Chapter 2 This is Not an Accident_1

Thinking about the task given by the system, Zhou Ning felt a sense of powerlessness and his mind began to wander.

A poke on his arm brought his thoughts back to the present.

"Doctor Zhou, what are you zoning out for? Hurry up and have a look. It doesn't matter if you don't understand, just say something, and make sure to take pictures quickly. We need to move the body," someone urged.

Zhou Ning knew that Xu Da was getting impatient. He tried to calm himself down.

"Xu Da, I just want to check the height and the condition of the body. We can't rashly turn it over, right? Is there a ladder here? I didn't expect the body to be up high, I wasn't prepared. Also, we need a chainsaw that can cut through branches."

When Xu Da heard Zhou Ning's request, he wasn't angry.

For a new forensic doctor to be so composed and analytical was beyond expectations, especially since Xu Da had been ready to simply haul the body away.

"What are you all standing around for? Get a ladder and a chainsaw for Doctor Zhou, and move it! You guys, keep searching for skid marks, bloodstains, and debris from the crash at the intersection, and hurry up the traffic police. Why hasn't the surveillance footage been pulled up yet?" Xu Da commanded in quick succession, creating an oppressive atmosphere.

Immediately, some went to make calls to borrow a chainsaw while others dispersed in different directions.

A burly detective came running back with a long ladder. Zhou Ning knew him; the man's name was Zhao Xinli.

Zhou Ning nodded in acknowledgment as the ladder was set up at the base of the tree.

"Mr. Zhao, hold the ladder steady for me, I need to go up and take pictures," Zhou Ning requested.

In the county's forensic office, where there were only two people, you couldn't expect the kind of scene you see on TV, where trace examiners each do their part, from flagging evidence to taking photos and labeling, before the forensic doctor examines the body.

In this small place, you have to do everything yourself—a fact Doctor Liu had told him about.

Zhao Xinli gave an OK sign, the gesture more expressive than a toothy grin, given that his mask covered his face.

"Don't worry. With your hundred and some pounds, I could hold you in a lift with no problem. You won't fall—I guarantee it. Go on up!" he encouraged.

With a clench of his teeth, Zhou Ning set his inspection kit on the ground, slung the camera under his arm, and grasped the ladder as he started to climb.

The aluminum ladder creaked under his weight. After reaching the fourth rung, Zhou Ning wobbled and felt Zhao Xinli's large hand supporting his backside.

"Take it slow, buddy. Straddle your legs over the ladder, cross your left and right foot, and clamp down with force. That's how to prop up your hips," advised Zhao Xinli.

Zhou Ning dodged Zhao Xinli's hands.

Ascending another step, he followed the suggestion. Sure enough, clamping his legs around the ladder did help stabilize his body.

He positioned himself slightly above the body. From this angle, he could now clearly see the corpse's entirety.

The anatomy professors at school and the limbs he saw during his internship were all viewed from a distance, at most you got to touch them, accompanied by a group of students, and with the comforting smell of formalin filling the air while you nodded along to the teacher's explanations. This visual impact was much greater.

The female body's head drooped toward the other side of the tree trunk, her right leg hung on the tree, and her left leg was broken at the calf, pinned beneath the right and wedged between slanting branches.

The entire body was almost suspended at a seventy-degree angle on the tree branch.

Her red checkered skirt flipped over to the side, revealing shorts underneath that covered only a palm-sized area of her private parts. On the upper body, a tight white shirt bore an image of a pink Kitty cat.

Her long hair hung down towards the ground, her head tilted to the right, with shiny gold eyeshadow on her eyelids and exaggerated gold hoop earrings. On the exposed left side of her cheek, one could see swelling with shards of glass embedded and a bruise around her eye socket.

Her arms hung down, but her fingers were free of nail polish, and her nails were neatly trimmed.

The rain had stopped by now, and the clothes on the body weren't completely soaked through. The water stains were visible. Looking up at the dense foliage, it seemed this spot was sheltered. But where had the person been tossed from?

Zhou Ning raised his camera and began taking pictures of the body from every angle, capturing the state of the deceased, the shutter clicking continuously.

These actions seemed to give Xu Dayuan some confidence.

Zhou Ning averted his gaze as he urged the officers maintaining the cordon to act—any onlookers who were taking photos were to delete them before being sent away.

After finishing the photos, Zhou Ning steadied himself against the tree trunk, intending to lean forward.

His action caused him to lose balance. His hand slipped forward, and he instinctively pressed on the body's leg. As he did, the body swung to the left, and with that motion, the corners of the shirt flipped towards the ground, revealing a round puncture wound below the right ribcage, which caught Zhou Ning's eye.

From such a small round spot, two columnar trails of blood seemed to have run, staining the edge of the skirt red.

Zhou Ning was shocked. With a broken left leg and bruising on the left cheek, why was there a puncture wound on the right side?

Could it be...

That the victim didn't die from a car accident?

No sooner had this idea emerged than a transparent screen appeared before Zhou Ning's eyes, scanning the corpse as it displayed on the screen.

System Alert:

"Binding person has touched the body, finding suspicious cause of death during the external examination."

System task completed, rewards are being drawn.

"Ding, congratulations to the bound user, you have obtained level two access to forensic crime scene sciences system knowledge. It will be fully loaded in two minutes."

Zhou Ning was completely bewildered. What... kind of reward is this?

Forensic crime scene science was a course he had taken in his third and fourth year of university. Although his grades weren't great, was there anything different?

The key point was that it was level two access. What exactly did that mean?

As he was zoning out, his ankle and waist belt were already grasped by Zhao Xinli, who seemed to worry about Zhou Ning swaying and feared he might fall off.

"Buddy, be careful, what's going on? Do you feel faint at the sight of blood?"

Zhou Ning wanted to strangle him. How would others perceive this?

Before he could answer, Zhou Ning had already been pulled down by Zhao Xinli, squatting right next to the inspection box.

Xu Dayuan had already pulled off his mask and walked over with a serious look on his face, seemingly a little disappointed in Zhou Ning's performance.

"How's it going?"

"Xu Da, I've finished taking photos, we can saw off the tree branch, use a forklift to support a flatbed, and bag the body."

Xu Dayuan looked around, tilted his head slightly, and asked in a lowered voice:

"Did you notice anything? Tell me the truth."

Zhou Ning pushed his glasses up. The mask concealed the nervous expression on his face, making him appear quite composed, but only he knew how tense he really was at that moment.

However, this subconscious gesture made that transparent display screen appear again, and a whirl of forensic crime scene science knowledge continuously flashed before his eyes.

Forensic crime scene science is the application of forensic medicine, clinical forensic medicine, criminal psychology, biology, and physics, as well as other natural science knowledge, to study life-threatening and injury-related cases. It aims to reconstruct and depict the crime process at the scene to provide a basis for determining the investigative direction and formulating investigative measures.

The foundation of forensic crime scene reconstruction is the on-site examination work. Life-threatening and injury scenes serve as information banks for obtaining criminal intelligence, as crucial venues for identifying the nature of cases, and the starting points for investigation and solving work...

In an instant, a plethora of knowledge filled Zhou Ning's vision, as if forcibly squeezing into his memory, bringing a choking sense of suffocation. He gripped the camera tightly.

After a pause of around fifteen seconds, although the knowledge hadn't been digested, all the information he had just found became organized and clear.

On the display screen, the photos he had just taken were also displayed one by one.

The body surface information he had discovered was also systematically arranged on one side.

At this point, Zhou Ning's feelings were indescribable. Although he didn't know the process of the incident, following the system's hint, Zhou Ning knew that what appeared to be a car accident must have some hidden truth to it.

He relaxed his grip slightly and located the photo of the victim's leg, then pointed and said:

"Sorry, I'm a bit afraid of heights. Xu Da, look, the victim has an open fracture to the tibia and fibula on the right lower leg, and you can see these abrasions here. It can be determined that she was hit and thrown into the tree; this is the primary crime scene."

"Are you saying this is a hit-and-run case?"

Zhou Ning shook his head and continued to flip to the photo of the lower edge of the right ribs of the victim.

"The victim's left lower leg, cheek, and head all show signs of impact, but at the back position of the right rib cage's lower edge, there is a puncture wound.

Due to the special position of the body at the moment, I can't check the depth of the puncture wound. However, the wound hasn't scabbed over, and there is vertical blood dropping to the ground. There are vital reactions, meaning it's an antemortem wound, and it was caused shortly before the car accident."

Zhou Ning tried to use a few professional terms to make himself seem more professional.

Xu Dayuan took a deep breath and stared intently into Zhou Ning's eyes. These words had changed Xu Dayuan's perception of the new forensic doctor before him.

At the same time, his hand rested on Zhou Ning's shoulder and his voice became even more hushed.

"Are you saying this wasn't an accident, but a homicide?"

.............

PS:

[1]Vital reaction: After the body is subjected to violent forces, a series of vital reactions can appear both locally at the injured area and systematically. These reactions can be observed through the naked eye, microscopy, or other laboratory examination methods, including changes noticeable to the naked eye such as bleeding, tissue contraction, swelling, scab formation, wound infection, foreign body displacement, etc.; and histological changes such as red blood cell aggregation in subcapsular sinuses of local lymph nodes, thrombus formation, embolism, inflammatory response, and wound healing.

One of the tasks of forensic pathology is to search for these vital reactions to determine the time from the violence to death. Vital reactions and supravital reactions are two different concepts.

The latter refers to the early stages of biological death when certain tissues and organs that are more resistant to ischemia and hypoxia, such as the skin and muscles, still retain some life functions and can respond similarly to external stimuli as they did while alive.

[2]Antemortem injury: The distinction between antemortem and postmortem injuries during a body examination refers to the differentiation between injuries sustained before death and after death.

The primary basis is whether the injury itself shows vital reactions. The original scene of an antemortem injury may show spattered blood, with the body surrounded by larger pools of blood, which often contain blood clots. Postmortem injuries or falsified scenes where a body has been moved do not exhibit the aforementioned characteristics.