However, no murder weapons such as knives were found at the scene. No external injuries such as stabbings were found on the surface of the deceased's body, and no blunt force injuries were found on the head. There is also no rope around the neck, and it is unknown whether there are any pinch marks due to the high degree of decay.

The light of the lantern could not shine far, only to the ground under his feet, so he could not see the rest of the ice cellar.

So, he held the lantern high, looked behind the corpse, and saw a lot of things, and at the same time understood why he couldn't push open the stone door alive. It turned out that there was a neat pile of wood piled up behind the stone gate of the ice cave, and at the end of the wood, that is, behind the stone door, there was a huge bronze tripod, which was just against the stone gate.

No matter how strong Xiao Jiading's internal force is, it can't push away the blockage of this huge and heavy bronze tripod and so much wood.

Xiao Jiading was very surprised, why did these deceased people block the stone door with a huge bronze tripod and these woods? What are they afraid of? What's out there that would hurt them?

He rubbed his chin and wondered, thinking of what could make them so frightened in this palace, hiding in the abandoned ice cellar, and holding the door against the door with a heavy copper tripod and a large pile of wood. And, in the end, they died, and the four were still wounded. What penetrated the closed stone door and came in and hurt them?

Xiao Jiading carried the lantern and checked the rest of the house, but found nothing, it was all empty.

He carried the lantern and looked around the walls, ceilings, and floors, but found no signs of damage, no secret passages or anything.

Xiao Jiading asked the two servants to start the autopsy, although the smell of the corpse was really bad, he still stayed and watched. The autopsy can often provide important clues to solve the case, he can't believe in ancient works, although he is not a professional, but he has never eaten pork and has seen a pig run. You have to see for yourself. So as not to leave any clues that have not been found, which will affect the detection of the entire case.

Two are qualified, one is tested, and one record is qualified. The deceased's coat was taken off first, and several patches of white maggots were found on the four corpses. This may be indicative of the fact that the four corpses had obvious trauma on their skin, which caused skin breaks and soft tissue damage, and were the favorite of the green-headed flies, so they laid a large number of eggs here and hatched into white maggots. The results of this inquest verified his previous reasoning that the four of them had fought.

This is strange, why did the four of them fight?

When he turned over Chun Tao's stripped corpse and examined his back. Xiao Jiading sighed, and went up with a lantern to take a closer look, and found that there was a strange pattern on the back of the corpse, which was some kind of mysterious arc, which looked very much like a human face with a big mouth, and it looked very weird.

The two of them were also a little frightened, and they glanced at each other, and their eyes showed some kind of fear.

Xiao Jiading does not believe in ghosts and gods. But what about this mysterious pattern on the back of the deceased?

Examining the other four corpses, such a mysterious pattern was also found on the back, but the specific position of the pattern on the back was different. It's all the face of a man with a big mouth.

Xiao Jiading asked the staff to depict these patterns. Although he was afraid, he did as he could.

In ancient times, autopsies were not performed on autopsies, but Xiao Jiading decided to do it himself.

In the end, it was determined that the cause of death of all four people was starvation, that is, death from starvation and thirst.

Xiao Jiading did not judge. He took off his dress outside and placed it on the ground for the queen and the female officer in the spring shirt to identify.

Queen Wang didn't know what these palace maids were wearing in Wu Zetian's bedroom. He looked at the female officer in the spring shirt.

Chun Yi carefully identified it, pointed to the four torn dresses and said, "These four are Spring Peach, Xia He, Qiu Ju and Xiang Tao." ”

Xiang Tao is the rough palace maid in Wu Zetian Palace, and the other three are the palace maids sent to Wu Zetian Palace by Queen Wang.

Empress Wang was also very puzzled, and said coldly to Wu Zetian's female official Chun Shan: "Why are the four of them injured?" I don't know if I died here in vain? ”

Chun Yi said neither humbly nor arrogantly: "I believe that our mother also wants to know this question very much, and now the queen mother sent Xiao Zhiyi to investigate this case, doesn't she also want to find out the reason for this?" ”

Queen Wang said: "You mean, you don't know what's going on? ”

"I don't know." Chunshan's answer was simple and crisp.

Queen Wang said coldly: "Go back and tell your mother, this case will definitely be investigated by the palace!" When I find out the real murderer, I will reason with her to the end if I don't let her be! My people can't die in vain! ”

Chun Yi said: "What Niang Niang said is, I believe that our Niang Niang also thinks the same, Xiang Tao is a person in Niangniang's palace, and she died here for no reason, and Niang Niang also needs an explanation." ”

Queen Wang snorted heavily, and then turned her head to look at Xiao Jiading: "Xiao Zhiyi, do you have any clues to solve the case?" ”

Xiao Jiading said: "I want to conduct an autopsy on the corpse to find out the cause of death of the four people. Since none of the four had obvious external injuries on their bodies, it was assumed that all four died of starvation and thirst, and I hope that the autopsies will be performed to find evidence and finally confirm the cause of death. ”

Queen Wang nodded: "This palace has said, as long as it is to find out the facts of the case, you can do it according to your own ideas, including autopsy." What this palace needs is the result, the real murderer. As for how you solve the case, this palace just asks. Looking forward to your good news. ”

With that, he turned around and walked away. Wu Zetian's female official also left with two palace maids.

Xiao Jiading asked him to depict the bronze tripod and the stacking of wood behind the stone gate, then moved the wood, moved the four corpses out, asked Fan Kong Shitai to find an empty wing room, put it in the house, and asked him to find a sharp knife and start dissecting the corpse.

He had never studied dissection, nor had he dissected corpses, but he had read many autopsy reports and learned the basic structure of the human body, so he was ready to rely on this limited knowledge for dissection. Because what he needed to find, he didn't need much medical knowledge, he needed to make sure that the dead were really starving.

To prove this, it is only necessary to dissect the stomach of the deceased and look at the stomach contents, if the stomach is empty, it can be proved that the deceased is likely to die of starvation, but if there are still remnants of the stomach contents, then it can be refuted that the deceased did not die of starvation. Then you need to find another cause of death.

Although the corpse was highly decomposed, the human tissue had not yet liquefied, and the dissection revealed something.

Xiao Jiading dissected the abdomen of the deceased Chun Tao and saw the stomach of the deceased. The deceased's stomach was still relatively full, indicating that there was something inside. So he opened his stomach and saw the eroded contents of the stomach.

Then, he dissected the stomachs of Xia He and Qiu Ju, and also found a small amount of stomach contents. -- The three palace maids sent by Empress Wang to Wu Zetian's palace did not die of hunger.

She dissected the fourth palace maid, that is, Cuilian, the palace maid of Wu Zetian's own bedroom, and the result was the same, there were still more stomach contents, indicating that she died shortly after eating.

According to Xiao Jiading's forensic knowledge, the stomach contents are generally emptied in about five hours, and the amount of stomach contents of the four people can be roughly judged that the time of death of the three palace maids of the queen is inconsistent with that of the palace maid Cuilian, Cuilian died within about an hour or two after eating, while the three of them died three or four hours after eating.

Of course, this judgment is not necessarily accurate, because it is related to the amount of food eaten by each person, and if the person himself eats very little or no food, then the judgment is not accurate.

Since the stomach contents show that none of the four deceased died of starvation, what was the cause of their deaths?

Xiao Jiading began to carefully examine the neck of the deceased, and found no strangulation marks or pinch marks. There were no traces of pressure on the nose and mouth.

He couldn't figure it out, how did these four die?

He decided to proceed with the dissection and look at all the relevant organs to see if anything was found.

He dissected the chest cavity of the deceased, first looked at the lungs, there was nothing unusual, and then checked the heart. Still nothing has been found.

After he examined all the important organs, he found nothing out of the ordinary.

In the end, he suspected that he had died of poisoning, so he took the contents of his stomach, and had a few ducks caught and fed to them, and although the ducks looked very uncomfortable, none of them died.

It's time for him to be dumbfounded, he regrets that his forensic knowledge is too rudimentary, and at the same time, he lacks modern testing equipment (which he wouldn't use even if he had).

The four dead were neither starved to death, nor poisoned, nor strangled to death, nor had obvious external injuries, so how did the dead die?

Xiao Jiading felt that he was really a little poor in donkey skills. He was originally just a student of law, he had not systematically studied forensic medicine, nor had he learned to solve cases, and many of his previous cases were solved by luck. Is there luck on his side this time?

If a case is solved, but the cause of the deceased's death is not even clarified, how can this case be solved? Can the alleged murderer be found? Because the murderer did not even understand the means of causing the death of the deceased, what can the murderer do if he is discovered?

Xiao Jiading had an urge to go to Queen Wang now, telling her that he couldn't find the murderer, and he couldn't even be sure whether the four of them died of homicide or their own illness or accident.

However, Xiao Jiading quickly gave up this idea, not only a matter of not admitting defeat, but now that the body has just been found, he raised a white flag and said that he had no way to find out the truth, which is too unusual. Therefore, Xiao Jiading decided to wait and talk about it first.

Xiao Jiading asked Master Fankong to find a coffin, and the body was collected and stored in the temple. Then he paced out, ready to go home.

Halfway through, a light rain began to fall again, dripping, but soon it became heavier. Xiao Jiading looked around, but he couldn't find anyone to borrow an umbrella, the palace maids and eunuchs didn't know where to go, and the huge palace seemed to have no one and became a ghost town. He had to run to a gazebo and stand there, waiting for the rain to pass before going back.

But the rain was very long, sometimes heavy and sometimes small, but it did not stop, it kept falling. (To be continued......)