Chapter 107: Discovery

In the midnight morgue, the howling wind sounded like a horde of ghosts passing through; fallen leaves swirled wildly in the air, neither departing nor settling, as if burdened with unfulfilled wishes.

In the midnight morgue, the lights flickered; through the window, the interwoven patterns of light and shadow resembled a gilded cage fate had set, but turning to look behind, one saw only pitch-black night and a gray, hazy sky—always feeling something might suddenly leap out and say, “Hey!”

In the midnight morgue, doors and windows always creaked, locks clicked open with a clack-clack, and water dripped incessantly—dong, dong, dong—even after careful repairs during the day, unexpected problems always arose at night.

In the basement-level autopsy room, the loud music never stopped:

“Barefoot running, barefoot sprinting, sprinting down the streets…”

The song “Shanghai Beach” plunged Li Zhen into his youth, filling him with nostalgia and delight.

Back then, young Li was a newly assigned forensic medic, a college graduate—the envy of the entire Langgu County!

Within a month on the job, he had autopsied nine bodies; when he ate at restaurants, the owner always added two extra pieces of braised pork belly for him.

Listening to the music, Li Zhen felt as if he had returned to the past.

He remembered how primitive conditions were—when cases demanded it, autopsies had to be performed on-site, often right on the bedroom floor of the deceased’s home, opening chests, abdomens, and skulls; back then, kneeling beside the corpse, his young body ached from back pain and soreness—now, if he had to do that again, Li Zhen would immediately add another corpse with a broken spine.

How different now—he even had an office in the morgue, no wind, no rain, just a bit cold—sssshh~~~

“That’s all we dug up from the grave,” Jiang Yuan said, after examining the last scrap of fabric, placing it back into the large evidence box on the small table. He stood up, stretched his back slowly, and rotated his body to loosen up.

He moved cautiously, afraid of waking the neighbors in the boxes around him.

Li Zhen had long collapsed from exhaustion; he slumped casually onto the nearby autopsy table, assuming a strange, half-baked yoga pose—comical, like a corpse forcibly posed.

He had been focused on the music, but at Jiang Yuan’s voice, he lifted his chin slightly, like an old, skinny, proud cat that refused to acknowledge anyone.

“Just sleep when you’re done. There’s a cot inside—you can open it and lie down. You’re too tired.”

Jiang Yuan: …

“...If there’s a cot, why are you sleeping on the autopsy table? It’s way too cold.”

Jiang Yuan had been absorbed in organizing evidence and hadn’t noticed until now; as he turned to look, he felt like he was chatting with an ancient corpse.

He stared at the stainless-steel autopsy table and involuntarily shivered!

Li Zhen chuckled. “You didn’t look closely—I’ve got a military overcoat underneath.”

“That military overcoat’s been sitting in the autopsy room all this time, constantly used as padding—you’ve probably soaked it through with corpse stench. And it’s way too big; it’d fit better on a corpse.”

Li the forensic medic himself couldn’t explain it—he was still young then. He autopsied the man under the overcoat, determined the cause of death, cracked the case quickly, and caught the killer.

The family came to claim the body and threw away the overcoat.

Normally, when something like this happened, families wanted to burn every trace of the deceased, unable to bear seeing anything related—anything that might bring back the pain.

He kept the overcoat—and kept it ever since. He wasn’t afraid. He even found it comforting.

Jiang Yuan calculated Li Zhen’s age, then deduced when he’d been dating, and suddenly felt profound reverence for the overcoat beneath him—it was no longer just a coat, it was a talisman!

“Aren’t we really going home?” Jiang Yuan asked again.

Li Zhen tapped his thumb toward the outside. “If you’re scared, go for a walk!”

Jiang Yuan thought about it: the room was an autopsy room, under police jurisdiction; outside was the morgue, under civil affairs management. Either way, the autopsy room felt safer.

“It’s not fear—I just feel uncomfortable sleeping here.” Jiang Yuan found the cot, measured it briefly, and confirmed it was indeed too short.

“Then let’s keep working,” Li Zhen suggested, rolled over, and began texting his wife a song—“Sweet, Sweet.”

“Sweet, sweet, sweet, sweet…”

Li the forensic medic’s nasal singing echoed through the autopsy room; Jiang Yuan shivered again.

Lying on an autopsy table singing “Sweet, Sweet”—it felt positively corpse-laden.

Jiang Yuan placed another evidence box on the table, opened his notebook, and put on a fresh pair of gloves—Li Zhen, asleep, was no longer paying attention to him.

Compared to the evidence in the large box earlier, this box was far less significant.

The evidence in the large box came directly from the hasty grave: the victim Sun Jingyi’s clothes, a few personal items, soil beneath the corpse’s abdomen—all had been sampled and sent for testing, the most critical, most promising evidence.

The box Jiang Yuan now placed on the table contained items found outside the grave, collected from the area between the grave and one kilometer around it.

“Jian Lai”

There were four such boxes total. Elsewhere, they’d be considered trash; here, every item had to be meticulously pondered before being dismissed.

The most notable evidence was cigarette butts—if they belonged to the perpetrator, they were essentially the killer handing over his ID number.

But the results proved otherwise—it was simply the search team’s unprofessionalism.

Someone had secretly smoked during the search and carelessly dropped the cigarette butt into the woods, then carefully stamped it out.

There was nothing surprising about it—the search had lasted over a day, and it was impossible to stop smokers in the wilderness.

The search team consisted only of professional rescue units, including semi-official local groups like the Blue Sky Rescue Team, but not actual police. They hadn’t received relevant training, bore no legal obligation, and were hard to manage under such harsh conditions.

They didn’t know a corpse might be unearthed here.

Jiang Yuan set aside the cigarette butts, tissues, and other items claimed by someone.

The box still held many other items: unclaimed plastic bags, lighter shells, mineral water bottles, shoe soles, fishing hooks and lines, nets, cloth bags, torn clothes, food packaging and boxes…

Jiang Yuan pulled each item out one by one and examined them.

Then he’d fingerprint each, then wipe for DNA.

This task could be done by other crime scene techs or analysts—but very, very few could do it well.

Even the simple act of dampening the cotton swab slightly before wiping for DNA—making it half-dry, half-wet—was rarely done; everyone knew it was better, but in practice, most just swabbed quickly and called it done.

As for proper swabbing technique, correct evidence bags, and timely submission for testing—fewer still managed these. These were tedious, complex tasks with no guarantee of results.

Like trace evidence, DNA testing’s core lay in sample extraction.

Extraction itself wasn’t technically difficult—just required care, patience, and skill—but in reality, few could achieve it.

Some were genuinely lazy; others simply couldn’t finish everything and had to rush.

In this regard, crime scene techs and analysts were no different from elementary schoolchildren. Teachers and parents constantly nagged: write neatly, be careful, don’t be careless, and take initiative—do extra homework.

In any class, the number of kids who could do all that? Probably none. Even with intense parental pressure, very few could sustain it.

And right now, Jiang Yuan was the most proactive, most diligent student in the class.

His mood and energy were high.

He’d used his newly acquired sketching skills to draw a diagram marking the distribution of evidence around Sun Jingyi’s grave. Though merely a tool sketch, it looked surprisingly pleasant.

Then he began processing the evidence itself.

By habit, he started with fingerprints.

Whether to fingerprint first or collect DNA first was occasionally debated; everyone criticized the other for being careless, but usually, whoever arrived first did it first.

Jiang Yuan was more familiar with fingerprints.

He scanned item after item: Baishuisan, Wahaha, Binglu—then came a bottle of Nongfu Spring. Jiang Yuan stared at the fingerprint he’d lifted, lost in thought.

He held the fingerprint in his hand, gazing silently.

This print was about three-quarters the size of a normal fingerprint, fairly complete, with clear ridge patterns—if this existed in the database, any latent print technician could easily match it.

It didn’t look like a fingerprint from a fingerprint war.

Yet he felt a strange sense of familiarity.

For fingerprint experts, impressions of fingerprints were like a playboy’s memories of ex-girlfriends.

Jiang Yuan pushed his thoughts further and further back.

As he thought, a fingerprint suddenly flashed into his mind!

The Wenxiang arson case!

After multiple cases were linked, most arson cases in Wenxiang were solved—except one.

The arson case involving the forest land remained unsolved.

Jiang Yuan immediately pulled out his phone and searched.

In his memory, the arsonist had confessed to several cases but refused to admit this one, so it was left pending.

The fingerprint collected from that case was extremely poor—but comparing it to this one… there were many similarities!

(grass container grass)!

!

The teacher was right—effort never goes to waste.

Jiang Yuan excitedly nudged Li the forensic medic, who had just dozed off on the autopsy table.