It was a windy day.

The wind blew along the tree-lined road of the funeral home, making a "whooshing" sound that lasted all night.

Jiang Yuan and several other forensic doctors were still in the autopsy room, boiling bones. When the wind was strong, they remained silent.

Everyone was a bit tired, but there was no time to sleep. At this time, even the spirit of chatting was gone.

The body being boiled now was the fourth one, discovered in the evening and just brought in.

Similar to the second and third bodies, the fourth body was also wrapped in a gray travel bag, with a red and blue snakeskin bag inside.

Moreover, both the gray travel bag and the red and blue snakeskin bag had traces of scorching.

The on-site technician obtained more evidence from this, which prompted Xu Taining to mobilize a large number of personnel from the Zifengshan coal mine and dispatch them to several towns to the north.

Finding Liu Jinghui was still the top priority, but in the absence of clues, solving the serial murders and finding Liu Jinghui became more feasible and likely.

Xu Taining didn't care about the comments or consequences afterwards, and gritted his teeth to send the search team to conduct investigations.

Jiang Yuan sat next to the third body, scrolling through his phone and waiting for the pressure cooker to finish.

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Boiling a body required a higher degree of tenderness than cooking meat at home. In kitchen terms, it had to be cooked until completely boneless.

However, most bodies that needed to be boiled had already decayed to some extent, so the overall boiling time might not be that long. It was just that some parts with a lot of meat would take longer.

Jiang Yuan's phone received notifications from a dozen work groups.

Most of them were related to Zifengshan, and some were newly added groups.

In the Zifengshan groups, teams were gathering everywhere, looking for vehicles and storing items.

Thousands of people set off at once, heading to different locations, and the coordination and support were very difficult. Even the local gas stations ran out of fuel.

However, this was Xu Taining's specialty. Although he was not familiar with the personnel under his command, and even the various teams were temporarily assembled, he organized everything methodically, and by five or six in the morning, all the teams were in place.

"It has been eight days since Comrade Liu Jinghui went missing. There is no more time to delay. After the teams are in place, please start working immediately and be sure to be careful." Xu Taining gave orders to the team leaders and then @mentioned everyone in the large group.

Jiang Yuan absentmindedly watched. He could imagine that the teams were now knocking on doors, getting scolded, explaining, arguing, and reporting.

Actually, if they only asked the missing person's family, the situation would be very different.

But whether it was a junior detective or a senior police chief, they all knew that the victim's family might not tell the truth.

Interviewing neighbors, taking statements from the missing person's friends, relatives, and colleagues could provide relatively accurate information and also deter potential false witnesses to some extent.

"The fourth one is ready." The young forensic doctor guarding the stove's alarm went off and reported quickly.

"Then summarize the third one, does anyone have any other thoughts?" Dr. Zhai took responsibility and called out.

Unlike previous autopsies, Dr. Zhai required everyone to contribute collectively. Each person was required to write a final autopsy report.

The first and second bodies had already been processed, and now it was the third body's turn.

Jiang Yuan silently handed over his autopsy conclusion.

"The third body, 30 years old. Female...height 163, cervical spondylosis, lumbar disc herniation, old ankle fracture (should have received treatment)...eyelid stitches...time of death, three years ago."

Dr. Zhai collected everyone's autopsy conclusions and looked through them one by one.

When he saw Jiang Yuan's conclusion, Dr. Zhai looked at it for a little longer.

"The judgments on the time of death and age are slightly different, but they are mostly consistent. Of course, there are some differences." Dr. Zhai summarized the key points.

No one said a word, and they all looked at Jiang Yuan in silence.

Dr. Zhai was not only a forensic doctor at the provincial level, but also had quite a track record over the years. He was a practical and capable forensic doctor.

Among the forensic doctors present, Wang Lan was a watered-down version of Dr. Zhai, and Niu was not very strong.

Everyone was a normal-level grassroots forensic doctor, occasionally making mistakes and occasionally performing exceptionally. Most of the time, they worked diligently. Whether it was judging the time of death or the age, they tried to give broad conclusions—

The strength of a forensic doctor could be judged by the final conclusion they gave.

For the same time of death, Jiang Yuan directly gave an age of 30, while some forensic doctors, to avoid mistakes, would give a range of 25-30.

Of course, under normal circumstances, Jiang Yuan could also give a conclusion of 28-32, depending on the condition of the body. The narrower the range given for the same body, the more confident the conclusion.

"Is the difference significant? I mean, in terms of the time of death and age." Jiang Yuan asked.

"Well, it's not that significant. Everyone has some different ideas." Dr. Zhai was not used to Jiang Yuan's confidence in his work.

He was an older man who always worked with caution, giving a wider range to avoid being too narrow.

In his generation, everyone was confident in their daily work and worked very cautiously. It was the opposite for Jiang Yuan's generation.

However, Jiang Yuan's conclusions were within Dr. Zhai's own range.

Dr. Zhai's gaze lingered on the time of death for a moment.

He had given a time of death of three to five years. His personal preference was four years.

Jiang Yuan had given three years...not too far off.Forensic Zhai ultimately didn't say much more, just nodded and said, "Let's tidy up and start piecing together the fourth body."

Beep beep beep.

The pressure cooker began to release steam.

Everyone silently waited for the steam to dissipate, then started to extract bones, peel off flesh, and arrange the corpse.

Jiang Yuan was still examining the bones one by one, quickly drawing conclusions and jotting them down:

Victim Four, age 32-34 years old. Female... Height 160 cm, cause of death, mechanical asphyxiation... Time of death, more than four years ago.

He confirmed what he could first, then slowly analyzed the remaining bone fragments.

The other forensic experts operated in a similar fashion.

Anthropology is a meticulous discipline. Even with a human body of that size, with over two hundred bones, if you just skim through them, you could be done in an afternoon.

But if you want to extract information from them, that's where the difficulty lies.

You have to examine them bit by bit, piece by piece.

When Jiang Yuan was working on the Wang Guoshan reservoir body-dumping case, he spent nights on end looking for details.

But this case was different; there was actually quite a bit of information provided by various pieces of evidence. To proceed as before, checking each shop one by one, would be far too inefficient.

Comrade Liu Jinghui probably couldn't endure that.

As Jiang Yuan was pondering, his phone started to buzz.

He nudged it with his elbow to take a glance, saw it was Huang Qiangming, and immediately took off his gloves, rinsed his hands briefly with water, then put on a new pair of gloves and picked up the phone.

"Captain Huang, any news?" Jiang Yuan redialed.

"Mm, we've found the owner of the jewelry," Huang Qiangming said, his mood somber.

At that moment, Huang Qiangming was standing in the victim's home.

It was a three-bedroom apartment located in the heart of Fangjin Township, with the township's only vegetable market visible from the window.

The apartment was an old welfare housing unit, decorated on a budget, with many areas patched up with newspaper.

The female homeowner lay in a hospital bed, gazing eagerly at the police officers in the room.

The male homeowner sat against the wall smoking, with rings of smoke surrounding the photo of his missing daughter.

"Do all the pieces of jewelry match? Do you have a photo?" Jiang Yuan asked somewhat anxiously over the phone.

Since the jewelry was very cheap, it might have a high rate of duplication; it would be best to have other corroborating evidence.

Huang Qiangming simply responded with a "Mm" and said, "Check the photos on WeChat."

"Hold on, I'll put you on speaker." Jiang Yuan set down the phone, opened the private chat in WeChat, and saw that Huang Qiangming had sent over a series of photos.

Most of the photos were rephotographed, showing a girl with a sweet smile and long black hair cascading down. Photos of the necklace and ring were visible. The last photo was a selfie, revealing the earrings on her ears.

Although a more detailed comparison might still be needed later, as far as the investigation procedure was concerned, this was already very thorough.

Jiang Yuan turned to look at the skeleton of Victim Three, where he had just been sitting for a long time.

However, the stark white bones bore no resemblance to the sweet smile in the photos.

"How long has this girl been missing?" Forensic Zhai came over and asked through the speakerphone.

"Who's this?" Huang Qiangming asked first.

"It's me, Old Zhai, Forensic Zhai."

"Mm. Forensic Zhai. The victim has been missing for three years and four months," Huang Qiangming finally replied.

Forensic Zhai unexpectedly uttered an "Oh," and couldn't help saying, "That's a bit short."

"It's the temperature inside the mine," Jiang Yuan casually replied, then picked up the phone and asked, "Captain Huang, have the other teams found anything?"

"Not yet, it wasn't us who found this, it was the people from the city criminal police team," Huang Qiangming clarified for Jiang Yuan, then continued, "We've already started searching for local motorcycles."