Chapter 71: Better to Return

Traveler’s Bridge is on the east side of Qinghe City.

The river here is not wide, but quite scenic; the straight beam bridge accommodates both vehicles and pedestrians, and nearby are views of the river and mountains, making it one of Qinghe City’s better leisure spots.

When Liu Wenkai and the others arrived, it was already 10 p.m.; the streetlights glowed on the bridge, and in the rain, it seemed to lead to an unknown place.

Distant mountains were lush green, their height and contours indistinct, with only faintly lit lights barely outlining their shapes.

Liu Wenkai was captain of the Second Squad of the Ningtai County Criminal Investigation Brigade, and both the First and Second Squads of the Ningtai County Criminal Investigation Brigade routinely handled major cases.

As a seasoned detective captain in his forties, Liu Wenkai’s daily life revolved around complex cases.

He drove across Traveler’s Bridge, then turned back, completing his initial observation.

Only Liu Wenkai and Zhang Enze were in the car; Liu Wenkai spoke without restraint: “Neither side is a busy area. If someone jumped here, few would see.”

“Or if someone pushed them, no one would see either,” Zhang Enze said.

Liu Wenkai nodded, then sighed: “If it was murder followed by dismemberment, the primary crime scene wouldn’t be here. There’s no way to dismember here. It’s too public, too inconvenient.”

“So if we can find Zhou Lei in surveillance footage from two or three days ago, we can preliminarily conclude it was suicide,” Zhang Enze refocused his reasoning.

“Pretty much,” Liu Wenkai counted on his fingers: “The victim, Zhou Lei, had no money, no savings, no property, no debts. Right now, he had no relatives or friends, no steady job, and his girlfriend broke up with him. That basically rules out common motives like financial murder, romantic murder, or revenge killing.”

Zhang Enze’s face sagged as he stared out the window at the rain: “It’s pretty tragic.”

Liu Wenkai grunted a quiet “Mm,” lit a cigarette, and looked the other way: “Sometimes I think, it’s just kind of meaningless.”

Zhang Enze stayed silent until the cigarette was finished, then cracked the window slightly, tossed out the butt, and said: “How do you explain the dismemberment?”

“There are boats on the river. Probably chopped up by propellers,” Liu Wenkai said listlessly. “Nothing new—boats on Taihe River cruise back and forth between rivers. If they hit a corpse, they might not report it.”

“Then let’s check the surveillance,” Zhang Enze didn’t pursue the boat theory. If it were murder, investigating every vessel on Taihe River over recent days would be standard procedure to preserve case integrity—but if it’s suicide, this becomes a non-natural death case, and allocating large-scale, long-term police resources becomes much harder.

Liu Wenkai silently pulled out his phone, first reported to Huang Qiangmin, then drove through the rain to a restaurant near the bridge entrance and asked the owner for the surveillance footage.

…

Ningtai County.

News from the front reached Jiang Yuan, who was surprised and specifically returned to the funeral parlor to pull out the body and re-examine it.

The severed section at the waist was relatively smooth overall, but upon close inspection, the muscle bundles varied in length, and the skin flaps at the cut ends revealed the cutting tool wasn’t very sharp.

Jiang Yuan lacked sufficient experience to accurately deduce the tool solely from the body’s fracture state.

But now, reversing from the front-line information, the propeller explanation was plausible.

Especially the remaining vertebral fragments—the irregular bone fracture surfaces suggested a blunt-force component, which aligned with the propeller’s cutting pattern.

Of course, analysis of the fracture surface alone couldn’t prove the propeller was the only possible weapon. But forensic anthropology didn’t rule out the propeller as a dismemberment tool.

Jiang Yuan examined the body twice before exhaling, changed gloves, took another batch of photos, then slowly packed up the remains.

He washed the autopsy table and floor with water, then soaked them in bleach. The same was done with the recently used instruments, though they required longer soaking.

When the autopsy room was cleaned, Jiang Yuan washed his hands again—just then, Wu Jun walked in, hands behind his back, wearing a mask.

“How’s it going?” Wu Jun asked cheerfully.

“It makes sense,” Jiang Yuan said, washing his hands. “Can’t we find the rest of the body? How should we look?”

“I called cities upstream and downstream—they haven’t reported finding the other half yet. But if it’s suicide, the body shouldn’t have vanished,” Wu Jun paused, then added: “If it really disappeared, we’d have to reevaluate the cause of death.”

Jiang Yuan nodded slowly. Indeed, if it was suicide and the body was severed by a propeller, the front half should have surfaced. Especially with recent heavy rains, the body couldn’t just vanish.

Of course, another possibility: the heavy rains might have washed half the body into Ningtai County’s jurisdiction, while the upper half remained elsewhere.

But unless someone deliberately concealed it, the body should have appeared within days—in this theory, the only possible concealment would be the boat that shattered the body. Yet if one half was already lost, hiding the upper half seemed pointless.

“Enough thinking,” Wu Jun said. “My experience tells me some things just don’t follow logic or probability. Especially murders—you can’t reason with ‘likely’ or ‘probable.’ Murder itself is a low-probability event.” He paused again: “Wait two more days, see how things develop.”

Everyone had worked overtime in the rain earlier because murder cases demanded urgency—they were racing the golden 72 hours.

Now that it’s largely proven not to be murder, rushing further is meaningless.

Jiang Yuan had done all he could; he simply cleaned the autopsy room and returned to the Criminal Investigation Brigade.

The next day, detectives returned with video footage from the day of the incident.

Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun went together to the video office to watch.

The surveillance footage had already been organized; the technicians simply pulled up screenshots and clips, easily identifying Zhou Lei in the video.

The living Zhou Lei: young, 170 cm tall, weighing 65 kg. He got out of a taxi, walked with excruciating slowness to the bridge’s edge, paced, returned, stood still, then slowly walked toward the center until he left the camera’s view.

Thus, suicide was essentially confirmed.

The next day, news arrived about the upper half of the body—it had been found on a reed island several kilometers away.

Jiang Yuan and Wu Jun retrieved the body again.

The body was now so decomposed it was unbearable to look at—impossible to imagine what it had looked like just days ago.

This time, after a simple external examination, they opened the chest cavity first.

The large left and right lungs swelled outward as if rebounding, their surfaces still bearing impressions from the ribs.

Jiang Yuan pressed a finger—it left a dent. He pressed with his palm—it felt like kneading dough.

“Waterlogged pulmonary emphysema,” Jiang Yuan stated simply.

Wu Jun nodded. This was a key sign of drowning—when the victim desperately gasped, water, mucus, and air turned to foam and were inhaled into the alveoli.

Drowning typically lasted over six minutes, excruciatingly long; waterlogged pulmonary emphysema was one proof.

Jiang Yuan cut into the lungs—large amounts of foamy drowning fluid oozed out. Fortunately, the body was already decomposed; its strong stench perfectly masked the odor of the fluid.

At that moment, a shiny dumpling rolled into Jiang Yuan’s hand:

Zhou Lei’s legacy—Swimming (Doggy Paddle) (LV4)—In the village stream, Zhou Lei learned to swim with his friends and became exceptionally skilled; he even used his swimming ability to save another child. After moving to the city, he discovered his favorite swimming style became a target of ridicule, so he stopped swimming. In his final moments, facing the raging river, Zhou Lei could have fought to survive—but why bother? Better to return. Better to see Grandma.

Jiang Yuan sighed deeply.

Forensic pathologists always see too late, change too little—just like ordinary people: the Qin people had no time to mourn themselves, so later generations mourned them; later generations mourned them but failed to learn, causing still later generations to mourn them again.