S.C.I Mystery Series Volume 3 Chapter 120

Mad Doctor Murderer 15 – Insecticide

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Yu Xiaofeng's death suddenly made Zhan Zhao frustrated; he was now unable to find any clues, he lacked sleep, was hungry, and a little cranky.

The SCI crowd returned to the police station and sat in the canteen. Bai Yutang fed a dull-eyed Zhan Zhao a salmon sandwich. A certain cat was now just mechanically accepting the feeding, his eyes staring straight ahead in a daze.

"What is this situation with Dr. Zhan?" Zhao Hu asked Ma Han beside him.

"Probably stewing over the case." Ma Han shrugged his shoulders, "After all, Yu Xiaofeng's death was too sudden."

"Two avengers? Why are the methods before and after completely different? Was our entire deduction wrong?" As Zhan Zhao questioned, a piece of chicken was shoved into his mouth.

Bai Yutang picked up a second sandwich and prepared to feed it to him while saying, "Yu Xiaofeng's body was handed over to Gongsun for an autopsy, and her family will be arriving in the next few days."

"Could it be a completely different case that got mixed up with ours?" Luo Tian asked.

"It's possible." Zhan Zhao perked up slightly at hearing a reason that could explain the two different sets of tactics, and the food might have played a part.

"That person who blackmailed her, any clues yet?" Bai Yutang asked Zhang Long and Wang Chao.

The two shook their heads, "The phone number has been checked, it was from a cell phone without a real name registered, and by the time we checked, the phone was no longer connected."

"At least it proves that the other party got the news of Yu Xiaofeng's death first, or simply knew that she would die at this time." Zhan Zhao looked at the crowd, "Otherwise he wouldn't have turned off his phone so quickly before he got the 'money'."

"Look in this line." Bai Yutang told Zhang Long to continue their search, "After listening to the recording of Yu Xiaofeng's phone call, it seems that the other party was also involved in the case back then, or at least was a knowledgeable person, yet he was not investigated, so it is possible that the other party killed to silence him"

Seeing the faint dark circles under Zhan Zhao's eyes, Bai Yutang thought it was better to let him rest first. He let the meeting adjourn and the two of them went to the lounge to take a nap.

By taking a nap, it meant snuggling up with a pillow and sleeping beautifully in the luxurious lounge that Bai Jintang had helped redecorate.

In the forensic room next door, Gongsun and Ma Xin put on their gloves and prepared to start the autopsy on Yu Xiaofeng.

The SCI team had been working for several days in a row, and Bai Chi was in good spirits as they had caught up on their sleep this morning.

"I never really thought that one day I would be doing her autopsy." Ma Xin suddenly felt a little emotional.

Gongsun gave the scalpel to Ma Xin, "You do it."

"Me?" Ma Xin took the scalpel with mixed feelings, holding it and looking down... at Yu Xiaofeng's face.

When Ma Xin started the autopsy, Gongsun looked around Yu Xiaofeng. Yu Xiaofeng was a good beauty, but she didn't seem to have good living habits.

"Judging from the colour of her nails, there's some calcium deficiency and malnutrition, and she likes to bite her nails. If Zhan Zhao were here, he'd probably say he she's worried about something."

"She has a tattoo on her left arm." Gongsun asked Bai Chi to hold the camera and take a picture of the tattoo on Yu Xiaofeng's left arm.

"This pattern, does it have any significance?" Qin Ou seemed interested in the tattoo on Yu Xiaofeng's arm, squatting down to take a closer look, "It's not pretty at all, and it's not writing, is it a distorted hieroglyphic pattern? It doesn't look like something a girl would get tattooed."

"Like… a map?" Gongsun frowned and took a closer look, "Like it's part of some kind of map? There's also a crossed latitude and longitude line."

"A map?" Bai Chi came over and searched his memory for a pattern that matched... Bai Chi could draw all the world maps in their entirety, remembering the coordinates of every country and even city accurately, but this wasn't some part of a map that he would normally see.

"It looks very similar, but it doesn't appear to be any country." The crowd crouched in front of the autopsy table and as they stared at Yu Xiaofeng's arm, they puzzled over it.

"Maybe it's not a map, but a function?" Bai Chi tilted his head and saw a different result, "Look guys, there are coordinate axes."

"Maybe it's an axis, look, there's an X," Gongsun pointed to a crossed symbol next to a horizontal line.

"Who would tattoo a function on their arm?" Bai Chi couldn't figure it out.

"A mathematician or something?” Qin Ou shrugged his shoulders.

The crowd glanced at each other and shook their heads.

"Huh?!" Ma Xin suddenly called out, and the crowd looked up.

"There's a bug inside her." Ma Xin said, and a bug came out from between Yu Xiaofeng's organs. It was black, hard-shelled, and about three centimetres, a very large bug.

When the crowd heard Ma Xin say bug, they thought it was at most flies, cockroaches and other things such as roundworms. But when Ma Xin pinched the bug that came out, the crowd was a little dumbfounded.

It was not a small bug that was eaten by mistake, nor was it a parasite in the intestines, but a completely wild insect!

Qin Ou frowned and patted Gongsun, "When I watched Dr. House, I remember an episode in which a woman had a 25-inch-long parasite growing in her stomach.”

"Yi..." Bai Chi's face scrunched up, "That's disgusting.”

"The parasites in the human body are soft worms, right? This kind of hard one, is it possible?" Luo Tian reached out and pointed to the bug that Ma Xin was holding with a clip.

"Impossible." Gongsun shook his head, "This is definitely not a parasitic worm!”

"Then what kind of worm is it?" Ma Xin looked up carefully, "... Who would swallow such a bug?”

"If it was swallowed, it should be in the stomach, why is it on the outside, between the organs?" Gongsun took a measuring cup and put the bug in it, trying to get a closer look.

But suddenly... the bug shook a little.

"It's alive?!" The crowd was astonished.

Gongsun immediately snapped the measuring cup onto the table as soon as he could and asked Ma Xin to bring the airtight container over. Afterwards, Gongsun put the bug in the airtight container, and it didn't take long for the bug to move around, bumping its head around inside the box.

"What kind of bug is this?" Ma Xin felt a little creeped out, it looked like an aggressive and ferocious bug.

Gongsun shook his head, he didn't know much about insects, so he called Chen Yin to come over.

Chen Yin came rushing over with Zhao Qin in tow and froze at the sight of the bugs in the airtight container. He reached out and grabbed the box, his surprised look making his handsome face look a bit silly.

Zhao Qin frowned, "Well-developed upper jaw, knee-like tentacles, with wings. The body is clearly presented with three parts: head, thorax and abdomen. Six legs, with a large distance between the forefeet, it's an ant!"

"Ant?" Bai Chi and the others spoke in unison, "But this one, it's three centimeters big!"

"There are so many different kinds of ants." Chen Yin whispered, "There are also very huge ones among the rarer species of ants, even as big as five centimeters. Ants are the most adapted to their environment and the most group-oriented creatures. Their mystery is beyond human comprehension, can you believe it? According to scientific speculation, there are at least tens of thousands of planets in the universe that are ruled by ants!"

Chen Yin was so excited that the crowd looked at him like a patient.

"You could write a science fiction novel." Gongsun took the container, "How did it get into the body? Won't it be dissolved by stomach acid if swallowed?"

"Could it have crawled in after they died?" Chen Yin frowned, "Also, what kind of ant is this?"

"You don't know either?" Gongsun was surprised.

Chen Yin smiled, "I definitely know the ants that have been recorded, but this is one that hasn't been found before, or a mutated subspecies." Saying that, he looked at Yu Xiaofeng's corpse, "She was bitten to death by this ant?"

"She died of arsenic poisoning." Ma Xin frowned, "Arsenic, she was drinking it, why didn't the ants die?"

"Xin Xin." Gongsun suddenly said, "Take her stomach out."

Ma Xin took Yu Xiaofeng's stomach out, and Gongsun looked it all over, "The stomach is intact."

The crowd stared, "It didn't come out of the stomach?"

"Turn the body over and look at her back." Gongsun moved his hand and, together with Ma Xin, turned Yu Xiaofeng's body over, only to see that on the back of the body, there was a wound that very subtle, a blood-red circle with some blood around it.

"Yu Xiaofeng shows no signs of haemorrhaging, does she?" Gongsun asked Ma Xin.

Ma Xin nodded, "No! The internal organs are intact."

"The ant entered through this wound." Gongsun said, his face changing slightly.

Qin Ou's eyes widened, "Don't tell me that the ant cut through the skin and crawled in on its own?"

The crowd looked together at the ant's sharp front jaws and all subconsciously took a step back. Gongsun frowned and shook his head, "Too many horror movies, does that possibility exist?"

The crowd looked at Chen Yin for an expert's opinion.

Chen Yin tilted his face up and thought for a while, nodding his head, "It must be possible on those 10,000 planets up there, but on Earth it seems..."

The crowd sighed in relief.

"The wound is a regular shape with a neat cut.” Ma Xin examined the wound, "Regular circle, like it was cut by a sharp object!"

"Did someone use a cylindrical, slanted, fast-mouthed murder weapon to stab Yu Xiaofeng from behind and send ants into her body?" Gongsun examined the substance left at the incision to surmise what kind of texture of weapon it was, while exclaiming, "The person who did it has an extremely strong medical knowledge, because with such a stab, it didn't injure any internal organs, the strike was incredibly precise!"

Ma Xin completed the autopsy successfully and got many clues. What happened to Yu Xiaofeng could be considered interesting in the extreme.

How to put it, the arsenic poisoning killed her instantly, yet the ant inside her body was something to behold.

Gongsun found that the cut of the wound carried a variety of herbal ingredients. The sharp instrument should be a bamboo product!

"Bamboo products... bamboo tube or something?!" The crowd was curious, “A new device is similar to a shovel, only in a cylindrical shape?” Qin Ou guessed.

"What bamboo products?"

At this time, pushing through the door were Bai Yutang and Zhan Zhao who had successfully finished recharging their batteries after catching up on sleep.

Gongsun told Bai Yutang about the autopsy while Chen Yin contacted overseas experts on ants and concluded that it was a variant of the famous 'Australian bull ant'.

"Bull ants?" Zhan Zhao stared at the ant in the jar, "Why would an Australian ant get into Yu Xiaofeng's stomach?

"Do you know why the ant didn't die inside her?" Gongsun asked the crowd as he held up the test report.

Zhan Zhao moved a stool and sat down to listen, he was already very interested in this.

"The ingredients of the drugs found in the wound include a large amount of datura stramonium, as well as some angelica, arisaema heterophyllum, acorus calamus, and a small amount of marijuana." Gongsun gave the crowd an overview of the ingredients detected inside.

"What are the effects of these herbs?" The crowd asked.

"Ah, a lot of datura stramonium, acorus calamus, something like the ancient recipe for mafeisan, ah." Ma Xin thought about it. (Angel: mafeisan, 麻沸散,  is an anaesthetic invented by Hua Tuo for surgical operations.) 

"Exactly! And marijuana is used for pain relief." Gongsun explained, "Also, there's some sodium bicarbonate and white vinegar in there!"

"Is sodium bicarbonate... baking soda?" Zhan Zhao asked, "These two things react to produce carbon dioxide, right? I learned about it in chemistry class in middle school."

The crowd nodded.

"A quick way to anesthetize insects is to instantly place them in a high concentration of carbon dioxide, and they will immediately pass out!" Gongsun said, "The ant was placed inside a sharp bamboo tube filled with anaesthetic and was in an anaesthetic coma. It was then delivered into the body by a clever trick. There was anaesthetic on the bamboo tube and the wound was small, so Yu Xiaofeng didn't feel anything after she was stabbed. By the time she noticed, the ant had probably woken up... so the three-centimetre mutant bull ant with sharp front jaws and tentacles would have been crawling around between her organs."

The crowd's brows furrowed as they imagined that image, it was horrible.

Zhan Zhao couldn't help but ask, "Then... what was going to happen?"

"She would probably be glad she died of arsenic poisoning early." Ma Xin said indifferently, "Otherwise it would have been so painful that it would have been worse than death. And the ant can't survive forever in the internal organs. Once the wound is infected or the parasites are brought in... in short, Yu Xiaofeng's end would definitely have been miserable, but she might not have died, and dying would have been a painful death."

The crowd looked at each other, all a little speechless.

"It's too cruel." Chen Yin couldn't help but say.

"This is a typical act of torture!" Zhan Zhao muttered to himself, "It doesn't make sense. If this method of torturing Yu Xiaofeng was already prepared, they could just wait for a good show, so why would they need to poison her again, or poison her so severely that Yu Xiaofeng would die a quick death almost painlessly?"

"Indeed..." Bai Yutang also thought it didn't make sense.

"It can only be explained by two sets of techniques. One set for torture for revenge, and that person is the avenger. And the other set, the one who drugged Yu Xiaofeng, and the one who sent us the email hinting that many people would die, is another person! This person may not be an avenger. If the two killers don't know each other, it could be an antagonistic relationship! But if they know each other – it means there is an internal disagreement?!"

The crowd was mulling over Zhan Zhao's analysis of the case when suddenly, Bai Yutang's cell phone rang.

After answering the phone and listening, Bai Yutang frowned and stood up, "A second one died."

"Who?" Zhan Zhao and the others all tensed, "Xue Qin or Chen Keqing?"

"Neither." Bai Yutang shook his head, "Someone you would never expect!"

‿︵‿︵ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ・❉・ ʚ˚̣̣̣͙ɞ‿︵‿︵

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Translator Notes

Please feel free to comment any mistakes I made so I can improve and do better as I go through the book.

Translated: September 27, 2022 by Angel

Edited: October 8, 2022 by Angel