"Crescent Moon..."

Cheng Muyou silently pronounced this name in his heart. At the same time, the doll appeared in his mind. It was a bit worn out. It must be the beloved thing of the little girl named Crescent. She was inseparable from it and took it with her wherever she went. However, the doll is still there, but its owner is missing.

She was not buried in this lotus pond with her family. So, where did she go? Is she dead or alive now? If she were alive, would she see the true face of the murderer?

Just as she thought of this, a mourning cry suddenly came from behind, "Sir, my poor cousin is so miserable. The whole family has died of misfortune. She is still alive and will not see anyone or body. I hope you can see the murderer who killed the family."

Cheng Muyou turned around and saw Jiang Xixi's face with tears on her face. He knelt all the way towards Qu Zhengkun, grabbed the corner of his clothes and begged hard. Her crying made the onlookers sad. Some people shook their heads and sighed, and many people shed tears in disgrace. Everyone had received a lot of favors from the Liu family. Now, seeing their entire family die innocently, of course they feel unbearable.

Cheng Muyou knew that the purpose of Jiang Xixi's performance in this play was, first, to further confirm the identity of the four of them, and second, because he saw that the county magistrate Qu was not a person who complied with the public, he was putting pressure on him so that he could solve the case quickly.

Cheng Muyou sighed in his heart: Her heart is good, but it can play a role but it is unknown. Qu Zhengkun is a veteran who has been in the officialdom for a long time. On the surface, he has done more things behind the scenes. Even if he is swearing in front of the people of the whole county to solve the case, he may still be lazy and ruthless after returning. Jiang Xixi can't understand this, but he can see clearly from the turbid and sophisticated mung bean eyes.

He took his eyes back from Qu Zhengkun and looked at the twenty corpses next to him again. Now, the yamen runners have started to pull people and are moving the bodies into the temporary cart to be found, preparing to pull them to the county government for further examination. Cheng Muyou looked at the corpses that were moved away from him, and his back suddenly felt cold: Something is wrong, these corpses are not right. He just felt that it was wrong, but he had not been able to find out the reason. Now seeing these twenty corpses passing through his eyes one by one, he finally relieved his doubts.

The shapes of these corpses are very distorted: they are clenched with their fingers, and they are twitched with their necks, and they are pulled into an extremely strange angle with their shoulders. What's more, they even opened their mouths and vomited, while lifting their legs and arms, stretching them upwards with force. They seemed to be fighting, struggling, and trying their best, but in the end they were exhausted and pressed to the bottom of the mud-filled lotus pond.

An electric current rushed through Cheng Muyou's back. He looked at the bodies that had been brought onto the cart, watched them sail out of their sight, and fell to the ground in dejection: What exactly is it, what pressed these people hard under the mud, until they were filled with the mud and died of exhaustion?

The strangest thing is that this thing has not left any trace yet. Generally speaking, if you struggle hard, you will leave some fighting scars and palm marks on the human body. However, according to his observation just now, there are no marks on these corpses, so what is this life-threatening thing?

The people from the county yamen pulled the body away. The crowd of onlookers blocked their noses and retreated to both sides, giving up a passage for the carts passing by. Cheng Muyou glanced at the two yamen runners, and the two walked to him tactfully, "Sir, what are you going to give?"

Cheng Muyou covered his mouth with his hands and whispered, "You go to the county government office. If you have any questions, please come back and notify me at any time."

The two yamen runners went down and quietly followed the team that had already walked away. Seeing this, Jiang Xixi walked up and said, "Sir, what are we going to do now?"

Cheng Muyou raised a thick eyebrows, "Looking at Qu Zhengkun's reaction, Shi Fei and Shi Jin should have never been to Liaoyang, so the two of them are very likely to encounter an accident halfway. What do you think is the weirdest place along the way?"

"That valley with ghost soldiers." Jiang Xixi blurted out without thinking. After a while, her expression changed slightly, "Sir, do you want to go to that valley again?"

Cheng Muyou looked solemn, "Let's go back to the inn first. I left in a hurry today. I didn't ask the shopkeeper to take care of Xu Ziming. He was injured. If we couldn't come back for a long time, no one would take care of him."

Jiang Xixi nodded, "Okay, by the way, I can borrow the copper coin from his hand for use. Last time when I was in the valley, the copper coin saved me. Maybe I can use it this time."

***

When the sun shone on the strongest light of the day, Jiang Xixi and Cheng Muyou finally reached the Yin soldiers' trough, but Xu Ziming was following behind them. When he learned that Cheng Muyou was going to investigate in the valley again, he insisted on following him. No matter how Jiang Xixi persuaded him, he refused to listen. He even said to the two: If he didn't let him go, he would wait for them to leave before following them secretly. In short, he would never sit idly by.

Having said that, Cheng Muyou had to let him follow him, so along the way, Xu Ziming told them the name of the valley and the origin of the name.

After hearing this, Jiang Xixi was quite surprised. She looked at the bright valley in front of her, which was scorching by the sunlight and sighed, "It turns out that there are three thousand white bones of the Liao army buried below. They died so miserably, no wonder they can't be peaceful. Now they are going to come out to do anything."

Xu Ziming followed behind and smiled bitterly, "Miss Jiang, these Liao soldiers are just ghosts now, wandering in the valley all day long, but they will not hurt people. You don't know what this place looks like when the battle was just over."

"What does it look like?" Cheng Muyou was answering the conversation. He looked at Xu Ziming, and the anxiety in his eyes was obvious.

Xu Ziming looked at the empty valley in front of him, and his face was covered with panic. "After the battle, several people disappeared in this trough of the Yin soldiers, all of which were in and out. However, due to the small number of people, it did not attract much attention. Later, a team of escorts passed by here and disappeared. Because the number of people and property involved in this matter, it attracted the attention of the government and sent the yamen runners to search," he swallowed, "Sir, guess what, they searched for a whole day and finally found an inconspicuous earthblock in the valley. After digging it up, they found that all the missing people were buried below. What's even more strange is that they were all killed by caltrops that only the army had."
Chapter completed!