A female coroner arrived at the Jingzhao Prefecture.

Chapter 208 Headless Female Corpse (2)

Suhe River.

As dawn broke and the winter sun rose, the fog gradually dissipated.

The officials and soldiers of the Jingzhao Prefecture cordoned off the banks of the East and West Rivers. Upon hearing of the murder, the local people rushed to watch, standing on tiptoe outside the cordon and whispering among themselves.

Mu Qingcheng brought with him Tian, ​​the coroner, Lin, the clerk, and four clerks.

The headless corpse was frozen on the river surface in a sitting position.

Seven people surrounded the corpse, their faces filled with undisguised shock!

The head was missing from the neck, leaving a bloody hole the size of a bowl. Although it was frozen stiff and the blood had congealed and stopped oozing, the scene was so bizarre and terrifying that everyone present felt a chill run down their spines!

The blood spurting from the neck soaked through the deceased's clothes on the front and back, even flowing onto his trousers and shoes. From the few unstained pieces of clothing, it could be seen that the deceased was not wearing a cotton-padded outer garment, but only a white undergarment and a pair of pink and blue embroidered shoes.

The victim's back and buttocks were visibly covered with numerous crisscrossing bloodstains. A quick sweep revealed more than a dozen such marks, and if overlapping areas were included, there would be twenty or thirty!

They were all too familiar with these scars; they were from being caned!

The deceased's inner garment was made of poor quality material, and it was torn in many places. Some of it was stuck to the rotten flesh, and some was stained with blood and frozen into clumps.

Mu Qingcheng put on pigskin gloves, lifted the frozen and stiff clothes, and saw that the deceased was wearing a bellyband underneath. Everyone turned their backs. Mu Qingcheng reached out and pressed on the deceased's chest to confirm the gender of the deceased, "It is a female corpse."

Lin Shuban took a few deep breaths to suppress his nausea and said, "What kind of grudge could lead to such a punishment, from caning to beheading?"

Mu Qingcheng pondered for a moment and said, "The most important thing now is to find the victim's head, otherwise it will be difficult to identify the source of the body!"

"Should we look around? Perhaps the murderer left the head not far away," the coroner suggested.

"We must search." Mu Qingcheng nodded, then summoned Jiang Zhan, the head constable accompanying him, and instructed, "Divide the men into two teams. One team will spread out to find eyewitnesses and inquire from house to house to see if any women are missing. The other team will search for the victim's head. Bring the patrol dogs over and first focus on a two-mile radius. If they don't find anything, expand the search area. Also, pay attention to the upstream and downstream sections of the Su River. It's not impossible that the murderer dug a hole in the ice and hid the head inside."

Jiang Zhan cupped his hands in greeting, "Yes!"

Mu Qingcheng glanced at the deceased and added, "Not only do we need to find the head, but also the clothes! Here's what we'll do: bring back to the yamen any women's clothing, headdresses, jewelry, ornaments, sachets, or even cosmetics we find!"

Jiang Zhan was momentarily surprised. "So many?"

"Yes, don't let anything unusual related to women slip by," Mu Qingcheng said firmly. "Think about it, why wasn't the deceased wearing an outer garment?"

Jiang Zhan pondered carefully, "Could it be that he was killed while he was sleeping?"

“That’s possible, but not necessarily.” Mu Qingcheng pondered, “Headless, without clothes, almost nothing that could reveal a person’s appearance, age, or identity was left behind. If the deceased was killed while conscious, then the clothes were very likely removed by the murderer to conceal the deceased’s identity.”

This case sounds incredibly complicated, so Jiang Zhan decided not to waste his brainpower on it and said, "Whatever Master Mu instructs, I will carry it out. If I encounter anyone suspicious, bring them back to you as well!"

Mu Qingcheng nodded: "If we don't have enough manpower, we can go back to the yamen and ask Constable Liu to transfer more people."

"Yes!" Jiang Zhan accepted the order and left.

Mu Qingcheng instructed the officials, "First, find a way to move the deceased back."

The body below the buttocks was frozen to the ice. To get the body out, one would either have to break the ice or set a fire to thaw it.

Fortunately, there were many people. Some were chiseling ice, and others were making a fire. Together, they worked for almost half an hour and finally managed to lift the body off the ice intact!

Mu Qingcheng and the coroner Tian conducted a trace investigation around the site where the body was dumped. Apart from some bloodstains that had seeped into the ice, the two of them found traces of someone walking in the weeds by the river!
However, the fallen grass blades only showed that they had been trampled, but no footprints were visible!
Suddenly, the coroner squatted down in front of a few straws and called out, "Master Mu, look at this!"

Mu Qingcheng walked over quickly and saw that several hemp threads were hanging from the top of the straw!

Unable to contain his excitement, the coroner continued forward, his sharp eyes scanning the area closely. Soon, he made a new discovery: "Master Mu, there's blood here!"

Mu Qingcheng was shocked and quickly moved closer to check. Sure enough, there were a few streaks of blood on the grass!
She took out a special white porcelain jar for storing evidence, and with tweezers, carefully collected all the hemp threads one by one into the jar.

The two followed the road and found more hemp threads and bloodstains, but when they reached the Suhe Bridge, all the traces suddenly disappeared!

Mu Qingcheng circled around a few times, then leaped onto the Suhe Bridge.

After some investigation, Mu Qingcheng had a general idea of ​​what was going on.

The coroner was waiting under the bridge. As soon as Mu Qingcheng returned, he anxiously asked, "How is it? Is there anything wrong? Did they run away from the bridge?"

Mu Qingcheng nodded and then shook her head. "Yes and no."

"Huh? What do you mean?" the coroner asked in surprise.

Mu Qingcheng explained, "The murderer must have entered and exited from the bridge, but he used light-footed skills and only used the bridge railing for leverage."

"You mean, the murderer carried the body, used his light-footed skills to fly over from elsewhere, jumped off the bridge, then walked to the site where he dumped the body, and then returned the same way?"

"Based on the traces, this is the inference, and the body was probably placed in a sack."

Upon hearing this, the coroner was filled with questions: "After the murderer flew onto the bridge, was he exhausted and that's why he switched to walking?"

“I think the murderer did it on purpose.” Mu Qingcheng frowned slightly and analyzed, “As a martial artist, even if he was exhausted, he could have rested for a while and then continued to use his lightness skill. After all, there was only such a short distance left, so it was really not worth the risk of walking and leaving so many traces of the crime.”

The coroner nodded repeatedly, "Yes, yes, that makes sense!"

Mu Qingcheng sighed softly, "So, the question is, what was the murderer's motive for doing this? Was it to provoke the authorities, or to intentionally lead them to discover clues?"

The coroner could not provide an answer.

Mu Qingcheng turned around and looked at the vast expanse of land across the Suhe Bridge, saying, "Once we cross the bridge, the roads lead in all directions. Finding the murderer would be like searching for a needle in a haystack. I think we can only start with the victims to pinpoint the killer!"

(End of this chapter)