Chapter 127

Lao Yao arrived at the police station around the same time we did. He gave me a copy of the information he found. Sun Tiger asked, “So you’re the computer genius that Song Yang always talked about? I’ll have to trouble you to analyze a video we found.”

“Leave it to me!” Lao Yao replied. He then casually patted Sun Tiger’s ass. Sun Tiger’s expressions darkened abruptly and I saw the police officers around us trying so hard to hold in their laughter that their faces turned red.

Lao Yao then went into another room and started working on the video. I decided to examine the dead body now. Xiaotao and Sun Tiger followed me to the morgue. Although she was technically a suspect now, Sun Tiger did not restrict her freedom of movement as long as she didn’t leave the building.

With the victim lying flat on the metal table, and I proceeded to perform Organ Echolocation. I found that the victim’s inner organs were almost completely damaged, yet there was only one deep stab wound in the abdomen. What’s more puzzling was the fact that she looked mangled and very bloody from the outside.

I sprinkled some seaweed ash on the victim’s body and blew it off gently. Only two sets of fingerprints were found. One was the victim’s, while the other didn’t seem to belong to a woman judging from the shape and size. I surmised that it was probably Officer Ma’s.

It seemed that the killer had worn gloves. That was a suspicious point. I asked Sun Tiger and Xiaotao if they saw the murderer in the video wearing gloves. They both shook their heads and replied that they weren’t sure because the person in the video had blood on her hands, so it wasn’t clear whether she was wearing gloves.

I pulled out my Autopsy Umbrella and asked Sun Tiger to hold a UV lamp up for me as I continued to examine the body. Two points caught my attention: one was a very complete right palm print that seemed to belong to a woman on the victim’s mouth; the second was a trace left on the left side of the victim’s head that seemed to show that she was squeezed there. Apart from that, there was a curious web-like pattern there, making me wonder how it got there. I had a feeling that this was somehow the key to solving this case.

After my inspection, I announced my findings to Sun Tiger and Xiaotao.

“This is how I think the sequence of events transpired,” I began. “The murderer stormed through the door and immediately covered the victim’s mouth to prevent her from calling for help. With the other hand, the murderer drew a knife and stabbed the victim’s belly.”

Sun Tiger was lost in thoughts for a few minutes. Then he said, “That’s a reasonable analysis.”

“Did you notice something else, Uncle Sun?” I asked. “The palm print on the victim’s mouth was clearly the right hand, which meant that the murderer held the knife with their left hand. But Xiaotao is right-handed, and Li Wenjia is left-handed!”

“Aren’t you making a hasty conclusion there?” argued Sun Tiger. “I don’t think you can prove Xiaotao’s innocence just with that. She’s a highly-trained police officer. She can easily teach herself to use a knife with her left hand.”

I understood that Sun Tiger didn’t say that because he didn’t believe in Xiaotao’s innocence, but merely because he wanted more convincing proof. Xiaotao knew that too and merely nodded at Sun Tiger’s point.

I then carefully cut the victim’s clothes open with a pair of scissors. Because she’d lost too much blood, her skin was now a grayish white. When her body was exposed, Sun Tiger pointed at the stab wounds and remarked, “Look, the incisions are all on the right side. This proves that the killer is right-handed!”

This was something I didn’t expect at all. I bit my lip and muttered to myself for a while, then asked Sun Tiger, “Where do you think the first cut was?”

“As you just reasoned,” he replied, “it’s probably on the belly.”

But with so many stab wounds on the victim’s body, I wasn’t sure how to examine it more closely. Just as I was feeling lost, an idea popped up in my head. It was a method that I learned in The Chronicles of Grand Magistrates. I called out for a police officer and asked him to buy me dried lotus leaves, camphor, sulfur, cigarettes, and a flexible tube.

While I waited, I looked through the information that Lao Yao found on the net. According to what he found, Li Wenjia’s right eye was most likely from a legendary fox called the green-eyed fox. These foxes were found predominantly in Inner Mongolia. Because of their small number and numerous natural predators, they gradually evolved a special ability in order to survive—hypnotic eyes.

When an animal stared into the fox’s hypnotic eyes, they would be stunned and unable to move, as if time itself had stopped. This way, they could buy time and escape from the predators.

All this might sound surreal, but there was a sound scientific basis for it. The basal ganglia—a region in the mammalian brain situated at the base of the cerebellum—was equivalent to a built-in biological clock. The feeling that time flew by when people were having fun but dragged on when people were bored was mainly due to this region of the brain. Moreover, it was precisely this part of the brain that the hypnotic eyes of the green-eyed foxes targeted.

By the same principle, anyone who looked into Li Wenjia’s right eye would instantly be immobilized, and their brain would turn utterly blank. After that, she was then free to hypnotize the person and implant any kind of instructions into their brain. It also didn’t matter how strong-willed her victims were, since she had all the time to break down their psychological defense!

There was still one puzzle that I couldn’t figure out though. The green-eyed fox had gone extinct since the founding of the People’s Republic of China. Where could Li Wenjia have gotten an eye?

I roughly summarized Lao Yao’s findings to Sun Tiger and Xiaotao.

“I can’t believe that she’s so consumed by the desire for revenge that she was willing to transplant an animal’s eyeball into her body!” exclaimed Xiaotao. “But is that even possible? Wouldn’t her body reject it?”

I thought of the needle puncture wound on the back of Li Wenjia’s hand and replied, “Definitely. Our bodies would even reject incompatible human blood types, let alone an organ of another species! She probably has to constantly inject a drug that suppresses her immune system. The downside of that is that it compromises her immune system and weakens it, meaning that she’s probably sick a lot and would have to frequently take antibiotics and painkillers to deal with the physical pain.”

“What a crazy woman!” remarked Sun Tiger, shaking his head.

Soon after that, the police officer returned with the things I needed. It was already very late at night, so it must’ve taken him a lot of effort to acquire these things. I thanked him profusely, then pulled out a stone pestle from my backpack. Since I often used it, I bought a spare one and always carried it in my equipment bag.

I pounded the dried lotus leaves, camphor, and sulfur into a powder, then asked Sun Tiger for a cigarette.

“But I thought you don’t smoke, kiddo!” he laughed.

He then tossed me a cigarette and lit one up for himself. At that point, Xiaotao frowned and reminded him, “Director, you’re in the morgue.”

“Ah, yes, of course,” he murmured as he put away the cigarette.

I peeled open the cigarette, emptied the tobacco inside, and refilled it with the powder that I just made, then licked the cigarette wrapper to reseal it. I asked Sun Tiger to light it up for me. I then took a huff, but because I’d never smoked before, it burned my throat so much I was almost in tears.

“Smells interesting,” Sun Tiger commented. “Can I try it?”

I handed it to him. He took a huff and broke into a coughing spell.

“What the hell is this?” he asked. “Is it even made for human consumption?”

“It is! For a dead human, that is.”

I asked Sun Tiger to put gloves on and help me hold the victim’s mouth open. I then inserted the tube into the victim’s mouth, took a big huff, and blew the smoke into the tube.

“Nothing’s happening,” said Sun Tiger.

“Patience, Uncle Sun,” I replied. “By the way, which wound do you think was the first cut?”

“This one!” He said, pointing at a wound.

The next moment, smoke rose up from one of the stab wounds on the victim’s belly, not where Sun Tiger was pointing.

“That’s incredible!” he exclaimed with widened eyes.

The technique I just used was called Intestinal Smoke. Once blown into the victim’s body, the smoke would not dissipate. It would linger in the victim’s digestive and only escape if there were any wounds that were deep enough to damage the victim’s internal organs.

I moved the tube further down and inserted it into the victim’s trachea, then continued to blow smoke into it. Suddenly, the body quivered slightly, making Sun Tiger let out a horrified gasp. He took a few steps back while Xiaotao, who was by then used to such a sight, watched on amusedly. I could even see that she was trying very hard to hold in her laughter.

As I blew in the smoke, the pressure inside the victim’s inner cavity built up, causing the smoke to force itself out through the wounds. This made the wounds sputter like the mouths of goldfish—and that was indeed a surreal sight!

I quickly marked the wounds that had smoke coming out with a red-ink pen before the smoke cleared.

“These are the only real fatal wounds,” I explained. “The rest are just for show.”

Sun Tiger counted five or six of these wounds. He then asked, “For show? Who’s it for?”

I smiled and answered, “The police, of course!”