Plotting with You: The Forensic Scientist in Ancient Times!-Chapter 228 - 227: Able-Bodied Men

Nine!

As soon as these words were spoken, not only was the rune shocked, but even the two government soldiers beside Prince Shuo were startled.

The people of Shuo Land have a simple and honest demeanor. Although they are somewhat rough and not strictly adhering to etiquette, they are not fierce.

In Shuo Land, there are seldom any vicious acts of violence or murder. Occasionally, there may be one or two incidents, which are dealt with impartially and punished severely to warn others not to imitate.

A single pit uncovered the remains of at least nine different people, a scenario neither of the government soldiers had ever encountered before—not even heard of it.

What on earth is happening, they felt chills down their spines.

And even more terrifying, the white bones in that pit haven’t been fully excavated. Who knows if the remaining bones belong to these nine individuals or if they’ll uncover new "members"!

At this point, Zhu Yu no longer suspected the possibility of accidentally uncovering a random gravesite, since no family would bury everyone packed together in a single pit.

After a while, the rune and the two government soldiers finally finished digging up all the white bones in the pit. To be on the safe side, the rune also dug around the surroundings a few times but found no new bones. Only then did the three of them breathe a slight sigh of relief and climb out of the pit.

The rune seemed quite calm; presumably, working with Lu Qing previously, he had encountered far more eye-opening incidents.

In contrast, the two government soldiers who came with Zhu Feng, who had never taken a life before—not even slaughtering a chicken—despite being skilled in martial arts without bloodstained hands. Now, pulling bones of the dead out one by one in the pit left them climbing out with cold sweat, their breathing somewhat ragged, evidently quite frightened.

However, fate seemed unkind to these two pitiful government soldiers, as they hadn’t yet recovered their composure when another shout erupted nearby.

This time, Zhu Yu and his team didn’t need to guess; apart from their hearts sinking and letting out a sigh, they had no other thoughts.

The expressions on the two government soldiers’ faces were as if mourning their parents, yet they couldn’t avoid it, reluctantly following the rune with trembling legs. Peeking over, they saw yet more eerie white bones dug out from the ground and could only resign themselves to help with the excavation.

This time differed slightly from earlier; the individuals digging the pit weren’t as cautious. A shovel went down directly cutting a bone into two.

Fortunately, the young man wielding the shovel was courageous; he wasn’t frightened but stood aside, scratching his head curiously, asking someone nearby, "Was this area some chaotic burial ground in the past? Why are we digging up so many bones?"

The commotion also attracted Zhu Feng, who had just returned from elsewhere. Approaching, he saw his two government soldiers digging human bones with the rune in the pit. He was initially stunned, and after glancing at Zhu Yu checking the bone positions and counts beside him, he was thoroughly shocked, blinking heavily to confirm he hadn’t seen wrongly.

Despite being shocked, as the rune handed two recently unearthed bone fragments carefully to Zhu Yu, appearing completely unfazed by the situation, Zhu Feng swallowed his surprise and simply watched as they continued to uncover more bones. 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Zhu Yu noticed Zhu Feng beside her and sensed his gaze, yet she had no mind to address it, as the white bones in front consumed all her attention.

The newly dug-up bones, like the ones discovered earlier, indicated from joint wear and the tooth wear on a recently unearthed skull that the age was between twenty and thirty years old.

From the shape and width of the discovered pelvises, all seemingly belonged to males without exception.

Based solely on this evidence, everything seemed linked to the mysterious disappearance of able-bodied men they’d heard about on their journey to Shuo Country.

The maximum age of the missing men was in their thirties and the youngest were seventeen or eighteen, all males, not a single woman.

Many people vanished without a trace. Following conventional logic, nine times out of ten, they’re already dead.

Yet, on the one hand, the signs shown by these bones inevitably associated them with the missing men, while on the other hand, these same bones added irrationality to everything.

Based on what they learned earlier, places where large numbers of men mysteriously vanished only began disappearing around a year ago; as for shorter periods, some had vanished for only about half a year.

Shuo Land is generally dry, and this region of Risun Ridge is extraordinarily severe, and the soil here contains many fragments of stone, forming a more compact structure over time, making the soil denser and harder.

Earlier, Zhu Yu attempted to manually dig bones from the soil, but within a few attempts, her fingers were scratched painfully by the hard soil and stones, verifying this characteristic.

In such an environment, a body buried in the soil instead slows decay; for a full corpse to slowly rot into entirely bare bones would take at least three to four years, possibly more.

Such results couldn’t form within about a year. Even if the missing men and blacksmiths died immediately upon vanishing and were buried, today they could only be half-decomposed bodies, possibly desiccated ones.

Additionally, another perplexing matter remains.

The two pits accidentally uncovered bones not just of one or two people, yet the second pit hasn’t been fully excavated, already revealing remains of over ten people—but there hasn’t even been a scrap of cloth found.

It’s not only clothing; another substance rarely decaying even exposed to air—hair—also hasn’t been unearthed, not even a strand.

That’s genuinely peculiar.

Zhu Yu’s brows furrowed tighter.

If these robust deceased aren’t the previously vanished blacksmiths and men, then why are so many of age, similarly naked, as if hair didn’t exist, collectively buried in a remote wilderness?

Not just in Shuo Country, but worldwide, the practice of human sacrifices has been abolished for hundreds of years.

Or, if the bones belonged to men missing elsewhere?

What means were used to transform them into this state?