Chapter 405

"Females aged 33 to 36, height around 163 cm, weight approximately 110 jin, blood type A, long hair, around 34 years old, has given birth, frequently bends over for work, often climbs mountains... likely a resident of an upstream town or village..."

Forensic doctor Zhai had strong expertise in forensic anthropology; during his previous collaboration with Jiang Yuan, he had already demonstrated level IV2+ proficiency, and now in Longli County, he focused intently, striving to showcase his best abilities.

The eight young forensic doctors attending the training listened carefully while taking notes, all showing serious expressions.

One who spoke up smiled as soon as Zhai finished speaking.

He said: "Forensic Doctor Zhai is truly amazing—just examining this single bone for a few minutes, he delivers a whole series of anthropological judgments. Unbeatable."

Zhai, an elderly man who spent his days with corpses, rarely received praise; he chuckled awkwardly: "What unbeatable? I don't even understand the things you young folks say anymore."

"You can understand what corpses are saying—that's the real skill," the forensic doctor quickly added two more flatters.

Zhai was pleased, put down the bone, and smiled: "They say forensic doctors listen to corpses, but it's not that easy. Still, technology is advancing fast—by the time you reach my age, I wonder how far forensic techniques will have progressed..."

"It won't really come to corpses speaking, right?" another forensic doctor said.

"Honestly, some corpses, if you asked them to speak, they couldn't even explain how they died. We still have to figure it out for them."

"So you're saying you chat with corpses while performing autopsies? That sounds pretty cool."

"A lot of surgeons do exactly that—give patients local anesthesia, chat with them while operating, then get praised for their good bedside manner."

"Logically, even if corpses think we're rude, they can't file complaints, right?"

"Then they should just solve their own cases instead of complaining."

Cough. Cough.

Zhai had been enjoying the conversation at first, but now he couldn't take it anymore: "Focus on the bones... focus on the bones..."

The group gradually fell silent, watching as Zhai picked up bones and explained them.

Zhai himself was also using this method to reevaluate his own judgments.

He had been studying these bones for two days, yet still hadn't made any breakthrough.

Fortunately, Zhai was old enough to know that failure to break through was the norm—ordinary human bodies, at death, were often just ordinary corpses, with no distinguishing features, sometimes leaving almost no special marks on the bones...

There were many residents upstream along Lishou River; several towns and villages were built along its banks. From the discovery site, the area within ten kilometers upstream was relatively densely populated. Moreover, the possibility of body dumping must be considered.

If the victim had previously broken a leg, had bone nails implanted, received dental work, lost half an ear, fractured two ribs, or suffered severe rheumatoid arthritis combined with gout, it would be easier to identify her...

"Today, let's talk about the patella," Zhai casually pulled out a knee bone.

"The value of the patella in forensic anthropology is ranked second-tier. Everyone knows that for forensic doctors, the pelvis holds the highest value—it can accurately and easily determine gender, age, and female fertility, and through various calculations, estimate height and even weight... Usually, if you have the pelvis, there's no need to examine the patella. But..."

"We're forensic doctors—we always encounter special cases, like dismemberment cases where investigators only find the lower half of the body, or just a single leg. What do you do then? The most common scenario is explosion cases: explosives, gas explosions, high-pressure pot explosions in restaurants—various kinds. In explosion cases, it's easy to find only the lower limbs, with the upper body completely destroyed."

Zhai held the corpse's knee as he spoke: "Determining gender from the patella is relatively difficult. First, you must measure the bone's height, the width of its inner and outer joint surfaces, volume, and other indicators, then apply a series of regression formulas... For age, you mainly observe changes in bone texture across various surfaces..."

He grew more enthusiastic as he spoke, since patella analysis was highly technical and perfectly suited to the identity of a provincial forensic expert.

Zhai glanced at the young forensic doctors listening intently and felt a touch of satisfaction.

As long as they paid close attention, these young forensic doctors would at least carry back some basic forensic anthropology knowledge—when they encountered cases later, even if they couldn't solve them themselves, they'd know where to seek help and how to preserve evidence, where to photograph...

Forensic anthropologist Zhai, at level 2.7, might today perform at level 2.8 or even 2.9, appearing effortlessly skilled.

Put another way, Zhai was nearly at level 3; in terms of forensic anthropology alone, within Shannan Province, apart from Jiang Yuan, he stood at the pinnacle.

In fact, Jiang Yuan's forensic anthropology was also level 3, but after handling so many cases in the province, Zhai had never encountered anyone of comparable ability. This was also due to Jiang Yuan's increasingly comprehensive skill set: level 3 in forensic clinical science, level 4 in forensic pathology, level 4 in forensic physical evidence, level 6 in time-of-death determination, and now level 3 in cranial reconstruction—all of which enhanced his forensic anthropology.

If calculated properly, Jiang Yuan's forensic anthropology must be at least level 3.7 plus.

But for the young forensic doctors attending the training, they still couldn't grasp the gap between Zhai and Jiang Yuan in forensic anthropology; due to Zhai's age and demeanor, they all assumed he was at least one level superior.

Only Zhai himself, while touching the bone, frowned.

His original intention was to use forensic anthropology to advance the case—not expecting to solve it directly, a low-probability event, but at least to narrow the scope to a manageable range for effective investigation. Zhai felt that would be sufficient.

Jiang Yuan needed time for cranial reconstruction; if Zhai used his own hand-molding method, it would take at least a month. Now, with computer-assisted cranial reconstruction, the time might be reduced to one or two weeks.

But Zhai believed that if he could define an effective search radius—even a region of tens of thousands or a hundred thousand people—as long as the specificity was clear enough, Longli County would be willing to conduct the investigation.

In police system politics, when you get a homicide lead, you charge ahead—you don't overthink. Even if superiors have doubts, they can only think privately.

Yet, thoughts are one thing, practice is another...

"You all think about it—I'm going upstairs to check," Zhai let go of the bone, gestured for other forensic doctors to take over, then walked out, hands behind his back.

They were examining bones in the basement of the Longli County Criminal Investigation Team.

The criminal investigation building originally had no autopsy room; some units had them, but the Qinghe City police department had no such facilities.

However, Corpse No. 122 had been boiled down to bones—completely decomposed, in a very clean state. To accommodate Zhai from the provincial bureau, Jiang Yuan, and the young forensic doctors from various regions, Captain Hou had arranged a room in the basement, considering everyone's needs.

Zhai climbed upstairs, took a deep breath, stretched his shoulders, then slowly ascended.

As he neared Jiang Yuan's office, he heard loud, lively chatter from inside.

"What's this...?" Zhai, like an old man, peered cautiously through the door.

"Oh, Forensic Doctor Zhai's here!" Hou Xiaoyong called out, reminding Jiang Yuan.

"Forensic Doctor Zhai. I can't leave my seat—come over and sit," Jiang Yuan greeted from inside.

Zhai finally saw clearly: several tables had been pushed together, and a group of criminal science officers, Hou Xiaoyong, and Jiang Yuan's cold case team were seated around chairs, enthusiastically eating pig intestines, pig stomach, chicken, and a hotpot cooked with them.

"So lively—what's going on?" Zhai asked as he entered.

"Chief Jiang reconstructed Corpse No. 122. We're celebrating," Hou Xiaoyong said, grease dripping from his mouth.

Doctor Zhai finally saw that in the small room, several tables had been pushed together, and officers from the criminal investigation team, along with Hou Xiaoyong and the entire special task force investigating the Jiangyuan cold cases, were sitting around the chairs, enthusiastically eating pig intestines and stomach.

"Yes. Captain Hou has already led the team to make the arrest." "Arrested?" Zhai echoed.

Hou Xiaoyong nodded: "The reconstructed photo was scanned with the police system—it instantly matched an ID from a village upstream: Yuguang Village. A farming woman who hadn't been reported missing for so long—most likely a case of someone she knew."

Zhai didn't care about case details; he only asked: "Where's the photo?"

"On the table beside the computer," Jiang Yuan said.

Tang Jia, seated at the lower end, immediately stood up to fetch it.

Hou Xiaoyong picked up another piece of intestine, chewed loudly, and called out: "Forensic Doctor Zhai, have some!"

"No thanks, I'm not hungry," Zhai said, though he was slightly hungry but had no appetite. He walked over to the computer desk and saw a pile of photos—not just finished ones, but many in intermediate stages.

Although Zhai couldn't perform cranial reconstruction, his near-level-3 anthropological knowledge was sufficient to recognize the progressive relationships among these intermediate images.

From 3D reconstruction, to referencing skull models, facial models, to marking cranial landmarks, facial landmarks, then generating the target facial model, followed by local deformation, overall deformation, finally forming the reconstructed facial model and the final facial model...

Looking at the photos alone, the process appeared plain and unremarkable—no hint of Gauss, Laplace, Lagrange, Fourier, Maxwell...

And without those distracting formulas, Zhai's artistic sensibility was simply and directly elevated—from hard bone to cartilage, cartilage to muscle, muscle to glands, then fat and skin...

"So it's done already?" Zhai sighed, unable to suppress a reluctant, self-deprecating feeling.

"This one isn't finished. The finished one is this stack," Tang Jia pulled a completed photo from the pile and handed it to Zhai.

Zhai was stunned again: "What do you mean?"

"I worked on three cranial reconstructions simultaneously," Jiang Yuan called from across the table. "Come sit. Eat while we talk."

He preferred not to discuss technical details with Zhai. Cranial reconstruction was too complex; at Zhai's age, explaining new knowledge... Jiang Yuan himself felt exhausted.

But given Zhai's current state, explaining technical details would be like speaking to a Muggle.

At Jiang Yuan's gesture, several people pulled Zhai to the table.

"You've already started eating," Zhai said helplessly, repeating his earlier question: "You said three cranial reconstructions—what does that mean?"

"When I began digitizing the outline of Corpse No. 122, I had nothing else to do, so I opened two more cases," Jiang Yuan said simply.

"I didn't know about this," Zhai blurted out.

Jiang Yuan smiled: "I asked Forensic Doctor Ye to cook it—it's only been a few days. One progressed quickly and produced an image; the other is still outlining. You happened to arrive just as No. 122 was completed, and Captain Hou left."

Jiang Yuan opening new cases didn't require explanation to Zhai.

He was simply saving time—cranial reconstruction is a step-by-step workload; so he opened multiple cases and worked on them like an assembly line.

And he didn't need to report any of this to Zhai—they had no hierarchical relationship.

Zhai realized his slip and stammered: "Then I see—the previous image was nearly done. That means another case is solved."

"I don't know if it'll solve the case, but in another two days, the second image should be usable. Come on, eat something..." Jiang Yuan urged Zhai, who could only join in.

The pig intestine, stomach, and chicken were extremely fresh; Zhai especially liked the rich pepper flavor, but the broth was slightly sour.

He was also trying to save time; cranial reconstruction was a step-by-step workload, so he might as well take on multiple cases at once, repairing one skull after another in an assembly line.

And he did all this without reporting to Forensic Doctor Zhai; they had no hierarchical relationship.

Forensic Doctor Zhai realized he'd slipped up and stammered, "Then I think that diagram from just now is nearly done. That means another case is solved."

「

Whether they'll solve the case is unknown, but if they work two more days, the second diagram should be ready. Come on, let's eat..." Jiang Yuan called out to Forensic Doctor Zhai, digging in enthusiastically. Forensic Doctor Zhai could only join in.

The pig intestine, stomach, and chicken dish was extremely fresh; Forensic Doctor Zhai loved the rich taste of the pepper in it, though the broth was a bit sour.