Chapter 2378 2379 They All Must Die
Chapter 2378: Chapter 2379: They All Must Die! Chapter 2378: Chapter 2379: They All Must Die! “Officer Comrade, Old Zhang was indeed a good person. As the village chief all these years, he did many good deeds for the village. Though he had a bit of a temper, he was reasonable. When he got angry, it was always the fault of others. It can’t be that someone would kill over something like that.”
“I feel the same. Just a few days ago, Old Zhang scolded me, but I didn’t get angry, and I still eagerly invited him to play mahjong.”
The villagers spoke one after another about Zhang Daye’s matters.
But they all said good things, even those who had minor frictions with him admitted that it was their own fault.
Therefore, the possibility of revenge killing could basically be ruled out.
After understanding the situation, Lin Yi looked at Zhang Daye’s body in the coffin and couldn’t help pondering.
This case was quite strange, even fraught with doubts.
The deceased had no motivation for suicide, nor possibility of being murdered for revenge.
But he died in a coffin, which was highly suspicious.
If he had committed suicide, suffocated within the tight confines of a coffin, he would have struggled in the last few seconds, as it is human instinct. It couldn’t be this tidy inside the coffin.
If it was a homicide, it would be even more superfluous. There was no need for that.
The more complex the method of disposing of the body, the easier it would be to reveal flaws, which does not conform to the logic of crime.
Hmm?
Just then, Lin Yi found something special inside the coffin.
At the corner of the corpse’s mouth, Lin Yi found two white hairs, each over ten centimeters long.
“Zhang Zixin, come take a look at this. What do you think it is?”
Zhang Zixin leaned in and looked carefully for a while.
“It seems to be the hair of some animal,” Zhang Zixin said.
“A dog’s?”
“It looks like it, but I’m not sure. We need to take it back for identification. Find me a pocket to put it in.”
“Alright.”
Zhang Zixin rummaged in the vehicle, found a sealed bag, and Lin Yi placed the two white hairs inside.
Then he examined the body again, preliminarily determined that the cause of death was suffocation, but whether there was foul play, it was hard to say.
Afterward, Lin Yi called some people over, had the professional coroners take the body away, and continued the investigation.
At the same time, the deceased’s relatives and friends also needed to be investigated, which was a massive amount of work. They certainly couldn’t cope with it alone.
During the process, Lin Yi called He Yuanyuan to pick up Ji Qingyan from work, as he couldn’t make it back anytime soon.
As night slowly fell, the investigation work continued.
Zhang Zixin bought mineral water and bread for Lin Yi and Zhang Peng. The two sat on a large outdoor log, eating while discussing the case.
“Lin Bro, doesn’t this case seem a bit eerie?” Zhang Peng said with a shiver.
Lin Yi looked up and saw two white lanterns hanging at the doorway.
In the yard, there were many paper effigies of people and animals, coupled with the pitch-black sky.
It indeed seemed quite harrowing.
“It just so happened to coincide. These were originally for his father, but now he’s the one who’s ended up using them,” Lin Yi spoke.
“Just don’t look at those things. It’s like this when someone dies in the village; their funeral customs are different from those in the city area.”
During his university years, Lin Yi had accompanied Wang Cuiping back to the village for a funeral once, and it was similar to what was in front of him now.
So he was accustomed to it.
“I’m not talking about these funeral items,” Zhang Peng lit a cigarette and whispered:
“Think about it, a perfectly alive person ending up dead in a coffin, it looks rather sinister no matter how you look at it.”
“Lin Bro, do you think it might be that Fang Daye committed some indecent acts behind his wife’s back, and, fearful of being reported and exposed, hid in there and committed suicide?” Zhang Zixin suggested.
“That’s impossible. If someone lies in a sealed coffin to commit suicide, in the end, they would definitely struggle. It’s instinct, and they can’t fight it. It’s not very likely he went in there by himself.”
“That’s even stranger, and with this cold breeze gusting through here, it’s giving me goosebumps all over.”
“Young man, I have something to tell you.”
Suddenly hearing someone speak, the three looked up.
Ah—
Zhang Zixin was startled.
The speaker was an elderly lady, seemingly quite old, probably in her eighties or nineties, her face covered in wrinkles and age spots.
She was hunched over, leaning on a walking stick, with little hair left on her head, swaying in the wind like the few teeth she had remaining.
“Old woman, what is it that you want to tell me?”
Zhang Peng steadied his nerves and asked.
“I’m telling you, stop wasting your time and head home quickly.”
“Ah?”
The expressions of the three changed at once, finding the old lady’s words to be somewhat eerie.
“I had known for a long time that they would die, didn’t expect it to be today.”
“They were going to die!”
Zhang Peng and Zhang Zixin had chills run down their spines, feeling all the hair on their bodies stand on end.
Looking at the old lady’s eyes also turned bizarre and terrifying, making Zhang Zixin quietly shuffle several steps closer to Lin Yi.
Even Lin Yi felt a shiver down his spine.
“Old lady, what exactly is going on? Do you know something?”
“What insider information could there be?” The old woman snorted with disdain:
“Three years ago, Fang Laoer killed a fox, and I told him that it was a sentient being, to bury it somewhere and not bring misfortune upon himself. But he just wouldn’t listen, and even ate its flesh. Now, look what happened—the Fox Fairy has come for retribution.”
“Heh heh…”
Lin Yi was a bit dumbstruck, “Old lady, you must be from the Northeast.”
“How did you know?”
“The Fox Fairy is a Northeastern superstition, it doesn’t relate to what we believe in the South.”
“You all, still young…”
The old lady revealed a look of disappointment and shook her head, then walked past the three with the support of her walking stick, muttering to herself.
“The Fox Fairy’s fur was even left behind, still denying it’s the Fox Fairy… Such childish ignorance…”
Hiss—
A chill wind passed, and the expressions of the three froze.
“Fox fur!”
They all remembered the fox fur that appeared on Fang Daye’s face!
“At first, it didn’t seem to matter, but on second thought, it really could be fox fur…” Zhang Zixin said tremulously.
All of a sudden, as if Lin Yi had realized something, he quickly chased after the old lady who had just left.
Zhang Peng and Zhang Zixin followed suit.
Though they didn’t know why they were chasing her, they wanted to see for themselves.
“Old woman, wait a moment,” Lin Yi called out to the elderly lady.
“What, do you believe what I said now?”
“I just remembered something you said earlier. When you said they all had to die, does ‘they’ refer to two people?”
Zhang Peng and Zhang Zixin also remembered that the creepy old lady indeed said something like that.
“Yes…”
The old lady spoke with a hoarse voice:
“Not only does Fang Daye have to die, but that damned one must die as well; they all have to die!”