Chapter 225
Our Discord Server: https://discord.gg/PazjBDkTmW
Chapter 225: Deduction from Severed Fingers
Two figures walked one after another down the empty, clean corridor.
At the corridor’s end was an automatic metal door, beside which sat a young man leaning against the wall, yawning.
Seeing the two approach, he immediately became alert and stood up.
“Please show your credentials,” he said seriously.
Lin Qiye took out his emblem and handed it over. The man examined it carefully and spoke with surprise:
“So you’re the new Night Watchman. My apologies.” He bowed slightly to Lin Qiye, returning the emblem with both hands, while looking curiously at the person behind Lin Qiye.
“Brother Lin, this is…”
“Oh, he’s an expert I invited to examine the body,” Lin Qiye said calmly, putting away his emblem.
“Alright, I’ll open the door for you.”
The young man opened a small box beside the metal door, entered a long code, and the door opened to reveal the passage inside.
An Qingyu, wearing a shirt and mask, followed Lin Qiye inside and spoke with surprise:
“Is security here this lax? I thought there’d be body searches, identity registration…”
“This is just a morgue, no need for such trouble. The real secret core facilities – you wouldn’t even know if they exist, let alone walk in so brazenly,” Lin Qiye replied.
In the end, he had brought An Qingyu along, not for any other reason but because An Qingyu’s ability to interpret corpses was truly top-tier in Great Xia, perhaps surpassing even the best forensic experts.
With him here, they might actually find some clues.
The two entered the morgue. Compared to the police morgue, this one was notably smaller, as only bodies related to Mystery incidents were stored here, and such incidents were rare throughout the year.
After showing his credentials to the forensic expert, Lin Qiye received an autopsy report, and at his request, Sun Xiao’s body was brought out from cold storage.
Lin Qiye merely glanced at the report before focusing on the body before him.
According to the report, this body showed nothing special, like the previous three. Any breakthrough would have to come from examining the body itself.
An Qingyu was completely focused, examining the entire body with absolute detachment and precision, his eyes emitting a faint grey light.
After thoroughly examining every detail of the body, he instinctively reached into his pocket, pulling out a sharp scalpel…
Lin Qiye grabbed his hand, shaking his head. Look only, no dissection.
An Qingyu nodded reluctantly and looked down at the body. His glasses reflected the harsh light as he spoke gravely:
“Overall, it’s like the previous three bodies – fatal wound in the chest, severed fingers, no other wounds except the nail holes.”
Taking the autopsy report from Lin Qiye, he continued: “The finger stumps show vital reaction, indicating they were cut off while alive, just like the previous three bodies…”
“So nothing unusual?” Lin Qiye asked disappointedly.
“There is!” An Qingyu nodded emphatically. “This body has one difference from the previous three!”
“Where?”
“The direction of the finger cuts!” An Qingyu’s eyes brightened. “The previous three bodies had downward finger cuts.”
An Qingyu pressed against the wall, positioning his left hand as if nailed there, palm to wall, back of hand outward.
His right hand formed a knife shape, gently chopping at the fingers.
“Normally, with victims nailed like this, fingers can only be cut from back to palm, as the knife can’t cut outward from inside the wall. This was the cutting direction on the previous three bodies.”
“But this body is different!”
He made an upward slashing motion across his left fingers with his right hand.
“His fingers were cut upward! From palm to back! But this cutting position is impossible with my current hand placement, so when his fingers were cut, the position must have been…”
An Qingyu flipped his left hand, still “nailed” to the wall but with palm outward, back to wall.
Lin Qiye’s eyes brightened, but his brow quickly furrowed.
“But in the video, the body was too far away and the lighting too dim to see the hand orientation. Maybe he was really nailed this way?”
“What can we tell just from how a hand was nailed?”
“Nothing from this alone, but that’s exactly the issue.” An Qingyu walked to the body, pointing at two wounds on the palm, continuing:
“A nail driven through from palm versus back creates similar but different wound patterns. The wounds on this body… were made from top to bottom.”
An Qingyu used one finger as a nail, demonstrating through his other hand from back to palm, saying seriously:
“This means… the nailing direction is opposite to the finger cutting direction! Which indicates…”
“He had his fingers cut off before being nailed to the wall,” Lin Qiye’s eyes narrowed, finishing An Qingyu’s thought.
An Qingyu nodded, “Correct.”
“But the video shows a process inconsistent with our deduction,” Lin Qiye frowned. “And analysis shows no signs of special effects editing, meaning the recorded footage shows what actually happened.”
“If so, there’s only one possibility…” An Qingyu spoke slowly.
“The person who died in the video wasn’t Sun Xiao!” Lin Qiye and An Qingyu said simultaneously.
Due to distance and lighting, the video footage wasn’t clear – the victim’s face wasn’t even visible. Everyone assumed the victim was Sun Xiao solely because of the waiter’s uniform!
And the next day, they did find Sun Xiao’s body nailed to the wall, exactly like in the footage.
No one had questioned the video victim’s identity.
“So someone else wearing Sun Xiao’s clothes was nailed to the wall by the ‘Mystery,’ but after the camera died, someone replaced the original person with Sun Xiao, whose fingers were already cut off?” An Qingyu frowned deeply. “But… why?”
“Our deduction has one fatal flaw!” Lin Qiye took a deep breath and continued:
“According to our reasoning, there should have been two different victims nailed to the wall in total, but… from the scene’s blood, we only detected Sun Xiao’s DNA!”