Chapter 68: Autopsy at the Mortuary Uncovers New Clues

Duty Room D-17.

Zhao Gang finally found a wooden stick to prop up the fourth leg of the table.

Although it still wobbled, at least it could hold things now.

Lin Chen spread out the scroll of documents regarding the Evil Cultivator case and pressed it onto the tabletop.

Zhao Gang and Shen Yue stood on either side of the table, leaning their heads in.

"Where are the four corpses currently being kept?"

Zhao Gang rubbed his hands together.

"The City East Mortuary. It is standard practice for the Patrol Division to send unidentified corpses and bodies related to cases there."

He paused for a beat.

"However, I heard from Old Liu at the mortuary that these few corpses have been there for several days."

"No one has claimed them, and no one has come to investigate."

Lin Chen's finger slid along the four crime scene locations recorded on the document.

Anding Ward in the east of the city, Liuhe Ward in the south, and Mazhuang in the west.

They were very widely distributed.

"Let's go, let's go see the corpses first."

Shen Yue picked up her saber from the corner of the wall and hung it at her waist.

"What about the eight people from before?"

Lin Chen turned his head and swept a glance at the row of old and weak laborers still squatting at the base of the wall in the courtyard.

Two of them had already started snoring.

"Let them rest."

The City East Mortuary was located in a dead-end alley four streets east of Chengen Ward.

The courtyard wall was covered in withered vines, and the white paint on the main gate was peeling off in patches.

An indescribable stench of decay seeped out from the gaps in the door panels.

Old Liu, who looked after the gate, was over sixty years old. He was hunched over on a low stool in the gatehouse, a tattered cotton jacket draped over his knees.

Seeing the three of them approaching, he squinted and sized them up for a long time.

"Who are you?"

Lin Chen flashed his Patrol Division waist badge.

"Patrol Division Squad Leader, Lin Chen. I've come to examine the corpses from the Evil Cultivator case."

Old Liu's eyelids twitched.

He stood up from the low stool, tucked in the hem of his cotton jacket, and lowered his voice.

"The Evil Cultivator case?"

Lin Chen nodded.

Old Liu looked him up and down twice and smacked his lips.

"You are the third group to come and see."

Zhao Gang interjected.

"Who were the first two groups?"

Old Liu held up two fingers.

"The first group was that Squad Leader Liu sent by the Patrol Division half a month ago."

"He brought two people to see them, and the day after they finished, he took on the case."

He withdrew his first finger.

"Then, on the seventh day, the person was gone."

"What about the second group?"

Old Liu shook his second finger in the air.

"The second group was after Squad Leader Liu died; the Governors Mansion sent a clerk to make a routine record."

"He walked in, took one look at the corpses, vomited on the spot, and ran away before he had even finished writing the record."

He retracted his hand into his sleeve and looked up at Lin Chen.

"Young man, you are so young. Have you thought this through before coming?"

Lin Chen put his waist badge back at his waist.

"Lead the way."

Old Liu dawdled for a moment, took a bunch of brass keys off a nail in the gatehouse, and led the three of them toward the mortuary.

The mortuary was in the deepest part of the backyard.

It was a single row of green brick bungalows with no windows, only a large iron door.

The key was inserted into the lock and turned twice, and the iron door creaked open.

A thick stench of decay, mixed with the dry smell of lime powder, rushed out to meet them.

Shen Yue's expression changed, but she didn't retreat; she simply raised her sleeve to cover her nose and mouth.

Zhao Gang's hand rested on the hilt of his saber.

It wasn't out of caution, but habit.

Lin Chen walked in front.

The light inside the mortuary was very dim, with only the patch of daylight that shone in after the iron door was opened.

Four stone beds were lined up against the left wall, each covered with a layer of coarse white linen.

Old Liu didn't follow them in; he squatted on the steps outside the door, his voice drifting in from afar.

"The one on the far left is the earliest one, from Mazhuang in the west of the city ten days ago."

Lin Chen walked to the stone bed on the far left and reached out to lift the white linen.

Zhao Gang gave a muffled grunt behind him.

Shen Yue's breathing hitched for a beat.

The thing lying on the stone bed was already difficult to describe as a "corpse."

It looked more like a skeleton wrapped in a layer of dry skin.

The skin was so dry and cracked that the grey fascia underneath could be seen.

The edges of every crack curled outwards, like land that had been in a drought for three years.

The eye sockets were so sunken that two eggs could fit inside.

The lips had shriveled to reveal a full row of blackened teeth.

The facial muscles had completely lost their elasticity, and the contours of the features had collapsed into the shape of the skull.

But what was most hair-raising was not this appearance.

It was the corpse's hands.

The ten fingers were curled into claws, and the fingernails were deeply embedded into the flesh of the palms.

Dried, blackened bloodstains remained on the palms.

It had struggled violently before death.

The fingernails had clawed its own palms to shreds.

Lin Chen stared for three breaths.

He stretched out his right hand, hovering his palm above the corpse's chest, about two inches from the skin.

A wisp of extremely fine True Qi from the Middle Stage of the Tongmai Realm seeped out from his palm, scanning slowly along the surface of the corpse.

The moment the thread made contact with the corpse, Lin Chen's brow furrowed.

There was something there.

Residual in the depths of the corpse's Meridians was an extremely faint, cold, and sinister aura, as thin as a thread.

Ten days had passed, and this aura was almost completely dissipated.

But the precision of his Middle Stage Tongmai Realm investigation was sufficient to capture this layer of residue.

It was cold, decaying, and carried an indescribable, sticky sensation.

It was as if something had crawled in along the Meridians, draining the vital blood inside drop by drop.

Lin Chen withdrew his hand.

"Zhao Gang, come and feel this corpse's arm."

Zhao Gang walked over, hesitated for a breath, and reached out to grasp the corpse's forearm.

As soon as his fingers pinched it, his expression changed.

"It's empty."

He let go and rubbed his palms.

"It's not just empty. The bones are still there, but everything inside is gone."

"The vital blood and the moisture in the fascia have all been drained dry."

"It feels like pinching a piece of withered firewood."

Lin Chen nodded and walked to the second stone bed to lift the white linen.

The state of death was exactly the same.

The third and fourth corpses were just as shriveled, with the same twisted faces and the same signs of self-mutilation on the palms.

But on the fourth corpse, Lin Chen discovered something else.

At the base of the deceased's neck, hidden beneath the hairline, was a black dot the size of a needle tip.

It was impossible to find without looking carefully.

After the skin had cracked over a large area, such subtle traces were very easily overlooked.

The moment Lin Chen's True Qi thread touched that black dot, the cold, sinister aura grew three times thicker.

That black dot was the entry point.

"Every single one has it."

Lin Chen straightened his back and turned to look at Zhao Gang and Shen Yue.

"At the base of the neck, beneath the hairline, a black dot the size of a needle tip."

Shen Yue walked quickly to the first three corpses and turned their heads to inspect them one by one.

After squatting beside the first corpse and examining it for a dozen breaths, she looked up.

"There is. It's very small; you can't see it at all without moving the hair."

Zhao Gang's expression darkened.

"When a normal killer murders someone, whether by hacking or poisoning, they always leave behind obvious wounds."

"No one would go to such great lengths just to prick a needle hole in the back of the neck."

Lin Chen covered the white linen back up.

He walked to the entrance of the mortuary and stood on the edge of the iron door's shadow.

"Zhao Gang."

"Yes."

"Go and flip through the Patrol Division's case file archive."

"Find all the case files of unexplained sudden deaths within the city over the past three years."

Zhao Gang was stunned for a moment.

"Three years?"

"Yes, three years."

Lin Chen moved his finger away from the scabbard of the black abyss.

"This technique was not practiced in a day."

"The four corpses are only the ones we've discovered; who knows how many more haven't been found."

Zhao Gang slapped his thigh and turned to run out.

Shen Yue didn't leave.

She stood half a step to Lin Chen's right, her lips pursed as if she were considering how to speak.

Finally, she turned her head and lowered her voice.

"Squad Leader Lin, is that how Liu Sanshui died too?"

Lin Chen did not answer directly.

His gaze went over the mortuary's courtyard wall and landed on the densely packed rooftops of the city in the distance.

"The files state that the state of Liu Sanshui's death was exactly the same as these four."

"There was a needle hole in the back of his neck too."

Shen Yue's hand tightened on the hilt of her saber.

"That means the Evil Cultivator knew someone was investigating him, so he acted first to kill Liu Sanshui."

It was already afternoon when they left the mortuary.

Lin Chen did not return to the Patrol Division; he took Shen Yue and walked south along the main street.

The streets of the city were indeed a hundred times more prosperous than those of Qingxi County.

But the further he walked, the tighter his brows furrowed.

The stretch of road from Chengen Ward to Qinghe Ward was less than two miles long.

Just past the first alleyway, an old man selling wontons was cornered against a wall by three burly men wearing coarse brown clothes.

The hot wonton carrying pole was overturned on the ground, and shards of bowls splashed across half the alley.

The old man trembled as he pulled copper coins from his pocket, but the burly men thought it was too little and kicked him again.

Passersby turned their heads and walked away, not even daring to take another look.

Lin Chen's footsteps didn't stop.

Half a street further on, at the entrance of a clothing store.

Two well-dressed Young Masters were pulling on the sleeve of a delivery maid, their words unbearable to hear.

The maid couldn't break free, her face red with anxiety.

A circle of people watched, but not one stepped forward.

Lin Chen's pace remained unchanged.

Turning past Qinghe Bridge, a line of beggars was squatting at the end of the bridge.

A lame old beggar had just picked up half a bowl of leftover noodles when a black boot kicked over.

The bowl overturned, and noodle soup spilled all over the ground.

The bailiff in the black boots stood with his hands on his hips, cursed a couple of times, and strutted away.

Lin Chen's gaze swept over the office mark embroidered on the back of that bailiff.

City Defense Battalion.

His pace didn't change.

But his thumb, resting on the scabbard of the black abyss, pressed down half a point, and the veins on his knuckles bulged slightly.

Shen Yue followed behind him, the corners of her mouth drooping.

"Has the law and order in the city always been like this?"