There is a god in the sky

Chapter 254 Beauty Bones 14

Xiao Ji brought up the injured man lying on the bed, "Doesn't your Heavenly God Sect believe in reincarnation and retribution? Aren't you afraid of going to the eighteen levels of hell after death?"

"Cough cough..." Elder Tu coughed violently, his eyes rolled back, and the wound on his chest reopened.

Shen Lan did not stop her.

It's impossible for anyone not to be angry.

"Hehe... Followers of our Heavenly God Sect do not go to hell after death; we aim to attain immortality!"

"Bullshit!" Xiao Ji rarely swore, veins bulging on his forehead. "You rats from the gutter, how dare you attain immortality?"

He asked coldly, "What is the name of the cultivation technique you practice?"

"What? Is this gentleman also interested?"

Xiao Ji pressed hard on his wound, causing the other man to turn pale with pain.

"You can choose not to speak; it's just a matter of whether you die a little easier or a little more gruesome."

"Our divine skill is called the Creation Skill. It cultivates the creation of heaven and earth, the interaction of yin and yang, and draws on the spiritual energy of heaven and earth to replenish the spiritual body, thus achieving immortality!"

Xiao Ji never expected that anyone in the world would believe such an obvious lie.

Even though cults have been eradicated for over a decade, there are still people who persist in practicing this evil art.

"If that's really the case, then you must be a piece of trash abandoned by heaven and earth!"

Xiao Ji stood up and shook the blood off his hands.

Shen Lan handed him a handkerchief, and the two walked out together.

Once they were alone, Shen Lan said, "Is it possible that someone in the imperial court saw this cultivation manual and also wanted to achieve immortality?"

What a temptation those four words are!

It cannot be ruled out that some people become addicted to it.

"That's possible, but Tu Yingming clearly used women to practice his skills, so why would there be mummified corpses on the mountain?"

Shen Lan was also puzzled and guessed, "Could it be that everyone has a different understanding of the cultivation method?"

The speculation cannot be confirmed unless they obtain the manual first.

Another question is whether what General Qian used to make the trade was actually this.

When they reached the courtyard, all the remains had already been dug up.

No wonder Xiao Ji was angry; some of the corpses were covered with clothes, while others were rotting, and the smell was extremely unpleasant.

As for the upside-down corpse that Shen Lan had seen, it was laid flat on the ground and covered with a white cloth.

She walked over, squatted down, and lifted the white sheet to examine the deceased's face.

She had almost bled out of her body, and her body was already stiff.

The fatal wound was in her chest; an iron pipe had pierced her heart, and blood was flowing down the pipe.

"The time of death was probably five days ago. We can ask the pregnant woman who was caught which street she lured from, and maybe we can find her family as soon as possible."

"Officer Xing has already gone to inquire."

Just as Xiao Ji finished speaking, Constable Xing rushed over, holding a piece of paper in his hand.

"Sir, the woman has confessed that she has cheated five people in total, starting from last Mid-Autumn Festival. She met the last one on Gulou Street."

Officer Xing glanced down at the deceased. "Yes, it's her. She said this girl was buying vegetables on the street when the basket hit her stomach, and she tricked her into coming here."

Shen Lan took a pair of hairpins from the deceased's hair and handed them to Constable Xing. "Take these with you and go over there to ask if anyone has lost a girl. She's about fourteen years old, has a mole on the corner of her mouth, and is wearing a lake-green jacket."

"it is good."

Shen Lan found four other corpses and could tell roughly when they died by looking at their degree of decomposition.

"The fat guy and his gang have all confessed. They only came to Bianjing last year. They were originally street performers and rented a place next door."

They only started tricking girls into selling themselves to him after they met Tu Ying by chance. They said Tu Ying was generous with money, and could sell a girl for ten taels of silver.

That's much better than performing, but the fact that ten taels of silver can buy a life still makes people uncomfortable.

Recalling the case of Miss Li, who was killed by Ding Yousheng, when the government notified the Li family, the two elders of the Li family fainted on the spot.

The Li family has been searching for their daughter for many years, posting reward notices every year, but they have never been able to find her.

Now that they are old, they have learned that their daughter has been dead for many years, and their last hope has been shattered.

Moreover, Ding Yousheng is already dead, so the Li family can't even take revenge.

"If he killed five people in six months, then he couldn't have only killed fifteen people in the past ten years, right?"

But if so many young women are missing from the capital, why hasn't the government reacted?

Shen Lan couldn't understand.

The disappearance of young girls did not attract the attention of the authorities.

“Many families wouldn’t report a missing girl of this age to the authorities,” Xiao Ji said, shaking his head.

"Why?"

An official nearby answered for Xiao Ji, "Because even if we find him, he'll probably die. We can either send him to a nunnery to become a monk or sell him. It's better not to look for him at all."

Shen Lan felt a chill in her heart. That was her own child, how could she bear to treat him like this?

"Of course, there are different cases, like the Li family who persist in searching for their loved ones, but it is indeed very difficult for the government to find them."

Too many children are abducted every year, and very few are ever found.

Shen Lan continued the autopsy, while Xiao Ji ordered Tu Ying to be brought back to the yamen for questioning, to ask him all the questions he needed to before he died.

By the time Tu Ying was handed over to the Imperial City Guard, he was barely clinging to life.

Xiao Ji made another trip to the Jingzhao Prefecture and compiled a list of all the missing persons from the past ten years.

It's surprising to learn that thousands of people go missing in Bianjing (Kaifeng) every year.

This was just a report to the government, leaving a record.

He wrote a memorial overnight, imploring the emperor to issue an edict to search the entire city for human traffickers, and to punish them with the death penalty if they were found guilty, without any leniency!

In his memorial, he wrote: “Under the emperor’s very nose, with his majestic power, so many people still commit evil, treating the people whom the emperor cherishes as livestock to be bought and sold, and regarding human life as worthless. This is against the will of heaven and damages the emperor’s authority. I beseech the emperor to allow the Ministry of Justice to join forces with the Jingzhao Prefecture to search for and arrest human traffickers and to increase the punishments, so as to serve as a warning to others!”

The emperor did not pay much attention to it at first.

But when Commander Zhao handed over the dying Elder Tu, the emperor realized that the remnants of the cult had been surviving under his nose for more than a decade, and had even killed many people.

Thinking back to the political instability and decline of the royal family more than a decade ago, the root cause of it all was a cult.

He issued an edict to execute the remnants of the cult by slow slicing, and ordered Xiao Ji, the judge of the Ministry of Justice, to form an anti-trafficking team to eliminate all human traffickers in Bianjing City within three months.

Tu Ying was also very clever. Over the years, he had moved to many places and changed locations to commit crimes every now and then.

He killed countless women; he deserved to be executed by slow slicing.

The people initially thought it was just a problem with human traffickers.

Every year at the end of the year, every household would tell their children not to run around, lest they be kidnapped by child traffickers.

Who would have thought that the girls who went missing this year were all their eldest daughters who were about to get married.

Ordinary families would certainly assume that if their daughter was abducted, she must have been sold far away.

Whether they can find it or not is another matter; even if they do, they probably won't be able to bring it back.

Little did they expect that the official notice they received would be for them to identify the body.

When they went to the government office, all they found were human bones. Even if they were their own children, they wouldn't recognize them.

Moreover, the scene was so eerie, with rows of skeletons waiting to be claimed.

Even in broad daylight, the family members who came to identify the body were terrified.