Chapter 55

  Ge Ya Ze picked him up from the beam, and when he touched the boy's body, he was stunned for a moment, feeling it was somewhat unbelievable.

  "This is also too strange!" He said as he put the corpse on the ground.

  "What's wrong?"

  "If I'm not mistaken, from the time we left this house to the law master's house and found the body, it shouldn't have taken more than 20 minutes, but he seems to have been dead for several hours."

  "How could this be? We saw him just half an hour ago, didn't we?" Lin Yuan was even more shocked. Could it be that they had seen his ghost? The thought sent a chill down her spine.

  Su Jiner looked at Ge Yaze who was carefully examining the body and asked: "How long has he been dead?"

  "Livor mortis and rigor mortis began to appear within 1-2 hours after death, but he had probably been dead for about 3-4 hours."

  "So what we just saw wasn't him at all." Su Jiner's eyes widened in surprise.

  Gao Yazhe turned his head to one side with his hand and found a faint scratch on the back of his neck, and also discovered a bit of skin under his fingernails.

  "This isn't a suicide, it's a homicide. He struggled before he died and scratched himself." Gao Ya Ze continued to examine the body.

  At this time, Zuo Yi brought a group of people over. A short and stout woman rushed over after seeing the body, pushed aside Ge Yaze who was standing beside her, hugged the body and burst into tears, saying something like "fool" as she cried.

  This woman must be the young man's mother, Su Jin'er thought sadly as she looked at her.

  A life that was still vibrant yesterday, in just one short day, turned into a cold corpse. I knew everything myself, but what's left for my loved ones is only endless sorrow and pain.

  Things in the world are really changing unpredictably, just like Su Jin'er would never have thought that after finding the village, Chu Fei Fan would marry someone else and become someone else's husband. She looked at him standing silently beside her, with countless thoughts swirling in her mind.

  Ailian also cried into a tearful person, she knelt beside the young man, silently weeping.

  "Ah Lang! How can you be so foolish! Ah Lian is married, and you still have Xiao Yu! How could you try to kill yourself?" The village elder said, wiping away tears.

  "He wasn't a suicide, but was killed by someone." Gao Ya Ze's words were like a stone thrown into the water, instantly stirring up a thousand waves, and everyone looked at him in incredulity.

  "Why didn't he just kill himself? We all watched him grow up, and we all knew how he felt about Ailian. Now that Ailian has married someone else, isn't it obvious that he killed himself out of heartbreak?"

  Su Jin'er looked at the village chief and said, "He was indeed murdered. Don't you think that if you want to kill yourselves, there's something missing?"

  Everyone heard her words and began whispering to each other, each thinking about what was missing, and the woman who had been crying out loud was also desperately suppressing herself.

  "It's a stool." Lin Yuan said excitedly, as if he had won a big prize.

  Su Jiner glared at her and said, "Right, if you want to commit suicide without a stool, how can you do it? And the deceased cannot move the stool away by themselves after they die."

  Her words made everyone come to their senses.

  "But..." Su Jiner lowered her head, this should be the typical locked room murder case. She had just looked at the footprints on the ground, and except for the victim's and Ah Lang's own footprints, as well as their three footprints, there were no other footprints here.

  Just now when those people rushed in, she and Lin Yuan blocked them at the door. Now there are footprints of Alan's mother and Alan in the room, so how did the murderer do it?

  "I think we should call the police!" Su Jiner suggested.

  "No way!" the village chief said loudly, "We can't call the police. Your sudden intrusion has already caused us a lot of trouble. How can we let outsiders in again?"

  The village chief's tone was firm and did not allow for refutation.

  "But someone has already been killed, and the murderer must still be in the village."

  "I think it was you few who killed Ah Lang. We haven't had peace since you arrived." A not-too-loud, not-too-soft voice said from the crowd outside the house.

  The crowd began to follow this voice in unison, and Arlang's mother also raised her head, glaring at them with hatred.

  "It wasn't us, we had no reason to kill him." Lin Yuan defended hastily.

  "Everyone calm down, listen to me for a moment." Chu Fei Fan stepped forward and stopped the restless villagers: "You all know that when we were caught, you took away everything from us. We have nothing on us, where did we get the rope to kill Ah Lang?"

  Upon hearing his words, the villagers began whispering among themselves again, just like they always did, like weeds growing on a wall.

  "It's also possible that you deceived Ah Lang and took out the rope yourself, then killed him." The voice said again.

  "Can the one who spoke please step forward?" he said with narrowed eyes.

  A dark-skinned and robust man emerged from the crowd, glaring at them fiercely like a hungry wolf.

  "My name is A Jian, I am a friend of A Lang, we grew up together since childhood."

  Su Jiner furrowed her brow, she had seen this man before, yesterday at the wedding, she saw him.

  "How did you determine that we are the murderers?" Zuo Yi asked.

  "It's simple, before you all arrived, we were living in peace. After you came, Ah Lang died, isn't this too coincidental?"

  "Wait a minute, before we are judged as the murderer, I want to clarify one thing. Aron has been dead for at least 3-4 hours, and I need to further determine the exact time, but it's definitely not less than three hours. If you say we're the murderers, there must be evidence. Three hours ago, Ahlian should be able to testify for us, we have an alibi."

  Ailian wiped away her tears and said: "Yes, now it's 10 o'clock. Three hours ago, around 7 o'clock, I was with them."

  After hearing what A Lian said, A Jian was stunned for a moment, let out a loud hum and then stopped talking.

  Su Jiner stared at all this and fell into contemplation. As long as it was done by a human, there must be evidence left behind. She looked up at the rope hanging from the roof. Here, they couldn't call the police, and they had no way to check if there were any fingerprints left on the rope by the murderer. In other places, they couldn't find any evidence at all.

  If Ah Lang had died three hours ago, then who was the person they just saw entering the house of Master Fa? She involuntarily cast her gaze towards Ah Jian, who although looked different from Ah Lang, but in terms of build and skin tone, he resembled Ah Lang very much. Perhaps the person they saw was Ah Jian, not Ah Lang.

  Zuo Yi seemed to have thought of the same thing as Su Jiner, and he asked in a low voice: "A Jian, where were you between 9:20 and 9:50? What were you doing?"

  A Jian raised his eyebrows and said, "I didn't go anywhere in my own room."

  "Who can testify?"

  "It's just me, with no one to testify for me, how can you suspect me?"

  "Oh! Not really, just asking casually, Village Chief, can we borrow your place for a gathering later?"

  The village chief nodded and said, "Okay."

  After everyone left, Chu Feifan stayed behind, he looked at Su Jiner, as if he had something to say.

  "What's up? Did you ask anything?" Zuo Yi asked with his arms crossed.

  Chu Fei shrugged and said helplessly, "She doesn't seem to trust me completely yet, so she won't say anything."

  He looked him up and down and said with ill intentions: "How's married life? Is it very enjoyable?"

  He finished speaking and exaggeratedly laughed twice.

  "Don't spout nonsense, nothing happened between us two, I didn't even touch her." Chu Feifan said while giving Zuo Yi a signal with his eyes, and also observing Su Jiner's expression.

  "There's a beauty who takes the initiative to throw herself into your arms, and you can still be like Liu Xiahui, sitting in her bosom without being disturbed. I really don't believe it!"

  Chu Fei Yan kicked Chu Yi's butt and said, "Don't say anything more, I'm already confused enough. As soon as I arrived here, someone forced me to get married. You try it!"

  Looking at Chu Feifan's pale face, Zuo Yi coughed twice and said, "If you can't get an answer, just keep asking! It's a good thing someone died, you can use this to talk."

  "Got it!"

  When we arrived at the village chief's house, all the villagers had already gathered. The village has about one or two hundred people, and they were all crowded outside the village chief's door.

  Zuo Yi asked in a low voice if everyone was present, and the village chief nodded that they were.

  Because almost everyone held a torch in their hands, they could see each other clearly. Su Jin'er scanned the crowd and said, "Your law master doesn't seem to be here!"

  "The monk cannot be the murderer, and he has the right not to appear. None of us can force him." The village chief said with a cough.

  "How can your Daoist priest have such great power?" Zuo Yi felt puzzled.

  "This is our village's business and has nothing to do with you. What do you want us to gather here for? We don't have time to fool around with you."

  "We just need to ask a few questions," said Zuo Yi.

  "There are so many people, how can we ask? Everyone could be the murderer." Lin Yuan whispered in Su Jin'er's ear.

  "Everyone be quiet!" Ge Yaze said loudly: "I just want to ask everyone a question, who was the last one to see Ah Lang."

  A Jian spoke up and said: "At four o'clock, I went to the mountain with A Lang to chop firewood, and we didn't return until five o'clock. After that, we each returned to our own homes."

  At this time an old man came out and said, "Ah Jian is right. After Ah Lang went home and put down the firewood, he went back to his room and never came out again, not even for dinner."

  "Did he have any abnormal reactions during that time?"

  A Jian and the old man both shook their heads.