The Butcher

Huang Xiaotao asked, "Song Yang, what does 'empty' mean?"

I couldn't help but wryly smile, "Are you asking me to explain the idiom, or asking why it's empty?"

"You!" Huang Xiaotao stomped on my foot and glared at me fiercely.

"I'll tell you! I'll tell you!" I waved my hands repeatedly, "The deceased's stomach was empty, extremely clean from hunger."

"That's nothing, she was probably kept by the murderer for a few days." Huang Xiaotao said unpleasantly.

"But there was not even feces in her intestines," I continued.

"Wha...what?"

Next I did something that made everyone nauseous. I spread the deceased's legs apart and inserted my finger deep into the deceased's anus, almost the whole finger went in. Huang Xiaotao's mouth was wide open, her eyeballs were about to pop out.

"Nothing to be surprised about, haven't you seen a doctor examine the prostate before?" I said.

"Can you compare that?" Huang Xiaotao said, "You're simply...forget it, I don't want to say it."

Actually I was quite innocent, this had to be done to examine here, now there were gloves and thermometers which was better, without these tools in ancient times, the coroners directly inserted their fingers into the anus to measure the intestinal temperature.

Of course I wasn't measuring the temperature, when I inserted my finger all the way in and pulled it out, I found a layer of oil on my hand. Also, the place that should have been the human excretory organ was exceptionally clean.

I held my finger under my nose and sniffed it, several policemen covered their mouths in disgust. I said, "There's vegetable oil in the deceased's rectum!"

Huang Xiaotao was startled and asked, "Vegetable oil?"

I nodded, "Pass me some tweezers."

A policeman took tweezers over, and gave me a strange look at the same time. Actually I could have used my finger for the next step, but I didn't want to disgust them so I used the tweezers instead.

I pulled apart the deceased's anus, and had a policeman shine his flashlight, after looking over it, I put down the tweezers and took off my gloves, the autopsy was over.

"What do you think?" Huang Xiaotao anxiously asked, her tone was like a worried family member asking about the condition of a patient.

"There is some damage to the intestinal mucosa, the murderer should have inserted a soft tube into the deceased's intestine, and poured oil in, while also making the deceased drink a lot of oil," I said.

"Why would he do that?" Huang Xiaotao was very puzzled about this.

"To make the deceased empty all waste from her body," I answered.

Just now when I examined the bones, I discovered that the liver had shrunk to some degree. The liver is like a built-in battery in the human body, when a person is in a state of starvation, the glycogen stored in the liver will start to be consumed to provide energy for the body.

This meant that the deceased was starved for at least a week before death. In addition, oil was poured in from the mouth and anus to forcibly empty the intestines.

Based on this, it could be deduced that the deceased had been missing for about twenty-seven days.

Most importantly, feces in the human body contain a lot of toxins. When the body is starved, the intestines will start to 'squeeze' the feces again for nutrients, and naturally these toxins will accumulate in the muscles and blood.

The murderer was obviously aware of this, so he used this method to forcibly empty the deceased's feces!

Also, when an animal dies in extreme fear, it will secrete some toxins into the blood, causing the muscles to become stiff. Therefore, the murderer let the deceased inhale laughing gas, to die slowly in a painless manner.

The murderer went through so much trouble not to torment the deceased. The conclusion is so twisted that even I feel it's excessive – the murderer did this to ensure the deceased's meat reached the most 'delicious' state!

After hearing me explain, two policemen rushed out covering their mouths, Huang Xiaotao had almost eaten a human meat bun before, so she had some immunity, but her expression was still somewhat horrified, "You mean the filling in the buns wasn't made by the murderer to destroy evidence, his original intention for abducting the victim was to take the best ingredients to make human meat buns..."

I answered, "Yes, I guess the murderer has no awareness of murder at all, to him people are no different than pigs and cows, he is a mentally twisted gourmet! Also, the third reason why the corpse doesn't show signs of decay that I mentioned earlier is this – because the deceased was starved for a week, some probiotics in the intestines were emptied from the body, the rest were killed by her own immune system, in layman's terms the bacteria starved to death, so the corpse did not rot severely."

Huang Xiaotao lowered her head without speaking for ten seconds, I thought she was sad for the deceased's tragic fate, but I was wrong, if she cried that wouldn't be Huang Xiaotao.

She angrily clenched her fists and gnashed her teeth, "Damn it, scum like this really deserves to be hacked into pieces! We must stop him from committing more crimes no matter what!"

But I was a bit pessimistic, this deceased had been abandoned for twenty days, twenty days was far too long, there may have already been a second and third victim.

I comforted Huang Xiaotao, "We'll do our best, even if we have to work non-stop these two days to catch him!"

"You're right!" Huang Xiaotao nodded.

After the autopsy, as usual I took out some spirit money, burned it in front of the deceased, recited the Rebirth Mantra, then covered her with a white sheet.

We left the morgue, Xiao Zhou had analyzed the results, he excitedly said, "Song Yang, you were completely right, the deceased did inhale nitrous oxide."

"What about the rope's components?" I asked.

"Polypropylene and some cotton textiles," Xiao Zhou answered swiftly.

"Thanks!" I nodded, it was as I expected.

Huang Xiaotao said, "It looks like we need to focus on tracing the ropes and laughing gas for clues now. Let's increase manpower and mobilize all the police officers and auxiliary police from the local police stations, we must solve this case as quickly as possible."

I asked Huang Xiaotao, "Where's Wang Yuanchao today?"

"He happened to be patrolling near the meat factory this afternoon, I asked him to trace Jin Huo Ma's clues, so he didn't attend the meeting," Huang Xiaotao said.

"Right, are there people staking out the bun shop?" I continued asking.

"How could I forget such an important place, I've sent four colleagues to keep watch there," Huang Xiaotao replied.

By now the sky was bright, I had actually spent two hours examining the corpse. Huang Xiaotao said let's go eat something.

We went to a nearby Western restaurant and simply ate some pizza. After eating, Huang Xiaotao said, "Song Yang, you didn't rest well last night, you must be tired, why don't you go back to school first, I'll notify you if anything comes up."

"What about you?" I asked.

"I still have to work on the case," Huang Xiaotao smiled wryly.

"I'll go with you, if you ask me to go back and sleep now will I be able to rest easy?" I said.

Huang Xiaotao smiled, "Okay!"

Huang Xiaotao called a few people back at the police station, one of them was Wang Yuanchao. After hanging up she told me, "Wang Yuanchao said Jin Huo Ma resigned from the meat factory three months ago, the pork he delivered afterwards had nothing to do with the factory. Also the head of HR said he had a habit of petty theft."

This was about what I had guessed, but it also meant this lead was cut off.

Soon, two policemen brought over a thick stack of files, saying they were the case files and records of people in Nanjiang City who had gone missing or lost contact in the last three months, from all police stations and public security bureaus.

Huang Xiaotao was surprised, "There are so many missing people in Nanjiang City in three months, are there aliens appearing in the city?"

"Not all are missing, some are just lost contact," one policeman said. "After all, Nanjiang City is quite big, with a lot of migrant population, coming and going unpredictably. Some in here are also debt dodgers who ran away."

"Okay, leave them here, I'll go through them slowly," Huang Xiaotao said.

Facing a table full of files, Huang Xiaotao smiled wryly, "Song Yang, lend me your eyes to help me out!"

I picked one up and flipped through it. Let alone there being so many files, checking them one by one would consume huge amounts of manpower and time. I suddenly had an idea, although a bit sinister, but it could indeed save massive manpower and time, after all, being a second late in solving the case would increase the probability of the next victim appearing.

I said, "Why don't we try reverse thinking!"

"What kind of reverse thinking method?" Huang Xiaotao asked.

"Looking at it from the killer's perspective, which of these people are the 'tastiest'!" I looked over the thick dossier and said.