Chapter 1346: The Attacked Manor

He Lingchuan asked him, "Is it seven or eight, exactly?" "Seven! Oh, no..." County Magistrate Li recalled carefully, "Eight, I'm sure it's eight!"

"Lead the way."

The manor that met with disaster is called Chen Family Manor. It is located in the suburbs of Baiting County, more than a mile away from the nearest country road.

To get to Chen Family Manor, one must take a fork in the road and head into the mountains.

Barren mountains and desolate fields; rabbits and rats were occasionally seen in the tall grass.

"What are the products of Chen Family Manor?"

"Grain, citrus, wool, mutton... things like that." County Magistrate Li thought for a moment, "The manors around here basically produce these. There are mountains behind Chen Family Manor."

"How is the yield?"

"I'm not clear on that." County Magistrate Li scratched his head, "I don't manage that."

He Lingchuan looked around: "Its location is a bit remote, and it's a bit far from Baiting County."

Transporting goods from here to Baiting County is not very convenient.

"Indeed." County Magistrate Li pointed forward, "We're here."

He Lingchuan had owned manors under his own name before and knew that many suburban manors lived in family clusters, built walls, and prepared weapons to defend against external enemies.

The Chen Family Manor before them was the same; the Chen descendants living here numbered five or six hundred, and with the gates closed, it was like a small county town.

After the incident, the Chen family still lived here and had guarded the manor gates, not allowing outsiders to enter or leave.

If not for County Magistrate Li paving the way, it would not have been easy for He Lingchuan to enter openly.

The manor was mainly residential, with granaries, livestock sheds, workshops, warehouses, and wells; there were even taverns and eateries, truly not much different from a small county town.

Everyone observed carefully and discovered that many buildings had traces of being attacked. For example, they had just passed a farmhouse, and there were three deep claw marks on the wooden door.

Upon hearing that County Magistrate Li was accompanying the Inspector to investigate the case, the Chen family patriarch immediately came out to greet them.

According to him, the night of the incident was a calm one, with stars but no moon, and the light was very dim, when suddenly several monsters appeared in the manor and pounced on anyone they saw.

The Chen family's manor guard team of forty-odd sturdy men grabbed their weapons and rushed over, but they were no match for those few monsters, and seventeen or eighteen were bitten to death in the blink of an eye.

The manor was in chaos, and the Chen family patriarch himself had two sons killed.

The others had even less courage to resist, and the manor's high walls instead became obstacles blocking their escape.

The remaining people thought they were dead for sure, but those few monsters suddenly let out a howl, jumped over the wall, and headed west.

Once they left, they never returned.

The Chen family had only just recovered from the shock and had remained on high alert ever since.

He Lingchuan listened carefully and asked a suspicious point: "Exactly how many monsters were there?"

"I saw three." The Chen family patriarch said, "But my clansmen said they saw five, and some said they saw seven. It was too chaotic and dark that night, and they were fast, so no one... no one saw them all." Moreover, the monsters varied in size, and their appearances were not the same.

"What did the three monsters you saw look like?"

"One looked like a fierce tiger, but its tail was black, bald and hairless, like a large pair of shears, and it could also attack people."

He Lingchuan thought of the claw marks on the wooden door. He looked at Dong Rui, who shook his head; he had never heard of such a monster.

"And what else?"

"There was another one that rolled around, but it was covered in thorns. I have seen a strange plant in the south called a cactus, and it... it looked a bit like that." Patriarch Chen turned and went into the house, and after a while, he took out five sharp thorns and handed them to He Lingchuan, "It's this kind of thorn; it can shoot them out to hurt people!"

He Lingchuan took them in his hand, and several people gathered to observe.

The shortest of these thorns was seven inches, and the longest could reach three feet; they were black and white, with barbs at the top. Just imagining what it felt like to be pierced by one made one shudder.

Patriarch Chen also said: "It caused the most injuries. Treating the wounds afterward was agonizing."

To pull out the thorns, one first had to cut the flesh, which was another layer of pain for the injured.

"There was another one that could burrow into the ground and emerge from underground."

"You have high walls and gate controls here, how did the monsters get in?"

"Climbed the wall." Patriarch Chen smiled bitterly, "I asked the guard on duty that night, and one saw with his own eyes that fierce tiger running from the forest, climbing the high wall like an ape, and attacking the guards."

"According to your account, these few murderous monsters should have been lured away by something, which is why you were able to save your lives." He Lingchuan pondered, "Before that, had any suspicious people or events appeared inside or outside the manor?"

Patriarch Chen shook his head: "No, our manor has always been peaceful."

"Have any outsiders been here?" A place like this should be very xenophobic; once an outsider entered, the Chen family could not have been unaware.

Patriarch Chen thought carefully this time, but still shook his head: "No."

He Lingchuan looked through the window at the livestock pens below, "When was the last time your manor sent out goods?"

"They just returned five days ago." The patriarch said, "They transported a batch of wool and fruit."

"Did you encounter any accidents or strange things on the road?" He Lingchuan asked him, "Perhaps these monsters were also lured here."

"Everything was normal coming and going." Patriarch Chen was slightly angry, "If someone really lured monsters to attack Chen Family Manor, that would be insane!"

He Lingchuan asked a few more questions but found no clues, then said: "Do you have the records of the deceased prepared here?"

"Yes." More than a month later, the Chen family had also recovered from the panic, "But there are only names, birth dates, ages, residences, and family members; they are all written on slips and tucked into the genealogy."

He Lingchuan looked out the window; the sky had darkened: "I will borrow a room in your manor tonight, and I will also look at the records."

Patriarch Chen naturally had no objections and cleared a small courtyard for him and Dong Rui to stay in.

That night, He Lingchuan and Dong Rui took out fluorescent spores and began to read the records of the deceased.

Sixty percent of those living in the manor were in-laws, which went without saying. But apart from that, no commonality seemed to be found among the victims bitten to death by the monsters.

After reading for nearly an hour, Dong Rui couldn't help but rub his eyes, and Ling Guang timely handed him a small bottle of eye drops. "Why is the handwriting of these people like ghost charms?" Reading was too hard on the eyes.

"In the countryside, it's good enough that some people can read and write." He Lingchuan urged him, "What did you see?"

"At first glance, these monsters seem to kill at will, and they eat while killing; even a grizzly bear that has just finished hibernating doesn't have as big an appetite as them." When Dong Rui was examining the bodies in Baiting County, the bailiffs on the side saw the incomplete corpses and didn't know how many times they had vomited.

These few monsters completely treated the humans of Chen Family Manor as food to be torn apart, and they only ate the nutrient-rich internal organs.

"Until I had a flash of inspiration and went to categorize the locations of the victims." The two were sitting in the courtyard, and Dong Rui drew a diagram on the sand, "This is the general topographical map of Chen Family Manor, and this is the distribution of the victims. Do you see anything?"

He poked dozens of small holes in the sand, each representing the residence of a victim. It was late at night when the incident occurred, and most people were sleeping in their own rooms; even if they were frightened and ran out, they were not far from home.

He Lingchuan leaned over to look: "Hmm, the monsters jumped over the wall from the east, but they ate more people in the west of the manor, and they almost didn't go to the south and north... Are there people living in the east, south, and north of Chen Family Manor?"

The last sentence was directed at Old Man Chen beside him.

Patriarch Chen had specially assigned a local expert to him to answer questions for the Inspector. This old man looked wrinkled and a bit hunched, but he was actually agile, sharp-eared and bright-eyed, and reacted quickly.

Old Man Chen didn't know how high an official the "Inspector" was, but since he was sent by the government to investigate the case, he cooperated: "Yes, there are. There are several large threshing floors in the west, so there are more people living in the east than in the west."

"So the monsters didn't stay in the populous east, but instead went to the west to go on a killing spree?" He Lingchuan pointed at the sand map, "In the end, they all left from the west."

All the monsters were like this, so it manifested as a commonality.

"So, there really is something in the manor that attracts them."

Dong Rui was smug: "It's your turn. After looking for an hour, you wouldn't have gained nothing, would you?"

His discovery was extraordinary. Although it wasn't worth much once broken, summarizing this clue from a pile of messy data and a stack of ghost-charm-like broken papers was a test of intelligence, right? He had followed He Lingchuan and seen countless cases, big and small, and he was no longer what he used to be.

He Lingchuan smiled and took out a stack of slips: "County Magistrate Li's data is wrong; the people who died peacefully were not seven or eight, but five in total. Here, it's these five people."

Everyone else died miserably, so these people "dying peacefully" was instead very conspicuous.

"All men, aged between twenty-five and fifty-three." He asked Old Man Li beside him, "Old Li, do you recognize these five?"

Old Li was illiterate, and only after He Lingchuan finished reading the names of the five did he nod: "I recognize them, I recognize them all. These three are bachelors, one has a wife, and another lost his wife long ago."

The twenty-five-year-old was already married with children, the others were bachelors, and the fifty-three-year-old victim was a widower whose wife had been dead for ten years.

"Do these five all live in the west of the manor?"

"No, no, only Chen Fu'ang, who is married with children, lives in the west." Of the other four victims, two were in the east, and one each in the north and south.

The sample was too small and not representative.

He Lingchuan pondered for a long time before asking: "What is the relationship between these five? Among them, who has traveled far recently?"

"Chen Fu'ang and these three of similar age are cousins, and the other two always drink with them and go out to do some small business." Old Man Li explained, "People living in this manor are all somewhat related."

Most of them were surnamed Chen, after all; they were one family decades ago.

"Have they left Chen Family Manor recently?"

"I'll go ask." After Old Man Chen said this, he left the courtyard.

Two quarters of an hour later, he walked back and said:

"Chen Fu'ang and his three brothers basically went out with the manor's caravan and came back with the caravan, which was just a few days ago."

Chen Family Manor had concentrated on sending out goods a few days ago, selling wool and fruit.

(End of chapter) ===== CHAPTER 1347 =====