Ancient Tomb Curse Six

  We quickly called our superiors to report, and soon the team leader arrived with his men, telling us two to follow them to the scene. The place was very remote, and it was all old houses, with uneven walls that were rough and bumpy, like a pair of silent and vicious eyes staring at passersby.

  We found the No. 13 house that the woman who reported the case said, which was a bungalow with a front yard. After knocking on the door for half a day, it didn't open, and I thought there was no one inside and was about to break in. The door suddenly opened slowly. Xu Wu, who was standing beside me, seemed to be very cold and suddenly shivered.

  A man's head poked out from the gap in the door, looking like he was in his thirties. His appearance wasn't ugly to say the least, but rather the type that would get lost in a crowd immediately. I felt a strong dislike and turned my face away.

  He asked us what was going on in the middle of the night, and the team leader told him that someone had reported a murder here. The man smiled slightly and said calmly, "There's no homicide case, it's just someone playing a prank by making a false report." Since there was no one reporting the crime, not even a record, we couldn't just barge in. Seeing him say this, the team leader could only retreat. Xu Wu kept saying that I must have been sleepy and had hallucinations in the middle of the night. As they were arguing, the man had already closed the courtyard door.

  At this time, a gust of cold wind blew from the courtyard, and it happened to blow up a piece of tree leaves that stuck to Xu Wu's forehead. Xu Wu took it down and shook it off, but found his hand sticky, and when he looked at it under the streetlight, he saw a hand full of fresh blood, and was shocked. His colleagues rushed to look at his face and saw a patch of blood on his forehead. Everyone busied themselves searching for that piece of tree leaves on the ground, which turned out to be a dark green leaf from a French plane tree, also covered in fresh blood. The team leader looked around and found that only the 13th courtyard had a French plane tree, gave us a signal with his eyes, and we rushed forward together, bursting open the door. A thick smell of blood rushed up our noses, making me almost vomit.

  The room was pitch black, a colleague went to turn on the light, but no matter how hard he tried, it wouldn't turn on. However, the streetlights outside were shining brightly. Fortunately, each of us had a flashlight, and with its light, we saw several corpses lying in the house, and the living room was covered in blood. We only took one glance, and our flashlights suddenly went out, no matter how hard we pressed them, they wouldn't turn back on. At that moment, my heart was racing like crazy, just like it's often described in books, it felt like it was going to jump out of my throat, and the beating was so intense I could feel the pain. Just as I was extremely frightened, Xu Wu let out a blood-curdling scream, and our team leader hastily asked: "What's wrong?"

  In the quiet night, no one answered.

  We used our lighters to illuminate the room and searched the entire house but couldn't find any trace of Xu Wu. Everyone was stunned at that moment.

  At that time, mobile phones were not as popular as they are now. The team leader had no choice but to teach me to return to the dormitory and ask for support, while they stayed on guard at the scene.

  I rushed back and forth. As I mentioned earlier, that alley is called Qingfeng Alley, which is a truly narrow and long alley. No matter how hard I ran, I couldn't reach the end, and my heart started to panic at that time. I went to knock on the door of the Dui family, but they were like dead asleep, with no response at all. I was both shocked and frightened. Sitting on the ground, thinking about resting for a while before thinking of another solution. But for some reason, although my heart was very fearful, I had no intention of sleeping, and when dawn broke, I was woken up by an early-rising cleaner.

  At that time, I told the cleaning aunt: "Hurry up and report to the police, there is a murder case in room 13." Then I rushed back to the scene of the crime. When I pushed open the door, I saw an unforgettable scene for my whole life.

  There was no one in the house, and all the team members were gone! The corpses and bloodstains had vanished into thin air. I was so scared that I almost fainted, but then someone suddenly patted me on the back, and I nearly fell to the ground. With great effort, I slowly turned around, and there stood the team leader and members behind me.

  "How could you be behind me?"

  "It was you who called the police and said there was a murder case here, so we rushed over." The team leader replied to me, walked into the house and took a look, immediately became suspicious: "Yang Hao, what are you doing? Where is the murder case?"

  I became even more perplexed: "How could there be none? We all saw it last night."

  "Last night?" a team member said in surprise: "We didn't come here last night."

  I scanned the crowd and felt myself on the verge of collapse, shouting: "Xu Wu disappeared here last night, we've been searching for him together for a long time, have you all forgotten?"

  One of my colleagues looked at me as if I were a mental patient: "Xu Wu suddenly had a coronary heart disease last night and died on the job."

  "No! It's impossible!" I shouted like a madman: "Last night, he, you, and I all came here together. The living room was indeed littered with several corpses! A murder case did happen here! Xu Wu also disappeared right here!"

  The team leader smiled; "Yang Hao, you've just become a policeman and have been on night shift when Xu Wu suddenly died. You may be traumatized, go see a psychologist."

  But I still insisted that the forensic team check the living room, and my boss was really a good person, he tried his best to invite the forensic team to inspect the entire living room, where there was no trace of human blood, let alone animal blood. Everyone laughed at me for having poor psychological quality, being scared out of their wits by a small matter, saying too much, even I began to suspect that I had just had a nightmare, but the dream felt so real." Old Yang said, staring straight ahead.

  "Didn't you investigate anything afterwards? For instance, the owner of that house?" Su Ying Zhen asked.

  "It's done, and precisely because it's done, I'm even more suspicious that I didn't dream it up. The owner of the house... is identical to the man who opened the door for me, identical... those eyes..." Old Yang began to mumble.

  "Alright, let's stop messing around and get back to this case." Xue Pinhan interrupted Old Yang's reminiscence, bringing everyone's attention back: "Don't you think Wang Shengli's reaction was a bit strange?"

  "Are you saying he asked where his wife drowned?" Su Yingzhen asked.

  Xue Pinhan's eyes flashed with a hint of appreciation: "Right, you think, normally whoever hears that their wife is dead should be hard to believe, then very sad and want to go identify the body with us. But he, as soon as he heard his wife drowned, first became nervous, then asked where she drowned, and after learning it was on the way back to her hometown, showed shock. Why would it be like this? What did he get nervous about first, and what did he get shocked about later?"

  "It's not that it can't be explained, anyway, he and his wife's relationship has already broken down, maybe in his heart he's been wishing for her death all along, now that his dream has come true, it's natural to be shocked, as for being tense, it's because he's afraid we'll misunderstand him as the murderer." Shen Zhiyuan analyzed.

  "If he had been waiting for his wife to die as you said, when he heard the news, he should have been shocked first and then relieved. He wouldn't care where she drowned," Xue Pinhan said.

  "Are you saying he's still a suspect?" Old Yang asked.

  Xue Pinhan shook his head: "No, he has an alibi. Moreover, when Yu Xiaolan fell into the pond, there was no one around her either. To say it's suicide is too suspicious, to say it's murder, but there's not a single clue."

  Yu Xiaolan won't be a water ghost finding a substitute and dragging her into the water. Dong Yiqi joked.

  "Nonsense!" Xue Pinhan scolded.

  Wang Shengli returned home in a daze, sitting blankly in the living room, staring off into space. The closed door creaked open slowly with a soft "creak".