Chapter 460: Finding the Tracks
During the day, the Merit Forest of Fayuan Temple is solemn and dignified, especially the Buddha reliefs on the stele, each of which is dignified and majestic, showing a scene of the Buddhist Pure Land.
But when it was pitch black at night, I could only see the shadows of the stone tablets, and it felt like it was only a few dirt buns away from being a cemetery.
Especially from time to time, you can hear the barking of wild dogs coming from somewhere. Those who are less courageous may not dare to go deep into it.
Sun Shaozong's courage was naturally unquestionable, so after arriving at Fayuan Temple, in order to save time, he simply passed the temple gate without entering, went directly around to the back of the temple, and without even picking up a lantern, strode into the Gongdelin.
Although it was difficult to determine the direction in the dark, Sun Shaozong easily found the crime scene by following the only light of fire.
Several yamen runners who were guarding the place were originally sitting on the ground around a campfire. When they saw Sun Shaozong suddenly appear, they hurriedly got up and stepped forward to salute him .
It was not easy to stand guard in the wilderness at this late hour . Sun Shaozong originally wanted to encourage them to show his usual people-friendly style, but as soon as he got closer, he smelled a sour odor of alcohol.
Apparently, these guys were drinking secretly together just now.
He was too lazy to say anything more and just said straight to the point: "Bring me a torch!"
The yamen runners knew they had broken the rules and were hesitant at first, fearing that Sun Shaozong would blame them. But when they heard that he would not pursue the matter, they felt as if they had been pardoned. They scrambled for a torch made of tree bark and rosin and respectfully handed it to Sun Shaozong.
Sun Shaozong took the torch and walked around the scene half a circle to find the footprints he had made during the day. Then he carefully went to the place where Jie Nian's body was lying and bent down to carefully examine the dog's paw prints on the ground.
Previously, through the flower reliefs on the soles of the mandarin duck shoes, Sun Shaozong roughly deduced that the murderer might have used a similar method to carve the shape of dog paws on the soles. After committing the crime, he would drive the wild dogs nearby over to hide his own footprints.
With this technique, if there was only one dog paw on each sole, it would be impossible to distinguish it among the many messy dog paw prints.
However, the claws of ordinary wild dogs are much smaller than human feet. If only a dog's paw was carved, the murderer would be like standing on stilts, which would make it difficult to maintain balance. Moreover, the crime was committed on the slippery ground after rain, making it extremely difficult to commit the crime.
And once Jie Nian finds out the flaw, he can be killed in minutes!
Not even a fool would take this kind of risk, especially since the murderer is very cautious.
Therefore, there should be at least two dog claws carved under the murderer's feet, so that he can maintain a better balance and avoid falling and losing everything before he even starts.
However, in this way, every time the murderer stepped on the mud, he would leave dog paw prints with equal spacing. If one was not careful, it would still be difficult to distinguish. But since Sun Shaozong had already seen through the murderer's mechanism, it would naturally be much easier to find him.
But even so, Sun Shaozong searched for more than a quarter of an hour before he finally found what he was looking for - three dog paw prints arranged evenly spaced in a triangular shape!
"What a cunning fellow!"
Looking at the dog paw prints, Sun Shaozong couldn't help but curse with a smile that seemed to be anger but was actually joy.
It turned out that the three dog paw prints were not only of different sizes, but also in different directions. At first glance, there was nothing strange about them. If Sun Shaozong had not already made up his mind and had compared them repeatedly, he would have been fooled by it.
After laughing and scolding, Sun Shaozong stood up and ordered the yamen runners who were watching from afar: "Leave two people here, and the rest of you bring torches and follow me!"
The yamen runners naturally did not dare to delay, and hurriedly left two with poor eyesight to guard there, while the rest followed Sun Shaozong, following the V-shaped dog paw prints all the way to the mountains and forests in the north.
At first, because the yamen runners destroyed a lot of traces during the search, Sun Shaozong had a hard time finding it.
But as they moved away from the crime scene, the V-shaped dog paw prints were no longer concealed and could no longer be hidden.
At this time, the yamen runners behind finally discovered something strange about the claw marks, and they all became inexplicably excited. If Sun Shaozong had not instructed them to follow him, they would have probably rushed to the front in excitement.
And when we reached the northeast corner of Gongdelin, the dog paw prints suddenly disappeared without a trace, and were replaced by ordinary human shoe prints.
Apparently, after arriving here, the murderer took off the shoes with dog paw carvings on them.
Sun Shaozong was cheered up and wanted to start investigating immediately. He reached down with the torch but nearly burned his fingers - he realized then that the torch had burned to less than a foot long.
"Give me a new torch!"
So he hurriedly asked the yamen runner behind him for an unused torch, lit the old one, and then bent down to search the ground inch by inch.
Soon, Sun Shaozong found some fresh wood chips among the footprints .
The murderer was indeed a cautious man. Before discarding the shoes with dog paw prints, he actually chopped them into pieces!
Rubbing the solid and heavy wood chips, Sun Shaozong looked up at the dense jungle not far away and immediately gave up the idea of going in to search for the fragments and the murder weapon - not to mention whether he could find them or not, going in with a torch and accidentally starting a forest fire would be no joke.
So he carefully put away the fragment and searched the area carefully.
This time, it took him about quarter of an hour to find two thread ends that were stepped into the mud in the middle of a footprint.
The two thin threads were only as thick as hair, slightly curved, dark yellow in color, and only half as long as a fingernail. However, Sun Shaozong carefully picked them out of the mud, held them in front of his eyes and examined them carefully for a long time. He laughed as if he had found a treasure.
Unfortunately, the yamen runners around him were of too low a status, and no one came up to ask "Why are you laughing, sir?", which greatly reduced his surprise.
So after laughing a few times, Sun Shaozong raised his hand and said decisively: "Let's go, follow me to the temple to find out the real villain!"
As the saying goes, "too clever is half the trick." If the murderer had not set up a trap to try to link Jie Nian's death to the evil spirit, and had simply discarded the murder weapon after killing him, Sun Shaozong might not have been able to catch him.
But right now...
If Sun Shaozong's guess is correct, all he needs to do is to conduct a simple inspection to expose the real culprit!
