Chapter 1821 - Scene Investigation

The front office was the most substantial structure in the entire inn—wooden construction raised upon a thick rammed-earth foundation. Its interior layout was unremarkable, identical to any ordinary inn's reception hall: a central room with a wooden counter, a locked standing cabinet, a guest register, tea implements. Nothing suspicious. The east and west wings proved equally unremarkable. However, against the back wall of the east wing stood a cabinet concealing a hidden door. Opening it revealed a small courtyard thick with humid air, where the sound of surging river currents echoed ceaselessly—they had clearly reached the riverbank.

The courtyard contained an open shed. Against the wall stood a brick stove fitted with an iron pot. Scattered nearby lay the various implements of an herbalist's trade: choppers, mortars of assorted sizes, basins, jars, baskets, and bronze and iron alchemical furnaces for refining medicines. The ground was strewn with unprocessed medicinal materials. At first glance, it resembled the compounding room of an apothecary.

Yet a strange odor permeated this compounding room—the savory smell of cooking meat mingled with a nauseating stench of rot, overlaid with the scents of spices and medicine, all mixed with the watery, fishy smell drifting in from outside. The moment Wu Xiang entered the courtyard, his chest tightened and his stomach heaved.

Gao Chongjiu, however, recognized immediately that this place held crucial significance. This was clearly where the gang had committed their atrocities. A single glance revealed the essential tools of such practitioners: cutting knives, iron needles, incense ash and herbs for staunching blood, bundles of lime. The river wind blew sharp and cold here, dispersing the various odors easily, while the quantities of sun-dried fish and the fishy smell of the river itself masked the scents emanating from this place.

Gao Chongjiu stood in the courtyard, smoking in silence. Li Ziyu's face was uneasy—the look of a man who had been badly shaken.

"Section Chief, look at this." A police officer lifted the lid of an iron pot. Inside was half a pot of white broth with bone-in pieces floating and bobbing. The surface was covered with foam—clearly the blood had not been properly cleaned out.

Wu Xiang kept his expression neutral. He picked up a nearby skimmer and stirred through the pot. A small foot immediately surfaced. From its size, it belonged to a child of seven or eight.

Several police officers who had been searching nearby could not bear to look and quickly turned away.

Wu Xiang's face was grave. He set down the skimmer and turned to ask: "Old Gao, what do you make of this?"

"Section Chief, this should be where they did their corpse-harvesting. The human flesh isn't being boiled for eating—it's for compounding medicines."

"Compounding medicines?" Wu Xiang had only heard that human blood could treat consumption, and knew of placenta, "red lead," and "autumn stone." But he had never heard of eating human flesh as medicine.

In this era of widespread famine and warfare, cannibalism was not uncommon. News of such things came constantly from other regions, and even in Guangzhou's outskirts, reports occasionally emerged during times of famine. But that was all driven by hunger and cold. Killing people and boiling their flesh to make medicine was something he had never encountered.

"That's right," Gao Chongjiu said. "Human flesh and bones, the internal organs... in their hands, everything can be made into medicine. Each part has its use."

These murderous "medicines" could not be displayed openly, and naturally their uses could not bear scrutiny either—mostly aphrodisiacs, abortifacients, and drugs for "enduring severe torture." Prices were high, deliberately shrouded in mystery, so there was never a shortage of buyers.

Wu Xiang found it somewhat hard to believe. He had been educated in the Council of Elders' modern scientific curriculum from childhood and had always scoffed at such supernatural nonsense. "Does this... actually work?"

"If it didn't work, who would buy it? It probably has some effect."

Underworld secret medicines constituted a vast category with countless varieties and tricks. The Public Security Section had arrested some "secret medicine" sellers. Most products were made from various Chinese medicinal herbs. Though mixed with all manner of bizarre, unimaginable ingredients, most still possessed some medicinal properties. But these "secret medicines" made from human flesh and bones—what medicinal effects could they possibly have?

Wu Xiang was full of doubt, but his long experience as a police officer had taught him that the dark side of human nature could sometimes be unfathomably deep. Effective or not, the very existence of such practices proved the demand was robust.

The police conducted a further search of the courtyard, and increasingly horrifying scenes appeared before their eyes. One iron pot was filled with charred children's bones. Wooden trays held organs that had been roasted dry. A police officer opened a small wooden box to find little boys' genitals that had been desiccated with lime, stored as carefully as precious treasures.

Evidence of corpse disposal became increasingly abundant. The stove's firebox still contained unburned scraps of clothing. The mud of the drainage ditch leading directly to the river was mixed with bone fragments and strands of hair. This nightmarish scene proved too much even for the relatively seasoned police officers. Some could not endure it any longer and ran outside to vomit violently. Though Li Ziyu had not yet started vomiting, his face had turned deathly pale and he could barely stand.

Though Gao Chongjiu remained relatively calm, he was privately puzzled: What was this gang's background? Since ancient times, corpse-harvesting had been something that could not be done openly. Practitioners mostly worked as itinerants, rarely "operating" repeatedly in one place. Setting up shop on this scale—there had to be some other reason.

Wu Xiang smoked as he watched the coroners from the Forensics Section—personnel retained from the old system—clean up the human remains. When they had cleared most of it, he asked: "How many people do we have here, approximately?"

The lead coroner replied: "This humble one hasn't counted and reconstructed yet. But at a rough glance, there are bones from at least four or five people."

That's too many! Wu Xiang thought.

Yet Gao Chongjiu had already concluded the victims numbered even more: however many soul-capturing gourds had been filled, that was how many dead there were.

"The ground is suspicious. The soil is mixed with lime. There may be buried corpses underneath." Gao Chongjiu pointed to the back courtyard floor, which was covered with a thick layer of wood ash and sand. The sand had a white tint. Wu Xiang squatted down and rubbed some between his fingers, immediately seeing the white lime mixed in.

Wu Xiang nodded: "Dig!"

Under Gao Chongjiu's direction, the coroners began excavating.

The first spot they dug was near the drainage outlet. Gao Chongjiu believed this was the most likely location for body disposal. A table-sized flat river stone lay there, its surface relatively level. When the coroners had been cleaning the drainage ditch, they had found black residue in the stone's crevices. Scraped out with bamboo picks, it proved to be blood.

They began digging in front of the stone. After removing the thick covering layer, they exposed the damp earth beneath. The police immediately noticed one area where the soil color was darker than its surroundings—a patch fully three to four chi square. Gao Chongjiu took one look and knew this was bad: not only were there bodies below, but quite a few.

"Dig along the edges. Don't push too hard."

After a coroner had dug several shovelfuls, he suddenly stopped.

"What is it?" Wu Xiang asked.

The coroner did not answer. He looked extremely nervous. In the excavated soil were fragments of blackened reed mat.

This only confirmed their judgment. Below was definitely a burial site.

Gao Chongjiu had the coroners continue digging. The cover layer was not thick—just over a chi. After removing it, fragments of mostly decomposed reed mat appeared, now turned black. But at the edges, traces of lime were still visible.

Several coroners continued digging downward. Feet kept slipping on the shovel heads. More mat fragments were turned up. When another shovelful of soil came up, a coroner suddenly lurched backward with a cry, dropped his shovel as if burned by hot coals, and fled the scene.

Police who had been searching the premises came rushing over. "What's all this chaos?" Gao Chongjiu went over to look and saw something stuck to the shovel blade. Looking at the freshly dug spot, some reddish-black liquid had seeped up, saturating the soil. The earth was mixed with many reed mat fragments.

What had terrified the coroner out of his wits was a small blackened hand protruding from the mud.

"Bastard!" Gao Chongjiu heard one police officer curse. Face iron-gray, he ordered: "Keep digging! Quickly!"

As the covering soil was progressively removed, the reed mat fragments could no longer conceal what lay beneath. A small arm protruded straight up from a hole in the torn mat, rigidly pointing at the sky.

The coroners quickened their pace. The mat was completely removed. Curious police officers and National Army soldiers who had stopped their work to watch took one look and instantly turned their faces away.

Many of them had experienced the mountains of corpses and seas of blood on battlefields, or had walked over roads lined with famine victims' bodies. But no one had ever seen such a wretched, horrifying sight.

At a glance, there were four or five naked corpses, stacked in the manner of piling firewood—very neatly arranged, heads and feet alternating for tight packing. But from the edges, one or more layers were visible beneath.

These bodies had already decomposed to varying degrees and were mixed with mud and sand. Most were small in stature—from their builds, either women or children. Some were quite young. More terrifying still, many bodies were missing limbs, similar to the corpse excavated from Room Three of the Heavenly Character wing.

The commanders on scene could no longer maintain even a pretense of composure. They stared blankly at the burial pit, momentarily at a loss for what orders to give. After the initial uproar, the crowd fell silent. Everything inside and outside the scene seemed frozen like a film still—even the air itself seemed to have solidified. Everyone had been paralyzed by the nightmarish scene.

Wu Xiang nervously touched his hat and issued his order: suspend the investigation immediately and report to Chief Mu at headquarters.

Soon, another platoon of National Army troops arrived from the city, fully armed, completely sealing off the scene. At the same time, another company cordoned off the streets around the inn on the waterfront, strictly forbidding anyone to enter or exit. Police began going door to door, checking and searching for suspicious individuals. Wu Xiang's orders were simple: arrest anyone suspicious. Meanwhile, machine guns were set up at the riverbank, blocking the harbor. All boat people's small craft were ordered to stay in place. To reinforce the blockade, the Coast Guard dispatched two patrol boats and several small and medium-sized motorboats to monitor the river. The dark muzzles of cannons and machine guns had their covers removed, pointing directly at the boat people's vessels.

(End of Chapter)