Once all the food was on the table, Bingxin suddenly asked me, “By the way, Song Yang-gege, do you have a girlfriend?”

“No,” I replied. “What about you?”

“Of course not,” she sighed. “I’m the same nerdy girl who’s got her nose buried in books all the time.”

“I’m sure you’ve got hordes of admirers!”

“No, I don’t!” she denied, shyly looking down at her own plate.

“I’m single too, you know!” Dali interjected.

Bingxin responded to him politely and said nothing else, which prompted Dali to bury his head down and focus on the food. Although both of us were really hungry, we ate very little because we didn’t want to appear greedy in front of Bingxin. She kept persuading us to eat more and to try this dish and that dish. At one point, she picked up a big slice of braised pork with her chopsticks and offered it to me. I was about to tell her I was full when I noticed that something was wrong.

“What is that?” I asked, pointing at the meat.

She looked down, froze for a few seconds, and screamed, “A fly!”

There was a dead fly stuck to the meat, which in itself was pretty bad. But it was worse than you might think, because it wasn’t an ordinary housefly. It was a blow fly.

“Come on, both of you!” Dali remarked. “Stop making a fuss out of nothing! It’s just a fly. Just pick it out and carry on eating. It’s fine!”

As Dali picked up the dead fly with his chopsticks, I told him, “You know, that’s not an ordinary housefly…”

“What kind of fly is it, then?” asked Dali with his mouth still full.

“It’s a blow fly,” replied Bingxin. “Blow flies are usually only found on dead bodies…”

Upon hearing that, Dali’s face turned green. He was about to spit out all the food in his mouth, but because Bingxin was there, he sprinted to the nearest trash can instead and spit out his food there.

He returned to the table while still wiping his lips and he asked, “Was that meat we just ate… human flesh?”

I picked up a piece of the meat and sniffed it, “No, it’s pork.”

“Maybe the blow fly was just attracted to the pig carcasses?” Bingxin proposed.

I myself thought the meat was quite fresh.

“Why don’t we go in there and check it out?” I suggested.

“Sure!”

We entered the kitchen and I asked the cook, “Will you let us check the kitchen and the storeroom? We suspect that there might be a dead body here.”

Without even looking at us, the cook replied, “If you have any complaints about us then… wait, what did you say? A dead body? That’s a first! Usually you brats complain about hair, nails, and bugs in the food. It’s the first time I’ve heard of a dead body in my kitchen!”

It was clear that the cook didn’t take us seriously, so I pulled out my special consultant badge and showed it to him. At a glance, it was identical to a police badge, so the cook instantly panicked.

“Officer!” he cried. “I swear there are no dead bodies here!”

“I’ll have to look around anyway.”

“Sure!” the cook nodded frantically.

Bingxin took a look at my badge and enviously remarked, “Cool! So you’ve officially joined the police force now?”

“No,” I laughed. “I’m just an external consultant.”

“But you’ve solved seven cases!” she said. “I’ll tell Dad to officially install you as a police officer. You’ll be even cooler with a gun!”

“Calm down, Miss Sun!” I said. “I chose not to be a police officer myself!”

We entered the back kitchen, and the cook showed us around. There were piles of vegetables, meat, and rice. I noticed a small door in the corner of the room and asked, “Where does that door lead to?”

“It’s a staff room,” the cook answered. “But I never use it.”

“Who uses it, then?”

“There’s a student who works here part-time,” he replied. “She changes her clothes in there. She usually comes here every day, but she didn’t show up today. She didn’t ask for leave either. Perhaps something happened to her.”

I asked the cook to open the door, but he told me the key was not with him right now. I picked up two iron wires from the scraps on the floor and picked the lock open in less than a minute. Bingxin stared in disbelief. Before the door was opened, I heard a strange buzzing noise. I told everyone to step back.

As soon as the door was opened, a swarm of blow flies flew out of the room. I covered my face with my hands. The cook screamed in terror. I took a closer look and saw a naked body in the middle of the tiny room. The body was very skinny. The skin had turned dark brown. The body lay face-down on the ground with one hand stretched out. Judging from the long hair, it should be the dead body of a girl.

I thought Bingxin would be terrified, but I found her looking so calm that her pupils were slightly enlarged. Dali, on the other hand, cowered behind me in fear as usual.

“You should be ashamed of yourself!” I reproached him.

All Dali said in reply was, “It’s… It’s a zombie!”

I called Xiaotao and told her to come over with the police straight away. Then I was about to ask the cook if this was indeed the body of the girl that worked here, but as I turned around, I couldn’t find him anywhere. It turned out that he’d fainted and collapsed onto a pile of cabbage on the floor. Judging from this reaction, he most likely had nothing to do with the murder.

My tools were still with me, so I went ahead and performed an autopsy. As I put on the gloves, Bingxin suddenly said, “Hand me a pair too!”

“You should go and wait outside now.”

“No!” Bingxin refused, pursing her lips. “I’m going to help you! Have you forgotten the fact that I’m a medical student? I’ve seen hundreds of corpses in the lab. Some of them were prisoners who were executed by the firing squad and even though their brains spilled out of their skulls, I was still unfazed! Besides, you’ve been telling me about how awesome your ancestor Song Ci was. Now that you’ve inherited the skills and knowledge of your family, I want to learn from you too!”

I regretted being so foolish and ignorant that I would brag about my ancestors to her like that.

“Miss Sun,” Dali suddenly interrupted, “he’s already got an assistant, and it’s me!”

“Okay,” Bingxin replied without batting an eye. “Why don’t you pass me a pair of gloves then, Assistant?”

Dali was at a loss for words. I told him to go on and give Bingxin the gloves. I understood her character well. Once she set her mind on something, there was no way that I could stop her.

The first rule of autopsy was to avoid moving the body as much as possible. Yet the room where the body was found was so narrow and tiny that it was crowded even with one person in it. There was no way that I could examine the body properly in here, so I asked Dali to spread a sheet of tarpaulin outside and we moved the body out there, taking care not to change its original posture. The minute we lifted the body up, I noticed how light it was.

Bingxin began to inspect the corpse and stated, “The muscles have almost dissolved. That means the time of death must be around three to four days ago.”

“You’re wrong,” I said. “She’d been dead for less than a day before we found her.”

“What?” Bingxin asked in shock. “But why would her body be in this condition?”

“Use your common sense, Miss Sun!” I reminded her. “The cook just told us that she usually comes here every day except today, so how could she have been dead for three to four days?”

“I guess you’re right,” Bingxin said, sticking out her tongue.

“Now determine the time of death again. And be very specific.”

I wanted to see what Bingxin’s skill level was at. If she was someone who could only regurgitate what she memorized in the textbooks, then I’d have to change my mind about letting her be around when I’m examining the crime scene.

Bingxin turned the body over, checked the three indicators of the pupils, the rigor mortis, the livor mortis, and asked me if I had a thermometer. Traditional Coroners usually measured a corpse’s temperature by inserting their fingers into the anus, and it wasn’t that I found it too icky, but I was worried that those who saw me doing it might be disgusted by it. Therefore, I relied on the modern convenience which was the thermometer instead.

I handed my thermometer over to Bingxin, and she proceeded to measure the temperature of the corpse’s lower intestine. Then she gasped and stated, “The time of death is around ten to twelve hours ago!”

“Much better,” I replied, nodding in satisfaction.

“But the muscles have almost completely decomposed! What could’ve caused that?”

“That is a notable anomaly,” I answered. “It also points towards the real cause of death. Why don’t you check the body again and determine the cause of death?”

Bingxin went back to the corpse and re-examined it. I saw her shoulder-length hair almost touching the dead body. It was kind of getting in the way and it irked me, so I told her to stop while I took off my gloves and tied her hair up with a rubber band.

Dali’s jaw dropped when he saw this, but I pretended not to see his reaction. What was there to be so surprised about, anyway? It wasn’t as if Bingxin and I were strangers.

While Bingxin was examining the corpse, I went on to scrutinize it too with my Cave Vision. I came to the conclusion that there were no obvious signs of physical trauma on the body, but there was a tiny needle puncture wound on the victim’s thigh—she had clearly been poisoned.

A few minutes after that, Bingxin stopped and announced, “The cause of death is poisoning!”