In the empty and tidy corridor, two figures walked forward one after the other.
At the end of the corridor was a metal automatic sliding door, next to which sat a young man leaning against the wall, yawning.
Upon seeing two people approaching, he immediately perked up and stood up from his seat.
"Please show me your identification," he said sternly.
Lin Qiye took out the emblem and handed it to him. The latter examined it carefully and said with some surprise:
"So you're the new Night Watchman. My apologies." He bowed slightly to Lin Qiye, returned the emblem with both hands, and looked at the person behind Lin Qiye with some surprise.
"Brother Lin, who is this...?"
"Oh, he's the expert I invited to take a look at the body," Lin Qiye said calmly, putting away his emblem.
"Okay, I'll open the door for you right away."
The young man opened a small box next to the metal sliding door, entered a password of more than ten digits, and the metal sliding door opened, revealing the passage inside.
Wearing a shirt and a mask, An Qingyu followed Lin Qiye inside and asked with some surprise:
"Is the security here so lax? I thought they'd search me or register my ID."
"It's just a morgue, why make such a fuss? The truly confidential and core areas are places you don't even know if they exist, let alone walk in so casually," Lin Qiye replied.
In the end, he still brought An Qingyu with him, not for any other reason than that An Qingyu's ability to interpret corpses was absolutely top-notch in the Great Xia Dynasty, and even the most skilled forensic doctor might not be able to compare to him.
With him around, we might actually be able to find some clues.
The two pushed open the door and entered the morgue. Compared to the police station's morgue, this one was significantly smaller. After all, only bodies related to mysterious events were stored here, and such events only occurred a few times a year.
After Lin Qiye showed his identification to the forensic doctor, the doctor immediately gave him an autopsy report and, at Lin Qiye's request, took Sun Xiao's body out of the cold storage.
Lin Qiye glanced at the autopsy report briefly before focusing his attention on the corpse in front of him.
According to the report, this body is no different from the previous three; if they really want to make a breakthrough, they still need to start with the body.
An Qingyu was completely absorbed in the task at hand, scrutinizing the entire corpse with an absolutely indifferent and meticulous demeanor, his eyes gleaming with a faint gray light.
After thoroughly examining every detail of the corpse, he subconsciously reached into his pocket and pulled out a sharp scalpel...
Lin Qiye grabbed his hand and shook his head. "You can only look, not dissect."
An Qingyu nodded helplessly, looked down at the corpse, the lenses of her glasses reflecting the pale light, and said in a deep voice:
"Overall, like the previous three bodies, the fatal wound was in the chest, all ten fingers were severed, and apart from the nail wound, there were no other injuries."
He took the autopsy report from Lin Qiye and continued, "The ten severed fingers showed signs of activity, indicating that they were severed while the victims were still alive. This is consistent with the previous three bodies..."
"So, nothing unusual?" Lin Qiye asked with some regret.
"Yes!" An Qingyu nodded emphatically, "This corpse has one thing in common that differs from the previous three corpses!"
"Where?"
"The direction of the severed fingers!" An Qingyu's eyes shone brightly. "The direction of the severed fingers on the previous three corpses was from top to bottom."
An Qingyu pressed his body against the wall, making a gesture as if his left hand was nailed to the wall, with his palm facing the wall and the back of his hand facing outward.
"At the same time, he made a knife shape with his right hand and gently chopped at his fingers."
"Generally speaking, if the deceased is nailed to the wall like this, the only way to cut off his fingers is to cut from the back of the hand toward the palm, because it is impossible for a knife to cut out from inside the wall. This is also the direction in which the fingers of the previous three corpses were cut off."
But this corpse is different!
"He used his right hand to draw a horizontal line from bottom to top on the fingers of his left hand."
"His finger was severed from bottom to top! From the palm towards the back of the hand! But I can't achieve that kind of severed finger posture with my hand in the current position, so he must have been in this posture when his finger was severed..."
An Qingyu flipped his left hand over, and it was still nailed to the wall, but now his palm was facing outwards and the back of his hand was facing the wall.
Lin Qiye's eyes lit up, but then his brows furrowed again.
"But in the video, the body was too far away and the light was blurry, so we couldn't see the direction his palms were facing. Maybe he really was nailed up like that?"
"What can you tell from the way a hand is nailed?"
"This alone isn't enough to tell anything, but that's precisely the problem." An Qingyu walked to the corpse, pointed to two wounds on the palm of its hand, and continued, "A nail driven into the palm of the hand and a nail driven into the back of the hand may create similar wound shapes, but they are actually different. The wound on this corpse's hand... was caused by a nail driven in from top to bottom."
An Qingyu used one finger as a nail, piercing it through the back of his other hand's palm, and said seriously:
"In other words... the direction the nail was driven in was opposite to the direction the finger was severed! This means..."
"That means he was first cut off his fingers and then nailed to the wall." Lin Qiye's eyes narrowed slightly as he continued An Qingyu's words.
An Qingyu nodded, "That's right."
"However, the process shown in the video does not align with our reasoning," Lin Qiye frowned. "Furthermore, after examination, the video shows no signs of special effects processing, meaning the footage captured is indeed real."
"If that's the case, then there's only one possibility left..." An Qingyu said slowly.
"The person who died in the video is not Sun Xiao!" Lin Qiye and An Qingyu said at the same time.
Due to the distance and lighting, the footage captured by the video camera was not clear, and the deceased's face was not even visible. Ultimately, the reason why everyone judged that the deceased in the footage was Sun Xiao was because of that waiter's uniform!
Moreover, the next day they did indeed find Sun Xiao's nailed body on the wall, exactly the same as in the picture.
No one questioned the identity of the deceased in the videotape.
"So, another person was wearing Sun Xiao's clothes and was 'mysteriously' nailed to the wall, but after the video recorder ran out of power, someone replaced the original person with Sun Xiao, whose fingers had been cut off?" An Qingyu frowned deeply. "But... why is that?"
"Our reasoning has a fatal flaw!" Lin Qiye took a deep breath and continued.
"According to our reasoning, the people nailed to the wall should be two different victims, but... we only found Sun Xiao's DNA in the bloodstains at the scene!"