The morgue.
Everything on the forensic doctors' side was ready. They were only waiting for the bodies to thaw before beginning the examination.
Sun Zhenbang had also completed the disinfection procedures and put on his sterile clothing and other equipment. He stood to the side, responsible for observing and recording.
The body was pushed out on a stretcher. As the ice melted away, its intact features appeared before Sun Zhenbang's eyes.
The man's face was livid, his body deathly pale, and his eyes were stretched so wide they almost bulged out. His features were also horribly twisted, as if he had seen something before dying.
"Deceased one. Male, thirty-eight years old. The preliminary estimate places the time of death at around nine to ten p.m. The cause of death was organ failure and massive blood loss resulting from a penetrating wound to the chest. The weapon is unknown."
At this point, the forensic doctor paused slightly, and Sun Zhenbang followed his gaze.
There was a huge bloody hole in the man's chest, roughly the thickness of a thumb. No one knew what sharp weapon had pierced him, but it was extremely conspicuous.
The flesh inside had long since vanished without a trace. It had probably fallen into the snow. Other than that, there were no other obvious wounds.
The wound was very unusual. Ordinary sharp weapons would have had difficulty creating such a shape, and the cut was exceptionally neat—clean and decisive.
Sun Zhenbang observed carefully from the side, thinking it over in his mind. It seemed that no weapon matched it.
This corpse was still relatively intact. The other one, however, was almost too gruesome to look at.
There was a scar running across his entire face. Judging by the marks, it was very fresh and must have been inflicted not long ago. Half of the inside of his head had also been smashed to pieces by something unknown.
"Deceased two. Male, thirty-nine years old. There are obvious wounds on his face. The preliminary estimate places the time of death at around ten to eleven p.m. The cause of death was severe trauma to the head. The weapon is unknown."
Sun Zhenbang fell into deep thought. "The two men died in different ways, and the times of death were also different. For now, we can rule out the possibility that they killed each other."
Moreover, they had been attacked one after the other. In other words, the killer had taken them down one by one.
No sharp weapon had been found at the scene. The only thing that might have been the murder weapon was a machete, which had already been sent to the laboratory for fingerprint testing.
But neither corpse had wounds resembling those a machete could inflict. It was strange to the extreme.
There were no traces of wild animals tearing at the two men either. Thus, it was very possible that a third person had been present, killed the two poachers, released the wild animals, and then left with the murder weapon.
Alternatively, that third person might also have been a poacher who wanted to rob them blind. But even so, there was no reason to kill them.
It was also possible that he had been discovered and had resorted to murder out of desperation.
After turning it over in his mind again and again, Sun Zhenbang came up with several possibilities.
The forensic doctors were still conducting a meticulous examination. One of them seemed to have made a new discovery. Holding a long, slender pair of tweezers, he extracted an extremely tiny fragment of a black-green scale from the bloody hole and placed it to the side.
Sun Zhenbang could not help moving closer. "What is this?"
The forensic doctor examined it carefully and said uncertainly, "It seems to be a fragment shed from the scale of some kind of snake, but it bears traces of scorching."
Afterward, someone found a similar scale fragment on the head of the other male corpse as well.
Sun Zhenbang immediately had someone take it away for examination. He still had other matters to attend to and could not remain in the morgue indefinitely. Seeing that the autopsy was nearing its end, he chose to leave.
He told the forensic doctors to notify him immediately if they obtained any new results.
By the afternoon, all the examination results had come back. The machete bore only the second deceased man's fingerprints. At the same time, apart from the footprints and fingerprints of the two deceased men, there was nothing else at the scene.
In other words, there had been no third person there.
The strangest part was that fragments of snake scales had been found in the fatal wounds of both poachers.
A wooden board had also been found at the scene. It contained a small hole roughly the same size as the wound on the first deceased man's chest. After the police at the scene measured it, they found that the shapes and diameters of the two holes were identical.
Strange deaths, a strange small hole, and the strange appearance of snake scales—everything was steeped in bizarre mystery.
It left people utterly baffled.
Sun Zhenbang held the report in his hand, sinking into confusion.
A wild goose leaves a feather behind, and water leaves a sound in its wake.
No matter how flawlessly something was done, some clues would always be left behind. Yet from the scene, there were traces only of the two poachers. There was no third person at all.
Then who had killed them?
Could it really have been a ghost?
Moreover, up until now, aside from several fragments of snake scales, they had not even found the murder weapon. They had no clues whatsoever about what kind of object it was or what shape it had.
Just as Sun Zhenbang was lost in bewilderment, the forensic doctors reported that they had made new progress.
The few forensic doctors had solemn expressions, their faces so grave that their emotions were difficult to describe.
Sun Zhenbang hurriedly asked, "What happened?"
The forensic doctors looked at one another, and none of them spoke.
The atmosphere instantly fell into deathly silence.
In the end, Forensic Doctor Li stepped forward. "Officer Sun, I've dissected countless bodies, but this is the first time I've encountered something so strange. That's why I wanted to ask you to come over and discuss it."
Forensic Doctor Li had the most seniority and the highest rank here. He had dissected at least hundreds of corpses, if not thousands. For him to say something like that was enough to prove that this matter was far from simple.
"What exactly happened?"
Forensic Doctor Li could not help sighing. "I suspect that whoever killed them wasn't human."
At that, countless question marks surfaced in Sun Zhenbang's mind. "The killer wasn't human? Could it have been a ghost? Forensic Doctor Li, you're an educated man, so how can you be superstitious too—"
Forensic Doctor Li hurriedly waved his hands. "No, no, Officer Sun, you've misunderstood me. What I mean is that it's very possible that a snake killed them."
"Did they test positive for snake venom?"
Forensic Doctor Li shook his head.
That sounded even more incredible. Sun Zhenbang could not help saying, "If it wasn't snake venom, how could a snake possibly kill someone? Don't tell me they were strangled to death by a giant python."
Most people killed by giant pythons died of suffocation. Because their blood could not circulate properly, their bodies would turn purplish red. But the causes of death for these two men were clearly not that.
Even though Sun Zhenbang was not a forensic doctor, he could still see that much.
Forensic Doctor Li knew that the facts would be difficult to believe. But if they had not witnessed it with their own eyes, they would not have believed this absurd reality either. He took out a report and handed it to Sun Zhenbang.
"Officer Sun, this is the latest examination report. According to the colleagues at the scene, there were no signs of a fierce struggle, and no murder weapon was found. However, the fatal wounds of both men tested positive for snake DNA tissue and fragments of shed scales."
Forensic Doctor Li paused, as if the words that followed were extremely difficult to say. "So—"
He had not finished speaking when Sun Zhenbang interrupted him. "So you suspect the killer was a snake?"
Forensic Doctor Li and the others fell silent before nodding. "Based on the current circumstances, yes."
"Absurd! Are you people joking?"
Sun Zhenbang felt that this explanation was even more unbelievable than a ghost killing someone.
If they had found snake bites or traces of snake venom on the two men, he would not have reacted this way.
He had personally seen the fatal wounds on the two corpses.
"One of them had his chest pierced through, while the other had his head smashed to pieces."
"And now you're telling me that a snake killed them? Are you out of your minds?"