False evidence

Chapter 249 The Grave Keeper

After I came to my senses, Gao and I removed more than a dozen more wall bricks.

At this point, it was clear that inside was the body of a naked woman!

As a brick above was pulled out, the female corpse suddenly deflated like a punctured balloon.

The slow rate at which the corpse collapsed made it all the more eerie and terrifying.

The three of them watched helplessly as the corpse's head slowly fell down in front of them!
It has now been confirmed that the female corpse's body has no flesh and bones; it is just a shell.

The head was perfectly preserved, with not even a single hair missing.

Xiao Shen gritted his teeth and cursed, "Hiding such a monstrous thing behind the statue, is this a death sentence for our family line!"

I thought of something and couldn't help but shudder.

Gao asked me what I was thinking about.
I said it was lucky it was winter.

Gao He didn't understand: "What about winter?"

"That eternal lamp must have been kept inside the corpse. It's so big, and it's restrained by the corpse, so it can't climb out. But what if it gave birth to babies?"

Gao He realized what was happening and also showed a look of horror.

Xiao Shen said, "This evil temple wasn't demolished, so something must have happened back then. It's most likely the 'everlasting lamp' that's causing the trouble."

Gao He stared at the woman's head for a while, then said in a low voice, "There are signs of mercury poisoning in the head, which is why it has been preserved until now, but it looks like she died of suffocation."

My voice was equally low: "That means they were still alive when they were bricked into the wall."

Gao He shook his head subconsciously: "That shouldn't be the case. If the body were alive, there should be signs of struggle. As you can see, apart from the hand that was torn off from the front, there are no obvious injuries on the surface of the body's skin."

“That means they were drugged.” Xiao Shen looked at me.

Suddenly, I realized what his look meant.

"The Land of Dark Sweetness!"

Gao He was still carefully examining the corpse's head when he casually asked, "What smells like that?"

I brushed it off vaguely and asked him, "In your opinion, how long has this woman been dead?"

Gao He said, "I'm not a forensic doctor, so I can't make an accurate judgment. But judging from her hairstyle, she shouldn't be a modern person."

Xiao Shen tugged at my sleeve.

I made eye contact with him and realized he meant for me to find 'something'.

Although I was somewhat afraid to look directly at the open-eyed head, I still gritted my teeth and peered through it.

By the light of the electric lamp, one could see the 'small door' inside, which appeared to be two small stone slabs of a certain thickness.

Behind the stone slab is a small platform about two bricks in diameter, and behind the small door is a strange-looking device.

"This really is a door..."

I found it strange, so I picked up Xiao Shensan and showed him.

Xiao Shen only glanced at it before he gasped, "Damn it, which bastard would put a tomb door like this on the wall?"

"The tomb entrance?" Gao He looked at him in confusion.

Xiao Shen San, using his phone's light, said, "See that device behind the small door? That seesaw-like stone slab is actually a doorstop. The principle is exactly the same as a seesaw, only the back is heavier than the front. When the door is closed, the front tilts up and blocks the door, making it impossible to open from the outside. But the person inside can open it. In ordinary households, who would dig a hole in the ground in front of the door? That would disrupt the feng shui. So, this kind of mechanism is only used on the doors of tombs. This damn... this Jiang Baohan is really a pervert..."

Gao He asked, "Who is Jiang Baohan?"

Just as I was about to answer, Xiao Shen San suddenly exclaimed "Eh!" He told me to put him down, ran to the side to break off a tree branch, and then made me lift him up again.

He stretched the branch into the wall, but was fiddling with it above the platform behind the door.

After only a few taps, a small cloth bag suddenly fell off with a "click".

Xiao Shen flicked it a couple more times, but nothing else fell out.

Gao and I then realized what was going on: what appeared to be a complete stone slab was actually a flip panel with a mechanism that could be opened and closed!

The small door was only big enough for one hand to fit through. If the wall hadn't been removed from the back, who would have thought there was a hidden compartment above the back of the door?
Seeing Xiao Shen San using a twig to poke at the small bundle, I quickly said, "Don't poke at it! That bundle is so old, the cloth is all worn out. Judging from the sound, it's quite heavy. What if it falls apart and the contents get into the hole in the wall? Should we pick it up or not?"

Xiao Shen thought for a moment, "I'll go to the front, you open the door for me."

Even Gao He didn't dare reach over that terrifying head to take something.

The only option was to cooperate with Xiao Shen San, so that he could reach his hand through the small door in front and take the small bundle.

When Gao and I returned to the front, Xiao Shen was staring blankly at the already opened bundle.

"Wow! It's a half-open package!" I was quite surprised.

Inside the bundle were two cylindrical red paper packets; even without opening them, one could guess what was inside.

Xiao Shen looked up at me and Gao He, picked up the paper package, twisted it with both hands, and sure enough, there were silver dollars inside!
"Goodness, exactly twenty genuine Yuan Shikai silver dollars, in such good condition, if you sold them to that bald guy, you could probably get a small car, right?"

I looked at Gao He.

Gao He said, "This doesn't count as a cultural relic. Since you found it, it's your responsibility to handle it."

Apart from two silver dollars, there was nothing else in the bundle.

As dusk approached, the thought of the terrifying corpse behind the wall sent chills down the spines of all three. After confirming there were no more traps or mechanisms hidden in the wall, they hurriedly descended the mountain.

As soon as his phone got a signal, Gao called the local authorities and asked them to handle the body.

After receiving treatment at the hospital, the three of them went to the steamed bun shop again.

It was lunchtime, and the steamed bun shop was quite crowded.

When the owner saw us come again, he said to us with a bit of 'arrogance', "You guys went to see the Jiang Family Archway, right? I wasn't lying to you, was I?"

A bald old man who was drinking chimed in, "Jiang Family Archway? What are you going to that place for? Let me tell you, that place is very eerie, you'd better not go."

There were no other seats in the shop, and seeing that the old man's table was mostly empty, the three of them sat down next to him.

Gao He ordered a bottle of decent wine, poured a glass for the old man, and asked, "Grandpa, all that's left of the Jiang family's memorial archway is a stone plaque. Is there anything else sinister about it?"

The old man initially said the same thing as the shop owner: that the stone plaque had killed someone.

Then he said, "The really strange thing isn't the archway, it's the temple on the mountain."

Xiao Shen asked three times, "Aren't temples all for worshipping Bodhisattvas? How could they be evil?"

The old man waved his hand: "That's the Jiang family's ancestral temple. It doesn't enshrine Bodhisattvas, but rather Lü Dongbin and Lü Zuye."

Hearing him say that, I thought of that headless clay sculpture again, and a detail came to mind, which suddenly made my head spin.

Gao He handed the old man a cigarette. "You seem to know a lot about that...that temple?"

The old man chuckled: "We know more about this than anyone else. My family has been looking after the temple for the Jiang family since our ancestors. In the old days, there were still Jiang family ancestral graves on Centipede Mountain, and we looked after those graves for them too."

(End of this chapter)