The Famous Detective of the Red Mansion

Chapter 459: Tracing

During the day, the Gongde Forest in Fayuan Temple was solemn, especially the Buddha statue reliefs on the stele, each with a solemn and dignified appearance, showcasing a scene of Buddhist purity.

In the night, when he was in the midst of it, he could see the stone tablet, and he felt that there was only a little difference between the graveyard.

Especially from time to time, a few wild dog barks were coming from nowhere, and those with less courage might not dare to go deep into them.

Sun Shaozong's courage was unquestionable, so when he arrived at Fayuan Temple, to rush, he simply walked past the temple gate. He walked directly around the back of the temple without even picking a lantern and quickly entered the Gongde Forest.

Although it was difficult to discern the location in the darkness, Sun Shaozong easily found the scene of the murder by following the only light of the fire.

The several Yamen guards guarding this place were originally sitting around the campfire on the ground when they saw Sun Shaozong suddenly appear and hurriedly climb up to salute.

It was not easy to be on duty in the wilderness on this big night. Sun Shaozong had originally intended to encourage them with a few words to demonstrate his consistent people-oriented style, but as soon as he approached, he smelled a sour and foul smell of alcohol.

Obviously, these guys were just gathering around and secretly drinking alcohol.

He was so speechless that he didn't bother to waste any more time. He only gave a straightforward command and said, "Get me a torch.”

The Yamen officials knew they had violated the rules and were already timid, afraid that Sun Shaozong would blame them. Upon hearing that he had not pursued them, they immediately felt pardoned and competed with each other to grab a torch. They lit a torch made of bark and rosin and respectfully delivered it to Sun Shaozong.

Sun Shaozong took the torch and circled the scene to find the footprints he had stepped on during the day. Only then did he cautiously reach the location of Jie Nian's lying corpse and lean down to carefully examine the dog paw prints on the ground.

Previously, Sun Shaozong roughly inferred from the flower relief on the soles of Yuanyang’s shoes that the killer might have used a similar technique to carve the shape of a dog's paw on the soles of the shoes. After committing the crime, he drove the nearby wild dogs over and hid his footprints in a mixture of fish and eyes.

This technique, if there was only one dog paw on each sole, mixed with numerous messy dog paw prints, was naturally indistinguishable.

However, the claws of ordinary wild dogs were much smaller than the soles of human feet. If only one dog claw were carved, the killer would be like stepping on stilts, which was difficult to maintain balance. Moreover, on the wet and slippery ground after rain, the difficulty of committing the crime was simply outrageous.

And once a loophole was discovered by Jie Nian, he could be killed in minutes!

Even a fool wouldn't take this risk, let alone the murderer, who was still cautious.

Therefore, there should be at least two or more dog claws carved under the fierce hand and foot to better maintain balance and avoid losing the game in one fall.

However, in this way, every foot of the murderer stepping on the mud would leave equally spaced dog paw marks. If unintentional, it would still be difficult to distinguish. However, since Sun Shaozong had already penetrated the murderer's mechanism, it would be much easier to find it again.

However, even so, Sun Shaozong searched for more than a quarter of an hour before finally discovering three dog paw prints arranged in a pin-shaped and equidistant pattern!

“What a cunning guy...”

Looking at the dog's paw print, Sun Shaozong couldn't help but laugh and scold with anger and joy.

It turned out that the three dog paw prints were not only of different sizes but also had different orientations. At first glance, there was no discernible difference. If it weren't for Sun Shaozong's conclusion and repeated comparisons, it couldn’t have been true that they would have been fooled by them.

After laughing and cursing, Sun Shaozong straightened up and instructed the Yamen attendants who were watching from afar, "Leave two people here, and the others bring more torches and follow behind me.”

The Yamen attendants naturally didn’t dare to neglect, leaving behind two people with bad looks to guard here, while the others followed Sun Shaozong's footsteps, all the way along the pin-shaped dog paw prints, heading towards the mountains and forests to the north.

In the beginning, Sun Shaozong also had a lot of trouble finding it because the government officials destroyed many traces during their search.

But as they gradually moved away from the scene of the crime, the dog paw print lost its cover and had nowhere to hide.

At this moment, the Yamen attendants behind finally discovered something strange about the paw prints, and they were all inexplicably excited. If it weren't for Sun Shaozong's explanation, they would have rushed to the front eagerly.

And to the northeast corner of Gongde Forest, the dog paw print suddenly disappeared without a trace, replaced by the footprints of ordinary human shoes.

Obviously, after arriving here, the killer took off the shoes with dog claws carved on them.

Sun Shaozong's spirit was lifted, and he originally intended to immediately investigate and explore with the torch, but he almost burned his finger before realizing that the torch had already burned less than a foot long.

“Give me a new torch quickly.”

So he hurriedly asked the Yamen attendant behind him for an unused torch, lit it with an old one, and then searched the ground inch by inch.

Not long after, Sun Shaozong discovered some fresh sawdust among the footprints.

The murderer was indeed a cautious person, even splitting the dog paw print shoe into pieces before discarding it!

Rubbing the solid and heavy wood shavings, Sun Shaozong looked up at the dense jungle not far away and immediately dispelled the idea of searching for fragments and murder weapons. Not to mention whether they could be found with the ignited torch while going in. If he accidentally ignited a mountain fire, it was not for fun.

So he carefully put away the fragments and carefully searched nearby.

This time, it took him about two-quarters of an hour to discover two threads that had been stepped into the mud in the middle of a footprint.

These two thin threads were only about the thickness of the hair, slightly curved, and presented a dark yellow color. They were only half the length of a nail cap, but Sun Shaozong carefully squeezed them out of the mud and carefully examined them in front of him for a while; his expression was like he found a treasure and burst into laughter.

Unfortunately, the identity of the Yamen attendant around him was too low, and no one came up to ask, ”Why are you laughing?” This greatly reduced his surprise.

So after laughing a few times, Sun Shaozong raised his hand and said firmly, "Let's go; follow me to the temple to identify the real culprit.”

As the saying goes, ”cleverness is often mistaken by itself.” If the murderer didn’t set up a mechanism and attempted to link the death of Jie Nian with the demon and only discarded the murder weapon after killing, Sun Shaozong might not have been able to catch him.

But for now...

If Sun Shaozong's expectations were not bad, just a simple examination could reveal the true culprit!