The Sweetness of the Seventies
Chapter 474 - 445 Found, Gone Mad_1

Chapter 474: Chapter 445 Found, Gone Mad_1

But now they didn’t have any solid evidence and couldn’t draw a conclusion yet.

Qi Ling smiled and said, "How could I not hear that there’s something off about Hu Sanchuan’s words? But right now, we don’t have any other evidence, and since he’s injured, we can’t exactly resort to torture to extract a confession."

"So what do we do now?" Xiao Chen asked. In this freezing weather, where could they possibly find a clue!

"No need to rush." Qi Ling said, "We’ll come back tomorrow. Let’s take another turn around the mountain today."

Qi Ling checked the cave once more. There were a lot of tools left behind by those people, all of them very complete. Without being pursued by outsiders, tomb robbers wouldn’t possibly leave such a complete set of tools behind.

After all, in times of scarce resources, assembling a toolkit like that wasn’t easy.

He then retraced the path He Jingyu and Village Chief Qi had mentioned, walking it back and forth twice.

But each time, the trail of those people seemed to vanish near Peach Orchard.

No matter what, Qi Ling couldn’t discover any more information because Snake King had already set a barrier around the cave. They simply couldn’t see it.

If the barrier had been lifted at that moment, there would surely have been many men’s footprints visible.

However, at that time, Snake King was cultivating and unaware of, and unconcerned with, what was happening outside. After all, anyone who intruded would die!

In the afternoon, Qi Ling visited Third Grandma Qi’s home again to inquire about some matters concerning He Jingyu.

He Jingyu repeated the same story as before.

Qi Ling was still clueless.

He Tiantian listened worriedly on the side, thinking how cunning Hu Sanchuan was.

"Big Brother Qi, that man can’t be allowed to leave. Can’t you have someone carry him up the mountain?" He Tiantian said, "This person is very suspicious!"

"Tiantian, what insights do you have?" Qi Ling asked.

"It’s actually pretty simple. There might be snakes in a pit during the summer, but now that it’s winter, snakes would have burrowed deep into the earth to hibernate. How could one get bitten by a venomous snake in a dug-out pit? Moreover, Hujia Village had a plentiful grain harvest this year. They could be well-fed without hunting. Hu Sanchuan’s family is well-off. Under normal circumstances, who would go hunting in the middle of the night?"

"It’s also possible that Hu Sanchuan unearthed a venomous snake while digging the pit himself," Xiao Chen said.

"Big Brother Xiao Chen, Hu Sanchuan is an experienced hunter. How could he fall into his own trap?" He Tiantian said, "But these are all my speculations. You need to investigate on your own; I won’t meddle further."

Qi Ling smiled and said, "Tiantian makes a lot of sense. Our breakthrough point is Hu Sanchuan. Tomorrow I will have someone carry Hu Sanchuan to the back mountain and have him repeat his story a few times."

Indeed, employing this method made Hu Sanchuan panic. He gave inconsistent statements multiple times on the trip up.

After taking Hu Sanchuan back home, his wife, upon seeing her injured husband still being hassled, cursed and complained loudly.

Two days later, Qi Ling, brimming with enthusiasm, came over with Xiao Chen and said to Hu Sanchuan, "Hu Sanchuan, I’m taking you there. I’ve already found one of those people. He says he knows you..."

"Impossible!" Hu Sanchuan said confidently.

"Why are you so sure?" Qi Ling asked back.

"I only watched them secretly; they don’t know me," Hu Sanchuan said, realizing in his heart that Boss and the others had all been killed by that creature. There wouldn’t be any survivors.

"We’ll know whether he knows you once we get there," Qi Ling signaled Xiao Chen with a glance.

Village Chief Hu had Hu Sanchuan carried away.

Fearing for her husband, Hu Sanchuan’s wife followed along.

Afterward, Qi Ling instructed Xiao Chen and Old Wu to search Hu Sanchuan’s home.

Because yesterday, while they were visiting Hujia Village, they saw Hu Sanchuan’s son holding a shiny small shovel, different from the ones used by farmers.

Having recently studied those tomb-robbing tools, Qi Ling immediately spotted the difference.

That’s why today they took Hu Sanchuan away and searched his house.

There’s no need to talk about a search warrant, transportation is inconvenient, and special circumstances require special measures.

At least when Qi Ling did anything, he paid attention to evidence and never resorted to torture.

After climbing over the wall into the house, Old Wu and Xiao Chen conducted their search but found nothing.

While searching Hu Sanchuan’s kang, they discovered a part that was newly repaired, so they pried it open and found a toolbox and a chest.

The toolbox contained various tomb-robbing instruments; the other chest was filled with half a box of silver coins and some gold and silver jewelry, a full chest.

Old Wu and Xiao Chen each took a chest and went directly to the Village Committee office in Hujia Village.

Qi Ling found someone from another village to pretend to be a tomb robber.

"Is it this person?" asked Qi Ling.

"Not Boss Lu." Hu Sanchuan’s mouth slipped, giving himself away.

"Boss Lu?" Qi Ling narrowed his eyes.

"I heard those people call a rather thin man Boss Lu," explained Hu Sanchuan, "This person is much taller than Boss Lu, so it’s not him."

Just then, Old Wu and Xiao Chen arrived.

When Hu Sanchuan saw the two chests, his body trembled and he fell to the ground from the stool.

"You must recognize these items, right?" Qi Ling said with a smile. It was a case of ’no need to break a sweat to get what comes without effort’, and it was all thanks to Hu Sanchuan’s son.

Hu Sanchuan nodded his head, then immediately shook it, stammering, "Don’t... don’t recognize..."

"We found them under the kang in your house, you don’t know?" said Old Wu, "Captain Qi, we can arrest him now. We suspect he’s in on it with that gang, got the goods, and was planning to turn on them and swallow everything."

Hu Sanchuan was sweating profusely, his face pale and ashen, this time he could not escape.

"I confess, I confess, I was forced by those people, ah... I had even hidden in the remote Hujia Village, but they still found me and made me take them to steal from the tombs on the back mountain," Hu Sanchuan said, "The situation that day was very strange..."

Hu Sanchuan admitted he was a tomb robber and even said he was coerced, but he firmly denied any killing.

However, since the circumstances of those people’s deaths he described were too bizarre, and they could not find them after going up the mountain, Qi Ling and the others did not believe him.

In desperation to find the cave where they had been that night, Hu Sanchuan couldn’t locate it, and in a state of acute anxiety, he actually went insane.

Whether he truly went insane required a formal medical assessment, so Qi Ling took Hu Sanchuan away.

Secretary Hu had no glory to show for it; in this village, there wasn’t only a murderer and promiscuity, but now also tomb robbing.

Who would have thought that this tiny village hid such ’crouching tigers and hidden dragons’!

Just thinking about the upcoming conference at the commune at the end of the year was sure to bring embarrassment, and Secretary Hu collapsed from frustration.

As for whether it was a real illness or feigned, nobody knew.