Chapter 422: The Child Beaten by Many People

The bones were sorted out one by one, a massive workload, and with so much to do, it would have been very difficult for Chen Fan to handle it alone.

It was just that many people felt a bit let down.

The letdown was a strange one—when everyone thought it was a serial murder case, they were shocked, stunned.

But once they learned it was just one person who had died, they started feeling again that there wasn't much to it.

That is human nature; human nature can't find resonance, and you can't make others feel a certain way.

The remains were brought back one by one.

A group of bigwigs gathered together, studying what the bones themselves might contain.

Screening through them bit by bit.

In the end, one thing was proven—Chen Fan was right; the deceased really was just one person.

Chen Fan looked at the remains, at the bones wrapped up like that, and suddenly thought of something terrifying.

"What if I told you this isn't actually a centipede, just something that looks like one—would you believe me?"

Li Tian looked at Chen Fan and said, "Stop trying to scare me. Just talk properly. I feel like you're not even normal right now."

Chen Fan said, "Yeah, this isn't a centipede—it's something wrapped up. These remains are all female, and they're all quite old. I noticed the pelvic bones all seem fairly wide; eighty percent of them had borne children."

Had been pregnant, had given birth?

Li Tian said, "What do you mean by that?"

"First, being able to get hold of this many remains is already a problem in itself. And I'm telling the truth—the forensic examiner told me these were all mothers."

Li Tian was silent for a long while, then called Xiang Qinqin.

"Ah, Captain Li Tian, I'm watching the livestream. What's up?"

"Do you know anyone at the funeral home? The kind with a bit of a screw loose?"

Xiang Qinqin said, "Well, isn't everyone who works at a funeral home a bit of a screw loose?"

That actually seemed true. Li Tian said, "Yeah, how should I put it—the kind with a bit of an artistic streak?"

Xiang Qinqin said, "Then I'll have to call my teacher. This kind of thing really doesn't sit well with me."

The call went through, and soon Li Tian got a reply, learned of a place, and it wasn't far from where he was.

Then the answer became obvious.

Li Tian moved fast on the case, taking people straight over to make the arrest.

Chen Fan and Old Zhou followed along.

The heavy snow outside quieted down at that moment—no wild wind, just a silent snowfall.

A man dressed all in black stood in the snow, awaiting Li Tian's arrival.

"Hello, Captain Li."

Li Tian looked at the man and said, "If you don't give me an explanation, I have the authority to take you in."

"I didn't kill anyone. These remains are from the funeral home side—just no one wanted them."

?????

The man's words struck Li Tian's heart like a sharp blade; Li Tian was utterly shaken.

He looked at the man and said, "What do you mean? No one wanted them? How could that be, in this world… damn, son of a—"

Li Tian thought of something and finally shut his mouth.

The man said, "I work at the funeral home. It's different from Xiang Qinqin's side—I'm the one who liaises with some hospitals."

Liaising with hospitals.

Li Tian stared at the man in silence and said, "Liaising with hospitals—these remains, are they…?"

"Right. The families won't pay for treatment, and they won't take them home either—they just dump them at the hospital, using morality to hold the hospital hostage, hoping the hospital will treat them for free. If they get better, they come to collect them. If they don't, they sue the hospital for murder. In the end, left with no choice, our side has to handle it."

The man's words were very quiet, but it was precisely words like these that gave one a heavy, helpless feeling.

Li Tian had handled cases like this before—families who didn't care about their elders' bodies, just leaving them at the hospital.

No treatment fees either; they just leave them there, don't come pick them up, don't even make a phone call. But if you handle it on your end, they'll come after you, sue you, that sort of thing.

As these cases piled up over time, a group of public prosecutors and lawyers emerged who specialized in handling them.

They'd charge those people with abandonment, and in the end, those people had no way out.

The money came from the government—cremation, then letting the funeral home handle the rest.

What was the funeral home supposed to do—give them a grand funeral?

They could, of course, just burn all the bones to ash, but there was no point. After all, in our Chinese tradition, birth, aging, sickness, and death are actually very important matters.

The black umbrella the man was holding was, at that moment, the most striking thing for the viewers.

"Want to ask how this child died? I don't know. The hospital got the body, the police are investigating too, but they don't have any leads. The child starved to death."

After saying that, the man handed the umbrella to Chen Fan and said, "Hope you can find the answer."

With that, the man turned and walked back.

Chen Fan was speechless, his face full of disdain as he said, "What are you trying to act cool for? So annoying. I actually thought it was kind of cool."

Chen Fan was joking, but no one else found it funny.

The color palette of the livestream at that moment, and the mood it carried, made everyone feel as if they were watching a scene from a movie.

That man, in his own way, was drawing everyone's attention to this case.

Li Tian was speechless and said, "Chen Fan, do you know the answer?"

"I do."

"Then what are you here for?"

"I'm here to watch the show. I thought you were going to make an arrest."

"Damn, it's such a big case—don't you know that?"

Chen Fan pointed at the forensic report and said, "I wrote in there that the cause of death was starvation. It's your own fault for not reading it carefully. You were the first to jump to the conclusion that it was a serial murder case. You blaming me?"

"You go handle the skeleton first. I'll stay here and have a chat with this guy, look into it — I want to find out where this child is from."

Old Zhou and Chen Fan returned.

This time, Chen Fan took the hammer and, in front of everyone, smashed the child's bones to pieces.