Necropsy 02

A cold sweat ran down Luo Weiwei's forehead as she stammered, "It looks like some bamboo splinters."

I turned off the UV light and said, "Judging by the angle these splinters pierced the skin, the victim was forcibly pushed against some kind of bamboo stick at the time. If you don't believe me, you can go ahead and compare them to that pair of red chopsticks - I bet the splinters broke off from them."

"He really killed his own mother!" Huang Xiaotao exclaimed in shock. "Matricide!? How brutal!"

Luo Weiwei said indignantly, "So what if you got this one thing right? The wife had to have been the last to die, because..."

"Because you think it's impossible for someone to cut off their own head, right?" I interjected, staring at her intensely.

Under my badgering gaze, Luo Weiwei wavered a little. I knew she was starting to doubt her earlier judgement.

But she stuck to her position: "Of course it's impossible! There are so many nerves and blood vessels in the neck that you'd be dead halfway through cutting it off. How could anyone cut their own head off? Isn't that common sense?"

I sneered, "Then why don't we make a bet?"

Luo Weiwei became flustered. "A bet? On what?"

She was a girl, and I didn't want to take things too far and make her eat cigarette ash or something. So I said, "Do you know how to drive?"

"Yes!" Luo Weiwei nodded.

"If I can prove the death was a suicide, then for the rest of the time we're investigating this case in Wuchou City, you'll be our driver free of charge," I stated.

"What?" Luo Weiwei's eyes widened in shock. "Why should I?"

"What's wrong, not confident anymore?" I asked.

Luo Weiwei knitted her brows, probably weighing the pros and cons. "What if you lose then? I don't need you as my driver!"

"Well I don't have a license either," I laughed. "If I lose, whatever, do what you want."

"Alright, if you lose, I want the four of you to go find Zhao Dao and apologize for this!" Luo Weiwei said after thinking for a moment.

I had assumed she would tell us to stop interfering with the case, so I was a bit surprised that Luo Weiwei was openly defending her boyfriend.

I readily agreed, "Forget apologizing, we'll kneel and admit our wrongs if needed."

Huang Xiaotao glared with wide eyes, "Hey!"

Luo Weiwei looked very pleased with herself as she crossed her arms. "Good, you said it yourself - a promise made by a gentleman can't be chased away even with a team of horses!"

Huang Xiaotao complained in a small voice, "Song Yang, you make your bets yourself. Why drag us into it too? If you have to kneel, do it yourself!"

"Don't worry, would I get it wrong?" I smiled mysteriously.

"Alright, I trust you. Just don't embarrass us Jiangnan City police!" Huang Xiaotao said.

"You can rest assured!"

Seeing that I wasn't moving, Luo Weiwei urged, "Go on, we're still waiting to see what tricks you have up your sleeve."

"No rush, wait for my assistant to get back." I said lightly.

After waiting twenty-odd minutes, Wang Dali finally hurried back, carrying bags large and small. He had two pots slung over his back, looking quite comical. He said excitedly, "Hey Song Yang, the supermarket here was so hard to find! Here are the things you wanted!"

"Thanks!" I had Wang Chuanzhang help me glue the heavy duty hooks to the ceiling in a row.

Luo Weiwei shouted, "Hey, don't mess around here!"

I glanced at her, "Do you want me to examine the corpse or not? Don't worry, I'll clean up afterwards."

After securing everything, I looped all the elastic bands at equal distances onto a wooden stick, then inserted the stick into the row of hooks. I gave it a tug with my hand to make sure it was sturdy.

All the police looked on curiously, wondering what exactly I was going to do.

"Uncle Wang, help me move the corpse!" I ordered.

Wang Chuanzhang and I lifted the male corpse under the hooks and posed it in a kneeling position on an iron table. Then I slipped the elastic bands over the arms of the corpse, so that it hung like a suspended puppet.

"Is this... an interrogation of the dead?" Huang Xiaotao asked.

"No, the method I'm using this time is even more advanced than that." I took out a sewing needle and magnet, and rubbed the needle along the magnet in one direction until it became magnetized - a magnetic needle.

The preparation process was quite time consuming. Wang Dali started goofing around again, "Hey Song Yang, I heard a hilarious joke the other day."

"Let's hear it," I said.

"Two policemen arrive at a murder scene. The older cop says to the rookie, 'Xiao Ming, this case has something in common with the locked room murder last month, the dismemberment case at the dock, and the body dump at the crossroads the month before.' The rookie asks, 'You mean they were all done by the same person?' The older cop says solemnly, 'No, what I mean is those are cases I couldn't crack either.'"

After finishing the joke, Wang Dali slapped his own thigh laughing uproariously. Huang Xiaotao and I couldn't help but laugh too. He meant no harm, but the others probably took it as mocking their poor investigative skills - Luo Weiwei and the policemen's faces grew progressively gloomier.

Huang Xiaotao said with a smile, "Watch your audience, why don't you."

Wang Dali gave Luo Weiwei a roguish glance, "Alright, I got it."

By this time, my preparations were complete. What I was going to use could be called an upgraded version of the 'interrogation of the dead' - 'raising the dead.' The arcane technique was recorded in the Demonic Prison Codex, using magnetic needles to stimulate acupoints and make the deceased 'come alive' again.

I had accidentally used the interrogation technique during the vampire case last time. After returning, I crammed on human meridian knowledge.

Just what are the human meridians? Some Western doctors have dissected cadavers and declared meridians don't exist in the Chinese sense, arrogantly claiming they are merely Eastern superstition.

However, traditional Chinese medicine has a history spanning thousands of years, and techniques like acupuncture and acupressure do have miraculous healing effects. In TCM theory, the human body is an inseparable whole. As the saying goes, pulling one hair affects the whole body. Through a single acupoint, organ and body part functions can be manipulated - this is a fact verified repeatedly over thousands of years.

Therefore, some believe the human body contains many tiny magnetic fields. Where these magnetic fields intersect, biological magnetic meridians are formed. This is the essence of the twelve meridians described in the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon.

The so-called 'raising the dead' involves inserting magnetic needles into special acupoints, releasing the residual magnetism in the body's meridians, and causing the muscles to repeat actions prior to death.

Of course, the 'awakened' muscles have tiny strength, so external force like these elastic bands must be used to bear the corpse's weight in order to see the effects.

Before inserting the needles, I reminded Wang Dali, "There'll be intense scenes coming up again. Do you want to step outside for a bit?"

Wang Dali excitedly shook his head, "No worries, I can take it. This is stuff you never get to see normally, way more thrilling than horror flicks."

I laughed heartily. Don't blame me if you get freaked out later!

Using my fingers, I measured out the dead man's spine and inserted the magnetic needles into the Dazhui, Shendao, Lingtai, Zhongji, Xuji, Mingmen, and Yaoyangguan acupoints along his vertebrae, sinking them about half a needle deep.

These points would be too risky to casually try on the living, potentially causing paralysis or even death!

But on a corpse, nothing short of 'heavy doses' could make the dead 'come alive.'

After inserting all the needles, the corpse showed no reaction. Luo Weiwei gave a cold laugh, "Hmph, after all that mystique, not a hint of results."

"Don't rush!"

I slapped the corpse's shoulder heavily, and at that moment, the corpse slowly began to move!