National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 694 - 637 Under the Skin

Chapter 694: Chapter 637 Under the Skin

Three o’clock in the morning.

Thousands of households illuminated.

Twinkling stars above, flickering lights below, the Xinjian District, teeming with factories, seemed to be summoning immense power, doing push-ups upon the land.

Qian Tongyi was smoking a cigarette, Liu Cheng was smoking a cigarette, Jiang Yuan was also smoking a cigarette...

Once the lime had been shoveled aside, the stench that had been gathering for days burst forth. Even the forensic doctor would find it revolting, only with a stronger endurance. The body had just been moved out, and only then did the team come out for some fresh air.

The job was far from done. All that lime was, in theory, evidence. The bricks had to be taken back as well—testing was one part, but some would also be kept as evidence.

Furthermore, several walls had been erected inside the room, and Qian Tongyi’s intention was to pry them open for inspection.

Jiang Yuan wasn’t planning on going back in just yet. Having smoked one to freshen his mouth, Jiang Yuan pulled out his phone and while texting said, "I’m planning to reserve a Cantonese dim sum breakfast. This place also has Chaozhou-style congee in a clay pot, the kind with all sorts of ingredients. It’s pretty fresh, pretty tasty."

Qian Tongyi frowned deeply, "The Chaozhou-style congee you’re talking about, is it the kind that has a lot of offal in it?"

The men who were smoking suddenly showed signs of retching.

Jiang Yuan sighed and said, "There’s also seafood congee, and other types too. Everything can be turned into clay pot congee, I guess. I’m not sure, but it seems to be the case..."

"As long as it’s not offal, it should be fine. Pig brain won’t work either; I can’t stomach pig brain," Liu Cheng gestured, being a pure northerner, he was accustomed to simpler fare.

Jiang Yuan agreed and asked, "How many servings should I order?"

"Just for the whole team. But let’s control the budget a bit, shall we? Thirty yuan per person," Qian Tongyi said.

Thirty yuan was roughly the price of one extra dim sum plus a pot of tea. If an old man was dining alone for breakfast, it would be no problem, but a bunch of hungry wolves would definitely find it insufficient.

Jiang Yuan waved his hand, "Today’s unusual, the brothers have all worked hard, I’ll treat."

"That’s... not really appropriate," Qian Tongyi truly felt embarrassed, hastily adding, "We can raise the budget, it should be expensed to the public account. I’ll claim it back in your name later."

"Alright then, I’ll order first, later Director Huang can ask Chief Yu for reimbursement," Jiang Yuan said, then texted the owner, "Fifty servings of dim sum, over-ordered."

Of course, there weren’t fifty people this time, but with Cantonese dim sum, having just two or three pieces of each kind is normal, four or five is already a lot. Doubling or even tripling the number wouldn’t be enough to fill the stomach.

Having settled on breakfast for three hours later, Jiang Yuan let out a long sigh, distributed another round of Zhonghua cigarettes, and then returned, reeking of smoke, to Shang Geyong’s new house with the others.

The stench was as vile as before.

Fortunately, the crime scene had been mostly cleaned up. Jiang Yuan turned to look at it and soon sank into thought.

The higher the level of crime scene examination, the more information could be gathered. Even within such an unfinished house, there was much to see.

On the other hand, the multitude of contractors complicates matters with their numerous footprints and what’s more troublesome is that in such rooms, the workers always stand, crouch, lie, or perch in various odd corners and positions, making it extremely challenging for those analyzing the scene to avoid getting their heads full of dust.

It was somewhat self-inflicted trouble, yet also somewhat amusing.

Everything was complete, and as the police gradually left the scene, it was already six in the morning.

The older policemen couldn’t wait to go home, even the promise of free snacks couldn’t keep the sleep-deprived seniors around. In contrast, the younger officers were all eager, as if determined to bankrupt the police bureau with their appetites.

Qian Tongyi was genuinely afraid of going broke. The old saying ’youngsters can eat their parents out of house and home’ was a perfect description of the situation at hand.

He specifically stood close to Jiang Yuan and whispered, "Let’s not order anything too expensive."

"It’s already been ordered," Jiang Yuan explained. "With so many of us, if we don’t reserve ahead of time, there wouldn’t be any food left when we arrive."

"Right, right..."

Fortunately, the teahouse was just in front of the Criminal Police Brigade, so no time was wasted. Once there, the owner was very welcoming and hospitable, making the meal very pleasant for everyone.

Only Qian Tongyi was preoccupied with thinking about how to explain the situation to Chief Yu.

After the meal, Jiang Yuan went home to sleep before returning to the police station in the afternoon. There, he worked with the forensic doctors from Changyang City Bureau to process the body.

For the police, the focus of the investigation had shifted to tracking down the bricklayer.

To this day, the police didn’t even know the man’s real name. In this era of big data, that’s quite rare. Of course, it’s not surprising since the ’Sanhe gods’ are often deeply involved in various cases.

Dealing with a body that had been treated with quicklime was another kind of morbid experience.

As everyone knows, one of the most important tasks in forensic work is to take samples and make slides of the body’s internal organs. If there are no organs or if they have been left too long and have decayed, there is nothing that can be done. But if there is a way...

Jiang Yuan didn’t know whether he could successfully take samples from the quicklime-treated organs, but he attempted the procedure anyway, which took a tremendous amount of time and effort.

The delicate organs, brutally ripped out by the killer and then sprinkled with quicklime to be rubbed...

If they had been normal organs, such treatment would have left nothing usable, but for sampling purposes, even tissues that had been rubbed with quicklime could still be of use.

Jiang Yuan used many solvents to clean off the quicklime, primarily oils, until the organs were almost clean, and then he rinsed them with water before continuing with the paraffin wax slide preparation.

Paraffin waxing of organs is inherently difficult, and during the creation of slides, they can easily break if not handled carefully. The organs that had suffered the indignity of quicklime treatment were particularly soft and mushy. It was only because Jiang Yuan’s Level 4 expertise in both Forensic Pathology and Forensic Material Evidence complemented one another that he managed to create pristine slides.

Without dwelling on other aspects, a forensic doctor with this skill could feasibly open a central kitchen specializing in demanding dishes like sliced kidneys, certainly outperforming in a field well beyond his own.

Particularly when it came to Level 4 Forensic Material Evidence, this expertise was even more helpful in processing the organs. Jiang Yuan estimated that it would take a nearly Level 3 Forensic Material Evidence specialist to clean organs of this condition thoroughly. For industrial scale application, a true Level 3 specialist in Forensic Material Evidence would be required.

The cooperating forensic doctors all felt like they were learning something new.

The routine autopsy, especially the process of dissection itself, is actually not difficult; the main issues are the disgusting and foul-smelling aspects. The challenge lies in making further judgements based on these facts. Slide preparation is one of the more technically demanding and time-consuming tasks. Many forensic doctors spend a lot of time under the microscope for this very reason.

For Jiang Yuan, dissecting bodies was no difficult task at all.

The body at this time had only some of its flesh remaining, but it wasn’t just a skeleton; the tricky part was dealing with the remaining flesh, which was similar to a mummified state. Forensic doctors didn’t know much about this type of body, and there were few relevant data to support their analysis, making it tough to make effective judgements just from looking at them.

"Let’s boil it," Jiang Yuan suggested as he prepared to examine the body and then put it into a pot.

The facilities at Changyang City Bureau were good, equipped with something akin to a Japanese-style bathtub for boiling. This was a tub where the height was greater than both the length and the width.

Such a tub, or pot, is much better at concentrating heat, it heats up quickly, and it requires less energy to maintain temperature; it is, thus, a green and environmentally friendly product.

A few forensic doctors were busy turning on the machine and adding water—the principle is much like a regular kettle with a built-in heating function at the bottom, but adding water was quite time-consuming.

While they were busy, Jiang Yuan set down the pelvis of the body and said, "How old was Shang Geyong again?"

A gloveless forensic doctor immediately tapped on his PAD and replied, "Around 40, I think. Let me check... Seems like he was 38."

"The age doesn’t match up," Jiang Yuan said, looking closely at the pelvis that seemed nitrate-treated. He stripped away some of the remaining flesh before saying, "At most 33 years old, probably around 32 or 33. That’s a 5-year difference."

"Did he change his age? A 5 year discrepancy isn’t that exaggerated," commented one experienced forensic doctor.

Jiang Yuan grunted in agreement and then took a closer look at the contorted body. Quickly after peeling away the flesh from the leg with a knife, he found a clue: "Shang Geyong was a skier, his fibula had been fractured, but there is no such mark on this body."

Without hesitation, Jiang Yuan took off his gloves and called Qian Tongyi, "The deceased is not Shang Geyong!"