Nine Chapters of Strange Cases

Chapter 148 Pie in the sky

As soon as Gan Lin confessed, the expressions of the other two families changed instantly.

Old Yu next door stomped his feet, his face full of resentment, "You useless, good-for-nothing slut! You can't even manage a child! You told her to take the human bones and summon the officials. That would have been fine, but you confessed before you even got beaten!"

Couldn't you just say that your son is a thief, and that the flesh and bones were chopped by you?

That strange guy wearing a straw hat, whose face I can't even tell what he looks like, he looks like he's completely lazy and doesn't know anything about farming. It would be a miracle if he could even tell the difference!

Ah Huang, who had just finished cleaning the pigsty, touched his straw hat and opened his mouth, as if to say that he could tell the difference.

But never mind... I'll just say it in my heart.

As he was thinking, he heard Zhou Zhao speak up, "He's not some weirdo. He's a coroner who can distinguish between humans and animals, unlike you who would rather be animals than be perfectly normal people."

Old Yu was clearly the kind of grumpy old man you could see anywhere on the street, used to throwing his weight around at home all day! The emperor didn't even allow his ministers to object, but this kind of old man was so bad that even the dogs on the street had to listen to him, or he'd start lecturing them!

"What kind of official are you, a woman, and what cases have you investigated? Who are you calling a beast?"

Zhou Zhao calmly looked at the enraged Lao Yu, "The officials who arrested you are investigating the case you committed. According to the laws of Daqi, desecrating a corpse is a serious crime, and digging up someone's grave to steal money is the same crime as murder."

Old Yu's pupils dilated suddenly, and he looked at Zhou Zhao in disbelief. "This...this...this can't be right, right? I didn't kill him!"

Zhou Zhao glanced coldly at Old Yu. This group of people treated human life like dirt and dismembered the body with a clear conscience. Their hearts were no longer human.

She ignored Old Yu and looked at Gan Lin, who was trembling with fear. "How did that person find you? How many corpses were there? Did you know him?"

Gan Lin glanced at Lao Yu and saw that he was also at a loss before she spoke up, "About three months ago, one day Sanmazi and I returned from a big feast in our hometown and met a person on the way who wanted to hitch a ride to Chang'an."

Since it was on the way, and the man offered us a string of cash, Sanmazi let him get in the car. At first, he remained silent. I had brought some swill from a feast in the countryside, and that day there happened to be large bones. My youngest daughter, Chunfang, was curious and asked her two older brothers.

She asked if a pig could eat such a big bone. My son told her that pigs eat anything, and they'll eat everything they can chew.

Then the hitchhiker suddenly spoke up. He said his surname was Qian and his given name was Qian Liu'er. He had a good thing to do for us. Since he casually held a string of coins, we figured he was a wealthy man, so we asked him.

As Gan Lin spoke, she recalled what had happened back then.

"His voice was a little hoarse, but he looked quite ordinary, not at all fierce, and appeared to be around thirty years old. He said that every now and then he would bring some food to our pigs, and we had to make sure the pigs ate it all. He would give us a silver ingot each time he did this."

He then gave us another silver ingot, saying it was a deposit, and there was only one condition: it could not be revealed to anyone.

That's a lot of money! How many grand feasts would we have to host to earn that much? My two sons, Chunhong and Chunliang, are both of marriageable age. Although we knew there must be something wrong with it, we still agreed.”

Zhou Zhao listened attentively.

The silver mines of the Great Qi Dynasty are now mainly located in the southwest region, which is far away from Chang'an.

Therefore, silver ingots were generally used by nobles and came in various shapes, including round and long. Ordinary people mostly used copper coins.

Money is tempting, and even though Gan Lin knew there was no such thing as a free lunch, she couldn't resist the temptation. "After we took that silver ingot as a deposit, we couldn't sleep for three nights in a row. Qian Liu'er seemed to have vanished; he didn't show up at all. Just when we were feeling anxious, on the fourth night, we suddenly heard a loud bang, and then my big black dog barked a few times."

Sanmazi went to check the yard and found a burlap sack that had appeared there sometime during the night. It was close to curfew, and there were fewer pedestrians on the road as it got dark. My wife, my two sons, and I stared at the burlap sack for a long time before finally opening it.

That look almost scared the soul out of me!

Upon hearing this, Zhou Zhao asked, "Is the sack filled with a corpse? Is it a man or a woman? What are its distinguishing features? Where are the wounds on its body?"

Gan Lin nodded. "It was indeed a corpse. It was the first time we had ever seen a dead person. His eyes were wide open, as if he were still alive. He was a young man, about seventeen or eighteen years old, anyway, not very old. He was wearing a white robe, and there was a jade pendant hanging from his waist."

We wanted to report it to the authorities, but we were afraid that if we didn't explain ourselves clearly, we'd be arrested as murderers, and besides, we had accepted money from that man.

Although it was only three months ago, Gan Lin felt as if it were a lifetime ago. They had dismembered many bodies since then and were no longer afraid. They no longer had the thought of reporting it to the authorities, unlike the first time.

"We didn't know what to do, so we stripped the body naked and threw it into the pigsty. I didn't dare to look at it or feed the pigs. We left it there for a day, and when we checked on it the next day, the pigs couldn't even chew it."

Qian Liu'er kills people like chickens. What if we take his money and don't do his job, and he slaughters our entire family? We have no choice but to dismember the bodies.

As Gan Lin spoke, she raised her head and looked at the Yu and Dai families.

"But our two houses are next to each other, and we know each other very well. These days, unless it's a butcher slaughtering pigs and chopping meat, who has so much stuff to chop? Soon, the two families found out and joined in. The money was divided into four parts, with our family getting two parts and each of them getting one part."

Whoever dismembered the body could take anything from the deceased. We took off all the clothes and patched them up to make other things.

"When we're at home, they all come to our house to chop the meat, and then we feed it directly to the pigs."

As Gan Lin spoke, she suddenly looked angrily at the Dai family, "Yesterday was Dai Shiduo's body. He didn't clean it properly. Chunhua took a finger, and he didn't even notice... That's why the Northern Army came."

We had long feared the day our secret would be exposed, so we made a plan. If the officials came to question us, we would say we didn't know who had sneaked in at night and dumped the remains in the pigsty. The evidence would be the fresh marks on the wall and the sound of dogs barking…”

Zhou Zhao remained silent for a moment.

“You know some of the methods the government uses to handle cases, but with so many people, it’s impossible for them all to have the same brain and give the same testimony. As soon as we ask, we’ll know that you’re colluding.”

Fortunately, they know a little, but not much.

"Yu Si Niang, you didn't hear the night watchman's call, you were just startled awake in bed, so how do you know it's 11:45 PM? And Dai family's young master, if you heard the night watchman's call, why didn't Yu Si Niang, who was awake at the same time, hear it?"

“I deliberately asked about some details that you might not have noticed, and sure enough, you panicked.”

At 3:45 PM, Zhou Zhao had set a trap for them.

And they hit the target precisely.

True, how smart can someone be who would dare to pick up a human flesh pie that falls from the sky?