Chapter 456

He pointed to the east and said: "Wudou Town is over there. I was going back to Shuangyi Town; originally, there was no way I could have walked to the medicinal fields."

Wudou Town and Shuangyi Town were not far apart; taking a detour to the medicinal fields would have more than doubled the journey.

Even on a rainy day, could this villager have deviated so much while walking home on a familiar road?

Soon, the group arrived at Mount Niutou.

"That night, you entered the mountain from here?" Standing at the entrance, He Lingchuan understood why Wang Mazi was injured. This kind of valley was also called Rolling Stone Valley, filled with round stone eggs everywhere, large and small. If a person walked on them, they would slip if they weren't careful.

"Yes, I slipped and fell right here." The carriage couldn't enter the mountain, so Wang Mazi, riding on the rock goat, gestured for him, "When the Zuanfeng Beasts came, I rolled into the bushes over there."

"Where was the location of the lanterns?"

"In, in front."

The rock goat moved in the direction Wang Mazi indicated, bouncing higher and higher among the scattered stones.

Along the way, He Lingchuan found a small piece of torn cloth in a rock crevice; he didn't know who had accidentally gotten stuck here. The fierce tiger found a few strands of hair on a tree branch, which were clearly not human.

General Ling leaned over to sniff and said sadly: "They are my children!"

"They did indeed go up."

Finally, the rock goat stopped halfway up the mountain, and Wang Mazi said: "It should be about here."

He Lingchuan followed up and looked, frowning.

The spot where the rock goat stopped was just a small mountain hollow, which could hold at most four or five people, and it was open-air. It was a bit crowded for the fierce tiger to jump up, and it wasn't easy to turn around.

As for General Ling, it suddenly displayed a peculiar skill: it took a deep breath, and its body actually shrank at a speed visible to the naked eye.

Only when it was the size of an ordinary goat did it leap lightly into the mountain hollow.

"..." The Zuanfeng Beasts had this kind of trick? He Lingchuan was speechless. Why didn't it use it earlier at the government office instead of breaking someone's window? "There shouldn't be. This is neither heaven nor earth; the light should have been shining halfway up the mountain."

He Lingchuan looked up. The rock wall directly above was very smooth, not looking like a place where a human could stand.

"But your companions had thirteen people, and there were seven or eight Zuanfeng Beasts chasing them. How could such a small place accommodate them?"

Wang Mazi smiled bitterly: "The government runners said the same thing. But I really didn't lie, Master He, I truly saw light here!"

This valley wasn't deep, and the government runners had already searched it; there were no traces inside at all.

The fierce tiger suddenly leaned close to the rock wall and sniffed: "A bit fishy."

He Lingchuan reached out and scraped the rock wall, pushing aside the grass leaves, and saw some reflection on the protruding rock wall.

"There are some traces of dried mucus."

Wang Mazi also took a look: "Maybe a slug crawled over."

There were countless small soft-bodied animals in the mountain forest, and wherever such things passed, they would leave traces of mucus.

Apart from this, it was clean and there was nothing else here.

The rock goat bleated twice, somewhat uneasy. He Lingchuan comforted it: "I know, I remember."

Not long after he entered the Chi Yan Kingdom border, someone came to steal the rock goat at night and even wanted to push Taozi off the cliff. One of the two sheep thieves died and the other escaped; the one who escaped disappeared after fleeing the cliff, but such mucus traces were left at the bottom of the cliff.

It seemed that the thing under the cliff at that time also appeared here more than ten days ago and took away more than a dozen villagers and seven or eight Zuanfeng Beasts.

How dangerous; if Taozi hadn't happened to disrupt the sheep thieves' plan, his rock goat would have gone missing just like that.

"Good, good, this official matter has turned into a personal grudge." So the other party had long since bullied him! "I will get to the bottom of this."

Official matters and personal accounts had to be settled together.

General Ling was curious: "How did it become your personal grudge?"

"I had just entered the Chi Yan Kingdom border when my rock goat was nearly stolen. It seems it's related to the murderer here."

General Ling looked him up and down and suddenly realized: "I said I always felt something was wrong; where are you from?"

"I come from the Fu Kingdom."

"Such a small place?" General Ling didn't understand, "Why didn't the Eldest Prince use Chi Yan people?"

This old thing really didn't care about the occasion when asking questions. He Lingchuan glanced at him: "Maybe he doesn't trust them?"

General Ling was speechless.

Next, He Lingchuan investigated more carefully.

There were no bloodstains, no severed limbs, and not even any traces of struggle or fighting. He Lingchuan felt that the government runners defining Wang Mazi as the culprit wasn't too outrageous. In most cases, the person who survives in the end is the most suspicious.

The fierce tiger Jiao Yu suddenly said: "Why don't we find the Mountain Spirit and ask? Wouldn't it be clear?"

He Lingchuan snapped his fingers: "Makes sense, you summon it."

So the fierce tiger scratched the ground hard and let out three long roars facing the southeast.

The tiger's roar shook the mountain forest, and He Lingchuan felt the solid rock under his feet trembling. The mountain forest went quiet immediately; the wind didn't blow, the trees didn't sway, the birds didn't call, and even the small insects in the rock crevices went silent.

He Lingchuan discovered that the copper plate on Jiao Yu's neck was glowing again, helping it transmit the tiger's roar wider and further than usual.

It held an official position, and by using its internal power, it could summon the Mountain Spirit.

So everyone waited quietly.

Half a stick of incense passed.

A quarter of an hour passed.

He Lingchuan stood up and patted the grass clippings from his palms: "It seems the Mountain Spirit doesn't intend to come."

"Summoned by a superior and not arriving, does this Mountain Spirit want to be punished?" The goshawk spoke from the side.

With Jiao Yu's loud voice, it was impossible for the Mountain Spirit not to hear.

"What kind of monster is the Mountain Spirit here?"

"It's a giant ground sloth," General Ling replied, "Including Mount Niutou and the official medicinal fields, a hundred hectares of mountain forest are its territory."

He Lingchuan wondered: "Isn't that thing notoriously slow? Can it still be a Mountain Spirit?"

"You're talking about a tree sloth," the goshawk corrected him, "A ground sloth is bigger than a bear, with sharp claws two feet long. Although its movements are a bit slow, its hard skin is impervious to swords and spears. I heard that the Mountain Spirit here has three hundred years of cultivation, and the villagers have even built a shrine for it."

Hearing this, Wang Mazi asked weakly: "Are you talking about the Wushuang Mountain Spirit?"

"Wu..." Is it a combination of Wudou Town and Shuangyi Town? These people are too lazy at naming things; does the Mountain Spirit have no opinion? "Probably, what's the problem?"

"I heard from a fellow inmate that the plaque dedicated to the Mountain Spirit shrine broke a few days ago."

"The Wushuang Mountain Spirit is dead?" He Lingchuan was startled.

He had a say in this matter; when the old turtle demon of County Magistrate Lake was bitten to death by the Crocodile God, the plaque of the Water Spirit shrine also broke.

These sheep thieves are quite arrogant, daring to even kill a Mountain Spirit.

Hmm, calling them sheep thieves is no longer appropriate.

Jiao Yu realized: "No wonder it couldn't be summoned."

"Does the town know about this?"

Wang Mazi scratched the back of his head: "I don't know."

General Ling said in a rough voice: "I haven't heard of it either. Those idiots in the government really don't do their jobs!" Eating and doing nothing, they couldn't get any useful information.

"See the person if alive, see the corpse if dead." He Lingchuan looked at the valley, "Twenty-some large living creatures, how could they just disappear without a trace?"

In the past few days, he had also flipped through the case files left by Fu Shanji.

Honestly, there wasn't much information. With the research spirit he had honed in Panlong City, he finished reading it in less than half an hour.

The manpower Fu Shanji could mobilize was far beyond his reach, so he ordered the counties and prefectures in the north to do some statistics.

There were no direct clues to the missing courier case, but after compiling the statistics, it was discovered that sporadic missing persons cases had appeared all over Chi Yan.

Du Shan County, two people and three monsters missing.

Baishanyuan, one monster missing.

Kuli, one young girl missing, suspected three monsters missing, belonging to the same nest of bat demons.

There were fourteen or fifteen other places not listed.

But some missing persons were marked with "armed fighting" or "already found" next to them, which were clearly added later.

Calculating this way, at least ten humans were missing, and more than twenty-three or twenty-four monsters were missing, but because they were scattered all over Chi Yan, they didn't seem very conspicuous.

Beijia's laws were quite strict regarding conflicts between the demon race and humans, but internal fighting among the demon race was always impossible to prohibit.

It was natural instinct and couldn't be forcibly suppressed.

Next to the data, Fu Shanji had drawn a red circle and made a note: When monsters go missing, humans don't necessarily go missing.

This statement seemed to have no beginning or end, but looking closely at the statistics from various places, it was indeed true that where monsters went missing, humans didn't necessarily go missing.

In other words, the number of missing monsters was higher than that of humans.

Why did Fu Shanji want to compile these statistics everywhere? He Lingchuan didn't quite understand at first, but hearing about Wang Mazi's encounter here and hearing about the Wushuang Mountain Spirit's broken plaque, how could he not understand? Including the couriers in Lingxu City, what was the connection between these missing individuals within the Chi Yan border? Unfortunately, Fu Shanji was killed by his brother before he could find the answer.

Wang Mazi also echoed: "Yes, yes, they all just disappeared, I don't know how this could happen!"

"All of them?" He Lingchuan's gaze narrowed, "Are there any other missing persons cases?"

Wang Mazi swallowed: "My lord, can you really save my life?"

"The more real information you provide, the greater the chance I have of catching the real culprit."

Wang Mazi knelt down to him again: "You were sent by the Crown Prince's mansion, please spare my life directly! I'll be your beast of burden if you want!"

Although the tiger demon was fierce and the goshawk was magnificent, there was no doubt that He Lingchuan was the one in charge.

General Ling kicked him onto his back with one hoof: "Bah, do you think I'm not here?"

But he actually had a sense of proportion, and Wang Mazi only had his head knocked painfully. Otherwise, with his strength, he could have kicked him to death easily.

He Lingchuan remained unmoved: "That depends on your performance."

Wang Mazi racked his brains: "There is one thing, I don't know if it counts as a missing persons case, but it was truly very strange."

He Lingchuan noticed that Wang Mazi's expression was clearly hesitant, "Tell me about it."

"More than a year ago, I heard that a strange thing happened in Zhitian Township, thirty li away from here." Wang Mazi licked his lips, "People here rarely leave their hometown. If it weren't for the many friends I usually interact with, I'm afraid no one would have heard of this."

Where... where... where are the monthly tickets~~?

Reaching out. jpg

(End of chapter)