Chapter 66 The Headless Corpse Case at Longshou Canal
Under the bright sunshine, the capital city in May was already shrouded in a wave of heat.
Outside Yanxing Gate, funeral vendors were everywhere, the sound of suona horns filled the sky, white paper money floated everywhere, and a group of people dressed in mourning clothes and crying sadly passed by Jin Shu and Li Jin in a hurry.
When they arrived, the officials of the Jingzhao Prefecture were still conducting a thorough search.
Pushing aside the tall weeds, Li Jin and Jin Shu walked for about fifteen minutes before finally reaching the Longshou Canal from the funeral-themed street outside Yanxing Gate.
Among them, the corpse lay there, feet facing south, half-submerged in the water, which was red, and the surrounding soil was also red.
Beside the body, a patch of wormwood lay flattened, stained with blood, stretching all the way to the ditch.
Jin Shu fastened her handcuffs, put on her gloves, and seeing that the artist beside her had already finished drawing the scene, she squatted down to pull the body out of the water.
Li Jin raised his hand to stop her, and with just a glance, three or five constables jumped into the water, carefully lifted the victim, and placed her on the ground to the side.
The scene before my eyes was shocking.
Jin Shu, however, was not afraid at all. She squatted down, searched his body for a while, and took out a piece of paper that was soaked with water from her sleeve pocket.
The ink stains on it are mottled, but the content of the writing is still faintly discernible.
"It looks like a few medicinal herbs." Jin Shu looked at it for a moment, then carefully handed it to Li Jin with her hands outstretched.
Only then did she remove the victim's shirt, revealing a dozen or so clearly visible, neatly trimmed small cuts in front of her.
"The victim was male, about five feet tall, with his head and body separated, the head not visible, and the edges of the separation rough and uneven. Based on the condition of his knuckles and skin, he was estimated to be around thirty years old. His clothing contained silk fabric, indicating that he came from a wealthy family."
She raised her hand and pinched the victim's limbs, gently pressing the livor mortis with her fingertips: "Based on the rigor mortis, the degree of relief of the livor mortis, and the swelling of the upper body, the time of death should be between 9 PM and 11 PM last night. The preliminary judgment is that the fatal injury was a sharp object piercing the chest, causing massive bleeding. However, we cannot rule out the possibility that the chest cavity was pierced, disrupting the negative pressure inside the chest cavity, and subsequently causing asphyxiation due to the inability of the alveoli to inhale fresh air."
"There are a total of eleven sharp force injuries all over the body, numbered one, two, three... eleven." She paused. "The initial examination revealed eleven sharp force injuries, eight of which were fatal. As for the rest, we'll need to take them back to find out whether the cause of death was excessive blood loss or suffocation, as well as the dimensions of the weapon used, whether it was a special weapon or a common one."
Li Jin took a deep breath, looked up at the sky, glanced at the people left at the search site, and nodded.
"In your opinion, this is the primary crime scene, right?" Li Jin asked.
Jin Shu stood up, pondered for a moment, pursed her lips, and said, "Yes, it's the scene of the crime, and the possibility of a revenge killing is extremely high, but..."
only?
Li Jin stepped forward: "Is there anything strange about this?"
Hearing his question, Jin Shu remained silent for a long time, then mimicked the action of holding a dagger with both hands, stabbing the air repeatedly as if it were a murderer.
After repeating this process for a long time, she shook her head: "There is indeed something strange, but we must take it back and test it to find out."
No sooner had they finished speaking than they heard a commotion in the distance, about a hundred meters north of where they were standing.
Li Jin pushed aside the weeds in front of him and walked ahead of Jin Shu to get there. He saw several people slumped on the ground, pointing in the direction of a small culvert, and stammering, "Found it! Found it!"
Inside the culvert, a blue shirt seemed to be wrapping a round object. If it weren't for the large bloodstains on the shirt, it would really look like it was wrapped in a jar.
Jin Shu walked to the culvert, squatted down, and reached out to scoop it up. The way she held it so naturally caused the constables to instinctively step back, making way for her.
She squatted down and quickly unbuttoned her blue robe. Some of the yamen runners around her couldn't hold back and wet their pants on the spot.
Not to mention the yamen runners, even Li Jin frowned.
Only Jin Shu remained calm and composed, examining the head from all angles for a long time before uttering two words: "Revenge killing."
Li Jin nodded: "I can tell."
Just by looking at the countless knife wounds and the disfigured appearance, one can see the deep-seated hatred between the murderer and the victim, a hatred that is irreconcilable.
“This garment is more noteworthy than the head.” Jin Shu picked up the blue robe and gently unfolded it.
“This is real silk fabric, quite valuable, and not something an ordinary family could afford,” she said. “But the victim was fully clothed, with no missing inner or outer garments. So this blue silk shirt with embroidered patterns is very likely the murderer’s.”
Looking at the man in the blue robe before him, Li Jin let out a long sigh.
He knew Jin Shu was absolutely right. Even in the capital, only the wealthy and powerful could afford to wear such a material; it was far from being worn by ordinary people.
For two whole hours, the yamen runners of the Jingzhao Prefecture thoroughly searched the ten acres of land outside Yanxing Gate, but they found no other valuable clues.
After pondering for a long time, Li Jin carefully put away the blue robe, the loose silver in the victim's pocket, and the note, and returned to the Six Doors.
With nothing else to offer, he could only start with the blue robe while hoping that Jin Shu could find more specific clues from the victim.
But to his surprise, as soon as he returned to the entrance of the Six Doors, Shen Wen, who had been waiting there for a long time, hurriedly came over and pointed inside the door.
“His Highness the Crown Prince and Vice Minister Chen of the Ministry of Justice are inside,” he said.
Crown Prince?
Li Jin paused, "What's he doing here?"
Shen Wen pursed his lips, his face showing difficulty as he pointed to the garment in Li Jin's hand: "Chen Wen, the Vice Minister of the Ministry of Justice, said that the one who died was his second son. He didn't know exactly what he came for, but he was definitely up to no good."
In the officialdom of the Great Wei Dynasty, everyone knows that the Six Doors and the Ministry of Justice dislike each other.
The Six Doors (a government agency) looked down on the Ministry of Justice's bureaucratic style, finding them incompetent yet arrogant, and for keeping a bunch of incompetent fools around.
The Ministry of Justice, on the other hand, felt that the Six Doors were too nosy, recruiting all sorts of people and a bunch of country bumpkins.
But these are all just appearances. The core issue is that the Six Doors and the Ministry of Justice belong to two different factions: one is directly under Prince Jing, Li Jin, and the other is a lackey of Crown Prince Li Jing.
Sooner or later, it will be a fight to the death.
Li Jin pondered for a moment, glanced at Jin Shu, and lowered his voice to say to Shen Wen, "Take Mr. Jin in through the back door, and be sure to avoid the Crown Prince's men."
"As for Li Jing, I will go and meet him myself." He sneered, "I want to see what new tricks he has up his sleeve in my Six Doors."
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