CHAPTER XLIV

She carefully put the pieces of meat down and got up to clean the dead man's head with the cotton balls in the toolbox. Or with alcohol or tweezers, after a quarter of an hour, the true face of the woman can finally be revealed.

"This ...... This is that quacky female shopkeeper! Without waiting for Xu Chu to open his mouth to confirm, Xiao Mingzhu had already stretched out his fingers tremblingly and exclaimed.

Xu Chu nodded, glanced at Xiao Mingzhu without a trace, and saw that her face was pale but there was no sign of being overly frightened, so he frowned and continued to test.

"The deceased, female, about 35 years old, had her scalp lifted, except for a slight injury to her face, the rest of her body was removed, leaving only the skeleton." Xu Chu changed into his spare gloves and continued to inspect, "The mandibular joint is stiff, and the masseter muscle on the side is also in a state of stiffness, and it is preliminarily estimated that the time of death is from an hour before to an hour and a half. ”

"The five organs are neat and undamaged, which shows that the murderer's knife skills are excellent, if he is not an executioner who is good at this, he is a skilled butcher and the like." She said that the five organs were removed, and carefully examined them one by one from the heart to the liver and spleen, without the slightest cowardice and panic that a woman should have.

The two guards who followed in to clean up the corpses on the ground were bold people whom Xiao Qinglang had personally ordered, and they had all fought on the battlefield, dancing with knives and guns all day long, and the number of enemies they had killed was even more numerous. After seeing the strange scene of the woman's pure face in the dark room, and the strange scene where her expression could not change at the heart of the bloody forest, she couldn't help but feel a chill down her spine, which showed that she analyzed the slightest reason, and felt that such a person should be worthy of their admiration.

This is also the scene where several people have seen her dissecting the corpse, from the initial scene of disembowelment, skin and flesh open, bruises and rotting extremely disgusting and disgusting scenes, to the later boiling corpse and steaming bones, when the stomach is stirred, they have long been accustomed to the female servant brought by the prince to act differently.

Otherwise, if it were someone else and I saw her for an autopsy for the first time, I was afraid that even if I couldn't be scared to death, I would vomit to death.

Xiao Mingzhu only dared to sneak a few glances at the moment, if he really wanted to take a look, he didn't have the guts. But even just a glimpse of a shadow is enough to make her tremble. Especially when her sister Xu was calmly holding the pile of internal organs, the visual impact made her gasp.

However, the smell in the dark room was too unpleasant, even if she felt that it was shocking, she only dared to hold it and did not dare to gasp.

She didn't say more, and directly used the autopsy knife to dissolve the stomach of the female shopkeeper, and the bloody and hideous stomach was dissected. The cloudy gastric juice mixed with the full food was poured out, and the smell was so strong that people couldn't avoid it.

If the guards could still tolerate it before, it would be a little disgusting to look at it at this time. And Xiao Mingzhu had already vomited and couldn't spit out anything anymore, and now he was just shaking and covering his mouth and retching.

Xu Chu didn't know how others were suffering, and he didn't care much. She only looked at the food residues left in the stomach on her hands and said: "The deceased's stomach has rice grains and vegetable residues, most of which have become erosive, and you can vaguely distinguish meat and sake lees in the stomach." ”

As she spoke, she used tweezers to pick out the slightly complete piece of meat, but she saw that the muscle fibers were thicker, and there was no fat between the muscles, and the meat was firmer and rougher when squeezed with tweezers. The rest of the vegetables, which had begun to erode, in addition to the green leafy vegetables, also had a transparent and whitish strip, but when she looked closely, there was no doubt that it was a radish.

"The deceased had eaten beef and drank alcohol before his death." Xu Chu turned his head to look at Xiao Mingzhu, "Does the county lord remember what the female shopkeeper said that day, what kind of banquet was going to be held in the inn?" ”

"Whole sheep feast." Xiao Mingzhu waved his hand weakly, and when he thought of what beef and mutton, he retched again. But she was stunned and didn't hide out.

Xu Chu nodded, looked at Xiao Qinglang again and said: "Judging from the texture of the cow, this cow is a healthy cow that has been fattened in the prime of life. ”

That is, whether it is the beef purchased by the inn itself, or the meal bought from outside, as long as you find out where the nearby place has been slaughtered in the government, you can find out the person who went to buy meat or dishes.

Xiao Qinglang nodded, no longer looked at the bloody bones, and looked at Xu Chu at a glance to understand her intentions and unfinished words. Then he turned his head and instructed Wei Guangdao: "Send the palace guards to check with the token, and all records must be sealed and sent directly to the king's temporary residence in the state capital." ”

Xu Chu saw Xiao Qinglang's order to go down, so he continued to check. But she saw that in the pile of sour food, there were things mixed with something she had never seen before, not like vegetables or like any common food.

Xu Chu sniffed slightly, and there was a smell of fried chestnuts with sugar. Before she could take a closer look, she felt a palpitation and dizziness. In a trance, she suddenly remembered the hallucinogenic herbs involved in a case in the county.

It was also thanks to the fact that the object was digested in the female shopkeeper's stomach for a while, and the medicinal effect was reduced a lot, so Xu Chu failed to fall into an inexplicable hallucination. She found clean rice paper and wrapped the object, and said that she would find a free time to do research later.

After a long time, Xu Chu put down the objects in his hand and checked the female shopkeeper's flesh and blood head again. But seeing her holding her breath, she broke the person's jaw with a movement of her hand, and then bent down to close her head close.

said that it was a complete head, but the half-connected hair, which had long been stained with blood, was wet and greasy, and it was indescribably tragic.

And when Xu Chu held the bloody Lin head, when he lowered his head and was close to or even almost against the lips and teeth that had been broken open, it was even more shocking to watch.

Xiao Qinglang's fingers pinching the brush couldn't help clenching, and his eyes looked over for a moment, although the shock in his heart was comparable to the turbulent waves because of the ferocity of the case, but it couldn't withstand his mood when he saw Xu Chu intimately approaching the deceased's skull at this moment.

As if a subconscious move, he stepped forward directly to stop her from getting closer.

"The deceased had milky white thick mucus in his mouth." Xu Chu held the head with one hand, removed the gloves with the other hand and twisted it slightly with his fingers, and when he pulled it out again, his fingers were stained with some white mucus. "It is remembered that the deceased was fed a large amount of hallucinogenic drugs before his death, causing vomiting."

"According to the degree of vomiting, it can be seen that it was done in a hurry after eating, and it will cause nausea because ......it stimulates the appetite," Xu Chu took off his coat and covered the miserable blood bones, sighed and said word by word, "According to the mucus reaction, the deceased was still forcibly poured after death." ”

"After death?!" I don't know if it is Xiao Mingzhu, the county lord who is not familiar with the world, even Xiao Qinglang couldn't help but be surprised.

"If the murderer is either a pervert, then the deceased is someone who has deep feelings for each other. Although the deceased died and was scraped alive, his face was not hideous, which shows that the punishment did not suffer much pain. ”

"How is this possible!"

The dark room was silent, and Xiao Mingzhu covered her mouth with a shocked face. It's incredible, who the hell is it......

Although the deceased's face was destroyed, he could still see her facial features, which showed that the murderer could not bear to completely destroy her. And her face is quite calm, and there are no bone scars caused by struggles and fights, which shows that she also has the heart to die. Xu Chu's voice was cold, looking at Xiao Mingzhu, who was pale, and Xiao Qinglang, who was frowning and listening, continued, "Zhu Youshu has the ability to control people's minds, and it was used for witch healing at the earliest, and it is said that it can eliminate the pain caused by diseases, but in fact, it is just the use of hallucinogenic drugs and psychological suggestion to achieve the effect of shielding people from pain. ”

"Just now I checked the stomach of the deceased, and found that in addition to beef, wine and food, there are hallucinogenic herbs, but now I am not sure what they are." Xu Chu was silent for a moment, his face was slightly gloomy, and he continued, "That day, I was in the middle of the blessing, and from the middle to the unraveling, it was all determined by the sound of the female shopkeeper's abacus. At that time, I tried Shunzi, Shi Zhu Yushu's buddy, but found that he deliberately clumped his body and put extremely high soft objects on the soles of his feet to confuse his height and weight...... If I'm not mistaken, Junko is the one who picks meat, and what he does is either admiring the female shopkeeper with a crush, or he is the person he married in the mouth of the female shopkeeper! ”

It was because Shunzi was hiding that Xu Chu didn't easily express his speculation. As he was talking, Xu Chu found that there were several bloody footprints on the side of the blood and bones that were not distinct.

Her brows furrowed almost invisibly, and then she asked in a deep voice, "Are the soldiers and guards who entered to investigate, are they close to the blood bones?" ”

"No, the soldiers who first discovered this place were frightened and did not come forward, and then they only checked the breath of the corpses of those women with flesh and blood, and did not get close to the blood and bones." Regarding the situation at the scene, Xiao Qinglang had asked the people below as early as when Xu Chu was inspecting. He knows that all the scenes will inevitably leave clues, so he will naturally not be careless.

Xu Chu nodded and squatted down to look at the bloody footprints.

"Barefoot, the footprints are seven inches and two inches long, five feet four inches tall, the steps are messy and the footprints are uneven, the murderer may be exhausted, or he has been injured. The heel of the footprint is shallow, and the forefoot mark is deep, and the person is used to being rickety, not straight enough. Xu Chu used rice paper to draw the footprints he saw on the paper according to the depth of pen and ink, and then said, "After working all year round, although the family is not short of food and clothing, it is not rich...... He has force, but his body is relatively weak, not strong enough, his strength is small, and he is not proficient in light internal strength......"

"In short, most of the murderers are executioners or butchers, and they are absolutely the best at the knife. There are enough ways to buy beef and other things, and most of them are related to the yamen or are themselves butchers who have obtained the permission of the government to slaughter healthy cattle. He is about thirty-five to forty years old, about five feet four inches tall, and walks in disguise with a rickety body. Xu Chu frowned, took the rice paper again, and drew the psychological portrait of the murderer back and forth, "The murderer has excellent quality in his heart, and he is fierce to others, but he has a lot of feelings for the deceased, and he does not hesitate to use hallucinogenic drugs and use the extremely draining Zhu You technique to relieve the pain of the deceased." It can be seen that he has a cautious and suspicious personality, and he does not hesitate to kill his sweetheart with his own hands because he is worried that we will find out more things along the female shopkeeper's vine. Moreover, he scraped the female shopkeeper, which was mostly a punishment, so this person's temperament must be repaid. ”