She raised the oil lamp and shined it on the road ahead. She saw that the rock cave was deep and bottomless, and only the whining draft was blowing.
It's dark and cold.
"I don't know where this road leads." Xiao Lingyue murmured, "These bandits are serious enough in what they do!"
Digging a secret tunnel in the deep mountains is undoubtedly a hard job.
Without the help of machines or gunpowder, every inch of road must be dug manually, which is much more difficult than building roads and bridges.
And it's still underground, so there's a risk of suffocation due to lack of oxygen if you're not careful.
Xiao Lingyue couldn't help but think to herself - how big the temptation of profit would be to make these bandits go to all the trouble and risk their lives to do such a thing?
"I'm afraid the people who dug this secret passage are not bandits at all!" Zhan Bei said coldly.
"Why do you say that?" Xiao Lingyue was stunned.
"Come and take a look." Zhan Beihan raised the oil lamp in his hand and shined it to the other side.
The naturally formed rock cave is not a straight path.
Affected by the mountain terrain and other factors, the deeper you go into the cave, the more twists and turns it becomes, with various protruding rocks, many blind corners and forks, and shadows that cannot be illuminated by light everywhere.
It is called a natural maze.
If people hadn't walked around this secret passage frequently and left obvious traces, the two of them might have gotten lost in the cave.
Xiao Lingyue stepped forward, looked in the direction of the oil lamp in Zhan Beihan's hand, and suddenly took a breath of air!
"hiss......"
The dim yellow oil lamp was scattered, and the fire light flickered, illuminating the narrow stone crevice on the side of the road.
As soon as the firelight shone in, Xiao Lingyue saw a dense white scene.
It’s human bones!
The corpse had obviously been abandoned for a long time. The skin and flesh had long since disappeared, leaving only broken bones.
Some were even crushed under the rocks, and a few incomplete skulls were stuck in the cracks of the rocks. As soon as the firelight shone through, some small centipede-like insects crawled out from the black eye sockets of the skulls and disappeared quickly.
Xiao Lingyue looked ugly: "These bones, could they be..."
Those people who were taken captive into the mountains and disappeared without a trace?
"You know medical skills, how long does it take for a corpse to turn into bones?" Zhan Beihan suddenly asked.
Xiao Lingyue was startled and said in a low voice: "This depends on different circumstances. The speed at which a body turns into bones is different if it is buried in the soil, exposed to the air, or in a cold and humid place."
"Among them, the decay rate when buried in the soil is generally about two months, and when exposed to the air, it is almost a month. However, if it is in a cold and humid place and is disturbed by the environment, the decay rate ranges from three months to several years.
Wait, some even stay rotten all year round.”
She looked at the surrounding rock environment and said solemnly: "There are rocks everywhere here, it is ventilated and dry, and there are not many scavenging insects. It will take more than half a year for the corpse to be completely turned into bones."
Medical knowledge is similar in many aspects. Many forensic doctors are directly transferred from surgeons.
Therefore, Xiao Lingyue is no stranger to this.
"These bones are already yellow and brittle, and are incomplete. Preliminary estimates suggest that these people must have died here for several years."
Zhan Beihan narrowed his eyes slightly and said, "Hulangshan's behavior changed almost a few years ago."
"You mean, these bones may be the first batch of victims?" Xiao Lingyue suddenly said, "The bandits took them up the mountain to dig a secret passage, and after they died, they were thrown into the crevices of the rocks?"
Zhan Beihan: "Yeah." Popular 『』 This chapter has been completed!