“Deceased: Yan Qing, female, 27 years old. July 31st, 2021, 1:00 PM. First autopsy commencing. I am the lead forensic examiner, Shen Liang.”

As the camera screen flickered to life, the cold instruments on the dissection table scraped against each other with a grating metallic sound. Yan Qing had heard that sound a hundred times before, and the sharp scalpel it produced had moved with effortless precision in her own hands.

She had performed autopsies on no fewer than a hundred corpses in this very room, yet today, the person lying on that aluminum table was herself.

She drifted like a wandering soul with nowhere to land, hovering above the autopsy room, watching with her own eyes as her body was sliced open by a sharp blade, revealing the vivid red of flesh and blood.

In that moment, she finally understood the feelings of all those deceased she had once examined — how they would have willingly endured being cut open, just so that a forensic examiner might uncover the truth on their behalf, just so that the killer who had taken their lives might be brought to justice.

But she knew there was no way she could make this forensic examiner named Shen Liang identify her killer — because the true killer was at this very moment holding the scalpel, destroying the only evidence he had left behind.

Shen Liang. Her boyfriend. Her superior. Director of the forensic department at the S City Bureau. Because their parents had been comrades-in-arms, the two of them had been childhood sweethearts, and marriage when they grew up seemed to have been mutually understood as a natural progression. However, for the sake of their careers, they had always kept their relationship hidden and never made it public.

Yet who could have imagined it — this man who had seemed like the natural choice for her future husband, when she had accidentally knocked over and broken a fish tank, not only refused to help her, but picked up a shard and severed her carotid artery.

He was a forensic examiner. He knew how to kill with a single blow and leave no trace of foul play.

She remembered it clearly: when her neck was stained crimson with blood, when she had reached out to him for help, Shen Liang had looked at her with eyes full of both pity and cold resolve. He had said: “Yan Qing, I’m being transferred to the provincial bureau. There’s a position as head of the forensic division waiting for me there. But you know how my old man is… So, I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to bear this.”

She hadn’t understood then. Now, she finally did. It turned out all those rumors had been true. Shen Liang had gotten involved with the daughter of someone in the upper echelons of power, someone who could arrange his transfer to the provincial bureau and set him on the path to wealth and glory.

The condition, however, was that they had to marry.

But Shen Liang’s father was a military man, and he had long since decided that she would be his daughter-in-law. Shen Liang also didn’t dare to offend the Yan Family lightly. And so, when faced with fame and fortune on one side and her life on the other, he had made his choice without hesitation, sacrificing her.

“Transection of the left carotid artery, clean-edged wound consistent with glass fragments found at the scene. Preliminary determination: accidental death caused by excessive blood loss after the carotid artery was cut by a glass shard.”

No. No, this wasn’t an accident. This was murder! Murder!

She had screamed until her voice was raw, yet she couldn’t make a single sound.

In the final moments of her life, she had used every last bit of her strength to leave behind reliable evidence. A careful autopsy would certainly reveal the discrepancies. She had not died in an accident — she had been killed.

Yet she was as faint as air on the verge of dissipating at any moment. No one could hear her. No one would ever find her.

She watched helplessly as Shen Liang sutured her corpse, transferred it to the freezer, signed and stamped the autopsy report, then switched off the room’s cameras and the lights.

As Shen Liang turned to leave, the cold smirk of triumph at the corner of his lips stabbed into the very center of her heart like a blade. The man she had once believed would be her companion for life had, in the end, become the executioner who took it.

Hatred and resentment surged like a tide, churning and crashing, impossible to calm.

The room’s lights suddenly dimmed. The sound of footsteps outside the door grew distant, leaving only the hollow and eerie hum of the freezer unit. The soul drifting in the air grew more and more indistinct, her consciousness growing ever shallower…

Was this truly how her life would end — in regret? She had clearly… clearly…

“Aah!”

A piercing shriek tore through Yan Qing’s eardrums. Immediately after, something clattered and scattered across the floor in a clamorous burst. The noise was so jarring that she instinctively opened her eyes.

A paper effigy fashioned from white paper lunged into her field of vision without warning. She opened her mouth, and with a heaving sound, spat out a mouthful of murky water.

—