up! Wolves, foxes... Lin Baozhu even spotted a bear carcass that was almost nothing but a skeleton among the rotting flesh! The intense stench was emanating from here.
Through the decaying flesh and wriggling maggots, it is clear that on the forehead of each corpse there is a small hole with neat edges that pierces through the skull!
Qin Haifeng's expression was stern. He casually picked up a sturdy tree branch and carefully lifted a wolf carcass.
“The fatal wound is this hole.” He said in a low voice, pointing to the radiating fine bone fractures around the opening. “The hole in the forehead is regular, with cracks around it, but there was no explosive injury to the back of the head…”
“This isn’t a gunshot wound,” Lin Sanlang added in a deep voice, gripping the homemade gun in his hand tightly.
"It's a crossbow!" Lin Baozhu's pupils shrank, and she blurted out! She instantly recalled the incredibly powerful crossbow that had been seized from Zhang Baikui—its power was enough to easily pierce through the hard skull of an animal!
Looking at the mass grave before her, which resembled a slaughterhouse, Lin Baozhu's face turned ashen.
"If it were just the environment causing the carnivores to die, that would be one thing. But this... is clearly a systematic massacre! What exactly are the people behind this trying to do?!" A chill ran down his spine.
Qin Haifeng straightened up from the edge of the mass grave, his gaze like that of a hawk piercing into the even darker depths of the dense forest, his tone leaving no room for argument:
"Keep exploring! I want to see what kind of shady things are hiding in these deep mountains and forests!"
"Let's go!" Lin Baozhu swayed the basket on her back, her eyes gleaming with intense curiosity and wariness. What kind of secret could possibly warrant such a fuss to clear the entire forest of wild animals?!
Qin Haifeng, carrying a homemade gun, cautiously led the way. Without a word, Lin Sanlang pushed Lin Baozhu between the two:
"Little sister, walk in the middle! There are guys protecting you from the front and back!"
"good!"
The three set off again, heading into the depths of the dense forest that seemed to devour all light.
The branches and leaves of the towering ancient trees blocked out the sun. The further you went in, the thinner the light became, until finally only a thick, inky darkness remained, with only the beam of a flashlight struggling to cut through the darkness.
Deep within this desolate forest, they discovered two even larger mass graves! The bodies inside had long since turned to bare bones, piled up densely, silently recounting the horrific tragedy that had occurred...
Lin Baozhu put on thick canvas gloves and picked up a wolf skull from the pile of bones. She carefully shone her flashlight on the familiar hole in the skull:
“The fatal wounds are the same as before, they’re all fatal with a single blow.” Her fingertips traced the bone surface, her brow furrowed. “And look, these bones… are covered with countless tiny holes.”
Lin Sanlang leaned closer for a look: "There are a lot of maggots in the forest, you must have eaten them, right?"
Lin Baozhu did not answer immediately. Her sharp gaze swept over the ground around the pit of corpses—if it were really gnawed by maggots, there should have been a lot of empty fly shells scattered around the edge of the pit... But before her eyes, it was clean, with almost no trace of maggot shells.
This discovery caused the doubts in Lin Baozhu's mind to snowball.
Qin Haifeng gazed at the seemingly endless dark forest and said in a deep voice:
"Judging from the degree of decomposition of the body... the murderer started from the deepest part of the forest and hunted his way out!"
Lin Baozhu threw the bones back into the pit, her voice filled with confusion and solemnity:
"They went to all that trouble and took such a huge risk just to create a rabbit overpopulation? To trigger landslides and destroy a few villages? That's just... ridiculous! The motive doesn't make any sense at all!"
Qin Haifeng remained silent for a moment, his eyes sharp as knives:
"This is likely just a smokescreen. Their real purpose... is probably hidden somewhere deeper."
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