Life in North America, you call this an autopsy officer?!
Chapter 426 - 251: The Arrogant Killer, Provoking

Chapter 426: Chapter 251: The Arrogant Killer, Provoking

Along the way, Brian’s keen eyes spotted plenty of fresh tracks on the ground and some small footprints.

In an open area, it’s difficult for tracks to remain visible for several days.

The mountain wind would carry away leaves that covered any traces.

This indicated that the tracks were fresh.

Judging from the tracks and footprints, these weren’t left by the police officers; they more closely resembled those left by the victimized children wandering through the forest.

In an open space, tracks are hard to preserve, and scents are even more difficult to retain.

Movement plus strong wind meant scent molecules had no chance to cling to the surroundings before being dispersed.

Other than detecting some residual urine smell, Brian didn’t notice any particularly distinctive scents along the way.

After walking about fifty meters more,

He came across Chief Jilder waiting under a cluster of disordered trees, with a few patrolling officers around him.

Their faces were mostly grim.

The reason was simple.

In front of them was a somewhat sinister scene: one after another, bodies were hung on the trunks of large trees, blindfolded, motionless, swaying in the wind...

These bodies formed a large circle.

Underneath them, an old, large wine barrel stood on a frame, equipped with a spigot, over a conically shaped ’silver carpet.’

The ’silver carpet’ was quite expansive, almost completely covering the area beneath all the bodies.

The wind whispered through.

Brian’s acute hearing also picked up the faint metallic sound coming from that silver carpet.

The thing was a metal foil.

On top of the metal foil, there remained quite a bit of a converging liquid.

The liquid was colorless.

Brian took a light sniff and confirmed it was water.

In addition, all the deceased had been blindfolded, their mouths stuffed with cloth, their facial expressions exaggeratedly distorted.

This, combined with the curved, withered branches of the scene, created an atmosphere of despair.

In daytime, it wasn’t too bad, but come nighttime, if someone were to witness this sight and didn’t scream their head off, it would speak volumes about their courage.

Brian narrowed his eyes slightly.

This crime scene, it had an artistic quality.

The perpetrator this time didn’t seem to be a simpleton.

...

Seeing that Brian had finally arrived, Chief Jilder did not inquire about the previous Alpha incident.

He pointed at the crime scene ahead, saying,

"Mr. Brian, the person who reported this discovered the camper parked outside of the forest out of curiosity, wondering why such a vehicle would be here, so they came to check it out and ended up finding this.

After receiving the report, we sealed off the area and removed one of the bodies for a preliminary examination.

The result was unexpected."

"What was the discovery?"

Brian retracted his evaluating gaze and looked at Chief Jilder.

The efficiency was somewhat high, probably because there were so many dead and the children’s parents had some status, prompting these people to exhibit such high efficiency.

Chief Jilder’s face showed a strange expression:

"Aside from a cut on the wrist of the right hand that only damaged the epidermis, there were no other external injuries found on the body’s surface.

The Autopsy Officer who conducted the examination, dissected the body.

And he found that the victim had been scared to death.

He said the symptoms of the deceased were very similar to an experiment in psychological suggestion once conducted by Martin Jlard, but the effect was even more astonishing.

The problem is, the environmental conditions at the scene do not meet the requirements of that experiment at all."

"What experiment?"

Green asked curiously.

Chief Jilder smiled awkwardly, "Sorry, I was a bit frustrated at the time and didn’t really remember it."

Green rolled his eyes to the side.

This chief was a complete fool.

Such an important clue, and he failed to remember it.

Brian explained:

"It’s a very famous psychological suggestion experiment.

Martin Jlard is a psychologist.

He used death row prisoners for his experiments.

They would blindfold the condemned, tie them to a bed, and place various instruments on them to monitor body temperature, blood pressure, ECG, EEG, and so on.

Then, a judge would come to the side of the death row inmate’s bed and announce the execution.

A priest would also bless his soul to ascend to heaven soon.

At this time, the inmate would be told that he would be bled to death.

With a command from the judge, an assistant who had been prepared in advance would approach and scratch the inmate’s wrist with a small piece of wood.

In reality, the wood only scraped the epidermis of the inmate’s wrist.

Then, these people would turn on a previously prepared faucet, letting water drip into a copper basin below, making a "ding dong" sound.

With the dripping rhythm going from fast to slow, a great sense of fear would arise in the inmate.

He felt his blood draining slowly away!

All kinds of detection instruments accurately recorded various changes in the inmate’s physiology: the prisoner exhibited typical "blood loss" symptoms.

In the end, that inmate passed out."

After listening to Brian’s explanation, Chief Jilder nodded repeatedly, "Yes, yes, right, that’s the experiment."

Green, somewhat disgusted, shrank his neck, "These researchers really know how to torture."

"Death row inmates are just prisoners who lost their rights. They just sacrificed themselves for the sake of scientific research, that’s all. By the way, Martin Jlard isn’t dead yet, Green, buddy, you might have a chance to say that to his face."

After speaking, Brian stepped on those metal plates and walked in front of the barrel to crouch down.

The mouth of the barrel had been transformed into a drip-tube shape.

This drip-tube was specially designed.

From a mechanical perspective, the dripping would accelerate constantly as the liquid level in the barrel decreased, hitting the metal foil below.

The metal foil underneath would then amplify the sound of the water drops hitting it.

Based on these clues, it indeed matched some steps of Martin Jlard’s psychological suggestion experiment.

The problem was, the core of this experiment was psychological suggestion, scaring oneself.

People in a sealed environment tend to let their imaginations run wild, especially when blindfolded, coupled with previous psychological suggestion, their emotions can be strongly affected to the point of impacting them physiologically.

To achieve that level.

Quiet environment, enough psychological suggestion, alone... these are all important.

This is why many hypnotic methods are commonly seen in film and television, but in reality, hardly anyone can snap their fingers or swing a pocket watch to hypnotize others, not even hypnotists or psychologists.

The current scene was in the midst of a forest.

When the wind blew, the rustling of the leaves was all disturbance.

The victims were all clustered together, and although their mouths were stuffed, it didn’t stop them from making some noises.

Moreover, the presence of a group, at most, would create mass panic, which doesn’t help the atmosphere created by psychological suggestions, but instead, disrupts it.

So how did the murderer manage to scare so many people to death at the same time?

Brian became interested.

This case was more intriguing than he had imagined.

...

After examining the scene.

Brian began to... observe the bodies on the trees even more minutely.

On several bodies, he smelled the scent of urine that he had previously encountered on the road.

Urine carries many unique pheromones.

These pheromones are one of the sources of each individual’s distinct scent.

This is why wild animals use urine to mark their territory.

This discovery also confirmed that these victims had walked here themselves.

Brian continued to look around.

By the time he had made a full circle, he was frowning slightly.

Green whispered beside him, "What’s wrong, boss Brian?"

"The scene is too strange, these victims should have come here on their own, but there are no large amounts of adult footprints, nor signs of clearing evidence.

This indicates that there aren’t many murderers.

It’s winter, and although the climate in Los Angeles is good, it’s very difficult to clear tracks like footprints without leaving traces in a forest.

I suspect there are only one or two murderers, maybe even just one.

How do you think they controlled so many children, and a few armed security guards and camp teachers?"

As he said this, Brian pointed to the bodies of two strong men in the trees.

At their waists, you could see the pistol holsters and the guns that remained.

Hearing Brian’s words, Green also furrowed his brows.

It really didn’t make sense.

The armed security guards were professionals, much stronger than ordinary people, and they still had their guns.

The camp teachers, judging by their muscle contours, were also the type to exercise regularly.

Even if the murderer had a weapon and coerced these people to cooperate, there should have been a chance to fight back when the murderer was tying them up, right?

The traces at the scene were as if these people had no thoughts of resisting at all, as if they had complied with the murderer to be hung up, and then simply waited for death to come.

The more Green thought about it, the more eerie he found this place.

He shrank his neck and said in a low voice, "Boss Brian, there’s something fishy about this case. It feels like these victims were like the rats in the fairy tale controlled by the Magic Flute, helplessly slaughtered by the perpetrator."

The Magic Flute is a story from the Grimm’s fairy tales, roughly about how the rats would follow the piper and jump into the river to drown themselves.

Listening to Green’s words, Brian simply shook his head, "There’s no such thing as a Magic Flute in reality, even for a Mutant, it’s extremely difficult to achieve an effect similar to the Magic Flute. The possibility is too small."

The most devilish thing he had encountered was the silver box he came across in the prison, which was another project from Benjamin’s research facility.

The thing inside the box could use the electromagnetic waves emitted to continuously bombard the prisoner living in that cell, triggering certain negative emotions.

But this process took a long time.

Judging by Benjamin’s attitude, that thing was also very important to Black Light Biotechnology Company, who even sent an expert to contact Brian.

If criminals had such technology, they would have been hunted down long ago.

As for Mutants...

The possibility was even less.

Precise hypnosis is almost the equivalent of a Rule Type Blood Moon Gift ability.

Apart from himself, Brian had only seen similar abilities in old man Ryan, the rest were mostly physical talents.

If he was really that lucky to come across a Mutant with such abilities...

That would be like winning the lottery, a cause for celebration.

Excluding those two possibilities, how did the murderer manage to make this group cooperate so well?

...

After pondering for a while.

Brian told Chief Jilder, "Have the bodies packed up and taken back; I want to perform a full autopsy on them."

"Alright."

Chief Jilder nodded, took out his phone, and arranged for someone to come and collect the bodies.

Twenty minutes later.

Seven or eight people arrived with stretchers, and someone cleverly brought a folding ladder.

Seeing this, Brian was spared the trouble.

He had been prepared to climb up and undo the bodies himself, but now there were others to do it, he didn’t need to bother.

Authority, authority.

If you had to do everything yourself, what was the point of having authority?

Under Green’s command, everyone started packing up the bodies.

A rather slim officer, with a knife in hand, took the initiative to climb the folding ladder, ready to untie the ropes.

He was just about to lower his head and tell the person stabilizing the ladder to be careful not to let him fall.

Suddenly.

The officer’s eyes widened, staring intently at the ground, exclaiming, "Shadows, shadows!!"

"Hmm?"

Brian heard the officer, with no hesitation, leapt up over three meters, then grabbed onto the tree trunk and pulled himself up the ten-plus meters to the treetop, looking down.

He saw that under the sunlight, the ropes and the swaying shadows of the bodies on the ground formed a line of letters: this is just the beginning...

Brian pursed his lips.

Interesting, really interesting.

Such an arrogant criminal.

Murdering is one thing, but leaving a message at the scene as a provocation.

Too interesting!