As he recorded the findings, E’Yuan raised a challenge. “Estimating age from a single piece of costal cartilage seems far too reckless. I have never seen anyone use such an outlandish method to calculate a person’s age.”

“The fact that you haven’t heard of it doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist,” Yan Qing said, her tone measured. “I stand by everything I’ve said.”

“What about cause of death — can that be determined?” Shi Ting pressed, less interested in debate and more focused on learning as much as possible about the body.

“The deceased died of mechanical asphyxiation.” Yan Qing was entirely certain in her analysis. “There is no drowning fluid in the stomach, which rules out death by drowning. Furthermore, the liver, kidneys, and other organs show clear congestion, Tardieu spots are present, and the blood is dark red and fluid in consistency — all of these are clear signs of death by asphyxiation. Mechanical asphyxiation, however, encompasses multiple causes: strangulation by hand, strangulation by ligature, and suffocation are all possibilities. Since the neck and head are absent, the specific cause cannot be determined at this time.”

“Tardieu spots?” E’Yuan asked, puzzled. “What are those?”

It was only then that Yan Qing realized — in this era, the term “Tardieu spots” hadn’t yet come into use. No wonder both E’Yuan and Shi Ting were looking at her with expressions of complete incomprehension.

“Ahem — it’s a foreign term,” Yan Qing said, doing her best to cover the slip. She used her hemostatic forceps to probe the thoracic cavity. “Look here — there are petechial hemorrhages beneath the epicardium and under the pleura. These are precisely what I’m referring to as Tardieu spots.”

“How do you spell ‘Tardieu’?” E’Yuan asked, somewhat embarrassed. He had never encountered this concept in any of his textbooks, and he had studied abroad, where medical knowledge was generally more advanced than back home. Yet even overseas, no one had ever mentioned Tardieu spots before.

Was this Sixth Miss simply making things up? And that method of hers — estimating age from a piece of costal cartilage — was absolutely unheard of and frankly baffling.

Carrying a stomach full of skepticism, E’Yuan scribbled down the autopsy notes.

“Female, approximately twenty years of age, death by asphyxiation…”

Although the previously blank report now held several additional lines of information, the leads it contained were not particularly valuable in and of themselves.

Yan Qing was well aware of this. To locate the source of the body, the investigators would need far more specific details — otherwise the case would remain deadlocked, a tangled knot with no end to pull.

She trusted that the body had something to say. With enough care and attention, there would always be a trace of something to find.

Noticing that Yan Qing had been working continuously at the autopsy table for over two hours, Shi Ting spoke up. “Perhaps take a short break?”

He had long heard that the Sixth Miss of the Yan Family was physically fragile, frequently falling ill and missing school. On top of that, she had nearly drowned not long ago. He worried that this level of sustained, intensive work might be more than she could bear.

But Yan Qing was a workaholic — the moment she stepped up to an autopsy table, she forgot all about fatigue and discomfort, her mind consumed entirely by the unsolved puzzles before her.

What she had been neglecting, however, was the body she currently occupied as Sixth Miss. To call it frail was no exaggeration. Over two hours of autopsy work had already left her feeling deeply unwell.

“All right,” she said. She didn’t push herself further. She pulled off her gloves and stepped back, but even during the brief rest, her eyes never left the incomplete remains.

There had to be something more. There had to be something she had overlooked.

“Ha.” A scornful sound from E’Yuan nearby — quiet, but not quiet enough to escape Shi Ting’s ears.

“The things Sixth Miss found — why didn’t you find them?” Shi Ting fixed him with a cool, sidelong look. “Before she arrived, the only lead you were able to give me was that the victim was female. Age? Cause of death? Did you see any of that?”

E’Yuan was momentarily at a loss. He recovered quickly and pushed back. “Using a single piece of costal cartilage to estimate age is a method whose accuracy remains to be verified. And the so-called ‘Tardieu spots’ she mentioned have no academic foundation whatsoever. Whether any of this is reliable is still an open question.”

“The fact that you don’t know about something doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist.” Shi Ting looked in Yan Qing’s direction, something thoughtful passing through his gaze. “Don’t be so quick to dismiss others.”

The unknown was, in its way, like this young woman herself. Beneath her fragile exterior seemed to lie an enormous secret — and she had built a fortress around it in her heart, watertight and impenetrable, affording no outsider even a glimpse.

“What is this?” Yan Qing suddenly wheeled herself back to the body and raised her magnifying glass over the edge of the torso’s abdominal section.

—