“Open your mouth.”
Jingrong was embarrassed. He stared at the thing in her hand, frowning with disgust on his face. “Why is it this thing again? It tastes terrible.”
She said, “Jiao Shiniang’s corpse has been inside for two or three days already. It’s the eighth month of summer—it’s probably already rotting, and you can’t stand the smell of corpses. If you want to go in, you must eat it.”
“Ugh!”
“Open your mouth…”
“Can I not…” eat it!
Before he could finish speaking, taking advantage of his open mouth, Ji Yunshu quickly pushed the ginger into his mouth.
Then she gently lifted his chin, and the ginger soaked in sesame oil rolled down his throat.
It immediately choked him so badly his eyes turned red!
Tears nearly streamed down.
Woman, you’re dead!
He clenched his fists.
Ji Yunshu had already gone inside.
The morgue was very dark, with only a single window open in the roof, but because there was a large tree blocking it outside, the light was very faint.
So she casually lit a candle and placed it beside the corpse covered with white cloth.
A thick, putrid smell gradually emanated from beneath the white cloth.
Pungent!
Because of the hot weather and being in this sealed room, the corpse naturally decomposed faster.
One could imagine that Jiao Shiniang’s body was probably already breeding maggots.
Jingrong had eaten a piece of ginger, but he could still smell that odor, though it was very faint. He wrinkled his nose and asked, “How are you going to examine it?”
Ji Yunshu said, “To know the true time of death, besides checking the livor mortis on the body and bodily rigor, you can also examine the deceased’s teeth, stomach, or heart. But… this corpse has probably decomposed too much to distinguish now, and the murderer processed the body. Ancient times don’t have advanced equipment for testing, so examining from the surface is impossible.”
“Then what should we do?”
Her eyes tightened slightly as she spoke one phrase: “Examine the bones.”
The morgue had many tools for examining corpses, but Ji Yunshu could never get used to any of them, so she always used her own specially made tools.
She put on gloves and selected a pointed knife from her sandalwood box, heating it back and forth over the candlelight for a while.
Then—
She grasped the white cloth covering the corpse.
She lifted it!
The corpse stench immediately surged up the moment the white cloth was lifted, revealing Jiao Shiniang’s disgusting corpse—rotted to the point where flesh hung in strips, facial features collapsed, bones protruding. That originally delicate face had been skinned by someone, the flesh had rotted, and bones could be faintly seen inside.
Too horrible to look at.
Anyone who saw it would stay far away.
A peerless beauty—in the end, wasn’t she just a pile of rotten flesh and bones?
“What a pity.” Ji Yunshu sighed.
Jingrong glanced once. “Just a shell. What’s there to pity?”
Ji Yunshu turned her head and gave him a withering look.
He immediately shut his mouth and retreated to the side.
Ji Yunshu then turned over Jiao Shiniang’s hair, then raised the pointed knife in her hand and cut toward the skull.
One incense stick’s time later.
The corpse’s skull was exposed.
Bloody mess, extremely viscous!
Still stuck with bits of flesh.
She curved her fingers and tapped on the bone. The sound was very dull. Then she used the knife to scrape some powder off the top of the skull, rubbing it in her palm. The powder was like a spirited horse breaking free of its reins, quickly scattering with the air.
“White liquor.”
Upon hearing this, Jingrong obediently brought over the alcohol that had been placed in the room originally.
He passed it to her sideways.
That appearance was really quite comical.
Ji Yunshu took the white liquor and wiped it on the deceased’s skull that was sticky with blood threads, cleaning away the blood traces. Then she lifted the candlestick and slowly brought it close to the top of the skull.
One minute, two minutes, three minutes… ten minutes!
Many tiny cracks slowly appeared on the skull. If you didn’t look carefully, you might not see them at all.
And it was precisely because of these cracks that Ji Yunshu reached her conclusion!
“Just as I thought!”
The mystery was solved!
Jingrong was a curious baby. He asked, “You can tell the time of death from the skull?”
“If a person has been frozen for a period of time, not only will the body become rigid, but the bones will also become rigid. If a person is frozen after death when blood is no longer circulating, then after thawing, the blood in the brain will coagulate and not disperse, resulting in congestion. The skull will also be as if it’s hardened, and many tiny cracks will appear on the bones. The top of the skull is the most obvious, but the naked eye can’t see it at all. Only after wiping with white liquor will those cracks appear. Jiao Shiniang’s skull indeed showed this condition, so we can deduce that the deceased was refrigerated by the murderer after death to deliberately confuse the time of death. If a body is frozen for more than twelve hours, the powder scraped from the bones will be very sticky. The powder I just scraped from Jiao Shiniang’s skull was exactly like this.”
Jingrong listened in a daze!
But he had already gotten used to such surprises.
Secretly, he gave this woman a thumbs up.
My woman is just that impressive.
Half an hour later, at Longfu Inn.
Ji Yunshu and Jingrong came from the Ministry of Justice. Just as they arrived, the notified Chief Justice Yu, Jing Zhaoyin, and the Minister of Justice all hurried over.
“Your Highness, Master Ji, has there been progress in the case?” the Minister of Justice asked.
She frowned slightly. “Sort of.”
Either there is or there isn’t!
There is none or there is some!
What does “sort of” mean?
Everyone went upstairs and opened that “unlucky” room. Inside, except for Jiao Shiniang’s corpse being carried to the Ministry of Justice, everything else remained untouched.
Chief Justice Yu asked, “Master Ji, could there be something strange about this room?”
“This room is not only strange, but conceals hidden secrets.”
Everyone looked at each other.
Quietly waiting for what came next.
She said seriously, “I’ve already re-examined Jiao Shiniang’s corpse and discovered that the deceased’s time of death wasn’t at all the hour of the rat on the 14th, but rather at the hour of the rat on the 13th or earlier. In other words, before she even entered the capital, she was already dead. But because the murderer deliberately refrigerated her body, the time of death was delayed by a full twelve hours or more.”
Huh?
Once these words were spoken, everyone was shocked beyond measure!
Jing Zhaoyin immediately said, “Master Ji, are you mistaken? How is this possible? Lord Liu from the Ministry of War said that he saw the deceased enter the city with his own eyes that morning. Not only did he see it, but the magistrates at the city gate all saw it too. There’s no mistake.”
One person’s eyes playing tricks was one thing, but surely not everyone’s eyes were playing tricks?
Besides—
“And Lord Ji, didn’t you say you also saw Jiao Shiniang that day? You saw her, so naturally it can’t be false. Could it be we’re all seeing ghosts?”
Sweat!
Ji Yunshu said, “That day I indeed saw Jiao Shiniang. I not only saw her face, but also saw her hands. A pair of… delicate, slender hands painted with rouge.”
So?
Why suddenly bring up hands?
The several officials stared at each other wide-eyed, not understanding.