"The skin tissue behind the victim's ear showed secondary burn marks." Su Chen's fingers, wearing latex gloves, were suspended in front of the dissection table. The shadowless light illuminated the scalpel. "This is the third corpse with a blue dragon totem this month."
Tang Ren leaned on the door frame of the morgue and poked his head out: "I told you there was a gang fight! Look at this tooth mark..." He held up a half piece of jade pendant in the evidence bag, "It's exactly the same as the 'dragon raising its head' I saw at the fortune-telling stall on Temple Street last year!"
Qin Feng suddenly stretched out his hand to press the edge of the autopsy table, his fingertips brushing the cuffs of Su Chen's white coat: "The pupil... the pupil dilation speed is right." He raised the flashlight of the camera and aimed it at the eyeball of the dead man. "It...it rained heavily two hours ago, but the soles of the dead man's shoes were stained with the cinnabar soil of the Chinatown archway."
A mechanical sound suddenly rang in Su Chen's mind: "Detecting time-space paradox, it is recommended to check the stomach contents of the deceased." He shook his head and picked up a piece of undigested glutinous rice ball with a tweezer. Half a gold foil was embedded in the dark red bean paste.
"VIP snacks from Jin...Jinyulou." Qin Feng turned around abruptly, his tactical boots rubbing against the ground with a sharp sound, "Tang Ren! Who did you say you met in the casino three...three days ago?"
"A Xiang said she saw 'Jade-faced Tiger' and collected protection fees..." Tang Ren was suddenly stuck, staring at the faint "叄" mark on the gold foil, "Wait! This mark is the same as the one that sank into the pond last year..."
Suddenly, a sharp brake sound exploded outside the police station. Su Chen's white coat fluttered without wind, and the system warning red light flashed on the retina: "Detection of high-risk targets approaching, it is recommended to activate emergency protection."
The door of the morgue was slammed open, and five strong men with dragon tattoos on their shoulders rushed in. The tall and thin man who came in last used a folding fan to lift the corpse, and gently tapped the dragon tattoo on the chest of the deceased with a jade ring: "Officer Qin, does your brother's injury look like an ordinary knife wound?"
Su Chen's scalpel suddenly refracted a strange blue light, and the blade reflected the extremely fine strangulation marks on the neck of the deceased - that was clearly the Ming Dynasty gold thread stolen from the museum!
"Lin... Boss Lin, you're here just in time." Qin Feng suddenly stuttered even more violently, and turned his back to signal Tang Ren, "We just found out that your brother might be involved..."
Tang Ren suddenly threw himself at the thin and tall man's feet and howled, "Brother, your brother died tragically! The wound was obviously caused by a nine-section whip!" He secretly stuffed half of the jade pendant into his trouser pocket, "We have been tracking him for three months. It must have been done by the Vietnamese gang of Snake Eyes!"
Su Chen looked at the holographic analysis diagram that suddenly popped up in the system. The metal residue at the burn behind the deceased's ear overlapped with the cinnabar soil test report in Qin Feng's pocket - that was not a gang mark at all, but some kind of wax seal used for identification!
Suddenly, there was a sound of tiny ice crystals breaking in the cold storage.
---
The shadowless light on the dissecting table suddenly flickered, and the twisted gold thread on Su Chen's fingertips rippled in the blue light. Boss Lin's folding fan was put away with a "swish", and the jade ring knocked against the edge of the iron dissecting table, making a grinding sound.
"Nine...Nine-section whip caused a ring-shaped bruise," Qin Feng suddenly raised his hand and touched the neck of the corpse, "but...but..." He deliberately prolonged his stuttering for three seconds, and his right hand quietly stuffed the cotton swab stained with cinnabar into the pocket of Su Chen's white coat.
Tang Ren slid down to his knees and hugged Boss Lin's legs: "Look at this gold thread, my friend! This is the soul-suppressing rope that the 'Jade-faced Tiger' dug out from the coffin of Empress Dowager Cixi!" He took out a plastic bagua plate from his trouser pocket and stuck it on the forehead of the deceased. "The yin energy is so heavy that we must perform three days of rituals before we can bury him in peace!"
Su Chen's mind exploded with a red warning light, and a 3D structure diagram of the gold thread was projected on his retina - the double-strand winding method, a unique craft of the Ming Dynasty court, but the third spiral angle had a 0.3mm deviation. He suddenly pulled off his mask: "This Dong is a high-quality imitation from three months ago."
The temperature in the cold storage dropped by two degrees.
A sharp blade popped out from Boss Lin's folding fan and pressed against Su Chen's Adam's apple: "Young man, your ancestors made goldware for Emperor Yongzheng's office." Half of a wax seal suddenly appeared on the inner side of the fan bone, which perfectly matched the burn mark behind the deceased's ear.
"Ding! Detection of dense patterns from the Qianlong period." The mechanical sound of the system made Su Chen's temples jump. "The sealing wax formula contains 70% cinnabar, which is consistent with the soil composition of the deceased's soles."
Tang Ren suddenly jumped up and knocked over the autopsy table, and the corpse slid towards Boss Lin. Five strong men rushed to help, but he took the opportunity to tear open the shirt of one of them - the back of the neck was clearly tattooed with the same wax dragon!
"It turns out...it turns out that Boss Lin believes in Feng Shui." Qin Feng picked out half a piece of gold foil from the body's finger joints, "Tattoo...tattoo your brother with the mantra of rebirth. Are you afraid of the ghosts who will come to take your life?"
The sound of police sirens came closer and closer. Boss Lin put his folding fan back on his waist and said, "Let's have morning tea at Jinyulou tomorrow." He glanced at the blue light on Su Chen's scalpel and said, "Remember to bring your skills to examine the accounts of the underworld."
After the gangsters left like a whirlwind, Tang Ren suddenly spat out a bloody wax seal from his mouth: "I picked it off when that street thug pinched my neck just now!" The bottom of the seal was stained with chocolate sauce, "Look, this '叄' is missing a corner, just like the one in the container at the dock last time..."
Qin Feng had already opened the evidence cabinet. Three equally incomplete wax seals formed a complete pattern under ultraviolet light - a cross-section of the underground drainage system in Chinatown. A certain red dot continued to flash, marked "1905 Customs Sealed Warehouse".
Su Chen's scalpel suddenly made a buzzing sound, and the system projected a revised image of the surveillance footage from the rainstorm in front of him. In the archway that should have been empty, a wheelbarrow carrying a bronze tripod was clearly rolling over the cinnabar soil, and the wheel tracks were exactly the same as the clay in the dead man's fingernails.
Suddenly, there was a sound of tiles breaking from the cold storage ceiling, and a new corpse, covered in ice, fell to the side of the autopsy table. In the emerald cigarette holder tightly clenched in the dead man's right hand, there was a dewy lily.