Chapter 272 A Farce to Buy a Shop (1)_1
The woman’s sudden death in prison only added to the already baffling and enigmatic case.
Rumors spread among the people, with some saying the family had been claimed by malevolent spirits, others suggesting the family’s Feng Shui was at fault, and a few suspected that the family had been hiding something deadly...
In any case, this case became a topic of conversation for many, and wherever one went, there were mentions of it. Meanwhile, the residents who had lived nearby felt a creeping fear, with some unable to bear it and relocating their families, others inviting monks and priests to perform rituals, all in the hopes of securing peace at home.
Upon hearing this, Xiao Ruiyuan had an idea and dispatched a large number of people to conduct confidential inquiries into the households of ordinary citizens in Jing City. Should they discover any symptoms similar to the poisoning of that family of seven, they were to immediately investigate the cause and report back.
It wasn’t long before the dispatched individuals relayed messages back, reporting numerous instances of illness in residents’ homes that roughly matched the symptoms of the family of seven, albeit milder; shockingly, some families reported similar conditions in relatives who had recently passed away.
Xiao Ruiyuan took stock of this information, put it all together, and then had them look into the origins of these households’ grain supplies to determine if they had been regularly buying moldy grain from the grain shops.
Following this lead, the investigation ultimately implicated the moldy grain.
Despite having ample evidence that long-term consumption of moldy grain could lead to death by poisoning, now was still not the appropriate time to act.