Chapter 307 - 170: Skills Passed Down Through Generations (Part 2)
The autumn executions passed quite quickly, and in the blink of an eye, the busiest period at the Vegetable Market was over. After that, the daily number of corpses Xu Qing performed salvation rituals for gradually decreased from a high of two hundred down to fifty.
By mid-September, the chief officer in charge of overseeing the executions, Lu Zhizhou, had left Linhe, leaving only Li Tongpan and County Captain Dong to manage the execution platform.
During this time, Xu Qing happened to meet an old acquaintance.
To be precise, it was an old acquaintance who had just been beheaded.
Do you all remember, several months ago, Mr. Xu was out doing part-time work and took on corpse collector duties. Near the Reed Marsh, he discovered an upside-down corpse.
Xu Qing had seen the spinning lantern of the corpse, and the deceased was named Zheng Deli, who, before his death, had been strangled by two water bandits and thrown into the river on the Baijiang.
Zheng Deli feigned death to escape, drifting along with the currents, ultimately surviving a catastrophe, only to meet his end at the hands of the Water Tiger, strangled by weeds near the Reed Marsh, becoming the upside-down corpse.
Those two water bandits weren’t bandits on the surface; they were boatmen disguised as helmsmen.
After throwing Zheng Deli into the water, the old helmsman and his assistant opened his bags, only to find that inside were just stones.
Many people had seen Zheng Deli boarding the boat, and the two, fearing exposure, went to the Corpse Recovery Team, claiming Zheng Deli had fallen into the river due to a mishap while relieving himself and was missing.
Xu Qing was intolerant of the two’s behavior and, with thoughts of aiding Senior Brother Wang’s forensic achievements, took Zheng Deli’s corpse to the Government Office forensics room, attributing the Water Tiger’s killing of Zheng Deli to the helmsman and his assistant, Yuan Hu.
Wang Lingyuan, upon examining the corpse, discovered the deceased was indeed strangled, and reported the case to the Government Office.