Reborn Cat Sheriff

Chapter 592 Is a son really that important?
"baby?"

The tiny bones that were picked out of the chamber pot made the investigating police officers turn pale.

Where's the head?

Upon discovering that the most obvious and crucial element was missing from the skeleton, Wu Dapeng couldn't help but roar out loud.

The other police officers around also had very grim expressions. This wasn't what they had hoped to find, but the harsh reality forced them to accept Guan Er's increasingly cruel nature.

Even without much analysis, people can guess what happened at that time.

Given Guan Er's bestial nature, he desired a son, and to that end, he didn't hesitate to imprison the woman he had captured in such a place and then abuse her. The woman was imprisoned for a long time, enduring unimaginable misery, and ultimately, under conditions devoid of any hygiene or proper delivery methods, she likely gave birth to a girl. Then… Guan Er brutally murdered her, throwing her body into a chamber pot in front of her. Perhaps the woman suffered complications after childbirth, or perhaps she witnessed this and did something, but she too was killed by Guan Er.

There shouldn't be any other possibility, right?

From the time Guan Er was arrested until now, all the information we have gathered is about this beast's various crimes of abusing women and trying to have another son.

The gossipy woman's obsession has been clearly explained: it was simply to ensure her biological son could carry on the family line and be cared for in the future. The fat fool needs no further mention, but Guan Er was the truly wicked and unscrupulous one, whose evil deeds were so numerous and ruthless that they horrified everyone.

Lin Ge even felt that the reason Guan Er couldn't have a second son was God's retribution for him!
This depraved wretch! The things he did were so outrageous that even God couldn't stand them!
As for the head of the victim's remains...

The police searched the entire Jingyue Temple with tension and anger, but even after searching from morning until dusk, they still couldn't find the skull of the innocent baby.

"Was it... destroyed? After all, a newborn baby's bones are very soft..."

A policeman spoke in a low voice, glancing at Wu Dapeng.

"..."

Wu Dapeng looked grim and remained silent.

"I hope the skull was just destroyed, and that this case won't have any further complications! There are fifteen related victims, sixteen if you include the infants; no other victims' remains were found in the locked room. God, there have already been too many victims!"

Another young policeman surnamed Sun spoke as if praying to someone, expressing his deep regret that the case would not recur.

This is absolutely cruel! The situation before him is pushing his psychological limits as a police officer to the breaking point. Please, no more deaths! This evil has already been enough; please, no more innocent victims!
"Well……"

Wu Dapeng remained noncommittal, after all, this wasn't something that could be changed by mere prayer. Criminals weren't going to obediently stop doing bad things just because the police disagreed.

He turned to the police officer who had asked the question and asked him one.

"Little Sun, do you think Aunt Gossip knows about this secret room?"

The policeman surnamed Sun paused for a moment, then nodded after thinking for a moment, saying, "She must know, right? This is her Jingyue Nunnery, how could there be a place she doesn't know? Besides, Guan Er imprisoned the victim here for more than just a day or two. Considering what the victim said, it's been at least a year, right? How could the gossipy woman not know about all that eating, drinking, and defecating for so long? And to be honest, this secret room isn't very soundproof. The victim might have called for help if she heard any noise outside. Under these circumstances, if the gossipy woman hadn't helped cover it up, at least one of the other people who came to offer incense and pray to the gods during this year should have noticed something was wrong."

An investigator, whose room was almost completely filled with digital cameras, walked over and nodded in agreement, saying, "That's right! That gossipy old woman definitely knew! But she confessed so much at the station, why would she keep it a secret from this secret room? There must be something else going on here!"

"That means there must be something in this case that we haven't figured out! Since we haven't figured it out, how can we say that this case will be without any further developments?"

Wu Dapeng glared at the policeman surnamed Sun.

The man was speechless and couldn't say a word for a moment.

"Where's Mimi?"

After a long and arduous search, including a trip to the room that had almost caused her a major incident, Li Siyu turned around and found that Lin Ge was gone.

"He's still inside!"

The on-site inspector, looking at the photos in the camera, pointed to the sewer.

Li Siyu nodded her thanks, dodged a policeman who crawled out from below, and went down into the drainage ditch herself, bending down to look inside.

The drainage ditch was pitch black, making it difficult to see anything and even somewhat eerie. Li Siyu crouched down and crawled into the secret room, only to find it had been almost completely searched. Even the floor had been scraped clean, ruling out the possibility of hidden evidence. Furthermore, almost everything that could be taken had been moved out, leaving only a bare room that looked even more unsettling. And Mimi wasn't in the room; only two policemen were still banging on the walls.

Li Siyu was stunned for a moment. Wasn't it said that Mimi was inside?
"Mimi?"

Li Siyu called out twice, but received no response. She crawled out of the secret room and searched other parts of the Jingyue Nunnery, but still could not find Lin Ge.

Immediately, not only Li Siyu, but also the other police officers at the scene became tense.

Police cats have vanished into thin air?

This is no small thing!
Damn it! Is there going to be another unexpected turn of events in this case?
"Ow~"

Fortunately, at that moment, Lin Ge's warning shout suddenly came from the third floor of the main hall.

How did it get there?

The on-site investigator holding the camera paused for a moment.

Just now, when I was taking pictures, this cat was still wandering around in the escape room. How come it teleported so far away as soon as I climbed out first?
"You came down the drainage ditch, didn't you?"

Wu Dapeng had guessed the possibility. Seeing that Mimi was still barking incessantly on the rooftop, he quickly led his men up there.

The group quickly ascended the wooden staircase to the third floor from the side room on the right side of the main hall, only to be astonished to find Mimi somehow climbing onto the roof beam. It was scratching at something between the pillar and the beam with its claws, sending wood chips flying with its powerful effort. Then, as the cat tore through a wooden plank, the group watched incredulously as Mimi pulled a skull from the gap that shouldn't have been there, hooking its claws around the eyeholes and lifting it high.

It was a very small skull, looking like one of those plaster casts doctors use. But for the police... it was still easy to tell the difference between real and fake, especially the uneven discoloration on the surface of the bone.

"The skull... was hidden in a place like that? Why?"

Wu Dapeng squinted.

There were no ladders at the scene, so several policemen formed a human ladder, allowing the young policeman surnamed Sun to climb up by stepping on his shoulders and take the skull from Lin Ge.

After handing the skull to the policeman below, Xiao Sun did not go down but instead climbed up the crossbeam with his hands.

The beam was covered in a thick layer of dust, instantly making a mess of his gloves. He crouched on the beam, head down, and took a flashlight from his chest pocket to examine the area where the skull was stored. He found it was just a gap between pieces of wood, containing nothing but sawdust and wood chips. Besides the marks he had made and cat paw prints, there were no other signs of anyone else having been there recently, and the dust was evenly distributed.

"Little Sun, have you found anything?"

Wu Dapeng asked anxiously from below.

However, before Xiao Sun could answer Wu Dapeng's question, he was stunned to see Lin Ge place the skull next to him, climb onto him, jump off his shoulder, stand firmly on the beam, and walk straight to the other end of the beam on the opposite side.

"No way?"

All the police officers were stunned for a moment, and suddenly had a bad feeling.

"What a terrible thing!"

Lin Ge squinted, his face expressionless. In the dim light, his pupils appeared even rounder, making his eyes seem exaggeratedly large.

From the moment he discovered the skull was missing from the corpse, he searched frantically throughout the Jingyue Nunnery, but to no avail. It wasn't until he went to the room next to Aunt Ba's bedroom and saw the blank wall behind the missing six-armed ghost painting that Lin Ge began to suspect a possibility. Aunt Ba, as the only female Taoist priest in the Jingyue Nunnery, had devoted herself to worshipping the ghost painting in hopes of bringing her son back to life, perhaps even hoping he would gain wisdom. Could she really only be secretly worshipping it here?

Lin Ge didn't believe that the gossipy old woman would place all her hopes on Guan Er, who clearly didn't care about her son. However, the police had already searched the entire Jingyue Nunnery once, and would likely search it a second and third time, even bringing in more specialized equipment for a more detailed investigation, but they hadn't found any relevant clues. In short, the murder and body disposal ritual was performed by Guan Er and the fat man. Could it be that the gossipy old woman was really just quietly burning incense, uninvolved?
From the very beginning, Lin Ge felt that there was something wrong with this.

Then the skull disappeared.

To put it bluntly, skulls have been used as tools for sacrifices or similar purposes since ancient times, even as drinking vessels. Therefore, Lin Ge suspected the gossipy old woman and began searching in narrow spaces.

Finally... Lin Ge found the top of the roof beam, a place that ordinary people wouldn't go up to, where they wouldn't see anything unusual at a glance, and where they wouldn't search in great detail.

When he arrived at the place where the skull was hidden, Lin Ge noticed something unusual as soon as he stepped on it.

Sure enough, with a hard dig, they found that what they were standing on was just a piece of wood of the same color.

The skull is inside.

So... how many skulls are there among these roof beams overhead?
After a group of police officers, realizing what had happened, climbed up the structure and pried it open with force, the five skulls found in the empty spaces at the ends of the remaining beams were also located and removed.

Six pale, tiny skulls were placed on three intersecting horizontal and vertical beams on the roof, forming a standard hexagon.

In the center of the hexagon is the statue of a deity on the first floor.

Everyone who comes to Jingyue Temple burns incense and kneels in prayer before the statue, thus fulfilling the needs of the gossipy old woman.

In superstitious or mystical terms, this is called the transfer of the power of incense offerings or the power of wishes.

The gossipy woman's goal was to get every worshipper to help her sacrifice to the six-armed demon. She was even suspected of killing Ying'er!

"What...what a joke!"

All the police officers gritted their teeth, and Li Siyu even ran out to vomit several times, covering her mouth. What's more cruel than murder in this world is killing innocent children, especially newborns who are the purest of beings, untouched by any cause or sin.

The child hasn't opened his eyes yet, hasn't seen this world that may not be beautiful to him!
result……

Guan Er and his wife, the Eighth Aunt, were capable of such cruelty.

The news reached the city police station, causing another sensation! The number of victims had increased from fifteen to twenty-one, a serious matter that had been somewhat anticipated. But the fact that the killer even targeted newborn children caught everyone completely off guard.

The municipal bureau urgently dispatched personnel to interrogate Guan Er and Ba Pogu again, and even intended to apply to higher authorities for disciplinary measures, but unfortunately, Liu Yuan rejected this.

But it didn't come to that much trouble after all.

The secret chamber was found, and the six ritual skulls were also discovered, shattering the last vestiges of hope that the gossipy woman had been clinging to. She finally stopped resisting the interrogation and confessed to everything she had done the next day.

Just as Lin Ge and the investigating police had guessed, the act of placing the skull was done by the gossipy old woman herself. Even the skull of Ying'er that she 'used' was unrelated to the one in the secret room; it was one of the six baby girls she had given birth to and who had been abandoned by Guan Er.

In other words, the actual number of victims was twenty-two, six of whom were the biological daughters of Ba Pogu and Guan Er.

This news... was shocking, leaving everyone stunned.

The fact that the gossipy woman washed her daughter's skull, placed it on the roof of the main building, and worshipped evil spirits was a serious shock to everyone's values.

How could it be possible to do that?

Superstition is not scary! Societal preference for sons is not scary either!
However, the combination of these two factors, leading to such an inhumane act, makes one wonder if this woman is even human.

Even if a biological son has a son, or even if he is mentally challenged and congenitally castrated, the gossipy women will still treat him like a treasure and try every possible way to bring him back to life so that he can have a better future.

And the six daughters... were killed right after birth... their bodies were to be...

This is simply incomprehensible!

Upon hearing this news, the police officers felt their scalps tingle and looked at the gossipy woman as if she were a demon.

However, this evil spirit spoke with great conviction.

The gossipy woman stated that the practice of hiding skulls on the roof of the main building to perform rituals and worship evil spirits was not actually her invention.

This matter indeed involved a murder and body disposal incident from twenty years ago, and the perpetrator was indeed someone else.

According to the gossipy old woman, the person who came up with this set of 'rituals' was her master, who was also the previous abbot of Jingyue Temple.

Back then, the preference for sons over daughters was extremely severe in the area surrounding Baiyan City. Many baby girls were abandoned, sold, or dumped in orphanages. Ba Po Gu was one such abandoned baby girl, picked up by the previous abbot, and to this day, she still doesn't know who her biological parents are. The previous abbot took her in and raised her as his own daughter for only one reason: to disguise Ba Po Gu as his own son, deceiving the ignorant masses to prove that Jingyue Temple truly possessed the magic to help infertile women conceive! Because as a female abbot without a husband, her ability to give birth to a child out of thin air, especially a son, wasn't that miraculous enough?

“I was raised as a boy from a young age until the serial murder case you mentioned came to light. My master fled and never came back.”

The gossipy woman, dressed in a blue prison uniform and handcuffed, looked like she was in her seventies or eighties, even though she was only in her fifties. Her hair had been forcibly cut short, making her look extremely thin, and her complexion was sallow.

She looked quietly at the policeman opposite her and said softly, "I've never been to school and I don't know many words. But by following what my master taught me, I still managed to convince those people. After the police discovered the case, the perpetrator who had fled came looking for my master. I told him that the ritual couldn't be done in one go; it needed to have a beginning and an end. It started with a sacrifice, followed by five years of sincere prayer, and then another sacrifice to end it, and his wish would be fulfilled. At the time, I was just thinking of delaying it for five years, hoping he wouldn't come looking for me then. But not long after, Guan Er, who had killed his father-in-law and uncle and fled to the mountains, discovered that I was disguised as a man. He raped me that night and got me pregnant..."

At this point, the gossipy woman paused for a moment and said, "When the child was still young, I only knew that he was a little stupid, but he was fine in other aspects, so I didn't think much of it. Then, that person waited for five years and killed someone again. Not long after, he came to Jingyue Nunnery, where I asked Guan Er to kill him."

"The murderer...was killed by Guan Er?"

The interrogator and the recorder were both stunned for a moment, then looked up at the gossipy old woman.

"killed."

The gossipy woman nodded without hesitation. “The body was buried in the woods, but I’ve forgotten the exact location. Because he killed someone and came here secretly, nobody knew about his relationship with Jingyue Nunnery, so it hasn’t been discovered until now. Then five years passed, and my son’s condition worsened. I was the one supporting Guan Er, but I couldn’t do anything about it. I took him to several hospitals, but nothing worked. So I had no choice but to try anything, looking for solutions from what my master taught me. Hehe… I found the Six-Armed Ghost King picture that my master had hidden. He used it to get that person to commit a murder sacrifice. I had no other choice but to pray to the Ghost King for help…”

"In other words, you came up with the lies to deceive that person, but in the end you believed them yourself, and then continued to perform the ritual of sacrificing to the ghosts once every five years, making Guan Er and your growing son help you kill people?"

The recorder, who had been writing rapidly, couldn't help but speak up.

"I'm not lying. The Ghost King's diagram shows one finger pointing to the sky and five hands collecting offerings, so of course it needs five offerings to be effective. I only lied to him about the five-year timeframe, which made me have to wait five years to continue the ritual. The method itself is definitely not wrong!"

The gossipy woman couldn't help but retort.

Seeing that the two people opposite her were looking at her, the gossipy woman explained earnestly, "At the time, I thought that as long as I gathered two more offerings, it would be enough, but who would have thought that Guan Er was useless and only killed one person, so the number was still not enough. Then, my son was found to be congenitally castrated, and I was unable to have a second son, so Guan Er's attitude towards me changed. Although he still helped me with my son's affairs because he wanted my money, he no longer listened to me and started doing all sorts of bad things."

At this point, the gossipy woman sneered, "After all, he's killed people. Guan Er's audacity grew, and he became fearless. He's capable of anything—imprisonment, murder, forcing women to bear his son. The more people he kills, the more unscrupulous he becomes, and that's how he turned out. It's only because he still needs me to earn money for his expenses, and because I can bear children, that he hasn't killed me and my son. Otherwise, I reckon we would have long been a thorn in his side. As for that person in the secret room you mentioned, she was exceptionally beautiful and younger than me. Guan Er kept her there for over a year. In the end, she was useless and gave birth to a daughter! Guan Er was furious and drowned the child. The woman collapsed on the spot and was killed by Guan Er as well. Heh... What's the use of being beautiful? I took that child's head out, smashed it, ground it into powder, and sprinkled it into the incense burner, so she wouldn't dare steal my man, so her bastard wouldn't dare steal my son's things!"

The gossipy woman's expression was ferocious, like a demon, and her clenched teeth sent chills down the spines of everyone in the interrogation room and the monitoring room.

This woman... she's gone mad!

Everyone couldn't help but sigh.

(End of this chapter)