10 Unsolved Mysteries

I pried open the corpses' mouths. According to the records in Severing Hell Scripture, if someone was burned to death, there would be a lot of dust in their nose and trachea. However, the mouths of these two dead men were very clean.

What was going on here?

There was another questionable thing. No matter if someone was burned to death or their corpse was set on fire afterwards, because the proteins in the body coagulate from the heat, the corpse often displays a boxing posture: the forearms held high, fists clenched tight, like a boxer's defensive stance.

But this feature was absent in both corpses, making me wonder if they really burned to death?

I asked Xiao Zhou for a scalpel and started examining a small patch of skin. I found the skin very brittle, and the blood in the vessels had been baked dry. This was clearly another feature shared by burning corpses and burning people alive.

I could only say, these corpses were full of contradictions from head to toe!

Distinguishing between burning to death and burning a corpse is a huge challenge in forensic medicine and funeral services. When the famous Song dynasty coroner Song Ci was still alive, he had experimented with burning live pigs and dead pigs to observe the differences between the two.

But these two corpses were neither completely like burned alive or burned after death, leaving me puzzled but also slightly excited.

It was like a math lover running into a difficult problem. I do have a twisted personality!

I sniffed the corpses and detected a slightly pungent odor, but it didn't smell like common accelerants like gasoline, kerosene or alcohol. I couldn't identify what it was, so I cut out that small piece of skin and gave it to Xiao Zhou to take back and test for two things.

One was the composition of the accelerant. The other was the carbon monoxide hemoglobin level in the blood.

Carbon monoxide hemoglobin is a product formed when hemoglobin binds with carbon dioxide in an extremely hypoxic environment. Exceeding a certain level would be fatal. This is an important indicator for determining burning deaths and post-mortem burning.

Actually this could simply be judged by the naked eye. Too much carbon monoxide hemoglobin would make the lividity appear bright red or cherry red, but that was absent in these two corpses.

I asked Xiao Zhou to test it just to be safe, since the two corpses were a bit bizarre!

I also cut out a small piece of the clothes and asked him to check if the clothes and skin retained the same accelerant.

Xiao Zhou put the samples into test tubes and smiled, "Detective Song, did you forget something?"

"What did I forget?" I wondered.

"DNA! How could you not test such an important thing?" Xiao Zhou said.

I laughed. I need you to remind me of such basics? I said, "The victims' identities aren't confirmed yet, testing DNA is meaningless now. Save your effort and go to the dental hospital in Nanjiang City tomorrow."

As I spoke, I pried open the mouth of the older victim and told Xiao Zhou to take a look at the two molars in the victim's mouth. Shining his flashlight, he said in astonishment, "This guy's rich! Those are gold teeth!"

"What discernment. Those are palladium baked ceramic teeth." I corrected him.

Xiao Zhou took a closer look and realized his mistake. "You're right, they're not real gold teeth."

Palladium baked ceramic teeth are quite high-end dentures, even more valuable than gold teeth. I reckoned there wouldn't be more than five dental clinics in Nanjiang City that do this kind of dental work. Having Xiao Zhou take a dental impression would identify this victim.

As for the other one, we'll slowly investigate and inquire! Once we know one victim's identity, we can find the other's identity by association. Then use DNA testing to finally confirm their identities.

Xiao Zhou stared at me blankly. I asked what was wrong, did he suddenly fall for me?

Xiao Zhou said, "Song Yang, you know both funeral services and forensics. I feel if you took the exam, you could easily get a forensic medical qualification certificate and crush a bunch of veteran forensic doctors."

I laughed. "Why would I need a certificate? Aren't we solving cases now? Hurry up and get going."

"Anything else?" Xiao Zhou asked.

"No, I'll collect the fingerprints and hair. Leave me a UV light. You guys from the tech team can head back first." I waved my hand.

After the tech team left, Huang Xiaotao smiled at me sweetly, "Giving out orders like that, you look quite stylish."

"No no, I won't overstep. Being the power behind the throne suits me better." I replied.

"Oh? So you're saying I'm the Emperor? Looks like I'm the fierce Wu Zetian in your eyes?" Huang Xiaotao said angrily.

"Wu Zetian was a great beauty!" I quickly explained.

"Haha, I'll take that compliment then." Huang Xiaotao's anger dissipated into laughter.

I pressed my ear against the corpse and started listening to the bone reverberations. Generally, the internal organs of a burned body would show some changes, like pulmonary congestion, blistering, kidney swelling and so on.

But these two corpses didn't have such characteristics. Also, from the organ changes I deduced the time of death to be about ten days ago.

I asked Huang Xiaotao to hand me scissors and cut open one corpse's clothes. I discovered a shocking thing - the underwear was completely stuck to the charred skin and very hard to peel off.

I came to a conclusion: "The victims were burned while wearing clothes!"

Huang Xiaotao covered her mouth in surprise. "But their clothes aren't damaged at all. Could this be the legendary spontaneous human combustion?"

Spontaneous human combustion is one of the world's top ten unsolved mysteries. There was an old man who lay in bed sleeping. His children smelled the scent of burning flesh, lifted the quilt and found half the old man's body had burned to ashes, yet the cotton quilt was perfectly intact.

Similar cases of spontaneous human combustion have also been reported abroad. A victim was shopping when flames suddenly erupted from his body and he was engulfed in the blaze. After eyewitnesses put out the fire with a hose, the victim fell motionless to the ground. The autopsy found that his internal organs had all burned to ashes.

There was also a woman who suddenly knelt down without moving during a prayer at church. The people around didn't notice anything at first, until they saw smoke coming from her nose and mouth and realized in shock that she had burned to death. Her internal organs were all charred to coal, but her skin remained undamaged.

Thinking of this and the many anomalies of the corpses, I heaved a long sigh: "It's hard to say!"

Huang Xiaotao chuckled, "First time seeing you stumped. Quite surprising."

"And you're here gloating at my misfortune. It'll be me scolded if we can't crack this case." I retorted.

"Speaking of which, where's your little sidekick?" Huang Xiaotao asked.

"I sent him back to the school to fetch something..." I explained.

Right on cue, Wang Dali came running excitedly with a bag of stuff. He fawned over Huang Xiaotao first before handing the bag to me.

I took out the bone listening wood and carefully listened to the corpses again, but didn't find anything special.

I had fixed the autopsy umbrella recently. I opened it to check for external injuries and had Wang Dali hold the light for me.

Under the purple light shining through the red umbrella, a faint red halo enveloped the corpses. I slowly turned in a circle, but didn't find any external injuries on the bodies. There were some fingerprints on the clothes, but they appeared to be the victims' own prints. I asked Huang Xiaotao to bring a camera over to photograph everything.

After packing up the autopsy umbrella, I complained, "When will I ever encounter a murderer who neatly leaves their prints behind?"

Huang Xiaotao cheekily said, "You complain, but faced with a regular mundane case, you'd definitely still find it boring."

I laughed. "How do you understand me so well?"

"Pshh, can't figure out your quirks after so long?"

Wang Dali watched our interaction with shock written all over his face. "Wow, you two don't even care about propriety anymore, force-feeding me dog food straight away."

Huang Xiaotao glared with wide eyes. "Keep spewing nonsense and I'll cuff you up, believe me or not!"

"Sister Xiaotao spare me!" Wang Dali cowered and fled.

We then went to inspect another room, and also collected fingerprints and hair near the two sleeping bags.

I swung my red umbrella around, shining it at the ground. The footprints on the floor were very messy, but I could still make some of them out. I had Huang Xiaotao photograph all the recognizable ones so we could analyze them later. Among them were two sets of footprints that must have been left by the shoes the victim was wearing. This led me to conclude that the victim had encountered something terrifying in this room, panicking and fleeing to another room, only to be burned alive in the end.

Just then, a shriek came from downstairs!