Holy Bone

Chapter 1536: Fortune Coin Tree, the Veteran in Animal Husbandry Knows the Way

Jinan asked Li Dajin, the owner of Penglai Inn, to take him to the room where Li Yan lived.

Li Dajin was indeed very kind to Li Yan. He took good care of this young man who had lost his parents early and arranged a small room for him to live in.

The small room is not big, and one can see everything at a glance once one enters. There are only simple furnishings such as a bed, a table, and a wardrobe. However, in the spice shop in the capital, where every inch of land is valuable, being able to own such a small room is already the envy of many people.

After Li Dajin calmed down from his initial anger, he looked at Li Yan who had cleaned up his place and felt deeply touched: "Don't be afraid of being laughed at by you adults. I thought I was a good talent scout and found a good seedling, so I was willing to give all the good things to Li Yan. I am often proud of myself because I am a good talent scout..."

"I never thought that things would turn out so unpredictably..."

"Not only am I not a good mentor, I also pushed Li Yan into the fire pit. If I hadn't brought him to the capital, he would have lived a poor and hard life in the countryside, but at least his life would not be in danger..."

Li Dajin said self-deprecatingly.

The old Taoist priest patted Li Dajin on the shoulder and comforted him, "Everyone has his own destiny. You and I both have the sky above our heads. We are struggling among all living beings. How can we help others change their destiny? Just do your best."

Li Dajin was grateful: "Thank you for your comfort, Taoist priest."

Jinan looked around the room, raised his hand and grabbed at the air, a few bricks in the corner exploded, and an iron box flew over from the air.

  boom!

The iron box fell to the ground with a heavy, dull sound.

The iron lid was shaken open, revealing the neatly stacked copper coins inside. One string of copper coins was worth one tael of silver.

Except for the old Taoist priest and Fatty Li, everyone else in the room was surprised by Jin'an's foresight.

Only the old Taoist priest and Fatty Li knew that in addition to being a martial arts immortal, Jin'an was also a Shinto master. In the eyes of a Shinto master, he could easily see through the snakes, rats and ants in the underground.

An object as large as a metal box could not escape the search of Shinto masters.

"It seems that these copper coins are the money that Li Yan received in exchange for his life, and the stolen money he earned from helping people dispose of corpses." Fatty Li was about to count the stolen money here, but when his fat hand was about to touch the copper coins, he retracted it.

Fatty Li asked Jin An cautiously: "Master Jin An, if we touch these copper coins, will it become a sacrifice for our lives?"

The old Taoist priest interrupted, "That's not the case. This is the capital city, with many Taoist temples and monasteries, and countless Taoist masters. If copper coins with evil spirits were to circulate in the capital city, they would have been discovered long ago and the crime would have been exposed."

Fatty Li slapped his forehead and said, "It's true. Master Chen, you are still the most clear-headed person in the world."

After being praised by Fatty Li, the old Taoist priest immediately became very happy and started to exchange glances with Fatty Li.

After counting, there were a total of sixty-three strings of copper coins in the iron box, which is equivalent to sixty-three taels of silver.

"It's true that making money through illegal means can make money quickly. A servant in an inn can accumulate such a huge fortune in a short period of time, which is equivalent to the annual income of a ninth-rank clerk." Fatty Li curled his lips and complained.

The old Taoist priest also echoed, "These sixty-three taels of silver may not be enough to open a larger restaurant, but after returning to the countryside to open a small restaurant, as long as you don't spend excessively and know how to increase income and reduce expenditure, it will be enough to live a comfortable life for a few years."

"It can only be said that Li Yan is not destined to be noble. It can also be said that all the money he got from his windfall was in vain in the end."

It was unexpected that a servant could accumulate such a huge fortune in a short period of time, but no one would envy Li Yan's speed in making money.

This kind of money that is earned through illegal means will only shorten one's life and will not last for a year. No matter how much money you earn, it will be useless.

You have to have the life to earn it and the life to spend it.

Jin'an threw the copper coins on the ground like throwing away feces, and then let the old dog smell the smell on Li Yan's mattress first, and then smell the smell on the copper coins, to help him find out which copper coins have the same smell.

Jin An explained: "Having come into contact with the three people who dumped the body, you will have some of their scent on you. These copper coins have all passed through the hands of the three people who dumped the body. As long as you find the overlapping scent, you can find the three people who dumped the body."

Fatty Li shouted in surprise, "I understand. Taoist Jin'an wants to use the dog's nose to sniff out the hiding place of the three people who dumped the bodies."

I don't know.

Jin An shook his head.

"No."

"That's too slow, and it's easy to alert the enemy. It's too time-consuming. I plan to use the 'Searching for Objects' technique to capture him directly."

Jin'an's answer made the old Taoist priest, Fatty Li, Deputy Commander Sun and other brothers from the Criminal Investigation Department present all brighten up.

The brothers of the Criminal Investigation Department will never forget how Jin An used his magic to rescue his kidnapped colleagues from the Indians and Rakshasas that day.

When I heard that Jinan was going to perform miracles again, I immediately became envious and excited.

Fatty Li laughed excitedly: "As expected, following Taoist Jin An to solve cases, I can always be excited and encounter evil spirits, and it can also broaden my horizons."

Li Dajin was the only one in the room who was completely confused. However, he made out one thing: Fatty Li looked very strange. Who would like to be exposed to evil spirits?

While he was talking, Lao Gou had already picked out three copper coins with the strongest scent from a pile of copper coins and passed them to Jin'an's feet.

He held his head high and had a proud expression as if he was asking for credit.

Jin An stomped his foot on the ground, and the three copper coins flew high into the air. He shouted three times: "Long, long, long."

Three copper coins fell to the ground at the same time, all of them happened to fall on the vertical surface, and were firmly embedded in the gaps between the blue bricks. The next moment, the three copper coins were seen sprouting and growing.

From sprouting to seedling, then to a small tree as thick as a human arm, and finally to a thriving copper coin tree, it all happened in just three blinks of an eye.

The copper coin tree is lush and leafy, and its thick crown is hung with strings of copper coins. Those copper coins are shining yellow, flashing in front of the eyes, dazzling and fascinating.

Ding Ling clang——

The copper coin strings on the tree collide with each other, making crisp and pleasant sounds. These pleasant sounds seem to arouse certain desires in people's hearts.

"What a fortune-bringing copper coin tree!" Li Dajin's shocked exclamation brought the dazed crowd back to reality.

Looking at the coin tree hung with strings of copper coins, Jin'an had a moment as if he had returned to Chang County in his dream and saw the green willow tree that had been a scourge for thousands of years in Chang County.

Jin'an's eyes hardened and he cleared his mind of other distracting thoughts. He began to look back and forth among the copper coin strings on the tree, searching, and then picked off three human-shaped copper coin strings one by one and threw them on the ground.

As soon as the three strings of human-shaped copper coins fell to the ground, the bronze surface faded and turned into three bloody human-shaped corpses, with a foul odor.

At the same time, the three fortune-attracting copper coin trees in the house quickly collapsed like rotten wood. They rotted and disappeared in the blink of an eye. The copper coins were still copper coins. Nothing had changed. The three copper coins embedded in the gaps between the blue bricks were still standing intact in their original places.

Although it was not the first time that Jin An was seen performing the Taoist art of taking objects from a bag, the effect was different each time depending on the medium used to perform the art. Fatty Li and Deputy Commander Sun were still so shocked that they held their breath and were speechless the entire time.

Fatty Li and the others were all like this. Li Dajin, the owner of Penglai Inn, was even worse. His mouth was wide open and his face was filled with shock.

After recovering from the shock, I took a deep breath and said, Ugh!

Everyone in the room retched and ran out, scrambling to get out of the door, driven away by the stench of the corpse.

Only Jin An did not run away, and squatted down to carefully examine the body. The other members of the Criminal Investigation Department who stayed outside the house watched everyone rush out, curiously asking what happened and what happened, and wanted to get closer to see what was going on. As a result, before they even got close to the door, they were driven away by the stench that was worse than rotten eggs in summer.

"Where did the sudden stench of corpse come from in Li Yan's room?" These people covered their noses and fled, puzzled.

Not long after, the old Taoist priest, Fatty Li and others walked into Li Yan's house again. This time, these people humorously stuffed their noses and ears with yellow talisman paper.

And his cheeks were bulging. It was probably because the old Taoist priest took out his homemade detoxification pills from his Tai Chi Bagua bag and distributed them to everyone. They could detoxify corpses.

Jin An, who was originally frowning and solemnly examining the corpse, was also amused by these people's funny appearance: "You can just plug your nose to smell the stench of the corpse. Your ears can't smell anything. Can your ears smell the stench of the corpse?"

Because he had the detoxification pill in his mouth, Fatty Li spoke vaguely, "Master Chen said that the stench of a corpse is not just a smell, it is also a highly toxic miasma that blocks all seven orifices. Be careful that the detoxification pill fails to work and everyone in the room is killed."

Jinan glared at the old Taoist priest, and it immediately became clear that the old Taoist priest was deliberately playing a trick on him.

The old Taoist priest had experienced the effectiveness of his homemade detoxification pills when he first entered the martial world. They could detoxify the stench of a hundred-year-old corpse, let alone the rotten corpses of a few people who had just died.

Even the old dog's nostrils and ears were funny enough to be stuffed with yellow talisman paper. He followed everyone into the house cautiously and reservedly.

When the old Taoist priest and his men came closer and squatted down to examine the corpses like he did, they could see a strong smell of Sanyang liquor emanating from them. It was obvious that the yellow talisman papers stuffed in their noses and ears had been soaked in Sanyang liquor.

"what?"

"what?"

"this?"

"how so!"

When the few people saw the three severely decomposed corpses on the ground, they all gasped, their faces filled with horror and shock.

Judging from the body shapes and ages of the three people on the ground, they matched Li Yan's confession. They were the three people who dumped the body they were looking for.

The way these three people died was very strange.

The body was fresh and still had some body temperature, looking like it had just died. But it was completely black and smelled foul, which was a typical case of blood coagulation causing the skin to turn black a few days after death, and the body was already decaying.

The strange phenomena of the corpses did not end there. The three of them had stomachs as big as jars, thick and fat necks, and they kept picking their mouths with their hands before they died.

"There seems to be something in their mouths?" The old Taoist priest was very bold. He reached into the dead person's mouth and fiddled with it for a while. He actually took out a copper coin from the dead person's mouth.

"Huh?" The old Taoist priest exclaimed in surprise, and regardless of the stench, he checked the corpses one by one, and actually took out copper coins from the mouths of the corpses.

"They had money in their mouths and looked painful before they died. Could it be that they died from suffocation from swallowing the money?" Fatty Li was surprised.

"Just cut open their stomachs and you'll know." Jin An was quite efficient. As soon as he finished speaking, a knife flashed and he cut open the three men's stomachs, which were as big as jars.

Dang Dang Dang——

It was the sound of copper coins rolling to the ground.

However, the three men's stomachs were filled with copper coins, and their flesh and blood bodies were filled with blood-stained copper coins, which had overflowed to their throats. All their internal organs had disappeared.

The old Taoist frowned and said, "Thanks to our timely arrival and the timely rescue of Li Yan by our brother, otherwise Li Yan would have followed in their footsteps and suffered the backlash of human desires..."

"wrong!"

"There is still some warmth on their bodies, so they must have died not long ago. It was Li Yan who was responsible. The other party knew that we would track down these three people sooner or later, so they took the initiative to kill them and silenced them. We are one step too late!"

Fatty Li punched the ground and cursed unwillingly, "Master Jin'an knew that the other party might kill to silence him, and he used Taoist magic to snatch him away, but we are still a step too late!"

"Who is the other party? He has been committing crimes so rampantly in the capital and has been lying dormant for so long, yet we have never noticed him!"

Jin An suddenly stood up, grabbed Li Dajin, and walked out of the house vigorously: "Tell me, where is the carriage that Li Yan used to transport the Southeast Asian spices?"

He is racing against time with the opponent.

He caught a big fish this time, and he would never let it escape easily.

Li Dajin was so nervous that he stammered, "Commander-in-chief, are you looking for horses to pull the carriage?"

Seeing Jin An nodding with a bad look on his face, Li Dajin said with a stiff face, "To be honest, the horse just died yesterday..."

  Ok?

Jin An's eyes turned colder, with murderous intent in them.

Li Dajin was nervous and hurried to explain: "The horse had some strange disease recently. It refused to eat or drink for several days. It was so hungry that it was as thin as a stick. It just died suddenly yesterday."

"Every word I said is true. If you don't believe me, you can ask the government. Such a big horse carcass is not easy to handle. I'm afraid it will cause problems if I sell it to a butcher as horse meat. If I want to transport it out of the city and find a place to bury it, I need a pass from the government. The horse carcass is still in the stable and has not been transported out of the city for burial. The commander has a sharp eye and can tell whether my words are true or not by performing an autopsy on the horse carcass."

Li Dajin did not lie. The starved horse was found in the stable of Jin'an Zao Inn.

The cause of death of the horse is not complicated. It died of poisoning. Its tongue is black, its gums are ulcerated, and it has a foul odor from its mouth. If the possibility of human poisoning is ruled out, it should have accidentally eaten the poisonous grass at the place where the body was dumped, and finally died of the poison.

Because Li Yan mentioned a detail, in the past he always drove away alone after delivering the goods to the destination. But the coffin he delivered last time was too heavy, so he was called to help carry the coffin. During this period, the horse was tied in place and there was a high possibility that it would eat poisonous grass by mistake.

The area near the place where the corpse was dumped must be a cold, remote and dark place, and poisonous weeds prefer this kind of growth environment.

"You're lucky this time. Thank goodness you didn't sell it to the butcher for cheap. Otherwise, even if I demolished your Penglai Inn, I wouldn't be able to pay for it."

After Jin An examined the horse's corpse, he first said to Li Dajin, and then said to Fatty Li: "Fatty Li, go to the kitchen and get the butcher knife. I want the butcher to butcher the horse, and bring Li Yan with me."

Ah this?

Everyone present was stunned with shock. Like a butcher cutting up a horse, was he going to cut Li Yan... for surgery?

Fatty Li didn't ask why. He left in a hurry and came back in a hurry soon after, with a butcher knife in his hand.

Jin An is not the kind of inhumane murderer, and he certainly doesn't want to kill Li Yan, a living person.

With his superb knife skills, he peeled off a piece of horse skin perfectly, then ordered the irrelevant people to leave. Then, he put the horse skin, which was still attached with flesh and blood, on Li Yan.

  The first animal-making technique!

A living person, in full view of everyone, turned into a colt with all four legs lying on the ground. His body and spirit were one, and there was no detectable flaw.

"What are you doing, little brother?" Even the old Taoist priest couldn't figure out Jin An's intention at this time.

Jin An snorted coldly: "Whether it's a living person or a dead horse, I have dozens of ways to catch these evil spirits who like to hide their heads and show their tails!"

Snapped.

Jin An patted the colt that Li Yan had transformed into and ordered, "An old horse can still recognize the way. Even if you have become a foolish person without any intelligence, your instincts are still there. Take us to the place where the body was dumped and find the murderer. Atone for your sins and you will suffer less in the next visit to Yama Palace."