A policeman had found the body in a sewer. It was wrapped in a black waterproof plastic bag with a messy tangle of ropes tied around it. The ropes had been cut after the body was transferred to the morgue.

Since the knot was often important material evidence in murder investigations, it was left as is and the plastic bag was cut open instead. This was basic knowledge that every police officer should know.

When we got our first look at the body, both Xiaotao and I couldn’t help but gasp. In fact, Xiaotao even covered her mouth with her hand in shock!

The deceased had been shaved completely bald and hairless and was stripped naked down to the underpants. What was even more ghastly was the sight of the body’s flesh being cut off from the body. The muscle tissues from the chest, abdomen, and especially the limbs had been carved cleanly off of this body that you could only see the bare skeleton on most parts of the body. Strangely enough, there wasn’t much blood on the body at all. Instead, it was covered in a sticky fluid.

The conditions of this corpse reminded me of a torture method used in the late Qing Dynasty, called Ling Chi[1], also known as Death by a Thousand Cuts!

It was impossible to judge whether the victim was a male or female at first glance. One of the police officers who found the body commented that the body felt too light when he lifted the bag up. He even suspected that somebody had played a macabre prank and stuffed an inflatable doll in the bag before tossing it into the sewer!

I donned rubber gloves and began to measure the length of the corpse’s feet and fingers, then the height and width of the pelvis. Lastly, I examined the corpse’s teeth.

After that, I moved on to scrutinize the victim’s face. To my utter horror, I discovered that the victim was smiling!

Just imagine this: on the face of someone who was stabbed and butchered inhumanly, there was a faint smile! What could have been the explanation for this?

After further inspection, I announced, “The victim was a woman aged between 25 and 30. She was of medium build and was fairly healthy. Judging from the bones, there are no signs of illnesses or disabilities. She was probably a worker in a textile factory.”

Xiaotao was so disturbed by the conditions of the corpse that she kept frowning, but when she heard of my discoveries, her expressions changed to that of curiosity. She asked me, “Wait a minute, how did you know she worked in a textile factory?”

I turned over the palm of the deceased and explained, “Do you see this horizontal line? There are also some cut wounds that have just recently healed on her hand here. Only those who work with threads and needles regularly would have this type of cut. Her back was slightly hunched too, which is a sign that she had spent a long period of time hunched over—and all of these are consistent with the characteristics of a worker in a textile factory.”

There were signs of admiration on the faces of the police officers present when they heard my explanation. Xiaotao nodded along thoughtfully and turned to ask a policeman beside her, “Have we got a list of missing persons in Nanjiang City from the last three months?”

“That’s Xiaowang’s task,” replied the policeman.

“Get in touch with him immediately and find out if there are any female textile factory workers on the list,” ordered Xiaotao.

“Right!”

I sniffed the victim’s face. Then I noticed that Xiaozhou of the forensics team was there. I told him, “I need you to do two kinds of tests. One is the origin and type of ropes; and second is the residue in the victim’s nasal passage.”

“You mean you suspect the victim might have inhaled a drug?” Xiaozhou asked immediately. He was a professional after all.

“I detected the scent of medical grade alcohol in the victim’s nose,” I answered. “You can just check if it is nitrous oxide, because this kind of anesthetic is always mixed with alcohol when used.”

“You already figured out that much, huh?” Xiaozhou smiled. “I never expected a Traditional Coroner like you to have knowledge of something like that!”

Xiaotao glared at him, so he quickly nodded and added, “Right, I’ll get to it straight away!”

He swiftly took a cotton swab, dipped it in alcohol, and inserted it into the victim’s nose. He then took a sample of the fibrous strand from the ropes used to tie up the plastic bag and went back to his lab.

I used scissors to cut the victim’s underwear and examined her genitals. There was no sign of sexual assault. In fact, I found out that she was still a virgin. Then I examined her body again and noticed that she was bound at the base of her thighs and her shoulders.

“Dali, I need you to go buy me some things!” I exclaimed without thinking.

Then I turned around and remembered that Dali hadn’t come with me. In fact, even Wang Yuanchao was nowhere to be found.

“Just tell me what you need,” said Xiaotao. “I’ll get someone to buy them for you.”

“I need a bottle of vinegar of the highest quality,” I answered. “Also, a small funnel along with some seaweed and kelp.”

Xiaotao immediately ordered a policeman to buy the items at a nearby supermarket.

While waiting, I checked the victim’s internal organs via Organ Echolocation. I found that the organs and the ribs were intact and undamaged. Judging by their conditions, I determined the time of death to be about twenty days ago.

“Twenty days?” Xiaotao was alarmed. “But shouldn’t the body be bloated by now if it had been that long?”

“You know about that too?” I smiled.

“Of course!” replied Xiaotao proudly. “I’ve read countless autopsy reports and seen numerous dead bodies. Like it or not, I picked up these technical terms like rigor mortis and livor mortis and corpse bloating.”

“So, what would cause a dead body to bloat?”

“Well… It’s bloated because…”

She fumbled for words but couldn’t come up with an answer, so I explained that after a period of time after death, the bacteria living in the intestines would run out of food to eat, and because the immune system had shut down, they would start to attack and consume the body tissues. This process would produce gas, and that made the corpse expand like a balloon.

The sight of a bloated corpse could be extremely terrifying. The whole body would transform into a pus-oozing swollen balloon, the eyes would bulge out of their sockets, and the lips would look like two fat purple sausages. If the corpse was flipped over or moved, you’d see a pool of putrid fluid underneath it. If the corpse was handled roughly, you might even see a greenish gas escaping from the orifices. It was definitely one of the things that tested a coroner’s psychological strength. If you search for it online yourself, then you’d see exactly what I mean!

In Collected Cases of Injustices Rectified, it was written that after a few days a decomposing corpse would swell up, the skin would fall off, the lips would turn inside out and the eyes would bulge out—just as modern science had discovered. I didn’t want to recite classical Chinese lines in front of Xiaotao and the other police officers though, since that might make me look snobbish. Thus, I opted to cite modern forensic science instead.

Also, I didn’t bring all these things up just to show off my knowledge, but there was something abnormal about the corpse that I needed to explain to Xiaotao. Before I could tell her what was wrong about it, she had to understand what the normal decomposition process was like.

“There are three possible reasons why this corpse isn’t bloated,” I added. “Firstly, because the muscle and fat tissues of the corpse had been cut off, the bacteria had less to consume, so the gas produced was significantly reduced as well. Secondly, the temperature in the sewer is pretty low, plus the plastic bag had been so tightly bound that it inhibited air and oxygen from entering it, thereby stunting the growth and propagation of the bacteria.”

“And the third reason?”

“I’ll tell you later. Look here.” I pointed to the signs that the victim had been bound on her thighs and shoulders.

“You mean the victim was tied up?” Xiaotao asked.

“No, the rope was only tied loosely around her thighs,” I explained. “I don’t think it was tight enough to restrict her movement or to hold her in place. It was more to restrict the blood circulation to her legs.” As I spoke, it dawned upon me that we were not just dealing with a violent murderer, but a psychopathic one with a sick and twisted mind.

“What was the point of that?” asked Xiaotao.

“Have you ever heard of ‘live donkey meat’?” I asked her. “It’s a cruel novelty dish where a donkey’s limbs are tied up to a wooden board. Then hot water is poured onto the donkey directly, half-cooking the muscle tissues where it came into contact with the hot water. Then this piece of flesh is cut off and then dipped into a sauce before it’s eaten straight away. It’s a vile and abhorrent practice.”

I saw a look in Xiaotao’s eyes that told me she understood what I was about to say.

“The victim was probably killed this way too,” I continued. “The murderer probably tied her up in order to cut fresh meat from her body, and she was tied to restrict blood circulation so it would be easier to cut it off!”

I glanced at the unrecognizable body on the iron bed. This meant that the victim really was killed by the Lingchi method!

1. A method of execution used in Ancient China that involved stabbing or slicing a person’s body part many times, resulting in slow and agonizing death.