Qiming Chapter 61

Chapter 61

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Qianyuan Villa.

To find a more complete chain of evidence, they returned to the crime scene. On a weekday morning, there weren't many people in the community, only a few women walking their dogs, and the dogs were well-behaved, not barking.

"Boss, how are we going to re-enact the crime scene now?"

"Oh, play the victims. You two sit by the dining table and pretend to be waiting for dinner."

"What about you?"

"I'm the murderer. In a moment, Professor Xu will drive me in, so you two hurry up and get into position." Gu Yunfeng rolled down the car window and used his gloved hands to shield his eyes from the glaring sunlight.

Shu Pan and Wen Xin quickly nodded, turned around, and entered the neighbourhood. They crossed the police cordon and went into the villa.

A few minutes later, Xu Chengyue drove into the neighbourhood with Gu Yunfeng in the passenger seat. These days, the neighbourhood's security was very tight, with nearly double the number of security personnel patrolling the shaded roads.

"When entering from the neighbourhood gate, we'll be caught by a surveillance camera." He pointed to the camera rotating in the upper right corner and said, "There."

"Then go straight, turn left, then right, and enter the underground garage."

"Why did Jiang Yang have contact with Wang Kun?" Xu Chengyue asked while driving.

"Wang Kun said it was about Jiang Hai's transfer to another hospital." Gu Yunfeng opened the window and carefully observed every tree, lamp, and potentially relevant object around them.

"Is their relationship good? I mean Jiang Hai and Jiang Yang."

"Probably not, to Jiang Hai, Jiang Yang is the child of his father's mistress."

Hearing this, Xu Chengyue remained silent until they parked the car and got out in the garage.

After getting out of the car, Gu Yunfeng circled the garage, inspecting every corner, and opened the trunk to check its contents.

"This trunk is quite spacious." He tried lying inside, "I can even squeeze in here."

He knocked on the sides while lying inside. The soundproofing was quite good, if someone was secretly hiding in it, the people in the front wouldn't notice for a while.

The garage had an elevator and a safety passage directly leading into the villa. The elevator had already been inspected, and no suspicious fingerprints were found. On the day of the incident, the villa experienced a power outage, making the surveillance cameras and the elevator unusable. Jiang Yang and the murderer entered the villa through the stairs of the safety passage.

The Jiang family had a temporary power supply machine, but it was only used in certain rooms that day. Unfortunately, the surveillance cameras weren't functional.

They walked together through the safety passage and into the living room via the stairs. No suspicious fingerprints on the stair handrails, no blood left behind, or valuable footprints.

Pushing open the door of the safety passage, they saw Shu Pan and Wen Xin sitting at the table. The two were bored waiting for them and breathed a sigh of relief when they saw them come out, waving their hands.

"Did you find anything?" Wen Xin, resting her face on her hands, asked while lying on the table.

"No." Gu Yunfeng found a chair, sat down, and played with a plate on the table. Previously, there had been plates here containing slices of Jiang Yang's excised muscle tissue.

"Not a single clue?"

"Nothing for now." Gu Yunfeng spread his hands and bent down to check under the table. Besides the empty, swaying tablecloth, there was nothing else.

"Wait a minute." Xu Chengyue suddenly remembered something and grabbed his wrist, taking the plate from his hand.

"Is this the plate that held the slices of flesh cut from Jiang Yang?"

"Aiyo, don't keep saying 'slices of flesh', it sounds gross," Shu Pan said.

"No, this is a new plate, the previous one was kept as evidence at the forensic lab."

"When the body was found, the muscle tissue was fresh, right?"

"Mhmm, the killer used ice and dry ice, mainly ice I was told. The villa had a power outage, so he must have brought it himself."

Gu Yunfeng recalled the scene at that time: water and blood from the melting ice mixed with the muscle tissue. He imagined the process of the killer using the knife, then slapped the table, "Test the composition of the muscle tissue, and test the composition of the ice, there must be other findings."

"The soft tissues were cut very neatly, the murderer has excellent knife skills." Gu Yunfeng said, "Yes, this is it, the knife, the meat-cutting knife!"

"The murder weapon was something from inside the villa, but not this meat-cutting knife. We didn't find a matching knife at the scene. We need to find this knife, which is also the murder weapon."

"I understand." Gu Yunfeng immediately called the forensic lab. He took off his gloves and took big strides outside, "I'll ask them to re-examine the shape of the cuts in the muscle tissue and re-identify the weapon used by the killer."

"Also re-examine the composition of the solution in the container holding the muscle tissue." He breathed a sigh of relief, "I hope we can get a good result."

—————

The forensic laboratory was in a state of chaos.

Xiao Zhang called Gu Yunfeng to inform him that the test results were out.

"When the murderer cut the muscle tissue from the victim's limb, they used two tools. One was a pen-style scalpel, the blades for these scalpels are disposable, but this 10-27 model blade clearly violated medical regulations." He pushed up his glasses, his expression serious. "We detected someone else's blood in the solution on the plate. This scalpel must have been secretly taken out after a surgery."

"It could be taken out?"

"Of course not, that's why I said it was done secretly."

"Can you identify whose blood it is?" Xu Chengyue asked.

"That's up to Captain Gu to contact the relevant hospital. They need to provide blood samples of all surgical patients from the month before the incident." If they could identify whose blood was on the blade, they could trace back to that surgery and find all participants.

"It's a wide range, it could be difficult." He hesitated but voiced his concern.

"What's the other tool?" Gu Yunfeng asked.

"A trigeminal nerve scissor."

"What's that?"

"As the name suggests, it's for cutting nerves." Xiao Zhang looked puzzled. "I don't know why it was used, maybe it was just at hand, so the perpetrator used it."

"This user's knife skills still need improvement, a scalpel would have sufficed." He remarked, then turned to Gu Yunfeng, "But for you guys, this is good news. Trigeminal nerve scissors and pen-style scalpels are commonly used in neurosurgery."

"Neurosurgery? Yes, yes." Xu Chengyue's eyelid twitched suddenly. He rubbed his eyes and saw Gu Yunfeng sitting across from him, looking delighted, with one hand propping up his chin. "In that case, Ruihe Hospital only needs to provide blood samples from all neurosurgery patients a month before the incident."

"Why Ruihe Hospital?" Xiao Zhang scratched the back of his head, puzzled.

"The last person Jiang Yang saw before his death, and our current suspect is a doctor from Ruihe Hospital." Gu Yunfeng clapped his hands, took the files from Xiao Zhang, and said, "Let's start with Ruihe."

—————

Two cups of coffee and a three-tier ceramic dessert stand.

Three tiers, yes, three tiers! High-calorie, high-fat, each tier filled with small desserts, macarons, almond cakes, opera cakes... Just looking at it made her feel full!

"Don't you like it?" Xie Yu'an always seemed to have a smile on his face, his sunny expression making Ying Xizi embarrassed to refuse.

"I do, I do..."

"You're so thin, a bit of sweets won't hurt."

"I... am not that thin."

"You are, you should eat more. Leave it to me, I'll make sure you gain some weight!"

"......" She resisted the urge to walk away in anger, forcing a cold smile.

"We met once a few years ago, remember?"

"Oh, I remember." She nodded. How could she forget? A bunch of people had dinner together that time, and afterwards, this guy named Xie Yu'an kept sending her friend requests. He did it so frequently that she eventually had to block him.

She rarely blocked anyone, but there was something about this guy she just couldn't warm up to.

"Are you still at Nanpu University?"

"Yes, I work at the university hospital."

"I haven't been back to our alma mater in ages, I should visit sometime and catch up with you."

"The school is very close by."

"Ai, I've been too busy. Today, I'm only off because my boss is on leave, otherwise, I'd be swamped with work."

"Are you still on a nine-nine-six schedule?" Ying Xizi asked.

"No, it's more like ten-ten-seven," Xie Yu'an replied seriously. "I'm not kidding."

"Do you even have time for a relationship?"

"Why do you think I'm still single!" He pulled a woeful face, though it still seemed sunny. Realising his words could be misinterpreted, he quickly added, "But if it's a relationship with you, I'd definitely have time!"

"Huh?" She sat there awkwardly, wanting to leave every second but feeling embarrassed.

"Do you still keep in touch with Xu Chengyue?" Not knowing what else to say, Ying Xizi shifted the conversation to someone they both knew.

"I helped him fix a door two months ago. I don't know who broke it, but it was pretty sturdy."

"Pfft." She couldn't help but chuckle.

"You know who broke it," Xie Yu'an looked at her with certainty.

"I know, but I'm not telling you." She smiled cheekily, then asked how he used to get along with Chengyue.

"Back then, Xu Shixiong and I were both under Lu Yong. I started working a few years ago, but he's still there, though not as a student anymore."

"What do you mean, it feels like you sympathise with him?"

"Yes, I do feel sorry for him," he said to Ying Xizi. "What kind of mentor gets their student so drunk they jump off the roof? Did he think the wind blew him off?"

His voice suddenly rose, drawing the attention of those around them.

Startled by his outburst, Ying Xizi responded, "He said he was star-gazing."

"Star-gazing? With all the light pollution nowadays, how many stars can you see at night?" He grumbled discontentedly, "I don't know how Shixiong got brainwashed."

"Ai, I shouldn't have brought this up," upon realising his outburst, he quickly changed the subject.

"Was Lu Yong not good to you?"

"Not exactly..." he lowered his voice. "He often had us involved in some, strange projects."

"What do you mean by strange?" She took out her phone, pretending to check the time while actually pressing the record button, feeling glad she hadn't left early.

"High-risk experiments without proper regulation," Xie Yu'an whispered.

"Can you give an example?"

"I can't really say." He moodily ate a few small cakes. "I wasn't a core member of the lab at the time, just an assistant, I didn't know much. If you want to know, you should ask Xu Shixiong. He was a core member and knew everything."

"But he doesn't remember now." She leaned in and whispered.

"Doesn't remember?" Xie Yu'an furrowed his brows, recalling how much Xu Chengyue's personality had changed after the accident. He absent-mindedly ate a cake, then suddenly exclaimed, "What the hell, could he have really been brainwashed by Lu Yong?"

"Are you serious?"

He nodded. "Our company's research institute is currently leading several interdisciplinary projects that... in theory, could actually achieve that."

"Which company do you work for again?" Ying Xizi rubbed her forehead.

"Zhiyin Technology, the unicorn tech company that handles all your needs from food and clothing to entertainment," Xie Yu'an, with his underage appearance, said earnestly.

She remembered her father, Ying Han, had mentioned Xie Yu'an's job, but she had promptly forgotten.

She saved the recording and immediately sent it to Gu Yunfeng.

– New intel, listen to it ASAP.

‿︵‿︵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: August 14, 2024 by Angel

Edited: October 30, 2024 by Angel