Chapter 331 Effectiveness

The story of old man Liu Baohua is over.

Lu Ming felt that this story could not have been made up by the old man himself. Although there may be elements of fiction and personal processing, the overall framework should be credible or have reference value.

So if we interpret the situation at this moment based on this story, the truth will be obvious.

When the archway is demolished, the evil ghost comes out of his cage to cause trouble and kill people.

Lu Ming didn't believe this statement. But he also knows that behind some seemingly ridiculous stories, there is often the truth hidden. Because the story may be false, but the logic is true. At worst, the story may well be instructive and point the way to the truth.

"Uncle, thank you. It turns out that this custom here on Nanlin Street comes from this."

Lu Ming thanked the old man Liu Baohua repeatedly. It was not easy for someone to listen to what I had talked about so much with great interest, and Liu Baohua was also very happy.

"It's okay, it's okay. If you still want to know, just ask me. I know everything and I can tell you everything."

Lu Ming and others asked for a few more details before saying goodbye and leaving.

Returning to the internal office assigned to the three people by the Public Security Bureau, Zhang Dingshan looked at He Wei: "What is the specific situation of the Wu family boy's case?"

"The records of the Public Security Bureau are the same as what Uncle Liu said: suicide. The cause of suicide was both emotional and financial factors."

The so-called relationship is naturally that the wife divorced and took on someone else's child and changed her surname. The financial factor is that she owes gambling debts.

"The Public Security Bureau also arrested those who gave us loan sharks to Wu Biao and punished them respectively. Those people also confessed to the process of extorting debts from Wu Biao."

"Is there any doubt?"

"Judging from the dossier, no. The dossier is very solid and of high quality."

The local security bureau obviously did nothing wrong in handling this matter. Operation Two couldn't have asked for more of them.

No matter how good the detective is, Wu Biao's case can only be concluded as suicide. After all, there were really no signs of homicide at the scene. The deceased had too many reasons to commit suicide.

But combined with what Mr. Liu said, this conclusion seems a bit unsound.

"Let's visit the old neighbors and old residents of Nanlin Street at that time. The first is to verify Wu Biao's suicide case, and the second is to verify the Bagua Mirror. Lu Ming, go and check the memorial arch."

"yes."

Of course, Action Team 2 will not rely solely on one person's words. Multi-party verification, multi-party confirmation, mutual comparison, and mutual confirmation are the most basic principles.

After that, the three began to act separately.

Zhang Dingshan and He Wei are mainly responsible for verification in reality, that is, interviewing witnesses and questioning insiders. Lu Ming is mainly responsible for searching for evidence from historical records, documents and archives.

Generally speaking, as long as a building like the old archway has a long enough history, it will be recorded in history or archives for decades or hundreds of years. The same is true for Nanlin Street Archway.

According to Liu Baohua, this archway has a history of at least hundreds of years, and there must be many places recording it in historical materials or archives.

Lu Ming came to the archives and started searching in the internal database using the word "archway" as the keyword.

Within the Blue Lake City area, relevant information about hundreds of archways that still exist or have been demolished immediately appeared.

Over the past hundred years, great changes have taken place in place names, administrative divisions, and other changes in history. For example, the current Blue Lake City did not exist before, only a small fishing village. The area of ​​Nanlin Street was formerly called Wushui Town and was under the jurisdiction of Wuxian County.

Lu Ming limited the search area to Wushui Town, and after searching for a while, he found records about the "Zhou Family Archway".

Wuxian County Chronicle records that there is a wealthy Zhou family in Wushui Town. The family has thousands of acres of fertile land and hundreds of fishing boats. They both farm and fish. The family has hundreds of servants, servants, and thugs, and employs thousands of long-term and short-term laborers and tenants. With great wealth and power, he can be called the tyrant of Wushui Town. His eldest son worked as an official outside the country, even reaching the level of county magistrate.

But later, the Zhou family encountered some accidents, and the family began to decline.

The county annals are vague about what happened to the Zhou family, and did not mention it clearly. It said that their eldest son was convicted and imprisoned, and the family had "frequent visions." In order to pray for blessings, the Zhou family built an archway.

But after the memorial arch was erected, it is not known whether the situation of the Zhou family has improved.

But that doesn't matter. At least these data have shown that the Zhou family actually existed and had indeed built this archway.

Some of the following information also involves the existence of this archway. Among those records, the Zhou Family Archway has even become a landmark building in a certain sense. When it comes to some agreed places, it means "Meet at the Zhou Family Archway", or "See you at the Zhou Family Archway at a certain time on a certain day of the month" and so on.

This also proves its construction time and builder.

Other travel notes, notes, and records that did not involve the archway occasionally mentioned that the Zhou family in Wushui Town was "unkind for the sake of wealth" and "oppressed the villagers."

From these records, Lu Ming could confirm that at least this Zhou family was once the dominant tyrant in Wushui Town, but it was true that the family had bad family traditions and oppressed the village. Later, the family fell into decline and the Zhou family archway was built.

As for whether there are so-called corpse dumping, revenge for wronged souls, blessings from ancestors, changing fate against the will of heaven, etc., then I don't know.

After reading through the records from earlier years, the subsequent records became much clearer and more formal. It began to appear frequently in official documents, not only as a landmark, but also in documents such as survey and protection and cultural relics assessment.

It was ultimately not recognized as an antiquity, and officials deemed it to have little conservation value.

Finally, with the official document from Blue Lake City “approval for the demolition of the Zhoujia Archway on Nanlin Street”, it ushered in the fate of being demolished.

The document believes that after investigation, the existence of the Zhoujia Archway on Nanlin Street has already caused certain obstacles to traffic, and has a negative impact on the decision to plan Nanlin Street as a food and leisure street. And after investigation, it was found that the Zhoujia Archway was in disrepair and was at risk of collapse. Based on the above considerations, it was decided to demolish it.

It was eventually dismantled, turned into a pile of garbage, and transported to a landfill.

At this point, Lu Ming has figured out its past and present life to a certain extent.

Back in the internal conference room, Zhang Dingshan and He Wei also concluded their investigation.

"We visited some old residents on Nanlin Street and asked about the Zhou Family Memorial Arch. What several insiders told was roughly similar to that of Liu Baohua. There are only some differences in details, but they can be ignored."

Lu Ming also said: "I checked the records about the Zhou family archway, which partially corroborated what Liu Baohua said."

The three of them had a detailed discussion and exchanged the information they had obtained with each other.

"It can be inferred from common sense that the Zhou family was rich and unkind at that time, and oppressed the villagers, so that the possibility of killing people was indeed real, and even very high. Combined with the changes in the situation of the Zhou family at that time, their motive for building this memorial arch was indeed very possible. It may be to change the fate of the family. From this point of view, it is quite possible that the old man Liu Baohua said that this archway is to suppress the souls of injustice."

It doesn’t matter whether this has any specific effect, whether it can really suppress the ghosts of grievances, whether it can really change the fate of the family, but it is indeed very likely that this was the motivation of the Zhou family to build this archway at that time.

This logically provides support for Liu Baohua's subsequent statement that "if the archway is demolished, the evil spirits will come out to cause trouble."

"I noticed that before the archway was built, there were many records of the Zhou family's unkind deeds in various township annals, county annals, notes, legends and other materials. After the archway was built, the records of negative news about the Zhou family gradually became less and less. Also, the Zhou family's final ending, by the time the World Government was established, did indeed end with an ordinary wealthy family.

From this point of view, the construction of the archway seems to be a turning point in the Zhou family's family tradition. This in turn seems to prove the impact of the construction of the archway on the fate of the Zhou family. "

If an archway can indeed affect the fate of a family, then it makes sense that the archway can suppress the evil spirits of evil spirits.

But Zhang Dingshan shook his head: "When looking at historical materials, we should not just focus on the small environment, but also look at the larger environment. In the Zhou family's time, the larger environment had changed."

Lu Ming was startled, then thoughtful.

At that time, the current situation was changing rapidly, and we were on the eve of the transformation of the entire social environment. It is also possible that the Zhou family was aware of this change and took the initiative to change themselves in order to protect themselves. It had nothing to do with whether to build an archway?

This is also possible.

He Wei interjected: "We can't know the truth about what happened so long ago, and I feel there is no need to explore the truth. As long as it is determined that the Zhou family built this archway, there is a certain possibility that it was based on 'suppressing the evil ghosts' That's the purpose of "invincible souls."

Lu Ming nodded and agreed with He Wei's statement.

"Okay. Next is Wu Biao's suicide case.

After interviews and investigations, it cannot be said that there are any doubts about Wu Biao's suicide case, but there are indeed some rumors.

First of all, this Wu Biao is indeed, as the old man Liu Baohua said, a typical second-rate man. His father died of a cerebral hemorrhage and his mother died of cancer. Strictly speaking, these two diseases are indeed related to being in a bad mood for a long time.

Rumor has it that Wu Biao made his parents angry to death.

Wu Biao does like to drink and gamble, has no stable source of income, and often domestically abuses his wife. In the end, it was inevitable that he would end up alone, separated from his wife and children, and owe a large amount of gambling debt.

Based on his "second-rate" personality, his suicide aroused suspicion among the neighbors and sparked rumors. It does have a certain basis in reality.

It's just this kind of thing, how to say it. Although from a psychological point of view, such people generally will not commit suicide, but there is no guarantee that such people also have any psychological softness?

Anyway, it's impossible to say for sure. Speaking of anomalies, there may indeed be anomalies, but they are only possible. It's normal to say it's normal.

As for the suicides of dogs, geese, and mice, several people said they had heard of them, but only Liu Baohua said they had seen them with their own eyes. There's no way to be sure about this kind of thing. "

Even if there are deviations in the memory of more than ten years, it is normal. Sometimes this deviation is not even noticed by the parties themselves.

Besides, over more than ten years, the rumors have been distorted into something unknown, and it is impossible to restore the truth.

Lu Ming let out a sigh of relief.

"So overall, the possibility that 'the Zhou family built an archway to suppress the ghosts of injustice, but it was demolished in recent years, and the evil ghost came out of the cage, possessed Wu Biao and killed Wu Biao', is currently neither confirmed nor denied. We can keep an open mind for the time being.

Subsequently, influenced by this story, almost every store on Nanlin Street put up a Bagua mirror, but this is reality.

So, under the premise that there are a large number of abnormal suicide cases in Blue Lake City, we can start by 'verifying whether placing Bagua mirrors is effective' to check. "

"I agree."

It is very simple to verify whether placing a Bagua mirror has any effect. Just collect suicide data from Nanlin Street in the past ten years.

This data was quickly placed in front of the three members of the second action team.

The number of permanent residents plus working population in Nanlin Street is actually not large, only less than 40,000. And this number is increasing year by year, that is, in the past years, the permanent population and working population of Nanlin Street were smaller.

Based on the calculation of 12.6 suicides per 100,000 people every year last year, it is normal for around 5 suicides per year among these 40,000 people.

Statistics show that ten years ago, three people committed suicide on Nanlin Street, nine years ago it was four people, eight years ago it was three people, and after that, it was 4, 5, 4, 6, 7, 6, 5, 7 people.

This number is roughly consistent with statistics.

Overall, the numbers show a slow growth trend. But this is also consistent with the population growth of Nanlin Street year by year.

Not much can be seen from the numbers.

However, the three members of Operation Team 2 are not actually concerned about normal suicide cases. What they are concerned about are unreasonable suicide cases.

"There are a total of 54 suicide cases. Screen them to see if there are any abnormal suicide cases."

"good."

The files of these 54 suicide cases were quickly transferred. The three of them read through it and saw that at least there was nothing unreasonable in the file.

This is also normal. After all, except for the obvious irrationality, if a person commits suicide, he can always find some reasons to explain this behavior.

Human life cannot be smooth sailing, there will always be setbacks. Once the person commits suicide, this frustration becomes the reason.

If you want to know whether a person's suicide is reasonable or not, you must make a comprehensive judgment based on his living environment, personality, psychological quality and other reasons.

This requires further field investigation.

The three members of the second operation team each led a team of security guards and devoted themselves to screening a total of 54 suicide cases.