Chapter 34 Chapter Twenty-Eight

In the middle of the night, who would appear in the grove in costumes? How can a person be suspended in the air? How could it float over? With this series of questions, the village director held a flashlight, greeted several young and middle-aged villagers, and went to the small forest with Bao Zhan and Su Mei.Hualong received a call from Su Mei and drove there with a team of criminal police. The car lights illuminated the grove like daytime, and the criminal police launched a search, and soon found a body in the forest. A man hanged in a wood in a shroud. After being identified by the village director, the deceased was the old woman named Zhang Tian. She leaned on a cane, carried a stool, and brought a shroud and a roll of hemp rope. She came to this grove at night to hang herself.The old woman put on her shroud, which showed that she was determined to die. On-site inspection showed that she committed suicide.The way of hanging was very weird. To be precise, she was hanged on a clothesline.

Zhang Tian tied the hemp rope to two trees, which looked like a clothesline.She put on her shroud, tied the waistband of her trousers over the end of the clothesline, and stood on the stool with her head in the loop.After hanging herself, her body is blocked by branches, and the moonlight casts the shadow of her head onto the ground.Then, the wind blew the branches, and the old woman's body gradually slid from one end of the clothesline to the middle. Her hands were drooping, her head was tilted, and she floated past silently. The two sons of the village chief were in the woods. When they saw this scene by chance, they were terrified. They ran away without raising their pants. Su Mei and Bao Zhan happened to pass by. They heard the screams and stood motionless on the dirt road. , Both sides were taken aback.

The author of this article has collected all kinds of weird ways of hanging. If a person has the determination to die, sometimes he can be very creative.This final inspiration comes from Grim Reaper, just to end his own life. A bizarre murder case occurred in a community in Chengdu. What is frightening is that the body of the deceased was found on a tree in the community.The dead were a man and a woman, who were hanged face to face on a tree branch three or four stories above the ground. Some people speculated that they committed suicide and died in love. On the Longhai railway line, a wage earner was hanged at the junction of two carriages with a stick and a tie.The train with the dead body passed through many cities and was witnessed by many people. The accidental glimpse was preserved in memory as a horrifying scene.

In western Hunan, there was a peasant woman who hanged herself while lying down. Hanging herself in a lying position is very rare.She was strangled with wire and tied to the base of a corn thresher. There was also a wire tied to her ankle connected to a stone mortar.Lying on the ground, she kicked the mortar into the well with her foot, and strangled herself to death with the force of the falling stone. Although the old woman Zhang Tian committed suicide, something strange happened. The special case team guessed that she might know the hidden story of the serial disappearance of teenagers.

Bao Zhan said: In rural areas, it is not uncommon for some old people to make shrouds and prepare for their funeral. Su Mei said: The old woman is so old, why did she commit suicide? After living her whole life, why can she suddenly lose her mind? Hualong said: I think she may have eaten human flesh. Professor Liang said: If this is the case, the words of the village director may have stimulated her and reminded her of some painful memories. Bao Zhan said: Where did those missing teenagers go? Su Mei said: It wasn't kidnapping, it wasn't revenge, and it couldn't be trafficking. If they were all killed, what was the motive for the killing?

Hualong said: In addition to sexual motives, there is another kind. Professor Liang said: Cannibalism is also a motive for killing. The special case team decided to thoroughly investigate whether the Zhangtian family had eaten people. Early the next morning, the special case team came to Zhanghe Village. The village director summoned some old people and sat under the old willow tree at the entrance of the village. Due to the repulsive psychology, Professor Liang pretended to be a university teacher, claiming to write the county annals, and asked about the events of the year in the form of small talk.

In 1960, Zhang Tian was 27 years old and had two daughters, Da Ni was six years old and Xiao Ni was only one year old. At that time, it was the period of "three years of natural disasters". Several old people confirmed that Zhang Tian's Xiaoni died of starvation that year. Professor Liang asked: What natural disasters were there at that time, drought or flood? An old man recalled: No, the weather was good in those years, and there were no disasters here. Professor Liang said: Then why do people starve to death? The old people opened up their chatterboxes, talking endlessly about that not-too-distant era, when people starved to death in the village happened from time to time.In those few years, by the river and in the fields, there were many figures carrying baskets looking for each other.When the wild vegetables were gone, people began to eat grass roots and bark.According to the memories of some old people, elm leaves are the most delicious and sweet, and can be made into elm leaf steamed buns, and elm bark can be dried and ground into flour. There were many people fighting for peeling elm bark.Sophora japonica is also delicious, but the flowering period is short and not enough to eat.Poplar is unpalatable and bitter, and it can poison people to death if not handled properly.

Old man A patted the old willow tree with his hands and said: This tree was skinned and eaten at that time. Old man B said: I also ate soil. At that time, I was lying on the bed hungry, with only a piece of skin left on my stomach, I couldn’t open my eyes, and I bit my sleeves to pieces.I was very hungry, so I took a big clay pot and put some Guanyin soil into it, and ate it as fried noodles. The old man C pointed to a kind of crispy stone and said: I have eaten stone noodles. I smashed the stone, ground it into flour, stirred some leaves, and dried it on the pancake griddle. I can’t eat too much of this. Can't understand.

The old man Ding said: In those days, I was so hungry that I couldn’t stand it, and there were people eating people. I saw it with my own eyes... The old man knew that he had made a slip of the tongue, and some other old people also chose to remain silent on this topic and left one after another.Professor Liang left the old man behind. The old man was called Zhang Youmin. In 1960, he was still a five-year-old child in his sixtieth year. . The village director once heard from his old father about Zhang Tian's cannibalism, and Professor Liang came to visit. The old father of the village director told some appalling things in that era. In 1960, many people were so hungry that they ate people. As soon as the starved corpses were buried in the ground, some people dug up the graves at night and cut off the flesh of the dead.Some villagers, whose children starved to death, couldn't bear to eat their own children, so they exchanged them with their neighbors and exchanged children for food.Mrs. Zhang Tian and her neighbor Mr. Li just exchanged their own children to eat. Mrs. Zhang Tian’s Xiaoni died of starvation, and Mrs. Li’s youngest son also died of starvation. They discussed it and decided to let the other party help to bury it. In fact, they knew it well. In fact, exchanging burial is actually giving it to the other party to eat.At that time, the cadres of the brigade called the members for a meeting. Mrs. Zhang Tian had just boiled old man Li's young son in a pot. She broke a calf, put it in her arms, and went to the meeting.

The oil lamp was dim, and the cadres of the brigade were preaching the highest instruction, which was to read a piece of news about "a mu yield of ten thousand catties". In the sleeves, nibbling quietly. Everyone turned their heads when they smelled the aroma of the meat. Mrs. Zhang Tian was weeping silently while eating. This incident was widely circulated at the time, and it was well known to everyone. However, the cadres of the brigade were worried that the superiors would blame them, and warned the villagers that the cannibalism was a rumor, and no one was allowed to speak nonsense, otherwise it would be slandering the people's commune.

Many years have passed, people at that time chose to forget, but this painful memory has been kept in Zhang Tian's heart. Eventually, she hanged herself. On April 23, 1961, the Public Security Department of a certain province wrote a "Report on the Occurrence of Special Cases" (referring to human cannibalism) to the Provincial Party Committee. The report stated that "since 1959, a total of 1,289 cases occurred."There are more than a thousand cases of cannibalism in just one province. How many provinces are there in the whole country? Hualong, Bao Zhan, and Su Mei went to Old Man Li's house. This is a typical rural family. There are pigpens and dog kennels in the yard. There is still a portrait of Chairman Mao hanging in the main room. Cobwebs are all over the corners, and all the furniture is crumbling. , everything is so dilapidated.There is an incense burner on the Eight Immortals table in front of the portrait, and a porcelain tea mug with a handful of plastic flowers inserted in it. The words "serve the people" left on the tea mug are legible. The three of Hualong revealed their police identities and explained their purpose. The old man Li said that although he and Zhang Tian were neighbors separated by a wall, they never communicated and did not speak even when they met. Su Mei asked: "She died, did you hear?" The old man Li said: This old woman will die as soon as she dies, and it has nothing to do with me. Bao Zhan tentatively asked: Old uncle, did you have a young son who starved to death in 60 years? Old man Li's face was livid, and he didn't say a word. After a long time, he said: No. The atmosphere was a bit awkward. The TV at Old Man Li’s house was on, and it happened to be playing "The Legend of Zhen Huan". The queen mother in the TV series said: "This time, all you have lost is a child, and next time it will be yourself." The three of Hualong asked a few more questions, and the old man suddenly became furious, and drove the three of them out of the door. He picked up a basin of washing water, and wanted to pour curses on the three of Hualong. The old man Li gritted his teeth and said, "Gun Gun, you are the police. I am not afraid of the old man. If you dare to ask nonsense, I will fight with you. I have cerebral hemorrhage and heart disease. I will blackmail you to death." Hualong and the others hurried out. At this moment, Old Man Li's dog ran back. It put down a bone it was holding in its mouth, and started barking.As you can see, it is a tibia, and the flesh of the sole of the foot still remains at one end of Bai Sensen's bone.