Chapter 378 - 276: Extravagant Last Meal

Chapter 378: Chapter 276: Extravagant Last Meal

Xu Jing had no idea what Wu Wuzuo beside her was thinking, and continued, "Furthermore, there are no obvious signs of resistance on both corpses, and no binding marks on their bodies, indicating that the two victims were already unconscious when they were decapitated.

However, from the dismembered pieces in front of us, we can’t determine how the murderer rendered them unconscious. It might be from a blow to the head or some type of drug. This will be clarified after we find more body parts.

For now, the most important thing is to identify the victims."

With cases like this, identifying the victims usually gets us closer to solving it.

Deng Youwei was well aware of this and remembered the methods Xu Jing used in previous unidentified body cases. His eyes lit up slightly, "Much obliged, Miss Xu!"

Xu Jing nodded and called over Cheng Xiao, "Cheng Xiao, prepare to light up the stove and set up the pot."

The group finally noticed that one of the guards following Miss Xu was holding a large pot in his arms, looking utterly puzzled.

Isn’t this an autopsy? Why, why set up a pot all of a sudden?

Could it be that Miss Xu is hungry and wants to cook?

After instructing Cheng Xiao, Xu Jing took out a long-unused scalpel from her toolkit, put on a mask, and swiftly and decisively made an incision in the man’s torso before her.

If it were a case where the victim’s identity was known, Xu Jing might have to worry about how to get the victim’s family’s consent for the autopsy.

But in this case, with unidentified dismembered bodies, there was no such concern.

Most people in Anping County government were familiar with Xu Jing’s autopsy methods, yet seeing them again after so long still made their hearts race.

Rumors had it that Miss Xu had remarried Vice Minister Xiao.

Only a man like Vice Minister Xiao could handle such a formidable woman!

Wu Wuzuo stood by: "..."

Good lord, how could he have forgotten that Miss Xu is no ordinary forensic doctor!

Xu Jing first separated the male victim’s stomach, cut it open, and said, "The stomach contents are slightly digested, with some having moved into the duodenum. The victim ate within an hour of death."

With that, she used forceps to pick up a small, undigested white piece, examined it closely, and said, "It seems they ate something like bread or dry food. There are almost no traces of vegetables or meat in their stomachs. Normally, people don’t just eat dry food. Given that we are quite a distance from Qingzhou City, I speculate that the victims were travelers, and these dry foods were prepared for their journey, but they encountered the murderer nearby."

Deng Youwei, having seen Xu Jing examine victims’ stomachs before, had almost forgotten how impactful the smell was. As Xu Jing cut open the stomach, he was immediately overwhelmed by the stench, and said quickly, "But, that being the case, we also don’t know where, where these travelers came from... Ugh!"

After all, this place is very close to Xinzhou, and the victims might have come from there.

"No, the victims probably came from the Qingzhou side."

Xu Jing stirred in the stomach for a while, before picking out a small charred yellow piece, about the size of a pinky fingernail, with small white fragments on it.

Chen Hu, formerly Xu Jing’s dedicated assistant, although his face didn’t look good, kept his gaze fixed on Xu Jing’s actions. His eyes widened as he exclaimed, "Isn’t this Huachun Garden’s peach crisp! I remember that Huachun Garden’s peach crisps contain crushed walnuts, which makes them more fragrant than ordinary peach crisps."

This method of making peach crisps is hard to find elsewhere. Even if someone attempts to mimic Huachun Garden’s recipe, they lack the generosity in ingredients. Often, a whole peach crisp contains only a few walnut bits.

In a small piece like this, where several walnut fragments can be seen, only Huachun Garden could make it.

Upon hearing this, the other Government Officials took a closer look. One official said, "In that case, the victim must have come from our Anping County. My wife’s family is from Xinzhou, and I know there’s no such peach crisp sold in Xinzhou."

If the victims had passed through Anping County and bought something at Huachun Garden, identifying them would be much easier.

After examining the stomach, Xu Jing sewed it up and moved on to the female victim, extracting her stomach as well.

The female victim had eaten around the same time as the male victim, further proving that the two knew each other and traveled together.

Moreover, the same peach crisp was found in the female victim’s stomach, along with a small piece of Jujube Cake with visible raisins, another specialty of Huachun Garden’s Jujube Cake.

This further confirmed that they had eaten Huachun Garden’s pastries before dying.

At this moment, a Government Official asked, "Is it possible that those pastries were given by the murderer?"

They all thought the victims had bought pastries at Huachun Garden before dying, but what if the murderer had bought them instead, and they had gotten the direction entirely wrong.

"Could there possibly be a murderer that generous?"

The official who mentioned his wife being from Xinzhou immediately widened his eyes and said, "Huachun Garden’s pastries are terribly expensive. Even though my wife loves them, I’d only buy a few for her to try during her pregnancies. Their pastries are usually only affordable by wealthy families."

That’s why they taste so good and are filled with generous ingredients!

The questioning official was momentarily stunned. He didn’t care for sweets, so he hadn’t studied pastries from different places.

Xu Jing had finished examining the female victim’s stomach by then. Sewing it up, she said, "Indeed, I don’t think the pastries were given by the murderer either. Not only did the murderer kill the victims and dismember them, but they also violated the female victim before killing her, indicating that even if the murderer didn’t hold a deep grudge against them, there was at least no fondness for them.

Under such circumstances, I don’t believe the murderer would have spent a significant amount of money purchasing Huachun Garden’s pastries as the victims’ last meal.

Besides, there’s a very distinctive trait in dismemberment cases..."

Chen Hu immediately asked, "What is it?"

"The main reason the murderer goes through the trouble of dismembering is to destroy evidence and hide their crime. In other words, they want to sever any evidence of a connection between themselves and the victims, indicating that there must be some relationship between them and the victims, making it unlikely a crime committed in a moment of stranger-driven impulse. This is also why many dismemberment cases are solved once the victim’s identity is known.

Of course, there are cases where the murderer has a perverse fetish leading them to dismember the victim. However, I mentioned earlier that no similar dismemberment cases have occurred around here recently, so this possibility is unlikely. Considering that we haven’t found the victims’ heads yet, it’s most likely that the murderer dismembered them to conceal their identity."

Throughout Xu Jing’s explanation, everyone nodded frequently.

Who knew there were so many intricacies in a dismemberment case? Previously, they mainly relied on intuition to solve cases and never thought of all this!

As Xu Jing concluded, she finished sewing the stomach.

Setting the stomach down, she picked up a scalpel and approached the male victim’s body again, at his pelvis. This time, she swiftly extracted a small piece of bone from there!

Amidst the group’s stunned gazes, she moved to the female victim and, with equally deft incisions, took out a corresponding bone fragment from the same area.