The group had anticipated this situation when they entered the mountain.

A few people from Beiliang Mountain Police Station carried shovels and mattocks.

Li Donglin and Lu Chuan stood on one side.

"Something’s not right."

Lu Chuan furrowed his brows tightly, watching the group digging, and whispered to Li Donglin.

"What’s not right?"

"The shoes."

The orange hiking shoes just found by the Beiliang Mountain police had already been inspected by Lu Chuan.

The shoes had been exposed to the sun for a long time.

The color was somewhat faded.

But it did not affect the assessment of the shoe size and style.

Size 36 women’s shoes.

"I checked the information of the five missing people, and the four students posted group photos on social media before they set off."

"In the photos, everyone was wearing outdoor hiking gear. The shoes should be the ones they wore when entering the mountain."

"I looked closely; one missing female student wore blue and white shoes, another wore dark red ones."

"But the shoes we found at the scene are orange."

Upon hearing this, Li Donglin understood what Lu Chuan meant.

"You mean... these shoes don’t belong to the missing female students?"

Lu Chuan nodded heavily.

But, if they don’t belong to the missing female students, it implies they might belong to other missing individuals.

If that’s the case... how many people have actually died in Beiliang Mountain?

"Found it! Found it!"

It wasn’t long before a police officer reported loudly.

Lu Chuan quickly stepped forward: "Everyone, step back."

The location where the bones were found was less than three meters away from the shoes, the soil not deeply buried but rather shallow, about 30 centimeters thick.

The corpse had also decomposed into bones, and Lu Chuan took a cursory look, carefully clearing away the surrounding soil.

"The color of the bones is relatively light... the hyoid bone is intact, there are cracks on the skull..."

The clothing outside the bones was not fully decomposed, covered in dust, but it was still distinguishable as seemingly dark green.

Lu Chuan carefully continued clearing the bones, and soon, the approximate outline was exposed.

Onlookers could tell, even without any skeleton identification analysis, that the deceased had been humiliated before death.

Because the pants on the lower half of the body were pulled down to the calves.

Rotten fragments formed a ring around the ankles.

No decayed clothing existed between the upper and lower body.

Obviously, the deceased was not wearing pants when killed.

Besides, under the corpse, Lu Chuan found a decayed backpack.

The items inside the backpack had mostly rotted away, but an ID card had remnants.

Though less than half remained, fortunately, part of the name was left intact, as the photographic part had decayed.

Chen Xi.

The deceased’s name was Chen Xi.

Li Hao sighed: "An adventurer who disappeared a year and a half ago, was reported missing at our police station."

Li Hao glanced at the name and immediately recognized the basic information of the person.

"The reporters were the victim’s parents."

"Chen Xi was a white-collar worker in Tianzhou City, who went to Beiliang Mountain for adventure with her fiancé a year and a half ago, after which they both disappeared."

"Fiancé?"

Li Hao nodded: "Yes, they both disappeared together. We searched the mountain but found nothing."

"At that time, they didn’t hire a guide. We thought they got lost."

"Now it seems..."

Since Chen Xi has already been victimized, what about her fiancé?

From the state in which Chen Xi’s bones were buried, it can be confirmed that she was likely violated before her death.

Judging by this, her fiancé should not be the perpetrator.

After all, they were soon to be married; there was no need for her fiancé to assault her.

So, where is Chen Xi’s fiancé?

The answer was soon unveiled.

All the police officers expanded the search from the spot where Chen Xi’s bones were found, discovering clues less than 10 meters away from where her bones were buried.

A decayed hand bone reaching out from the bushes.

"Buried alive."

Seeing it, Lu Chuan knew how the person died.

"The person wasn’t completely dead when buried, so one arm reached out from the soil."

The officers who found this clue were now all deeply unsettled.

Who wouldn’t be scared by a half-exposed skeletal arm in the bushes?

"Everyone, get to work, let’s dig out the bones first."

The excavation of the bones wasn’t difficult. In less than half an hour, the bones had been cleared.

Lu Chuan conducted a relatively simple identification analysis.

The time of death matched with the other set of bones, and the deceased had suffered great torment before dying.

Rib fractures, chest bone broken, skull cracked.

The direct cause of death appeared to be a stab wound in the chest.

But surprisingly, a decayed ID card was found at the chest position of these bones.

"Something’s not right."

Li Hao picked up the ID card: "The age is wrong, the surname is wrong too."

"Chen Xi’s fiancé was named Wang Feng and was the same age as her, but this ID card has the surname Li and part of the character ’Peng,’ not sure if there’s more character behind."

"Furthermore, the birth date doesn’t match, this ID card isn’t the deceased’s."

The two victims had been dead for a year and a half, Lu Chuan already conducted a preliminary assessment just now.

Besides the cause and time of death, the clues left by the perpetrator on the bones or the corpse had basically disappeared.

Even the items in the backpack found under the female body had mostly decayed under the influence of the decomposing corpse, making it impossible to extract fingerprints or other information.

This is different from the other scene where three male victims were found.

Because those victims had a shorter time of death, only about half a year, the items in their backpacks were relatively intact, allowing Lu Chuan to extract fingerprints from them.

For these two, the male victim’s backpack hasn’t been found, and the female victim’s backpack, influenced by the decaying process, contained no retrievable information.

Therefore, this decayed ID card is now the biggest clue.

The part with the image on the ID card had decayed, leaving only the characters ’Li’ and the character ’Peng’ from the name.

The bottom part of the ID number had also decayed, but the part indicating the place of birth and province, along with birth year and month, remained.

"Call the family to have them check, the ID location is Penghu County, age 28, surname Li, name containing the character ’Peng.’"

Li Donglin immediately set the plan.

There’s definitely no signal in the deep forest, so the group had brought satellite phones.

Chen Hu then called his Criminal Investigation Team to arrange for Li Donglin’s tasked work.

This type of screening is relatively straightforward.

Even if this screening yields no results, the ID has a chip, and it’s a guarantee once brought back and checked.