Chapter 89
Once the key point of "changing eyes" is revealed, and when you think about the fact that the victims in this serial murder case were all headless, many things become clear at a glance.
——The head was cut off to cover up the fact that the victim's eyes had been gouged out.
System: [The eyes are such a delicate and important part of the body. Even with modern medical technology, eye replacement surgery is difficult, let alone in ancient times when medical sterilization concepts were not yet fully developed.]
[Generally, bone marrow or organ transplants require matching, otherwise there will be rejection after the surgery. Should eye transplants also require matching?]
Chu Huan didn't have the knowledge to give a definitive answer: "Probably."
How exactly do you replace an eye? It shouldn't be something as simple and crude as digging it out and stuffing it back in, right?
If you are really so reckless, both the one whose eyes are gouged out and the one who needs a replacement eye will die.
System: [From the information I've found, they haven't reached that stage yet. They're still stuck on figuring out how to dig out a pair of eyes intact.]
Chu Hua: ???
Everyone: ???
No, it has been four months since the Chinese New Year, and more than ten headless bodies have been found so far. How come we are still stuck in the initial stage?
Chu Huan couldn't understand: [Why is there no progress?]
She knew that the eyes were important and too close to the brain, and the murderer might have been very careful, but this development made her puzzled and a little panicked.
Could the murderer still be working on something secretly? Otherwise, it wouldn't make sense for him to remain stuck in the same place for four months.
System: [The idea of eye replacement is too challenging for Xu Tao. She refused the moment Xu San proposed it. Her exact words were, "Everyone only has one pair of eyes. If I can see, that person will be blind."]
Xu San said he would find the right person and give them a sum of money to ensure they have a worry-free life for the rest of their lives. Truly impoverished families struggle to even survive, and many would be willing to trade their eyes for a stable and worry-free life.
Xu Tao's heart wavered after hearing Xu San's words. She longed to see the colorful world and return to a warm world. She hesitated for half a month, struggling every day, feeling extremely miserable and becoming extremely haggard.
Just when Xu San regretted making this suggestion and told Xu Tao not to think about it anymore, Xu Tao agreed.
Everyone sighed secretly, they could understand why Xu Tao made the choice.
How could someone who has seen the light be willing to live in darkness all his life?
Xu Tao has suffered too much prejudice and contempt because of her eyes since she was a child, and has heard too much gossip. She longs for change, whether it is her eyes or her marriage.
Even though eye transplantation itself carries great risks, she still wants to take the risk and give it a try.
System: [The idea of eye transplantation was originally a whim of Xu San. Many people have the idea but lack the courage and conditions to carry it out. However, he knew a man named Su Shou. Su Shou had some medical skills, but because he had once killed someone with his medicine, he was reported to the authorities and subsequently stopped practicing medicine.]
He initially tried to heal someone because he wanted to replace a person's hand with another who had just died. He ended up killing the person whose hand was broken. How can this be explained? He had a great idea, but without sufficient medical knowledge, equipment, and resources, it was impossible for him to succeed.
Cut off the hand of a newly dead person and attach it to another person's hand?
Everyone just thought it was absurd, Su Shou was too fantastical!
If this were feasible, why would Dasheng have so many soldiers retiring with broken limbs every year?
Chu Huan frowned: [Thinking of organ transplantation is a very advanced idea, but the actual conditions do not allow it.]
He didn't check the blood type or compatibility, but he just transplanted the arm without connecting the nerves. This surgery is too reckless. Was he going there to save people, or to kill people and conduct research?
The system explained: [Su Shou's original intention was to save people, but it was completely impossible for him to complete the arm reattachment under such crude conditions, not to mention that it was someone else's arm.]
His research passion never died. After he stopped being a doctor, he settled down in a village. He started with his rabbits, cutting them off and then reattaching them, repeating the process for more than ten years. Then, by chance, something happened.
A rabbit, by chance, survived surgery, lame and not doing well, but still alive. Su Shou was overjoyed and continued her research, but this was truly just a rare, rare occurrence, and it never happened again.
Chu Huan gulped down half a cup of tea. She could roughly guess the second half of this serial murder case.
[Did Xu San find Su Shou and ask him to replace Xu Tao's eyes, but those people died after digging out her eyes?]
System: [Correct.]
But this way, there is one thing that doesn't make sense.
Chu Hua: [Since the terms were already agreed upon, shouldn't the deceased be compensated and buried properly? Why chop off the head and then dispose of the body?]
The others also followed suit and drank tea and drinks, and some of the carefree ones started eating.
This action attracted the attention of others, and they also realized: If they remain silent, Chu Huan will become suspicious!
"Sister, do you want to try the sweet soup?"
“This meatball is delicious.”
"Sister, don't you want to eat cake?"
"I think pudding tastes better."
The women hurriedly tried to patch things up, trying to make up for the loss while warning each other with their eyes: Keep eating, keep talking, don't stop!
Chu Huan exchanged a few pleasantries with them, and seeing that no one was suspicious, she urged the system: "Tong'er, continue."
[Okay.] The system took in everyone's awkward reactions and became concerned: they were so focused on enjoying the show that they'd forgotten to cover up. If something like this happened a few more times, the cover-up would be impossible.
Xu San is Xu Tao's bodyguard, responsible for protecting her. The servants in her yard are always coming and going, and none of them stay for long. Xu San is also responsible for many of Xu Tao's affairs and will never leave her side.
Xu San gave Su Shou a sum of money and asked her to replace Xu Tao's eyes as soon as possible. Su Shou had only ever replaced rabbit legs before, but the success rate was low. How could he dare to perform surgery on anyone, especially a young lady from a wealthy family? He was afraid that if something went wrong, he would die.
Su Shou chose to experiment on rabbits first. When the surgery failed, he wondered if it was because rabbits were too delicate. He then switched to pigs, but that didn't work either. He was wasting too much time, and Xu San kept pushing him. Su Shou figured since the rabbit and pig experiments were successful, he should move on to humans, so he decided to skip that step and go straight to humans.
Chu Huan: “…”
Everyone: “…”
After all this time, it turns out that this person has no confidence at all and just digs out people's eyes?
It's simply a disregard for human life!
The fifth prince was so angry that his head felt dizzy. How could there be such a person in the world?
How is this any different than a butcher saying he's killed so many pigs that he knows every part of a pig's body, so he can treat people's illnesses?!
Chu Huan had thought that this Su Shou was really going to save people, but after hearing this, some problems became obvious.
[Isn't Su Shou a proper doctor?]
The system exclaimed in surprise: [Huh? Sister Huan, how did you know this? I was planning to talk about this later.]
Chu Hua: [A true doctor saves lives, cares about their patients, and has a compassionate heart. Look at these bare hands, what the hell? They don't care about life at all.]
That’s right! Everyone couldn’t agree more.
What serious doctor would gouge out someone's eyes casually? Unless the eyes are injured, infected, and necrotic, the patient will die if they are not gouged out.
System: [You've guessed it, so I'll put the part about Su Shou first.]
He was actually just an apprentice learning from the old doctor. Learning medicine is like learning martial arts; you have to lay a solid foundation first and then progress slowly. This principle applies to everything you learn.
Su Shou was a relatively clever person, which was why the old doctor initially accepted him as his apprentice. However, over time, the old doctor discovered that Su Shou lacked patience and was overconfident. When asked to identify a herb, he claimed to know it at a glance, and constantly pestered the old doctor to learn pulse diagnosis and acupuncture.
With Su Shou's learning attitude, wanting to treat a disease without even knowing all the herbs, how could the old doctor dare teach her pulse diagnosis and acupuncture? He thought the child might be too young and undetermined, and that he would slowly teach her and she would get better.
The old doctor refused to teach her, and Su Shou got tired of learning. She thought the old man was difficult to serve, so she stole the old doctor's notes and ran away.
Everyone: “…”
In other words, this guy Su Shou is not even the doctor's apprentice, but he is practicing medicine under the name of a doctor and deceiving people?
Hiss—this guy is so brave!
Everyone couldn't help but worry about the patients who had been treated by Su Shu. They were lucky and had a long life.
Chu Huan grasped the key point: [The old doctor's notes?]
System: [The old doctor dedicated his life to curing illnesses and saving lives, recording his many experiences, including the difficult and complicated illnesses he found difficult to treat. He planned to leave his notes to his disciples after his death, and instructed them to burn them for him whenever they solved a difficult and complicated illness, so that he could rest in peace in his grave.]
The old doctor was old and worried that he might one day close his eyes and never wake up again, so he told his disciples about the notebook. Who knew that when the notebook was almost finished, it was stolen by a sinister hand.
Along with the notes, the medical journal was also stolen. This is a combination of medical records and diary entries, describing a person's symptoms, pulse condition, and prescribed medication on a certain day of a certain month of a certain year.
[Relying on the old doctor's notes and medical journal, Su Shou was able to get away with it and avoid being exposed as a fake doctor.]
The fake doctor used the real doctor's notes and saved many people, but also harmed many people. Merits and sins coexisted.
Chu Huan didn't know what to say, so she sighed, "If the old doctor knew, he'd probably be furious."
The system's tone darkened: "Yes, after the old doctor discovered this, he was furious and annoyed. He spent the whole day regretting his poor judgment of Su Shou and not kicking her out sooner. He became depressed and passed away not long after."
Chu Huan: “…”
She said being angry to death was just a metaphor, a description, but she didn't expect that the old doctor was really angry to death.
The system finished its digression and continued with the previous topic: [Xu Sande had to stay by Xu Tao's side to take care of her. Su Shou was busy with experiments and couldn't find candidates. So, he gave the gangster Wang Lin some money, saying he needed several people to perform the surgery.]
Wang Lin had no other hobbies in his life except gambling. He was so happy when he got the money that he didn't care about anything else. There were so many beggars in and around the city. He could easily trick a lot of people with just a few steamed buns. Why would he bother with so much effort?
[Su Shou knew something was wrong the moment he saw the man, but since he needed people for his experiments, he accepted him directly, gouged out his eyes, killed him, and then handed him over to Wang Lin to be buried in a mass grave.]
There is a huge difference between a mass grave and the end of an alley.
The former is trying to cover it up a little, but the latter just wants everyone to find out. They are completely opposite.
Chu Huan couldn't imagine what had happened to the gambler Wang Lin that caused such a change in his mentality and made him bold enough to throw the body into the alley.
It's so strange.
System: [Su Shou's experiments have been failing. He suspects it's because the beggars aren't eating or sleeping well, and their health is poor, so he lets Wang Lin take someone else. Wang Lin is deeply in debt, and even though he knows Su Shou is gouging out eyes and killing people, and has already killed many, he has no choice but to help him.]
Thus, anyone who was alone on the streets or not returning home late at night became Wang Lin's target and became a victim of this serial killing.
Chu Huan: [Didn't Wang Lin bury the people in a mass grave?]
It's not like they were just too tired to deal with so many bodies and just dumped them randomly, right? There's no need to behead them then.
So there is something fishy behind this matter.
System: [Yes, Wang Lin worked for a month and got tired of digging pits and burying bodies every day, so he paid a mute to do the job. Mute Yang Si was ugly and mute, and he couldn't find other work. He was often hungry, so he took on the job of digging pits and burying bodies.]
Yang Si worked for half a month. One day, among the bodies he was about to bury, he found a girl. She was the benefactor who had given him a steamed bun when he was nearly starving to death. Yang Si burst into tears. He didn't know her name, nor did he know how to avenge her.
Yang Si took the jewelry from his benefactor to Shuntian Prefecture to report the crime. On the way, he encountered Wang Lin and was nearly discovered. Later, Yang Si chopped off the corpse's head and, in the dead of night, dumped the headless body into an alley.
[He can't speak, so I don't know why he did this or what he was thinking.]
Chu Huan speculated, following the storyline: "Perhaps Yang Si wanted to avenge his benefactor but didn't want to drag himself into the situation. Therefore, he couldn't reveal that the bodies were the ones he'd been paid to bury. He had to behead and strip the bodies to conceal certain clues. The discovery of a headless body in a Beijing alleyway would surely lead to an investigation by the Shuntian Prefecture."
Yang Si hadn't anticipated that so many clues would be covered up, and Shuntian Prefecture's investigation would be difficult, forcing them to repeatedly dump bodies. However, he hadn't anticipated that the more bodies dumped, the greater the workload for Shuntian Prefecture, and the more clues they would lose.
Everyone nodded secretly, this should be the case.
If Yang Si directly dumped the body or sent it to Shuntian Prefecture, the signs of gouging out the eyes would be so obvious that Xu San and Su Shou would soon hear about it. At that time, Wang Lin would have to kill Yang Si first to silence him.
Chu Huan was still racking her brains: [The beggar's disappearance might not have attracted the attention of Shuntian Prefecture, but how come so many people in the capital city disappeared without a trace, and why couldn't anyone even find out? And how come the bodies couldn't be matched with the ones that were dumped there?]
Burning, drowning, and decay can make the face of the deceased difficult to identify, so identifying the deceased through the face and head is faster, but it is not the only way to identify.
Even if the clothes and jewelry on the deceased were taken away, the clothes underneath, birthmarks on the body, and whether there were any injuries or fractures could be used to identify the deceased. How come Shuntian Prefecture has not found any clues?
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com
