“By the dead, what you’re saying is… that the cause of deaths was accidental?” Zeng Ke asked. He, too, felt goosebumps, and the atmosphere in the room quickly turned spooky. “And the corpses… were all stolen by the criminals? Grave robbers, perhaps? That is too immoral…”
“Not necessarily!” Zhao Yu said. “Back in our hometown, I’ve heard that such things can be bought with money! I wonder… is that the same here at Wu Qing Shan?”
“Well… that certainly seems possible!” Zeng Ke said. “If the bodies were bought, there would be no way to trace it to the missing people! But… all the underage girls are over 14 years of age. Even if they did have the money, would it be possible to buy them?
“Although the child died, after all, the child was still a member of the family. What parent would be willing to sell their own child’s body?”
“We can’t say that for sure. It could be poor families, local customs, or even the adults themselves who believe that this is for the sake of the children …” Zhao Yu said. “Anyway, we need to investigate in this direction!”
“Hmm…” Zeng Ke thought for a moment before asking, “Remember female corpse number seven? Didn’t the forensic doctor say that someone strangled her? That…”
“Eh?” Zhao Yu’s eyes brightened and he quickly said, “Zeng Ke, could it be that female corpse number seven was murdered, but the case had already been solved? Then, when the family dealt with the corpse, someone was willing to pay for her, and thus the corpse was placed in the seventh hanging coffin?”
“If it’s like that…” Zeng Ke understood what Zhao Yu meant. “Then I’ll look into the case records and see if there are similar cases.”
“Well, aside from that…” Zhao Yu began. “If we guess correctly, will there be any other way to confirm the identity of the deceased?”
“Underage girls have little chance to apply for identity cards. There are no photos on the account page. If we really wanted to search, I’m afraid we could only start with the student registration forms!” Zeng Ke said. “Only the student registration forms would have photos, so it would be possible to use software to compare.
“However, most of the photos on the student registration list are photos of children when they were very young, and the software comparison will have errors. Moreover, I’m worried some of them might have dropped out of school…
“Oh, and…” Zeng Ke said after thinking for a while. “You can also compare them with personal photos on the internet, but that takes a long time and generally is based on a longer period!”
“Okay, you cannot miss any one of them!” Zhao Yu ordered. “Pass the data back to the Criminal Department, and let the Criminal Department send it to the various provincial offices to get them to help piece it together. I don’t believe that out of six dead bodies, we can’t even find one identity!”
“Okay, I’ll do it now!” Zeng Ke said.
After agreeing, Zeng Ke hung up the phone.
Tsch!
At that moment, Zhao Yu was still on the cliff watching the staff busy at work. He pouted out of habit.
“I’m afraid… we’re investigating in the wrong direction…?” Zhao Yu thought.
He wondered to himself, “Because Geng Yaai was indeed a missing person, she must have nothing to do with afterlife marriage…
“If the family sold the body, how could it have been reported?
“Also, the autopsy report proves that she might have been in a car accident. Is there any deeper meaning behind that?
“It’s peculiar.
“Until then, the case had already been investigated for a day and a half. However, not only had they not solved any part of it, the mysteries had steadily increased. The mystery of the hanging coffin was bizarre and complicated!”
“Leader, leader…” Zhao Yu heard someone say.
As Zhao Yu was deep in thought, Captain Xiong Wendong suddenly brought a young police officer over to him.
“Leader,” Xiong Wendong said earnestly. “Didn’t you ask me to find a master of fengshui or metaphysics? Well… look.”
As he said this, he pointed to the young police officer.
“You can’t be serious,” Zhao Yu asked, grinning. “So young? You must be kidding, right?”
“No, no!” The young police officer waved his hands quickly. “The captain has misunderstood me. I am not a master; I just know where to find a master!”
“Oh?” Zhao Yu’s original intention was to have Xiong Wendong find some experts in that field to ask them about the Seven Stars Hanging Coffins.
He didn’t expect that Xiong Wendong had only found news.
“We have a master in Wu Feng Mountain, he is really accurate!” the young policeman said. “Well, I lived in the deserted Wu Feng Taoist Temple in the past. Aiyo… the Taoist are almost like Gods. You can tell in one look that he is not an ordinary person. Face reading, divination, fengshui… he’s really good at all of it!”
“Well, leader…” Xiong Wendong added. “To be honest, we are all police, and of course we don’t believe in these things. So, after you asked me, I asked around for a long time before I finally chanced upon him.”
“Wu Feng Mountain…” Zhao Yu recalled the map of the area. “That’s not very far from here, right?”
“Not far, not far at all!” the young policeman answered quickly. “It’s only like six or seven kilometers away. If you want to go, I can take you there now!”
“Does he see fortunes at night as well?” Zhao Yu asked, looking at the darkening sky.
“Well, about that… I don’t know!” the young policeman replied. “But you’re not asking for a fortune. As long as he’s home, I’m sure he’ll cooperate with the investigation!”
“That’s true!” Zhao Yu said. After thinking for a moment, he decided. “Well, I’ll go meet this master now!”
“Okay, I’ll go with you!” Xiong Wendong said, immediately walking to the police car.
“Don’t!” Zhao Yu waved. “Let’s change to another car. It’s not appropriate to drive a police car to a master’s house.”
“Oh… okay!” Xiong Wendong said, quickly picking up his cellphone and contacting a non-police car.
Later, Xiong Wendong drove while the young policeman led the way. The three men walked all the way up and headed to Wu Feng Mountain.
As the car drove, Zhao Yu was not idling. He told the two police officers the identity of the female corpse as he wanted to hear the views of the two locals.
“Afterlife marriage?” Xiong Wendong asked, shaking his head. “I have only seen this in supernatural novels, but in reality… I have never seen anything like this before, nor have I worked on a similar case!”
“Indeed…” the young policeman said, turning back while sitting in the passenger seat. “Leader, my family is actually the group of people who carries out funeral rites for a living!
“Let me put it this way. The sale of corpses may be found elsewhere, but in our area, it is absolutely impossible!”
“Ah? Why?” Zhao Yu asked, slightly shocked.
“Because… we do cremation here!” the young policeman said. “When people die, they are cremated!”
“Yes, yes!” Xiong Wendong suddenly clapped his hands. “Hey, why didn’t I remember that? Leader, this is really the crux of the issue. Cremation is not only a national regulation; it is also our tradition!
“The way I see it, the crime of selling corpses is such a foreign concept to me,” Xiong Wendong said. “You may not know this, but the traditional funeral culture here believes that a person can only go to heaven if their bodies are cremated. So, if the body is cremated, what corpses are left to be sold?”
“Oh?” Zhao Yu blew his nose in depression. Frustrated, he said, “So… even if it’s grave robbers, it’s impossible?”
“Yup, that’s about it,” the young policeman said, waving his hand. “There is no body in the grave, so what’s there to steal?”
