"Squeak—Clang!"
The heavy ancestral hall doors slowly closed behind us, finally emitting a muffled thud that completely shut out the last ray of light and sound from the outside world.
Inside the ancestral hall, a suffocating darkness and deathly silence descended instantly.
A mixture of the musty smell of long-sealed dust, the pungent aroma of incense ash, and... a faint, almost imperceptible, fishy smell of death rushed into Lin Wanwan's nostrils.
Even with her great courage, she couldn't help but feel a chill run down her spine, and a fine layer of cold sweat seeped out from her back.
She quickly pulled a tinderbox from her bosom and, with a "whoosh," blew on a small but tenacious flame.
The firelight dispelled the darkness and illuminated the scene inside the ancestral hall.
Rows of neat memorial tablets cast eerie shadows in the flickering firelight, as if countless eyes were silently watching her, this uninvited guest, from the darkness.
In the very center of the ancestral hall, the thin-skinned coffin sat quietly, like a giant beast lurking in the darkness, exuding an ominous aura.
Lin Wanwan composed herself and forced herself to ignore the eerie and terrifying environment around her.
Holding a tinderbox, she slowly walked step by step to the coffin.
"Miss Liu Yu, I apologize for offending you."
She silently recited a sentence in her heart, then took a deep breath, stretched out her slightly trembling hand, and forcefully pushed open the not-so-heavy coffin lid.
An even stronger, colder aura of death swept over us.
Lin Wanwan suppressed the churning in her stomach and brought the tinderbox closer.
Inside the coffin lay a young girl, lying quietly.
That must be Liu Yu.
She looked no more than sixteen or seventeen years old, a time when she should have been in the prime of her life, but now her face was bluish-purple, her eyes were closed, and her lips were bloodless. She was dressed in a relatively clean set of funeral clothes, but it still couldn't hide the stiffness and misery of death.
"call……"
Lin Wanwan closed her eyes and let out a long breath, forcibly suppressing the instinctive fear and sympathy in her heart.
She knew that now was not the time to be afraid.
Those two damned servants only gave her the time it takes for an incense stick to burn. She had to race against time and find the evidence!
Her mind began to flash back like a movie, frantically recalling the plots of the forensic dramas and suspense novels she had watched before her transmigration.
Forensic Heroes, The Great Song Dynasty Forensic Examiner, CSI...
"Calm down! Lin Wanwan, you need to calm down! Think back, how does a forensic doctor perform an autopsy? What's the first step?"
She forced herself into the zone, and her gaze began to become professional and sharp.
Discovery 1: A hand!
Her gaze fell on Liu Yu's hands, which were clasped together over her abdomen.
She noticed that Liu Yu's left hand was in a relaxed state, while her right hand was in an extremely unnatural, tightly clenched position, with her knuckles appearing unusually pale due to the force!
This detail touched Lin Wanwan's heart!
If a person hangs themselves, they will certainly struggle during the asphyxiation process, but after death, as the muscles relax, their hands will mostly be in a semi-clenched or relaxed state. This tightly clenched fist is more like someone who, in life, grasped something vital!
She reached out, enduring the coldness and stiffness of the corpse, and carefully, one by one, pried open Liu Yu's tightly clenched right hand fingers.
The body had already begun to stiffen, and it took her a lot of effort to finally pry open the tightly clenched fist.
By the dim light of the fire, she brought her gaze close to Liu Yu's palm.
When she saw what was in her palm, her pupils suddenly contracted!
Under Liu Yu's fingernails, there were some obvious, white pieces of skin flakes! And deep in her palm, there were several extremely fine, almost imperceptible fibers of dark blue silk fabric!
irrefutable evidence!
This is absolutely irrefutable evidence!
This proves that Liu Yu must have had an extremely fierce fight with someone before she died! She scratched the murderer's skin with her fingernails and tore a small tuft of fiber from the murderer's expensive silk clothes!
"Second discovery: The neck!"
Lin Wanwan's heart began to race. She knew she had found the right direction!
She moved the tinderbox to Liu Yu's neck.
The Gao family claimed that Liu Yu "hung himself."
But by the firelight, Lin Wanwan could clearly see that the ligature mark on Liu Yu's neck was horizontal!
She clearly remembered that in forensic dramas, it was said that when a person hangs themselves, the rope around their neck will be pulled upwards due to the force of gravity, and the resulting ligature mark should be in the shape of an "8" and tilted upwards!
A horizontal ligature mark indicates only one possibility—that the person was strangled to death from the front or back with a rope or similar object, or by being strangled with their arm.
Moreover, she also discovered that around the main bluish-purple ligature mark, there were several tiny, irregular abrasions and subcutaneous bleeding points!
These are not marks that should be found on someone who has hanged themselves! These are clearly "Yoshikawa lines" made by the deceased scratching their neck with their fingernails when they were being strangled and struggling violently!
murder!
This was absolutely a brutal murder!
"Found three: Clothing!"
Lin Wanwan suppressed her excitement and anger and began to check Liu Yu's clothes.
The burial clothes she was wearing were changed later, so nothing could be seen. Lin Wanwan carefully lifted a corner of the burial clothes to check the coarse cloth clothes that belonged to her underneath.
Soon, she discovered the third, and most crucial, point of suspicion!
Liu Yu's coat had several obvious tear marks, and even one of the buttons had been torn off!
However, when she checked the inner garment, she found that the close-fitting white inner garment was perfectly intact and neatly buttoned up, except for some wrinkles!
A cold glint flashed in Lin Wanwan's eyes.
This discovery completely overturned the Gao family's so-called "adultery" charge!
Imagine if it were truly adultery, and the man and woman were mutually consenting, their clothes should have been undone on their own. How could there be a contradictory situation where the outer garment was torn while the inner garment remained intact?
There is only one explanation—
Before her death, Liu Yu was assaulted! She fought back desperately, resulting in her outer clothing being torn by the assailant! But in the end, she sacrificed her life to preserve her innocence!
She did not commit adultery at all! She was brutally murdered by an enraged killer while resisting the assault!
At this moment, all the clues were connected to form a complete chain of evidence!
The Gao family's so-called "adultery and suicide" is, from beginning to end, a despicable lie used to cover up their murder!
Lin Wanwan let out a long breath, feeling her chest filled with immense anger and sorrow.
Looking at the innocent girl who had died tragically in the coffin, she felt a mix of emotions.
She carefully took out a clean little handkerchief from her bosom and meticulously collected the skin flakes and silk fibers from under Liu Yu's fingernails.
This is the most crucial piece of physical evidence!
She carefully wrapped the evidence, tucked it into her bosom, then rearranged Liu Yu's clothes and closed the coffin lid.
"Miss Liu Yu, rest assured, I will never let you die in vain."
In her heart, she solemnly made a promise.
After doing all this, she blew out the tinderbox and groped her way to the entrance of the ancestral hall in the darkness.
Outside the door, the impatient voices of the two servants could be faintly heard urging them on.
"Hey! You inside! The time it takes for an incense stick to burn is almost up! Are you done yet?"
Lin Wanwan ignored them.
Based on the existing evidence, she had already sketched out the truth of the entire case in her mind.
Gao Changsheng, the second young master of the Gao family—or rather, a man dressed in expensive dark blue silk—was overcome with lust and attempted to assault Liu Yu. Liu Yu fought back fiercely, scratching him and tearing a fiber from his clothing. Enraged, the murderer accidentally strangled Liu Yu to death. To cover his crime, he fabricated the events of "adultery" and "suicide," bribing the alleged "lover" to give false testimony, attempting to escape legal punishment by invoking the Gao family's "clan rules."
And the murderer is almost certainly the second young master of the Gao family who was rejected in his marriage proposal!
Lin Wanwan's heart was ice-cold.
She knew that she had to deliver this scalding "autopsy report" and this potentially fatal evidence completely to Xiao Che before dawn and before the execution at noon the next day!
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