Princess Fuyao

Chapter 46
Huang He didn't know that the prisoners here were not Fuyao's captives. When he saw General Guo, his guilt and self-blame made Fuyao feel very pity when he saw it.

There were still outsiders, and General Guo's face was very serious. He didn't reprimand or comfort him, and only ordered in a low voice: "Take us to the prison cell."

General Guo saw that the door of the prison cell was in good condition, and when he entered the room, he looked up. He thought that someone had lifted the tiles and sawed off the wooden rafters to come in, but he was very disappointed in the result.

As soon as Fuyao entered the door, he knew that this inference was not true. The room smelled of corruption caused by long-term poor ventilation. It was gloomy. If there was a leak in the roof, it would definitely not smell so bad.

On the north side of the house, there is a large kang built. This is probably the difference between the Dali Temple Prison and the Criminal Ministry Prison. After all, most of the prisoners here are officials, and some of them may be rehabilitated and released from prison.

The big kang was not built from the east wall to the west wall as shown in movies and TV shows, but on the east side, leaving a gap of about three feet.

The dead prisoner was still lying there, his face was not so scary because of the nipples of the middle-aged scribe killer, but the marks of the collapsed mouth and nose could still be seen, no wonder the doctor would make an assertion without hesitation .

General Guo ordered Huang He to guard the door, leaving only Fuyao in the room to watch her carefully remove the body, then cover the head of the dead body with a large sheet of white paper, and put the clothes of the condemned prisoner on top to cover it. Only then did Huang He come in and told him to monitor closely and send the body to the incarceration field to be burned.

The secret cell of Dali Temple sometimes detains criminal officials, and some of these people will be reused, so the conditions are better than those of the death row of the Ministry of Punishment.

Fuyao looked around, the room was fairly clean, the floor was empty, a straw curtain was spread on the kang, and an old quilt was piled up randomly on it, everything seemed so natural, without a single flaw, the murderer seemed to come and go without a trace The invisible devil.

Did the scream last night not wake up the dead prisoner, or was he already dead at that time?Why do you lie obediently on the kang and let others cover it?Or was the murderer's martial arts so high that he simply didn't have the strength to resist?
In order to find out if there was something wrong with the secret prison of Dali Temple, General Guo did nothing but install Huang He and Cheng Kerang. This morning, rumors of ghosts killing people have been spread among the jailers.All of a sudden, people in the secret prison were panicked, and General Guo pretended to be a jailer to check, but no one was surprised that he was strange.

Fuyao would not believe that ghosts could kill even if she traveled through time once. She stared at the wall behind the kang, and the more she looked at it, the more she felt something was wrong, so she stretched out her hand to touch it. There was a lot of black dust on her hand. She used another With one hand, I wiped it on the other walls, and put my hands together for comparison.

General Guo looked at Fuyao's two small black hands strangely: "Is there something wrong?"

"Yes, this wall seems to have been smoked." General Guo then took a closer look at Fuyao's hands. Although they were all dusty, the color was indeed a little different.

The kang in Dali Temple is solid and cannot be burned at all. How could there be traces of smoke in the house?Someone smoked the walls?Why do you want to do this?
Fuyao and General Guo looked at each other, their expressions were very solemn, could it be that someone is doing something to this wall?
At this moment, Lord Hong, the Minister of Dali Temple, came. Even if he lent the secret prison to General Guo, he had to come to check if something happened.

General Guo motioned Master Hong to retreat to the left and right. After a person came in, he said in a low voice: "Try to keep it secret, tear down this wall."

Hong Minghua is already in his sixties, with a gray beard and wrinkled face, with only one pair of eyes shining under his thick eyebrows. He didn't ask any more questions, and after a little thought, he turned around and went out. After an hour passed, he actually dressed up as a master and left. Come in: "You can start now, don't talk about tearing down a wall, even if you tear down a house, no one will see it."

Fuyao glanced at the old man appreciatively, he was so clever and exquisite, no wonder the emperor relied so much on him, he was wearing official robes, if he stayed here for too long, it would inevitably arouse the speculation of interested people, fearing that he would find out something was wrong here.If, as Fuyao suspected, the wall was tampered with, then the opponent must be very sensitive to these issues.

Hong Minghua was well-prepared. Even the hoe was rolled up in a mat and brought in in grass. Many prisoners in the prison slept on hay. Sometimes they bribed the guards to bring some hay. Even if the superiors knew about it, they would not say What, the outsiders have long been no surprise.

Huang He and Cheng Kerang had completed their mission and had returned. At this moment, they covered their mouths and noses with handkerchiefs, and began to demolish the wall. When the outer layer of mud with wheat straw was dug off to reveal the adobe inside, Fuyao was It is concluded that there must be a problem here. The Dali Temple Prison was built in the early days of the founding of the Great Yong Dynasty. The walls here are all made of bricks and stones. , It was made by smashing porcelain with a stone pestle, and the adobe wall was filled with loess in a wooden box to smash out pieces of cuboids. After drying, they were then built with yellow mud.

The dense prison of Dali Temple is surrounded by stone walls on all sides. Most of the people inside are literati who have been studying for a lifetime. Even if there is no wall, they can't escape, let alone an earthen wall.

Prison robbery is almost impossible under the guard posts on all sides. No one thinks of rebuilding this place after the country has money.

Although the dry base and the adobe wall are made of loess, the structure is very different. Not to mention Fuyao, even a rough man like Cheng Kerang let out a "huh" in surprise in the dust.

A hole was opened in the wall, revealing a narrow wall that could only allow one person to stand sideways. Cheng Kerang let out a low cry again. There was a water tank in the prison yard. After pouring some water, he splashed it into the house with his hands, letting the flying dust inside settle down a bit, and then General Guo and Lord Hong came in to have a look.

The faces of both of them were very dignified.

Mr. Hong has served as Minister of Dali Temple for so many years. On the one hand, he is suspected of being a wall, and on the other hand, he is also responsible for negligence of duty due to unclear investigation, and his face is even more ugly.

Yellow Crane thought the dust was too heavy, so he stopped digging with a hoe, but used his arms to dismantle the adobe piece by piece. This time, it was his turn to scream: "General, there is a dead man!"

In the middle of the wall, a hole five feet wide and one person high was dismantled. An erected adobe separated the wall into a closet. Human skeleton.

General Guo glanced at it and motioned to Huang He: "Be careful not to collapse it."

Master Hong's face became even more ugly. If he wanted to prove his innocence, he had to work with General Guo to find out the identity or time of death of the dead man.

It's a pity that in this era, there are no tools to determine the time of death, and it can only be determined by Wu Zuo's experience, which is very unfavorable to Mr. Hong.

Huang He was careful, lest he make too much of a move and let that dry bone fall down.Fuyao lightly sprinkled water on the wall, trying to keep the room from being filled with dust.

The skeleton slowly revealed its original appearance. He was strangled to death, and there were obvious marks on his neck.The man had been injured before, a broken arm, a broken rib in his chest, and a broken left leg.

Huang He took away the adobe in front of his feet, revealing a few pieces of broken clothes on the ground, Fuyao took out the handkerchief, and carefully picked up "his" relics one by one.

Finally, in the dust, Fuyao detected a wrench that was covered with rust, but it was still made of brass.

General Guo suddenly walked over quickly, took out a handkerchief and vigorously wiped off the copper rust on the finger.

On the finger, with very delicate and smooth lines, there is a pattern of a man with a bow and an arrow.

"He's from Northern Xinjiang?" The archers in Northern Xinjiang worship Houyi and hope that they can also shoot the sun. During festivals, many people worship this totem, so Fuyao knows it.

General Guo didn't answer, but continued to rub the finger vigorously, his serious expression remained the same, but the circles of his eyes gradually turned red. He obviously tried his best to endure, but the sadness in his heart still couldn't help showing out.

The deceased was actually known to him, and he should have a good relationship!The people in the room looked at each other, and Cheng Kerang, who had a rough temper, held his breath.

On the thumb, under Hou Yi's feet, lies a puppy. This pattern was obviously added later, and the lines are naive and shallow, and some lines are so worn that they can't be seen clearly.

General Guo stopped his hands and murmured: "Xiang Ming, my good brother, you died so unjustly!" A big tear rolled down his face and dripped on the wrench in his hand.

After a while, Master Hong came over and pulled General Guo's hand: "My condolences to the general, we should discuss it carefully and think about which villain is it that did such a disastrous thing."

Since General Guo knew the deceased, the date of his death could definitely be guessed. Hong Minghua had already guessed the relationship between the deceased and General Guo. At this moment, his face was full of grief and indignation, but his expression of anxiety was gone.

He certainly did not kill the deceased, and the time of death should not have been within his tenure.

Men don't shed tears lightly, not to mention that General Guo is the great general who led thousands of troops to fight against the Tartars on the battlefield!He took a deep breath, controlled his emotions, and then turned his head to Mr. Hong and said, "Is there a coffin for Xiang Ming to bury first?"

"you sure?"

"Yeah!" General Guo nodded, pointing to the wound on the arm of the skeleton, "It was broken by the barrel of a gun. The arrow wound on the leg, you see, it didn't last long, and the finger pull, Xiang Ming is a dog , I am a monkey, and Yuliang engraved our zodiac sign on the ring finger."

"Warriors from Northern Border?" Master Hong asked, seeing General Guo nodding, he said solemnly, "I will enter the palace with you in a while!" What he meant was that he would solve the case with General Guo.

Fuyao hadn't been in Beijing for a long time, and there were as many officials here as a cow's hair, but she still knew that it was too difficult for this Lord Hong to gain a reputation in ancient times, but it was also really easy.

It's easy to say because few officials understand criminal investigation. It's difficult to say that there is no knowledge system in this area. Mr. Hong was the number one scholar in the imperial examination, and he was blind to this aspect. He was relegated to the local area and became a seventh-rank county magistrate. Who would have thought that this man, who had worked in the local area for 15 years, would have developed superb criminal investigation skills, won the name of Qingtian, and was also promoted to a fifth-rank magistrate.When the new emperor came to the throne, he was promoted one after another, from the fifth rank to the third rank, and he sat in the position of Dali Temple Minister for ten years.

(End of this chapter)