Hitting the Jackpot

Ruan Rong, determined to show off, rushed into the courtyard. At first, she moved with swift strides, but after passing those few coffins, her pace slowed down. Her large eyes darted around, revealing the unease and fear in her heart.

If Li Jiuming had offered a few words of persuasion at this moment, she might have retreated.

However, Li Jiuming was a master at handling cases but utterly clueless about a young girl's thoughts.

He hurried up from behind, and seeing that the autopsy room was not far ahead, he shook his head helplessly and said, "Forget it. Since you're so determined to show off, little girl, come in with me."

Now Ruan Rong had no way out. She had to bite the bullet and cross the threshold alongside Li Jiuming.

The moment she stepped one foot inside and one foot outside the door, a stench assaulted her face. Even though Ruan Rong covered her mouth and nose in time, she couldn't completely block it out. The disgusting odor drilled into her nostrils and 'clawed wildly' in her stomach, as if trying to bring up the previous night's meal!

"What... what is this smell? It stinks!"

Ruan Rong suppressed her nausea and complained in a muffled voice. Then she heard someone respond from behind, "You're right. This is indeed the stench of a dead body. But it should be a lingering smell from before. If there were decaying corpses inside, the smell would be much stronger."

The stench of a dead body?

Much stronger?!

Before Sun Shaozong could finish speaking, Ruan Rong turned and sprinted out of the courtyard, followed by a series of intermittent vomiting sounds.

"This Rong girl!"

Li Jiuming sighed helplessly. When he looked at Sun Shaozong again, there was more scrutiny in his eyes. He had seen many desperate men who licked blood from their blades, but he had rarely seen a young man who could identify the stench of a corpse with one word and remain calm in the face of it.

So, imperceptibly, he raised his level of regard for Sun Shaozong by a few notches.

"Captain Sun, please."

"Thank you, Head Constable Li."

Li Jiuming raised his hand to gesture inside. Sun Shaozong casually thanked him and stepped into the morgue.

It was only about three o'clock in the afternoon, but there were a dozen candles lit in the morgue. The candlesticks were of varying heights, vaguely surrounding a single bed covered with a white cloth.

To the left of the single bed, two coroners, one fat and one thin, were silently cleaning their knives. When they saw Li Jiuming leading someone in, they merely nodded slightly as a greeting and then ignored them.

Sun Shaozong knew that these people who often dealt with corpses tended to be unsociable, so he didn't take it to heart. He walked to the bed on his own, pointed to the white cloth covering it, and politely asked, "Gentlemen, may I lift it to take a look?"

The thin one raised his head and glanced at Li Jiuming. Seeing that he had no intention of stopping him, a mocking smile appeared on his face, and he replied dryly, "Suit yourself."

As he spoke, his triangular eyes were full of schadenfreude.

The fat one didn't speak, but he also glanced over, looking as if he was waiting for a good show.

Faced with these two gloomy gazes, Sun Shaozong was very open. Without saying a word, he stepped forward, grabbed the white cloth, and lifted it all the way up!

Whoosh!

The white cloth was lifted, and a bloody corpse was immediately presented in front of Sun Shaozong. The person's head and limbs were still relatively intact, but the chest cavity was completely dissected. The bright red flesh and the pale white bones resembled a bloody maw about to devour someone!

And in that 'oral cavity', the internal organs, intestines, esophagus, and other fragmented objects were all wrinkled and turned outwards, dripping with yellowish-brown mucus...

An ordinary person would probably be scared half to death at the sight of this terrifying scene!

But Sun Shaozong had been a criminal police officer for more than ten years. What kind of corpses hadn't he seen?

Not to mention this kind of 'fresh' corpse with an open chest and abdomen, he had seen more than a dozen corpses that had been chopped up, deep-fried, and pan-fried!

Therefore, he nonchalantly bent down, carefully examined the corpse for a long while, and then poked around in the abdominal cavity before looking up and commenting, "It should have been pierced by a sharp blade between the fifth and fourth ribs on the left side, rupturing the liver and causing massive bleeding, resulting in death. The blade was angled downwards when it entered, leaving a cut mark on the fifth rib."

The fat and thin coroners and Li Jiuming looked at each other in astonishment.

After a long while, the fat coroner put down the knife in his hand and praised with a tsk tsk sound, "An expert! Which yamen is this young brother from? To have such courage and experience at such a young age..."

"Cough cough!"

Li Jiuming had brought Sun Shaozong here privately, so how could he dare to expose his true identity?

He coughed twice to interrupt the fat coroner's questioning and said sternly, "Since you know he's an expert, then don't hide anything. Tell this little brother the results of your autopsy."

The fat coroner didn't delve into the matter and pointed to the corpse, speaking eloquently, "A total of three corpses were sent here, all killed by the guards of the Bull Envoy during their resistance. After they were sent here, we first asked the patrol officers and constables on the streets to take a look, but none of them were familiar faces, so they shouldn't be from Qinglin Prefecture."

Li Jiuming added, "They haven't arrived in the last few days either. The city gate guards have no impression of them, which shows that they have been hiding in the city for some time, and some people are even responsible for receiving and taking care of them. Otherwise, how could a dozen outsiders have lived in the city for so long without anyone noticing?"

After he finished supplementing, the fat coroner continued, "Judging from the calluses on the corpses' limbs and the wear and tear on their teeth, these people usually lived a relatively comfortable life and rarely participated in labor, but they practiced with knives and guns all day long."

The thin coroner interjected, "However, judging from the strange wounds on their bodies, they shouldn't be soldiers or yamen runners. It's more likely that they came from the Roving Knights of the streets."

The fat coroner took over the conversation again, pointing to a single bed in the southwest corner, and said, "The one lying over there originally had a tattoo on his back, but it was forcibly destroyed recently, probably because he was afraid that the tattoo would reveal his identity."

Tattoo?

Sun Shaozong's heart stirred when he heard this, and he quickly turned his gaze to Li Jiuming. However, Li Jiuming shook his head slightly and said, "The Roving Knights of the Six Southern Border Countries often have the habit of tattooing. If the tattoo was still intact, I might be able to follow the clues and find out something, but now..."

Sun Shaozong was a little disappointed and turned to ask the two coroners, "Have you checked the food residue in their stomachs? Did you find any clues?"

"As expected of an expert!"

The fat coroner praised again, then took out a tray from under the shelf where the knives were placed. On the tray were three enamel bowls, filled with a sticky substance that he didn't know what it was. From a distance, a disgusting sour smell wafted over.

"This is what was taken out of their stomachs." The fat coroner pointed to the paste in the bowl and said, "In addition to common meat and pasta, there also seem to be some fruits—they shouldn't be common fruits on the market. As for what kind of fruits they are, the two of us can't tell."

Sun Shaozong immediately became excited again and blurted out, "Then can we use this as a clue to find out where the assassins' accomplices are hiding?"

"This..."

The fat coroner and the thin coroner looked at each other with bitter smiles. In the end, Li Jiuming opened his mouth to explain, "The Southern Border is known as the land of fruits and melons. Now it's the end of summer and the beginning of autumn, and there are at least hundreds of kinds of fruits. If we compare each one, I don't know how much time it will take—and this has to be eaten first and then vomited out before we can compare it, it's really..."

After a pause, he added, "What's more, this kind of seasonal fruit doesn't last long. Maybe by the evening, it will have completely deteriorated."

That's true.

In the absence of scientific instruments, if you want to find out the origin of these fruit residues, I'm afraid you can only rely on luck—but the iron rule of modern criminal police is that no matter how insignificant the clues are, you can't give up the investigation!

Therefore, Sun Shaozong still requested, "In that case, can the two of you give me some of these fruit residues? Maybe I'll be lucky and find this kind of fruit by chance."

This thing doesn't last long, so what's the use of leaving more?

Therefore, the two coroners agreed to Sun Shaozong's request without hesitation, took out a piece of oil paper, carefully separated nearly half of the fruit residue, packed it up, and handed it to Sun Shaozong.

Sun Shaozong was still unwilling to give up and discussed with the two coroners for a long time, but he still didn't gain anything. In the end, he had to say goodbye and leave in disappointment.

Li Jiuming sent him out of the morgue and stopped, saying in a deep voice, "I still have official business to attend to, so I won't see you off—remember to tell Ruan Rong for me, don't meddle in this case in the future!"

Sun Shaozong nodded in agreement and hurried out of the courtyard gate, only to see Ruan Rong standing pale against the wall, with a large pool of vomit spread out beside her. It was estimated that she had contributed her breakfast as well.

Ruan Rong also noticed Sun Shaozong at this time. Seeing his eyes wandering over the pool of vomit, she couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed. She scraped the ground with her boots, trying to cover the pool of vomit with dirt.

But at this moment, Sun Shaozong's eyes suddenly lit up, and he excitedly rushed to the pile of vomit, squatting down to study it carefully—he didn't expect that what he had just said casually would actually bring him such good luck!