National Forensic Doctor
Chapter 799 - 742: The Health Bureau

Chapter 799: Chapter 742: The Health Bureau

The single-story factory building, standing over a dozen meters high, still maintained the divisions from forty years ago. The walls had been thoroughly cleaned, and decorative brickwork at the top aided ventilation.

The factory had been emptied, with hardly any manufacturing equipment in sight. The floors and walls, however, were very clean, seemingly with traces of recent renovation.

A few large jars were piled together, most covered in dust, while a few had been used for pickling vegetables or similar purposes.

In a corner of the factory, where the earthy floor had been dug up, one could see a series of bodies laid out in a row, totaling eight in number.

Just counting them shook Jiang Yuan and his colleagues deeply.

Mu Zhiyang, with practiced flattery, said, "Worthy of Beijing."

"We’re starting at fifteen bodies, and with Zhang Lizhen’s, that makes sixteen," Liu Jinghui calculated, furrowing his brows and whispering so only a few could hear, "It doesn’t add up. Burying bodies here is much safer than dumping them in water. The skills demonstrated before and after are too varied."

With more people gathering around the bodies, Liu Jinghui hurried to remind Jiang Yuan to avoid any judgment errors.

Jiang Yuan, standing still, likewise whispered, "Was Zhang Lizhen’s body the beginning, and this here an evolved pattern?"

"Then the gap in between is a bit too wide. From my understanding, there should be an intermediate form," Liu Jinghui said, then quickly added, "Don’t mention this point first; it might lead to misunderstandings. With the number of bodies now, it’s likely to make everyone very sensitive."

Jiang Yuan gave an "mm" in acknowledgement and then stepped forward.

"Jiang Yuan is here; these are the newly unearthed ones," said the leading military officer from the armed forces group, with an assistant bureau chief in charge of communications stepping forward and adding, "So far we have arrested five people, and they have just confessed to the location where the bodies were buried. Whether there are more and what the specifics are, we still are mostly in the dark."

A brief statement, stressing the uncertainty.

Liu Jinghui repeated, "Was it the suspects who confessed? Did they confess to just this one spot?"

"This is where the bodies are buried."

"The people who buried the bodies here, do they have any particular identity? How are they different from the ones in the air-raid shelter?"

"Oh, they were performing a ritual of scavenging bones. That is, they would bury for a while, interring in the ground, then after three to five years, they’d dig them up again to retrieve the skeletons and orderly place them into porcelain jars or something similar..."

In fact, there was no need for utter clarity; as soon as the assistant bureau chief mentioned scavenging bones, several individuals understood.

In domestic terms, in places like Guangxi, the reason for the special forces-style grave visits is because of the bone-collecting burial ritual. Unlike here, they choose locations with exceptionally good feng shui the second time they bury, which tends to be inconveniently accessible, thus requiring climbing mountains and crossing rivers.

Also, it’s the bone-collecting burial that allows them to choose secluded mountainous areas. Otherwise, carrying a coffin and such would be too difficult and expensive.

Mu Zhiyang suddenly realized, "So, those few porcelain jars we found in the cave had the collected bones inside?"

"Add four, we’re at twenty now," Liu Jinghui meant to count the bodies found in the porcelain jars.

The assistant bureau chief nodded, "However, according to the suspects, those buried here and in the cave were generally devout believers who had suffered severe illnesses. Ah, ’believers’ is their exact word."

Jiang Yuan listened to their conversation while moving forward to inspect the bodies.

Compared with the skeletons in the air-raid shelter, these half-decomposed bodies were far more accommodating.

In fact, skeletonized bodies pose a major challenge to any forensic doctor; even for Jiang Yuan, this was the case.

While skeletons can reveal certain information, they inevitably provide limited feedback. Without stating the obvious, a body with flesh and intact bones theoretically offers much more information to the forensic doctor.

For all criminal science professionals, time is an eternal adversary.

Time is truly subtle in its impact, gradually erasing traces. The amount of information lost as a body goes from fresh to decayed, and finally to skeletonized, is immense.

Jiang Yuan started by observing each body carefully without touching any.

After examining all eight bodies, he chose a few and directly checked the neck area.

Quickly standing up straight, Jiang Yuan said, "From what I can see at the moment, at least four of these eight people died of mechanical asphyxiation."

"Strangled?" Liu Jinghui quickly caught on.

"Yes, the method was rather brutal, with virtually no attempt to conceal it. All four individuals had fractured hyoid bones," Jiang Yuan said as he removed his gloves. "They were probably strangled directly with hands."

Anyone intending to commit murder could learn from a little research that there are numerous sub-techniques to inducing asphyxiation. Of these, the most severe involves using a rope, which a Jiajing palace maiden employed, but her nervousness led to tying a knot too tight, resulting in a sentence to be executed by dismemberment. However, in terms of combat effectiveness, even a delicate palace maiden could use this method to kill a middle-aged man, indicating a very high degree of lethality.

Then, using a hard object to strangle or strangling with hands both require significant strength from the perpetrator, leading to severe traces. Some victims even bear the fingerprints of the murderer on their necks.

The method with the least traces would usually be suffocation with a pillow, but this requires a difference in strength between the parties involved, typically a man killing a woman or a younger person killing an elderly individual. The biggest advantage of this method is that it’s less likely to cause fractures to the hyoid bone, which makes it more concealable. For a Level 1 forensic doctor, this presents a basic level of difficulty.

A Level 1.5 forensic doctor should be able to handle such a body more easily.

Jiang Yuan mentioned "extremely brutal" specifically because of this point. The victims here are mostly the elderly or those who are weak and sick. Even though one could use more covert methods to kill, the perpetrator blatantly strangled them instead. If this caused a fracture in the hyoid bone, even if the body became skeletal, it could still be detected upon examination.

Thinking of this, Jiang Yuan was inclined to go back and check the bodies in the air-raid shelter again, where even the seated corpses would likely be missing bones, and something like the hyoid bone might have to be searched for amongst a pile of bones underneath.

Liu Jinghui also understood what Jiang Yuan meant and took out his notebook to record, saying, "If four people were murdered, then it’s actually simple. With the other bodies, they probably didn’t bother to conceal them too much."

"That’s possible."

Liu Jinghui wrote a few sentences in his notebook, then added, "This case is probably going to explode at the prosecutor’s office."

Once submitted for prosecution, the murderer had to be clearly identified, including who killed whom and how it was done, all of which had to be reflected in the case file. For the prosecutor, the massive amount of bodies and individuals involved in this case would inevitably lead to a huge amount of paperwork and evidence, just thinking about it was enough to give them a headache.

Jiang Yuan then called Tao Lu to report the preliminary autopsy results on his end. After hanging up, he said to Mu Zhiyang, "Call a few more people over to help move the bodies. We’re going to be busy late into the night again."

The eight buried bodies might be simpler to autopsy, but extracting them from the ground would require much more work. The main objective was to dig out all the bodies without mixing any up or leaving any behind.

When a forensic doctor does this work, the level of detail must exceed that of the person who buried the bodies, meaning the amount of excavation is only ever greater, never less.

If Jiang Yuan had to dig up these eight bodies alone, by the time he finished, it would likely be next week.

This is why the forensic doctors in smaller towns often need the help of criminal investigators. With only one or two forensic doctors in a town, they can get overwhelmed when faced with multiple bodies.

Beijing is different. In Beijing, no matter how many people die in a single room, the autopsy center can handle it.

Soon, Zeng Lianrong personally led a team, bringing over a dozen forensic doctors and assistants to help.

Meanwhile, the work inside the air-raid shelter entered a new phase, as the white-shirted individuals kept moving in and out, finally managing to max out their workload.

"What’s our procedure?" Zeng Lianrong, a pure forensic doctor, didn’t even bother to look inside the air-raid shelter, focusing all his attention on the bodies.

"Transport all the remains back. Collect all the evidence, then we’ll all head back to piece the bones together," said Jiang Yuan succinctly.

A group of forensic doctors got dressed on site, called over some criminal investigators to assist, and began the arduous work of unearthing, bagging bodies, collecting entire families of insects, and transporting soil...

Jiang Yuan, on the other hand, went inside the body cavity in the air-raid shelter, collecting and examining bodies.

Picking through bones was certainly lighter work compared to the physically demanding task of digging bodies out of the ground.

Zeng Lianrong, being of an older generation, also wasn’t interested in digging up bodies. He wandered inside and, seeing Jiang Yuan with a kindred spirit, couldn’t help but smile, intending to help.

At that moment, Jiang Yuan took a few bones that hadn’t been put in a body bag, had them photographed, and said to Zhan Kan behind him, "Take note, there are defensive wounds here. Designate it as air-raid shelter murder case 1."

Zeng Lianrong rubbed his eyes and looked closely at the forearm bones on the table, and after carefully examining the slight fracture and comparing its location, he indeed thought they resembled defensive wounds.

"Was the victim beaten to such an extent to cause this wound?" Zeng Lianrong conjectured instinctively.

Jiang Yuan replied, "It’s possible they just blocked a hit. Air-raid shelter murder case 1 is also a cancer patient, with severely reduced bone mass and very brittle bones... Of course, it could also be an accidental injury, but in this environment, classifying it as a defensive injury, nine times out of ten, won’t wrong anyone."

Zeng Lianrong nodded in agreement, and without saying more, he stopped handling the bones. Normally, the bones should be taken back to the autopsy center for thorough examination, but Jiang Yuan had already sorted and classified them with just a glance... Zeng Lianrong had nothing to say.

While he was contemplating this, Jiang Yuan swiftly packed a pile of bones into a box, then picked up an ankle bone, saying, "Sports injury, there are signs of repeated fractures..."

Then, looking at the corresponding bones again, he added, "Looks like it could be a professional athlete."

Determining whether a skeleton was that of a professional athlete or a sports enthusiast can be done in many ways, but none of them is entirely reliable.

But Zeng Lianrong trusted Jiang Yuan wouldn’t make such a judgment lightly and that it must have been a conclusion based on a comprehensive look at a set of bones...

Zeng Lianrong was interested in delving deeper and thought about how to inquire properly.

Whoosh.

Jiang Yuan moved aside another large portion of remains, picked up a few more bones, and said, "Bones of corpse number 3 and corpse number 4 are mixed up, indicating they were excavated together."

Zeng Lianrong, whose eyesight wasn’t the best, strained to make out the small bones in Jiang Yuan’s hands, but quickly gave up trying to identify them.

The task of determining which bones belonged to which body was exceedingly challenging; Zeng Lianrong had seen people perform such tasks before, but those were more like showcase events... Now, as Zeng Lianrong contemplated, he realized he was getting on in years. He’d had a difficult journey to his current status and it suited him now to be a noble man of leisure, perhaps taking a stroll amid the scent of the dead to improve his health.