'The Dead Coming Back to Life' was such a shocking scene that it left everyone dumbfounded.
Huang Xiaotao stared with eyes wide open and asked in astonishment, "Song Yang, how did you do that?"
"There is life in death, and death in life. Even a dead body can have some of its bodily functions restored through special means," I explained.
"This...this is too mystical!"
"There's nothing mystical about it. When people die, there is usually some air left in the lungs, unless they drowned or suffocated. What you just saw with the 'playing dead' was simply the air trapped in the corpse's lungs pushing it up."
I picked up the ice chips on the ground with tweezers and examined them closely - there was blood and some flesh stuck to them.
"How did ice form in the dead man's lungs?" Huang Xiaotao asked the question that all the policemen wanted to know.
"Because after he died, someone froze the body for a period of time. But there was no sign of water on the surface of the skin, so it was probably frozen using dry ice or refrigerant, thus greatly slowing down the decay. That created the illusion that he had been dead for only ten hours. However, the inside of the body cannot lie. Through 'reading the bones', I discovered that the internal organs were already decayed to varying degrees, which is typical for having been dead for forty-eight hours. Because the corpse was frozen, the air trapped in the lungs condensed into ice chips..." I said with a faint smile.
Huang Xiaotao was so shocked that she slammed her palm on me and said, "Song Yang, you're so amazing that I'm starting to doubt if you really are self-taught!"
I laughed: "Stop wasting time, let's continue the autopsy."
I asked a policeman to bring in a long table and lay it down in the middle of the room with the legs pointing upwards.
At the same time, I wrapped rope around the table legs several times to create a makeshift rope bed.
I then placed an electric stove underneath and plugged it in, putting an iron plate on top.
Huang Xiaotao picked up the succulent potted plant from my bag and said, "You college students really live colorfully, dabbling in all kinds of hobbies. What do you need this potted plant for?"
"You'll see in a bit. Come help me take the clothes off the corpse and move it on top!" I ordered.
Two policemen took the pants off the corpse and carried it onto the rope bed. When she saw the dead man's private parts, Huang Xiaotao frowned and averted her eyes, a blush rising to her face.
I thought to myself that Huang Xiaotao probably hadn't dated before, to be so shy at the sight of that thing.
I opened the white vinegar and squeezed ginger juice forcefully into the bottle. When the iron plate was hot, I splashed a whole bottle of white vinegar onto it. With a sizzling sound, the room was filled with the steam of white vinegar, stinging everyone's noses. Many policemen couldn't stand it and retreated to the side covering their noses.
I continued pouring vinegar, staring intently at the body.
In the curling vinegar fumes, purple-red markings began to appear on the corpse. I promptly turned off the electric stove and waited for the fumes to dissipate. Then a chorus of exclamations sounded from everyone in the room!
Numerous handprints had emerged on the body, and they were exactly the same as the ones I had uncovered from the other dead body using a red umbrella!
"Oh my god, these are a woman's handprints! Could it really be a female ghost committing the murders!" Huang Xiaotao exclaimed in surprise.
I laughed to myself. These handprints were smaller than an adult male's, with slender fingers, but that didn't mean they were a woman's handprints, let alone proof that a female ghost did it. I really wondered how Huang Xiaotao made it to police sergeant.
"What are you standing there for, hurry up and take photos!" I urged.
"Yes, yes, Little Wang, bring the camera here!"
At Huang Xiaotao's order, a young policeman immediately came over and started snapping away at the corpse.
This trick of mine was called 'vinegar steaming the corpse', another secret technique invented by forensic expert Song Ci!
A trace amount of alkaline sweat would secrete from the palms. By utilizing the acidity of the vinegar to react with it, the handprints would appear.
But these prints wouldn't last long. Sure enough, they gradually faded after a few minutes.
Huang Xiaotao asked, "Song Yang, in movies ghosts are ethereal without form, how could they leave handprints?"
"Who said it was a ghost, this was clearly left by the murderer, I'm certain the killer is human. Did you notice the clear handprints on the back of the victim's calves, in a grasping shape? Do you know what that implies?" I asked.
While gesturing, Huang Xiaotao guessed: "The murderer had grabbed the victim's calves with both hands at some point..." She suddenly covered her mouth, "I get it now, the murderer is a pervert!"
I was exasperated by her. It was such a simple deduction: "The murderer had dragged the victim's corpse by grabbing his calves!"
"Oh that makes sense!" Huang Xiaotao nodded.
"But that doesn't fit your earlier conclusion. You said the time of death was about forty-eight hours ago, but the two eyewitnesses stated that Deng Chao was still with them last night. Could he have already been dead?"
"Seeing is not necessarily believing. When witness testimony contradicts physical evidence, I tend to trust the physical evidence more. I suspect this isn't Deng Chao's corpse, it was moved here from somewhere else." I said.
"Then why would the killer do that?" Huang Xiaotao was confused.
"It's not yet clear, but the truth of the case will come to light eventually." I replied.
Just then Wang Dali ran in and said, "Yangzi, I've gotten all the stuff you wanted..."
He suddenly fell silent, eyes fixed on the corpse. The body was stripped bare and suspended on the iron plate. This scene probably shocked him.
"Holy crap, every time I leave you guys just get more hardcore. What's going on here, giving the corpse a sauna steam?"
"No no, we were discussing whether to steam it or pan-fry it." I shrugged.
Wang Dali probably imagined eating the corpse at my words. He shoved the stuff at me and rushed out covering his mouth.
Huang Xiaotao beside me was also looking queasy: "When you examine corpses, please don't talk about eating, it's really disgusting. Are you really a student, how can you be so thick-skinned!"
"Sorry, I've always been a bit dense." I laughed.
The magnet Wang Dali found was ripped off a speaker. I wrapped the magnet in white paper and moved it back and forth over the severed neck.
When I was done, I took off the paper and cupped it in my hand to show Huang Xiaotao the 'results' of my effort.
Although the particles were tiny, so small that a sneeze could blow them away, ordinary people could still see them against the white paper background.
"These are..." Huang Xiaotao leaned in to examine.
"Some sharp metal fragments." I explained.
Huang Xiaotao looked at me then looked at the things on the paper: "Hey! These are smaller than mites, how could you see them clearly!"
"Eating carrots regularly gives you good eyesight!" I joked.
"Then where did these 'sharp metal fragments' come from? The guitar strings?" Huang Xiaotao asked.
I showed her a guitar string. The strings were as fine as strands of hair, but if you looked closely they were actually spiraled - made by twisting several fine steel wires together. So even if they were damaged, it was impossible for 'sharp metal fragments' to break off from them.
"The tool that could produce fragments like these is probably a saw or hacksaw blade. Hacksaw blades are made of iron and it's common for them to get abraded during sawing." I explained.
"A saw? Are you saying the victim's head was actually sawn off alive with a saw?" Huang Xiaotao's eyes went wide.
"Let's not jump to conclusions yet. Oh yes, do you have a handkerchief?" I asked.
"Wait a moment!"
Huang Xiaotao borrowed a handkerchief from a policeman. I ripped off some of the succulent plant and wrapped it in the handkerchief, twisting hard to extract the juice. Then I dabbed the juice lightly on the victim's severed neck.
Gradually, the cut turned purple, and you could clearly see sawing marks on the skin and flesh, while the bone had the abrasion marks left by a hacksaw repeatedly grinding back and forth.
"See it now?" I said. "The skin was sliced open with a knife, but the vertebra was sawn through with a hacksaw."
Huang Xiaotao was shocked speechless for a good while before she could close her gaping mouth: "How did you do that!"
"It's simple. Succulents are very sensitive to metals, so when I used their juice to wipe the wounds, it revealed the traces left by the murder weapons." I said.
"Song Yang, I've known you for less than an hour, and you've already used all kinds of strange methods to examine the corpse, methods I've never seen before in all my years as a policeman. No, you have to give me a straight answer - just who exactly are you?"
Huang Xiaotao stared straight at me, looking as if she wouldn't rest until she got an answer!
he colors of other people’s emotions. Light red meant anxiety. Gray meant exhaustion. Orange meant excitement. Yellow... meant repression. At the same time, he could gain unlimited control over one of those colors. Pale cyan: relaxation. Using this ability, he started offering “two-yuan hugs,” spending an afternoon exchanging emotional-color experiences with others. Then came his final female customer of the day— a girl whose emotional color was pure black... —— A week later, Xu Chuan had become skilled at using pale cyan—Relaxation—treating it like a bottle of menthol balm whenever he needed it. That was when he discovered he had unlocked another unlimited emotional color: Purple, the color of fear. So these emotional colors refresh every week? Fine, I take it back—I’ll never call you useless again... —— Much later, after Xu Chuan had accumulated countless emotional abilities, one night, he suddenly found himself inside someone else’s dream. There, he could use the emotional colors he possessed to paint. And in her dream, he painted her a shower of pink shooting stars, spreading across the depths of the night sky...
e bizarre and supernatural had descended. The previous emperor was a thoroughgoing tyrant; no longer satisfied with human women, he had set his sights on a stunningly beautiful supernatural entity. He met his end in his bedchamber, drained of all his vital essence. As the legitimate eldest son and crown prince, Wang Hao was thus hastily enthroned, becoming the young emperor of the Great Zhou Dynasty. No sooner had he awakened the "Imperial Sign-In Intelligence System" than he was assassinated by a Son of Destiny—a classic villain's opening. The Great Zhou, ravaged by the former emperor's excesses, was in national decline. The great families within its borders harbored their own treacherous schemes, martial sects began to defy the imperial court's decrees, and border armies, their pay and provisions in arrears, grumbled incessantly against the central government. Fortunately, the central capital was still held secure by the half-million Imperial Guards and fifty thousand Imperial Forest Army who obeyed the court's orders, along with the royal family's hidden reserves of power, barely managing to suppress the realm. As the Great Zhou's finances worsened and supernatural activities grew ever more frequent, the court sat atop a volcano. Ambitious plotters everywhere dreamed of overthrowing the dynasty, and even some reclusive ancient powers emerged, attempting to sway the tides of the world. At the first grand court assembly, the civil and military officials nearly came to blows, fighting tooth and nail over the allocation of fifty million taels of silver from the summer tax revenues. The spectacle opened Wang Hao's eyes—the Great Zhou's bureaucracy was not only corrupt but also martially proficient, a cabinet of all-rounders. Some officials even had the audacity to suggest the emperor release funds from the imperial privy purse to address the emergency. Wang Hao suddenly felt weary. Let it all burn.
ions, keeping it grounded and realistic】 After quitting his job, office worker Su Yang accidentally binds with the "Enjoy Life System." As the name suggests, simply by indulging in life's pleasures, he can earn random rewards from the system—no need to spend money on beautiful women or grovel before anyone. Just enjoy, and the money follows, making it all about effortless fun. The system comes with a scanning feature, allowing him to establish a favorability bond with women rated 85 points or above. Every 20-point increase in favorability unlocks additional rewards. After suffering through over twenty years of hardship, Su Yang trembles with excitement, his dull eyes suddenly gleaming with newfound hope. "Enjoy life? How hard could that be?"
lity and could only live as an ordinary mortal. He only wished to live a peaceful life. Yet he didn't know— The dog he adopted, because it ate his food, became a legendary demon king. The kitchen knife he casually forged became a peerless divine weapon, causing numerous experts to fight desperately for it. The young disciple he took in became an immortal lord that led an era, due to cultivating the techniques Ye Feng taught him. Even the skeletons he looked down on the most were ominous demon kings that suppressed countless worlds. Many years later, looking at the void shattered with a punch, Ye Feng murmured to himself: It turns out the peerless kings were myself all along...
