"What does 'completely empty' mean, exactly?" Huang Xiaotao asked.
I gave a wry smile. "Are you asking me to explain the phrase, or the reason behind it?"
"You little—!" She stomped on my foot and shot me a glare.
"Okay, okay, I'll talk!" I raised my hands in surrender. "The victim's stomach was completely empty—she hadn't eaten anything at all."
"That's not so strange," she said gruffly. "Maybe the killer kept her locked up and starved her for a few days."
"But her intestines were also completely void of feces."
"Wh-what?"
I then did something that made a few people gag. I slid my hand into the intestines and withdrew it slowly. My glove was slick with oil. What was even more disturbing—the anal cavity was unnaturally clean.
I brought my fingers to my nose and sniffed. A couple of officers recoiled, covering their mouths. I calmly said, "That's vegetable oil inside the rectum."
"Vegetable... oil?" Huang Xiaotao echoed, visibly stunned.
I nodded. "Pass me some forceps."
A nearby officer handed them over, giving me an odd look. Technically, I could've used my hand, but I spared them the added disgust.
I spread the cavity open and had another officer shine a light inside. Once I was done, I dropped the forceps and removed my gloves. The autopsy was complete.
"How bad is it?" Huang Xiaotao asked anxiously, like a worried family member.
"There's damage to the mucosal lining. The killer likely inserted a soft tube into the victim's colon and pumped in oil while also forcing her to drink it."
"Why the hell would anyone do that?"
"To force her body to purge every bit of waste."
Earlier, when I used my Listening Bones technique, I noticed signs of liver shrinkage. The liver, acting like a power bank, stores glycogen to fuel the body during starvation. A shrunken liver means the victim hadn't eaten for at least a week. Combined with the oil intake, it's clear the killer deliberately flushed her digestive system.
From this, I estimated she had been missing for about 27 days.
Now here's the disturbing part: when the body is starved, the intestines begin to reabsorb nutrients from feces, including harmful toxins. Those toxins accumulate in the muscles and bloodstream. The killer seemed to understand this and ensured the victim was purged to avoid the meat becoming contaminated.
And there's more. When animals die in extreme fear, they release stress toxins into their bloodstream, causing muscle stiffness and poor flavor. But this killer… he made the victim inhale nitrous oxide—laughing gas—so she'd die slowly, painlessly, without fear, as her body was butchered.
He didn't do all this to torture her. No. The horrific truth made even my voice shake—he did it to preserve the quality of the meat. He wanted the flesh to be… delicious.
Two officers dashed out of the room to throw up. Huang Xiaotao, who had once nearly eaten human meat in a dumpling, managed to stay composed but was clearly shaken. "You're saying… the dumplings weren't just a method to dispose of the body. He kidnapped her with the sole purpose of harvesting 'premium ingredients'… for human meat dumplings?"
I nodded. "Yes. I believe the killer doesn't even think of it as murder. To him, people are no different from livestock. He's a twisted gourmet. And one more thing—the reason there were no signs of gigantism in the corpse is because her gut bacteria were killed off. Starvation and the oil flush decimated the probiotics. To put it simply, the bacteria starved to death, so the body didn't rot as it normally would."
Huang Xiaotao fell silent for ten long seconds, head bowed. I thought she was mourning the victim.
I was wrong. Crying wasn't her style.
She clenched her fists, her eyes blazing with fury. "That sick bastard deserves to be torn apart piece by piece! We cannot let him keep doing this!"
But I felt a creeping dread. The victim had been discarded twenty days ago—plenty of time for the killer to claim a second or even third life.
"We'll give it everything we've got," I told her. "Even if it means we don't sleep a second for the next two days—we'll catch him."
"You're right!" Huang Xiaotao nodded firmly.
After finishing the autopsy, I burned paper money and whispered a prayer over the body before covering it with a white sheet.
Outside the morgue, Xiao Zhou met us with a report. "Song Yang, you were spot on. The victim definitely inhaled nitrous oxide."
"What about the rope?"
"Polypropylene, mixed with some cotton fibers."
"Thanks." I nodded. That confirmed my suspicions.
Huang Xiaotao said, "We'll need to follow up on both leads—the rope and the laughing gas. Let's bring in more manpower. Mobilize officers from all local stations. We need to crack this fast."
"By the way, where's Wang Yuanchao?" I asked.
"He's on patrol near the meat processing plant. I asked him to look into Ma Jinhou's background. That's why he's not here."
"What about surveillance near the dumpling shop?"
"Come on, would I forget something so obvious? I've got four officers stationed nearby."
By then, dawn had broken. I realized I'd spent two whole hours on the autopsy. Huang Xiaotao suggested we grab something to eat.
We found a Western café and shared a couple of slices of pizza. After we ate, she said, "You didn't sleep at all last night. Why don't you head back to campus? I'll call you if something comes up."
"And leave you to investigate alone? Do you think I'd be able to sleep after this?"
She smiled. "Alright then."
Back at the precinct, Huang Xiaotao made a few calls. One of them was to Wang Yuanchao. When she hung up, she said, "Wang found out that Ma Jinhou quit the meat plant three months ago. The pork he's been delivering has nothing to do with them anymore. And according to HR, he had a habit of stealing."
That matched my suspicions—but it also meant the lead was a dead end.
Soon, two officers came in carrying a huge stack of files. These were records of missing persons from the past three months across all districts of Nanshi City.
Huang Xiaotao gasped. "So many people went missing? What, are aliens abducting people in this city now?"
"Not all are disappearances," one officer explained. "Some are just uncontactable. Nanshi's a big city with lots of transient workers. Some folks just vanish—others are running from debt."
"Got it. Leave them here. I'll take a look."
After they left, Huang Xiaotao looked at the towering stack and sighed. "Song Yang, think you can use your magic eyes to help me out?"
I picked up a file and flipped through it. There were just too many. Investigating each case would take a huge team and days we didn't have. That's when an idea struck me. It was unconventional—maybe even disturbing—but it could save lives.
"Let's flip our thinking," I said. "Try to see things from the killer's perspective."
"What do you mean?" Huang Xiaotao asked.
I stared at the files, heart heavy. "Which of these victims would he have considered… the tastiest?"