Chapter 68

Jiang Yuan did not immediately proceed to dissect the corpse.

Right now, the first thing to do is determine the time of death.

The most familiar method among the public is body temperature, but that applies only to recently deceased bodies. The corpse had already had a thermometer inserted rectally at the scene, though it proved useless.

Other criteria for judging time of death, when listed, are all statistical summaries.

For instance, this corpse’s skin was swollen and wrinkled, rigor mortis had subsided, and during transport, multiple areas of skin had peeled off; Jiang Yuan roughly judged: “The recent water temperature was probably just over 20 degrees Celsius; the time of death should be within two to five days?”

Determining the time of death, especially an accurate one, is extremely difficult—arguably the most error-prone task in forensic work.

Forensic experts in TV dramas or movies who glance at a corpse and give a time of death down to the hour are either impossibly skilled or their accuracy must be explained by plot convenience.

In reality, forensic experts can still provide a relatively accurate time of death for corpses within 12 hours, or up to 24 hours—say, between four to eight or six to twelve hours—but accurately determining the time for corpses dead over a day requires many favorable conditions; errors are not uncommon.

An extreme example is Professor Bass of the University of Kansas in 1977, who examined a corpse with a gunshot wound to the head; because the muscles were well-preserved and had a healthy pink hue, he concluded the death occurred within the past year. In fact, the corpse belonged to Colonel William Shy, who died in the Civil War and had been preserved in a sealed lead coffin—making it an 1864 body, 113 years off from Bass’s estimate.

Bass subsequently founded the famous “Body Farm,” yet even this could not fully resolve the problem of determining time of death.

Many forensic experts make mistakes in estimating time of death, yet this estimation critically affects the progress of investigations.

Jiang Yuan’s estimate of two to five days seemed quite reasonable to Wu Jun.

Jiang Yuan recorded Wu Jun’s verified answer in his notebook, then stood upright and examined the corpse on the autopsy table.

Jiang Yuan had performed normal corpse autopsies several times before, each time typically opening the three body cavities.

After opening the three cavities, the cause of death was usually found.

Occasionally, cases arise where no cause of death is found—the so-called negative cases—and further examination of limbs often yields answers.

But the half-corpse Jiang Yuan faced today had none of the three cavities intact. In other words, all the standard autopsy sites had been removed.

Frankly, Wu Jun handing the scalpel to Jiang Yuan was partly because he himself had no clear starting point.

In his view, there was little left to analyze in this corpse’s dissection.

“I’ll begin with the pelvic cavity,” Jiang Yuan said softly after repositioning the corpse.

Wu Jun grunted.

In a normal male corpse, the pelvic cavity contains the bladder, testes, prostate, vas deferens, urethra, etc. But today’s corpse had a mangled mess between the legs—swollen, decayed, likely gnawed by fish in the river or pulled out along with abdominal organs. In short, none of the typical organs remained.

Jiang Yuan still followed standard procedure: separating the soft tissues behind the pubic bone and outside the peritoneum, then cutting open the peritoneum to observe the pelvic cavity.

He found nothing.

Jiang Yuan remained silent and continued following the local dissection protocol, cutting steadily downward.

Performing forensic autopsies is sometimes like solving a puzzle. The solver seeks a result, but the solution path isn’t clear from the start.

At such moments, you must list all available conditions and then reason from them.

This is one of the major differences between forensic experts and doctors.

Doctors usually plan their surgery in advance; they don’t open the abdominal cavity and think while they go.

But forensic experts lack the diagnostic tools doctors have; they rely on the most basic, direct method—pulling things out and looking.

Only when they spot clues do they follow them to reach conclusions.

Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun worked together in focused silence, eyes fixed on the autopsy table.

They hoped to find distinguishing features—surgical scars, for example, from bladder surgery or varicose vein surgery—which could further narrow the scope.

Or perhaps the victim had trauma from physical activity, such as ankle marks, which would also be a good entry point.

Ideally, there would be a prosthetic limb—say, an artificial foot—with a serial number, allowing immediate contact with the manufacturer to obtain name, age, and other details.

“The color here is wrong,” Jiang Yuan suddenly stopped cutting and set the scalpel aside.

Wu Jun, whose eyesight was dimming, frowned and leaned closer.

“The lymph nodes here… turned black,” Jiang Yuan peeled back the skin and moved aside interfering muscle tissue to expose the lymphatic vessels in the thigh.

The lymph, which should have been white or pale yellow, now appeared bluish-black.

Wu Jun leaned in to inspect it and nodded: “It’s definitely blackened. Take a sample.”

“Alright,” Jiang Yuan snipped a small piece into the specimen bag, then pulled back more skin: “It’s not cancer—no obvious swelling, no signs of cancer cells.”

“Mm, young people in their twenties have lower cancer risk,” Wu Jun pressed the lymph node area twice, frowning: “It doesn’t look like a lesion…”

Jiang Yuan asked: “Could it be a tattoo?”

“Tattoo?” Wu Jun’s mind lagged slightly, but with Jiang Yuan’s reminder, he nodded: “Tattooing pierces the dermis—possible… but there’s no tattoo visible on the surface.”

“The tattoo was removed, but the lymph color remains,” Jiang Yuan pulled more of the corpse’s skin over, saying: “Look closely—you can still see traces. The skin was soaked too badly.”

Wu Jun slowly nodded. For forensic experts, tattoos are an excellent identifying feature—the legend goes that U.S. Marines all have tattoos precisely so forensic teams can identify bodies…

But Wu Jun was unfamiliar with tattoo removal: “Can it be removed this cleanly now?”

“Laser tattoo removal has some probability of success,” Jiang Yuan pointed to the corpse’s thigh: “His tattoo wasn’t large. Now you can still see faint traces—it was removed cleanly, with no scarring. Probably done at a hospital; there might be records.”

“That’s a good line of thought. I’ll call Huang’s team. Hospitals using laser tattoo removal on the thigh—there shouldn’t be many.” Wu Jun took off his gloves, washed his hands briefly, and dialed the phone.

The call connected, and Wu Jun shouted into the receiver: “…Right at the Fengshi acupoint—that’s the spot on the thigh where your fingertips naturally touch when your arm hangs down. A little above that, about the size of three coins, roughly.”