National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 753 - 696: At the Pinnacle

Chapter 753: Chapter 696: At the Pinnacle

"First, conduct the crime scene investigation," Jiang Yuan waved his hand, still in a methodical work mode.

Zhan Kan found himself involuntarily focusing intently.

Recalling the work he had just done, even with some foresight, he could only describe it as mundane – yet, listening to Jiang Yuan articulate the conclusions step by step, it seemed bizarre to use ’mundane’ to describe the investigation he was part of.

From his perspective as a forensic doctor, it would be more apt to describe it as ’a bolt from the blue.’

But even if given another chance, Zhan Kan still could not pinpoint anything extraordinary in the work he and Jiang Yuan did.

It was truly just ordinary, commonplace work, and the condition of the body was equally ordinary and commonplace.

Zhan Kan had been a forensic doctor for several years and was one of the more skilled in his field, yet he still couldn’t fully comprehend Jiang Yuan’s conclusions – he clearly understood the content of the conclusions and the conditions which he helped Jiang Yuan to establish, but how to progress from the ’known’ to reaching those conclusions was beyond him.

Jiang Yuan didn’t have time to explain and simply proceeded with the investigation methodically.

Crime scene investigations are, by nature, detail-oriented tasks, and the higher the profile of the investigation, the more meticulous it becomes.

Ordinary crime scene investigators often select specific targets when processing a scene, just like Qinghe City’s famed Chief Medical Examiner Niu, who, in his early years, would ignore everything else and first collect items like toilet paper.

Even fingerprint collection is not done inch by inch; investigators typically look at the positions of doors and windows, handle knobs, drawer pulls, and the nearby area of missing items. For most minor cases, receiving one or two hours of attention from crime scene investigators is quite good.

Only when it’s necessary to scan every inch do issues like determining the source of fingerprints or DNA, and whether there’s been any contamination, arise, requiring a much higher-level crime scene investigation capability.

After scanning the bedroom, Jiang Yuan moved on to the living room, taking samples where needed, photographing what was needed, effectively acting as a crime scene investigator again. It wasn’t that he didn’t trust the investigators from Zhengguang Bureau, but everyone’s perspectives varied, and he was now handling it purely as a homicide case. Besides, there were already several people working the scene, so one more person wouldn’t hurt.

"Any findings?" Liu Cheng hurried over to inquire as soon as Jiang Yuan started to take off his gloves.

"Can’t say for sure now, need to go back and review everything," Jiang Yuan said. "I’m heading to the autopsy center."

"Sure, sure, sure," Liu Cheng replied eagerly, then added, "I’ll continue to stay at the scene. If there’s any news from your end, it will help me to respond promptly."

Facing a live murder case, Liu Cheng had braced himself to stay up all night the moment he took on the case.

It wasn’t just because several leaders had highlighted this case, even if the suspect was caught on the scene with the weapon, in a crime of passion sort of murder, the detectives might still have to spend days and nights gathering evidence, interrogating, documenting...

Mu Zhiyang drove, taking Jiang Yuan and Zhan Kan straight to the autopsy center.

The victim, Zhou Xiangyang’s body, had arrived even earlier and was already lying on the cold stainless-steel table.

A few available forensic doctors came by, specifically to watch Jiang Yuan perform the autopsy.

Jiang Yuan, not often having such an experience, couldn’t help but compliment, "It’s really great that you have such an autopsy center with so many colleagues working together."

"You could ask for an autopsy center," said the senior forensic doctor Zeng Lianrong, who evidently knew quite a bit.

Jiang Yuan smiled and replied, "In Ningtai County, there are only two forensic doctors including me, and my master is about to retire..."

In the meantime, the autopsy table had been prepared.

The body was laid out flat on the surface.

The elderly man had been over one meter seventy tall and was of a lean build; now as a corpse, he belonged to the type that forensic doctors typically prefer. One cut would neither cause fat to splurt out, nor would it be so tough to cut through.

"Log the time, and then... we are now seeing dark purple-red livor mortis, rigor mortis is present across all joints of the body, the conjunctival sac is pale, and there is congestion in the conjunctiva..."

Jiang Yuan conducted another external examination before making the first incision.

Zhan Kan quickly set down his notebook to assist, while a forensic doctor diligently picked up the camera to begin taking photographs.

The autopsy room was equipped with continuous video recording, but the detail was certainly not as precise as photography, most importantly, due to differing angles which sometimes revealed varying content.

Zeng Lianrong, a veteran in the autopsy center, only needed to lean in and watch.

He had worked with Jiang Yuan on two cases before, and their process of getting to know each other was already complete; they were currently in a learning phase.

Watching Jiang Yuan open up the three body cavities, Zeng Lianrong naturally bent down and offered a bucket to Jiang Yuan.

Forensic doctors prefer to use buckets to contain organs like the stomach, heart, and lungs; using basins can lead to spillage, which even forensic doctors find disgusting. Moreover, it affects accuracy, and in some cases, when people have eaten a lot or have an enlarged heart and lungs, the volume can far exceed expectations.

As the old saying goes, you never know how many bowls of cold noodles someone’s stomach can hold until you open it up.

"Inside the tracheal cavity, we can see a small amount of pale red frothy fluid..."

"There’s a large amount of liquid in the stomach..."

"Beneath the pancreatic capsule, we can observe patchy hemorrhaging..."

"There is homogenized pink-stained edema fluid in the alveolar cavities..."

At this point, Jiang Yuan looked up at the other forensic doctors and said, "In this situation, we should consider death by poisoning."

Zhan Kan was still stunned, but Zeng Lianrong was already nodding in agreement.

Whether to consider poisoning as the cause of death affects whether an immediate toxicological examination is necessary, as well as the level of detail required for the examination. Most importantly, if death by poisoning is suspected, heart blood must be collected immediately to prevent a large metabolism of the poison.

Although today’s toxicological examinations are highly sensitive, the sheer number of different poisons means that some residues may be minimal.

Furthermore, contrary to what many people may think, toxicological examination isn’t just a matter of placing blood with poison into a machine for it to ’beep-beep-beep’ out an answer. Fundamentally, toxicological examination is still a comparative process. While the machines do contain data on some common poisons and can, to some extent, ’beep-beep-beep’ out an answer, anything more obscure requires individual, comparative analysis, with its own set of challenges.

Jiang Yuan quickly drew heart blood, collected contents from the stomach and urine among other specimens, and immediately sent them to the Toxicology Laboratory.

Next, the team carefully examined the body for external injuries, needle marks, and other signs, before proceeding with the remaining postmortem examination.

Towards the end of the procedure, a bluish mass rolled down from the mouth of the corpse, landing near Jiang Yuan’s hand.

Zhou Xiangyang’s legacy—Cryptography (LV5)—Zhou Xiangyang had always been the genius among his peers, starting from elementary school, through middle and high school, and even in The Great Learning. He remained at the top effortlessly, always consciously seeking challenges. Cryptography might be the most competitive of all disciplines, especially when he first entered the field, a time of bipolar world power competition, with an endless demand for cryptography. The future of cryptography seemed boundlessly wide... In recent years, the commercial value of cryptography has been increasingly exploited, with developments in new internet technologies like blockchain ensuring Zhou Xiangyang’s students always managed to secure very high salaries. However, Zhou Xiangyang himself started feeling disinterested as earning money was never his initial motivation for studying cryptography.

Jiang Yuan sighed internally after completing the examination, quietly suturing Zhou Xiangyang’s body together. He thought to himself that even in death, Zhou Xiangyang left behind a top-level mystery, hoping he could decode the puzzle of his death.

"Give Tao a call for me," said Jiang Yuan, gesturing with his hand before turning to the forensic doctor beside him.

The forensic doctor hastened to dial the number and placed the phone next to Jiang Yuan.

"Tao," Jiang Yuan began as the call connected, "I’ve completed Zhou Xiangyang’s autopsy. The cause of death is not yet clear, but it’s highly likely he was poisoned. The heart blood has been sent for toxicological analysis. I noticed that the project he had been working on is related to cryptography. Would it be worth notifying the national security authorities?"