Chapter 462: In life
Ding Yukang had an easygoing face. No wonder he so often mediated domestic squabbles; a face like that really did make it easy to get a word in.
The coroner's autopsy report was brief: [The deceased Ding was forty-nine years old and measured four chi five cun in height. There were five abrasions and three bruises. The fatal injuries were to the temples, with two fist wounds.]
"Did Constable Ding have any cultivation?" Pei Ye asked, undoing the corpse's shroud and examining him carefully from the neck down.
"Huh? No-reporting to you, sir, Uncle Ding had no cultivation," Xu Liu answered somewhat stiffly.
Zhao Yi had his reasons for not wanting to come here himself. Examining a corpse was not only dirty work but tiring work as well. Xu Liu had joined the County Office two months ago, and this was his first time seeing a murder victim at such close quarters.
He did not know where this official beside him had come from, but he was clearly far too young, yet now he looked calmly at that ghastly dead face, half covered in bloody bruising.
"Were you friends with Constable Ding?" Pei Ye had caught that form of address.
"... Reporting to you, sir, we weren't actually that close. I run outside assignments with Chief Constable Zhou. But sometimes, when I ran into Uncle Ding... he'd strike up a conversation," Xu Liu said. "He said he used to run outside assignments a lot in his early years too, and told me to... stick it out, and things would get better."
"Oh." Pei Ye nodded. He had now uncovered the entire corpse, and a cursory glance showed that the body was indeed largely intact, with few injuries. "Has anything seemed different about Constable Ding lately?"
Pei