Huang Xiaotao asked: "Why was the throat of this dead person slit?"
I pondered: "I feel like the murderer is constantly improving his skills."
"Improving...skills?" Huang Xiaotao was very surprised.
"Wait a minute, I need to confirm something first."
I pried open the dead person's mouth to take a look. The mouth was already severely rotten, and when I pried it open there was a sticky tearing sound. Some thin sticky threads were pulled between the upper and lower jaws.
The buccinator muscles on both sides of the mouth had begun to soften. I felt like the whole lower jaw would come off if I applied a little more force. The cartilage of the palate had also softened and collapsed without support, causing the nose to start caving in.
A large amount of rotting liquid from the nasal cavity flowed back into the oral cavity. The oral mucosa, gums, and tongue were all severely rotten. The warm and moist environment in the mouth naturally bred a lot of bacteria and mold. The oral cavity was so rotten it was almost unbearable to look at!
I struggled to withstand the urge to vomit as I leaned in to smell it. The stench was indescribable, and almost made me faint on the spot.
After all, my nose was much more sensitive than average people's. Among the overwhelming stench, I smelled a rich bloody scent, as if blood had flowed back into the dead person's nasal cavity.
Could it be that the victim was hung upside down and bled?
I checked the victim's ankles and found some binding marks as expected.
The whole corpse was so rotten that the phrase "the intestines burst through the belly" could be used to describe it. The intestines were completely exposed, especially since there was a lot of fat in the human intestine, and it was covered with maggots, some of which burrowed in and out under the intestinal membrane, eating until they grew fat and large.
I pressed on the stomach, and felt it was bulging. There was probably gas produced by the decomposition inside, but from the feel there were some other things too.
"Do you have dissection tools?" I asked.
"Don't you Taoist exorcists never dissect bodies?" Huang Xiaotao seemed a little surprised.
"I have no choice. The corpse is so rotten, all the cartilage is gone, it will fall apart if I move it even a little. If not, scissors will work too. I just want to see what's in the stomach." I explained.
Huang Xiaotao asked around and found me a small pair of scissors.
I held up the whole stomach with both hands, and had Huang Xiaotao hold a plastic bag under it to prevent contamination of other organs by anything leaking out of the stomach.
Then I told everyone else to stand back, and held my own breath. I started to cut open the stomach, because there might be stuff spurting out!
Sure enough, as soon as I stabbed with the scissors, there was a "poof" sound, and an extremely foul odor, with a strongly irritating gas, gushed out! I was too close, and the fumes made my eyes water so much I couldn't keep them open. At the same time, a black, liquefied rotten substance poured out in streams.
Many of the police officers were so frightened they kept backing away. I desperately held my breath, because if I breathed any of this in, I would really faint on the spot!
I started using the scissors to cut open the stomach wall, which consists of a layer of sturdy muscle. The crunching sound of cutting through the stomach wall made one's scalp tingle. The undigested contents left in the stomach flowed into the plastic bag. I asked Huang Xiaotao to hand me another bag, and after receiving it, I tightly wrapped the cut-open stomach in the clean bag, and stuffed it back into the dead person's belly.
This way, if the coroner needed to dissect it later, the other organs would not be corroded by residual gastric acid.
I picked up the bag of contents, and rushed outside the underpass to gulp several breaths of fresh air. A hand holding a cigarette box reached out, shook out a cigarette, I looked up to see it was Wang Yuanchao.
"Thanks, but I don't smoke." I said.
He silently stuck it in his own mouth.
"Wang Yuanchao, when did you get here?" Huang Xiaotao asked.
"I rushed over as soon as I got the call." He replied.
I examined the contents of the plastic bag in the sunlight. Huang Xiaotao asked if I had discovered anything. I told her to take a sniff. Huang Xiaotao was hesitant at first, but still leaned over to smell it, and exclaimed in surprise: "How come the dead person's stomach is full of the smell of spices!"
"Yes, there is Sichuan pepper, star anise, cinnamon, nutmeg in here." I analyzed each one.
Huang Xiaotao frowned and said: "This bastard murderer, isn't he hoping I won't dare to eat these things anymore?" Then she asked me: "Why would there be these things in the dead person's stomach?"
"The murderer probably wanted to improve the taste of human flesh." I answered.
"Improve...taste?" Her cheeks visibly twitched.
"I noticed abrasions on the esophagus just now. The victim was probably force-fed through a soft tube, and these spices were forcibly pumped in, like making Peking duck."
"How twisted!" Huang Xiaotao said with a frown.
"Also, there are binding marks on the feet, a lot of blood accumulated in the nasal cavity, the victim may have been hung upside down and had his throat slit..." I paused, and said: "Just like slaughtering chickens and ducks!"
Hearing this, everyone present changed color.
This dead person was the first one kidnapped by the murderer. The murderer had 'flights of fancy' about forcibly making the victim eat large amounts of spices. Judging by the degree of digestion of the spices, about twelve hours after being force-fed, the murderer 'impatiently' hung up the victim upside down and slit his throat to bleed him.
For ordinary people it is very difficult to calmly and composedly do such appalling things to another human being. The murderer should have two characteristics - first, a lack of humanity, and second, abundant experience slaughtering animals!
This corpse had many differences from the previous one, but I could still determine conclusively that it was done by the same person. Comparing these two corpses shows that the murderer has been continuously exploring more fresh and delicious ways of slaughtering people.
Obviously the method of using spices to improve the meat didn't work, which was why the murderer later used anesthetics to kill!
After saying all this, I took a deep breath. Trying to fathom the psyche of such a cannibalistic madman felt especially nauseating, oppressive and suffocating, like exploring a dark, filthy, dank sewer.
Especially when I thought about having to face such a horrifying corpse once again.
The people around me were all silent, for as long as five seconds. For most of the police officers, this may have been the most bizarre case they encountered in their lifetimes.
The silence was finally broken by Wang Dali's voice. He came trotting over excitedly saying: "Yang Zi, you guys are here! Did I make it in time?"
Wang Dali saw the atmosphere was a little off, then caught sight of the corpse on the ground and leaped as if he had stepped on a live wire: "My god! Is this still a person?"
I asked: "Do you have the stuff?"
"All here."
I told Wang Dali to hurry and take out my mint tin, which contained Shugan pills. I couldn't stand the stench any longer. After Wang Dali found it, he put one in my mouth. A clear fragrance with a minty taste instantly penetrated from my nose all the way into my brain, making me feel incredibly refreshed.
There was some seaweed ash left over from last night's burning, I had put it in a paper packet. I told Wang Dali to take it out, along with my red silk cloth for detecting shadow imprints.
I used these two items to examine the corpse. Same as the previous corpse, the murderer had worn gloves, so the corpse only had shadow imprints and no fingerprints. However, there were many fingerprints on the plastic bag, unfortunately too blurred from soaking in water to have any forensic value.
I stared blankly at the shadow imprints and fingerprints, while Wang Dali kept asking questions beside me, none of which I heard.
Huang Xiaotao asked: "Song Yang, did you discover something important?"
I murmured quietly, transfixed: "I seem to have made a major discovery!"