After being separated from my family, I became a darling of the military region thanks to my medical

The bright light of the operating lights shone down, and the operating room was so cold and lifeless.

Gu Zheng's words, "I have something to show you," made Ye Zhen, who was about to put on her second layer of sterile gloves, pause in her actions.

She looked up at him.

Without saying much, Gu Zheng took out a brown paper evidence bag from the inner pocket of his military uniform and tore open the seal with his slender fingers in front of her.

A crisp "ding" sounded.

He dumped a silver cufflink onto the instrument tray next to him, which was covered with sterile cloth.

The cufflinks were shield-shaped, carved with a pine tree, quite unique. But in the groove on the edge of the shield, there was a small, congealed, dark red bloodstain.

Ye Zhen's pupils contracted slightly.

"It was found last night at the end of the corridor outside Team Leader Ji's ward." Gu Zheng's voice was very low, as if he were talking about an insignificant object. "The people cleaning up the scene missed it. I checked, it wasn't the assassin's, nor was it one of Team Leader Ji's men."

Ye Zhen didn't even need to get close to take a closer look to recognize it.

"It's from Political Commissar Zhang." Her voice was soft and cold, with an undeniable certainty. "He has a habit of wearing custom-made cufflinks with his service uniform. This pine and cypress shield set was a birthday gift from his daughter last year."

So that's how it is.

The thick fog in Ye Zhen's heart was instantly torn open by this small cufflink.

Gu Zheng gave her an appreciative look, a cold, murderous glint flashing in his dark eyes: "Half an hour before Team Leader Ji was attacked last night, someone saw Political Commissar Zhang on that floor. He wasn't there to harm anyone; he was there to deliver intelligence. As a result, he ran right into an assassin who was about to make his move."

He paused, his tone undisguisedly sarcastic: "He must have fought with them, and in his haste, he left this behind. Those idiots thought they'd cleaned things up, but they missed this most crucial thing."

In an instant, all the clues came together!

Political Commissar Zhang discovered a shocking secret that could overturn the entire game, so he had to die. He risked his life to inform the head of the Discipline Inspection Commission, but unexpectedly stumbled upon the assassination scene, turning him from a "target to be eliminated" into an "immediate target to be eliminated"!

And I am the perfect scapegoat they carefully chose to cover up everything! What a cunning scheme that kills three birds with one stone!

Ye Zhen took a deep breath and felt a fire burning up in her chest, making her limbs and bones feel hot.

"I understand." She lowered her head again, her eyes sharp as a scalpel. "A person prepared to die to deliver a message would never leave behind only a cufflink."

Her gaze fell on the cold corpse on the operating table, her tone devoid of any emotion, displaying only the absolute calmness of a surgeon facing a difficult case.

"He will hide the last 'letter' inside his body."

This is no longer an autopsy to exonerate oneself.

This is a race against death, a war to find the last words of a wrongfully killed person from a cold body!

"Xiao Wang, high-powered surgical microscope."

"yes!"

Xiao Wang immediately pushed a sophisticated Zeiss microscope to the side of the operating table and quickly connected the power supply.

Ye Zhen began her actions.

Her hands were as steady as machines; the scalpel, tissue scissors, and probe seemed to come alive in her hands.

Instead of starting with the chest and abdomen as is customary in autopsies, she focused directly on the deceased's hands. Fingernails, between fingers, skin folds… she examined every possible hiding place for microscopic evidence.

Time passed by, second by second.

In the vast operating room, only the crisp sound of metal instruments colliding and Ye Zhen's calm, emotionless narration could be heard.

"...There were no obvious signs of a struggle on the surface of the nails, and the nail bed was clean and free of foreign objects."

"...There are slight abrasions on the stratum corneum of the palm, but no fiber residue."

Where would he hide it? He knew he was going to die, knew he would be used as evidence, so where would he leave the clues? In a place that was both concealed and difficult to erase afterward...

Ye Zhen's gaze swept over every detail of the corpse, her brain working at lightning speed.

In the corner, Gu Zheng, leaning on his cane, watched silently, like a lurking beast, at the focused figure under the lamplight. He watched how she transformed a cold corpse into a book awaiting interpretation. The pride in his eyes was almost overflowing.

Just then, Ye Zhen abruptly stopped moving.

Her tweezers hovered over the edge of the nail crease of the deceased's left middle finger.

"Zoom in," she commanded without looking up.

Xiao Wang immediately adjusted the microscope's focus and magnification, projecting the image onto a monitor next to him.

In a field of vision magnified hundreds of times, a nearly transparent fiber, a hundred times thinner than a strand of hair, was tightly wedged at the junction of the nail and the skin. Without this thorough, meticulous search, it would be impossible to spot with the naked eye.

found it!

Ye Zhen's eyes flashed with an astonishing light. Using the finest sampling needle, she held her breath and carefully picked the fiber out of the flesh, placing it steadily on a glass slide.

"Zoom in further."

As the magnification increased, the details of the fiber became crystal clear. It was a deep blue synthetic fiber with a special sheen, its weaving structure completely different from the "Dacron" or cotton fabrics commonly seen in the military.

"This is..." Xiao Wang was also stunned.

Ye Zhen didn't explain. She straightened up deftly and began the final step—the extraction of toxicological samples.

Stomach contents, blood, tissue fluid...

By the time all the samples had been sealed, the sky was beginning to lighten.

Ye Zhen took off her sweat-soaked mask and gloves, her face showing the exhaustion of not having slept all night, but her eyes were frighteningly bright.

She held two things in her hands: one was the preliminary autopsy report that she had just written, and the other was the sample bag containing dark blue fibers.

Gu Zheng walked over, leaning on his cane. His gaze fell on the evidence in her hand, and a bloodthirsty smile curled at the corner of his mouth.

A big fish is about to take the bait.

Ye Zhen walked to the heavy lead door, and without hesitation, reached out and, with a "click," unlocked it.

"Squeak!"

The heavy door opened inwards.

Outside the door, Qian Weiguo and Li Jian, who had been guarding like two door gods all night, suddenly stood up from their chairs. Their eyes were sunken and bloodshot, and their faces showed undisguised anxiety and tension.

Upon seeing Ye Zhen emerge, Qian Weiguo immediately plastered his signature fake smile on his face and eagerly approached her.

"Expert Ye, thank you for your hard work! I wonder... what do you think of this conclusion?"

Li Jian, on the other hand, looked wary and suspicious, his gaze sweeping across Ye Zhen's face like a searchlight, trying to find even the slightest hint of guilt.

Ye Zhen didn't even bother to glance at him, and simply walked up to Qian Weiguo with a blank expression.

Her voice wasn't loud, but it was crystal clear in the quiet corridor.

"Team Leader Qian, there are two conclusions."

She paused, looked at Qian Weiguo's smiling face, and held up the report in her hand: "First, Political Commissar Zhang did indeed die from poisoning. But the poison was not penicillin, but a military-grade rapid-acting nerve agent. Its brilliance lies in the fact that the resulting physiological symptoms are highly similar to those of acute anaphylactic shock."

Qian Weiguo's smile visibly stiffened for a moment, and his eyes twitched almost imperceptibly.

Li Jian's breath hitched.

Ye Zhen didn't give him time to process the information. She held up the small evidence bag in her hand and waved it under the light.

"Secondly," she said slowly, her gaze calmly meeting Qian Weiguo's probing eyes, "I found this under the deceased's fingernails."

She looked at Qian Weiguo's face, which was already turning pale, and her voice was calm to the point of being cruel.

"A special dark blue blended fiber. As far as I know, in the entire Southeast Military Region, only one group of people are authorized to use this fabric to make custom-made uniforms—"

The air froze completely in that instant.

Li Jian's pupils suddenly contracted to the size of a pinhead!

Ye Zhen's gaze, like two of the sharpest scalpels, was fixed on Qian Weiguo's already bloodless face, delivering the final blow.

"Summer special uniform for officers of general rank."

She tilted her head slightly, looked at Qian Weiguo who was completely stunned, and asked the fatal question that was enough to crush everything in an almost naive tone.

"Team Leader Qian, shouldn't the expert team you brought from Beijing include someone in charge of logistics and military equipment?"

"Why don't you go and check right now to see if any leader in this military compound who wore this kind of uniform today is... currently missing an identical cufflink?"