Chapter 22 The First Discoverer

This question, like a mystery, puzzled everyone present.

After a long pause, Li Jin glanced outside and said, "I need to go back to the scene again to see if I can find the murder weapon."

“I’ll go too,” Jin Shu said. “Some things are hard to see at night, but we might make other discoveries during the day.”

Last night, under the moonlight, the horrific scene looked particularly terrifying and eerie.

Now, when I return in broad daylight and look at everything on the walls and the ground, it's as if I'm there, feeling the victim's strong will to survive, which evokes pity.

Splattered bloodstains and spray-like blood spots covered the mottled walls of the room, while the floor was covered with messy footprints, scratches, and marks.

Li Jin went into the inner room and found several pieces of crooked writing under the spread-out bedding. The writing, though brief, conveyed a sense of suicidal despair and world-weariness.

"Why me? Why must I endure this in silence? I don't want a next life, I want to become a vengeful ghost and demand justice!"

justice?

He held the paper in his hand, turned around in confusion, and in that instant, out of the corner of his eye, he caught a glimpse of a long, protruding handle on the edge of the door frame.

Li Jin stepped forward, squatted down, and looked at it with a slight glance.

Found it.

With the discovery of this wooden handle, several people quickly found a square hammer head stained with blood and with strands of the victim's hair stuck to it in the corner of the room, under the washbasin stand, at the very back.

The two items, when combined, form, just as Jin Shu had said, a rectangular hammer.

Li Jin held the hammer in his hand and examined it again and again. After a long while, he finally spoke: "Jin Shu, come and act out a play for me."

Being suddenly called by her full name, Jin Shu was stunned for a moment before she reacted: "Huh? Acting?"

"Just stand still." Li Jin didn't explain further and handed the hammer to Zhou Zheng.

He circled behind Jin Shu, swung his arm in a wide arc as if holding a hammer, raised it high, and assumed a posture ready to launch a full-scale attack.

This scene touched a nerve with Yunfei. He took a few steps back, observed from different angles, and after thinking for a moment, said, "Mr. Jin, please squat down a little."

Jin Shu looked confused, but still squatted down a little as he had said.

Behind her, Li Jin's raised arm slowly descended, and just as it was about to touch the back of Jin Shu's head, it suddenly rose again.

His arm traced an almost perfect arc in the air.

What seemed like a nonsensical action was, in Yunfei's eyes, a coherent reconstruction of the scene.

Along that arc, the splattered bloodstains, along every tangent, left streaks on the wall, as if light and shadow were recreated, perfectly overlapping with the marks on the wall in Yunfei's eyes.

On this stage, everyone's movements are slowed down, and the specks of blood seem to control the forward and backward movement of time.

It was as if he had returned from the wall to the air, back to that bloodstained hammer.

Using time reversal, it reenacts everything that once happened.

He examined the victim closely, his fingertips stroking his chin: "When the victim was in this position, he was already in a state where he could no longer support himself."

As he spoke, he gestured to the two people in front of him: "Gentlemen, step back a little towards the door and repeat this action."

He stood in the room, as if holding the thread of time in his hand, connecting the present and last night, two time points that never intersect, controlling the forward and backward movement of time in his mind, and recreating the entire scene in his mind as he followed Li Jin and Jin Shu's performance.

He seemed to see the victim struggling in agony, and he seemed to see the murderer's vicious, relentless, and dark face.

It was as if I could see her desperately trying to take the hammer away, as if I could see the despair rising in her eyes after her failure.

It was as if I could see her collapsing there in the end, her eyes gradually losing their last glimmer of light.

The splattered bloodstains on the wall, the bloody handprints, and the messy footprints on the ground—at this moment, in Yunfei's mind, they combined to form a coherent picture.

After a long while, he sighed.

“The struggle between the victim and the murderer actually began inside the house.” He stood at the doorway. “Look at the footprints here. The murderer took a big step before launching his attack.”

He took a small step along the direction of the footprints, then pretended to pick up the murder weapon and swing it forward as if to strike: "Therefore, there is less bloodstains on the wall on the side of the door compared to the other walls."

Yunfei used the traces on the ground as clues to coherently recreate the scenes he had constructed in his mind.

“After the victim was struck, there was a struggle to seize the weapon.” He took two steps forward and pointed to a semi-circular scratch on the ground. “Around here, the struggle reached its climax.”

He stood there, pointing to the locations of the splattered bloodstains on the wall, and swung his arm: "The murderer struck three times from this direction, then changed positions during the struggle and struck five more times from this direction."

He took two steps forward: "By this point, the female victim was no longer able to fight back and gave up the idea of ​​continuing to fight the murderer. She used her last bit of strength to try to escape."

He moved forward again and stood where Li Jin and Jin Shu had initially stood: "Here, the bloodstains on the ground are the most, and the bloody handprints are all concentrated here. The reason I had Mr. Jin squat down earlier was because when we got here, we could deduce the height of the blow by looking back at the position of the splattered blood. At this moment, the victim should be in a lower position, and the murderer's blow was almost vertical."

"Finally, the victim completely lost the ability to resist and fell into a pool of blood."

After hearing these words, Jin Shu stared blankly at Yun Fei. After a long while, she cupped her hands, bowed deeply, and said, "Lord Yun is so amazing. I have broadened my horizons."

Seeing her solemn demeanor, Yunfei returned the greeting, saying, "Mr. Jin, you flatter me."

Although we don't know what method this man used, the effect of reconstructing the entire case based on the traces at the scene is truly reminiscent of a forensic expert.

In front of such a master, she couldn't help but worry about her identity as a woman. Jin Shu nodded in greeting and took a small half step back.

"Based on the combined results of the scene reconstruction and autopsy, I already have a good idea of ​​what's going on." Li Jin narrowed his eyes slightly, a smile spreading across his face.

Now that the murder weapon has been dissected and what happened at the scene has been clarified, the nature of this case is obvious.

The gold and silver inside the house were not missing, and there were no signs of the victim being violated. Apart from the victim being robbed or sexually assaulted, the only other possibilities left are revenge killing and crime of passion, which fit the situation at the scene.

Li Jin stood in the courtyard outside the house, arms crossed, tapping his shoulder with his fan, lost in thought. Even when Magistrate Lin called him three times, he was not noticed.

"Your Highness, the identity of the deceased has been confirmed." Magistrate Xiaolin, with dark circles under his eyes, presented the papers in his hand. "This woman has not been in Xiaolin County for long. She is a widow who lost her husband last year and has not remarried. She lives alone. Apart from having some contact with Granny Liu, who lives nearby, she hardly ever leaves her house and doesn't interact with many people."

Looking at the letter in his hand, Li Jin's gaze fell on the words "Grandma Liu": "Where is this person now?"