Miss Truth
Chapter 90 - 56 Self-Harm_2

Chapter 90: Chapter 56 Self-Harm_2

If it made no sense, she would stop trying to understand it. Ran Yan didn’t utter a superfluous word and went straight to the corpse placed at her feet.

The body was now on a wooden platform high enough that she only needed to bend over slightly to reach it. Tables and stands in the Tang Dynasty were rarely this high, and one could tell at a glance that it was specially made. Ran Yan silently cursed Inspector Liu: That damned old fox!

When she lifted the plain cloth, a terrifying female corpse was revealed. The body was still somewhat fresh, and as Inspector Liu had said, the face was a bloody mess with skin and flesh cut open. Judging by sight, there were at least eleven or twelve cuts, primarily on the cheeks and jaw, with only bloodstains on the forehead, but no wounds.

The face was swollen and purplish, and when Ran Yan lifted the corpse’s eyelids, she found as expected the subconjunctival hemorrhage in the eyes.

The way forensic doctors like Ran Yan thought about death was to consider homicide before suicide, external causes before internal ones, and injury before disease. Seeing a corpse as cruelly disfigured as Cui Mei’s, Ran Yan would certainly first examine it from the perspective of a homicide, with the external injuries being quite obvious.

However, after a series of examinations, based on the arrangement of the wounds and the direction of the cuts, Ran Yan reached a very puzzling conclusion—the marks on Cui Mei’s face seemed to have been self-inflicted!

The neck also had only one strangulation mark below the throat. The marks at the back of the neck branched out like the character for "eight" instead of intersecting, indicating signs of self-hanging rather than someone else strangling her and then staging it as a suicide.

To verify this result, Ran Yan quickly undressed the body until it was completely bare.

Cui Mei had died merely one night before, and her body was well preserved, with fair and delicate skin, a full and rounded bosom, and straight, slender legs. If one could ignore the face, such an enchanting body would be hard not to fantasize about. Everyone present was male and felt somewhat embarrassed as it was the first time they were gathered to observe a woman’s body.

Liu Pinrang coughed twice and glanced at Xiao Song out of the corner of his eye. Noticing that Xiao Song’s expression remained unchanged and he was unabashedly watching Ran Yan’s movements on the body, he couldn’t help but admire the man. It was no wonder that at such a young age, he held a high position—Liu Pinrang found Xiao Song’s unwavering composure to be out of his own reach.

Ran Yan checked the entire body carefully while speaking, "The deceased has a total of thirteen cuts on her face, with neat outward-turning edges and slight signs of inflammation. The depths of the wounds vary, but they are arranged in a relatively uniform manner. It is judged that the injuries were inflicted while she was alive, and very likely self-inflicted."

"How is that possible? Who would slash their own face like that?" Feng Sanxun immediately questioned. He believed it was a murder, and if this could be casually overturned, his reputation in Suzhou City would plummet.

Liu Pinrang had also always thought that Cui Mei died by murder, and he asked in confusion, "Why would that be?"

"First of all, apart from the knife wounds on her face and the strangulation mark on her neck, there are no other obvious marks on the body. If someone else had been responsible, how could the deceased have just lain still and let someone else slice her face? At the very least, the murderer would have had to hold her down strongly, and the force used would not have been small, so how could there be no traces of it?" Ran Yan explained.

Feng Sanxun rebutted coldly, "If the murderer tightly wrapped her in a blanket, making her incapable of moving her limbs, it’s quite possible to produce such a phenomenon."

Ran Yan nodded, "Indeed, that’s possible, but I suspect she harmed herself for another reason. Because people feel pain, when one is cutting themselves to commit suicide or self-harm, they would feel pain, and the strength of the cut would lighten once it hurts. As a result, the initial cut is deep and the lifting of the blade is light, leading to varying depths in the wounds. If there are multiple cuts, they tend to be arranged in a relatively even pattern. Look at Cui Mei’s wounds on her face, they precisely match this pattern."

"But why would she harm herself if everything was fine?" Feng Sanxun asked with a frown.

"Everything was fine?" Ran Yan looked at him, her voice flat, "People often engage in extreme pain, self-mutilation, self-harm, and self-torture due to emotional distress, and their psychological state during such acts can’t be measured by the standards of ordinary people’s psychology. Surely you’ve also discovered that she was nearly three months pregnant. She was a musician at Cai Xiu Hall, not a prostitute, so why did she suddenly become pregnant? Moreover, she had three raspberry-like sores in her vulva, clearly infected with venereal disease, something that should not have happened to her. Of course, currently, there are only some indications that she hurt herself; to be certain, we’ll need to wait until after the autopsy."

Feng Sanxun was stunned. As a forensic doctor with decades of experience, he had performed autopsies on few bodies, firstly because the families of the deceased would not allow it, and secondly, unless there was significant trauma, such as a ruptured liver, it couldn’t be assured that the autopsy would reveal the cause of death. This was basically the case with all forensic doctors in the Great Tang. Could dissecting a young lady truly reveal anything? Feng Sanxun was skeptical, so he held his tongue and waited to see what would happen.

Since the case involved hanging, Ran Yan started the autopsy from the marks on the neck. As soon as she made an incision and exposed the muscle tissue under the skin of the deceased’s neck, she immediately found bleeding in the tissues under the skin and within the muscles. Ran Yan’s hands didn’t stop moving, but she felt compelled to explain to the onlookers, lest only she understood the significance, "Gentlemen, look here, there is bleeding between the skin and muscle. This is one of the indications of death by hanging."

As she spoke, Ran Yan used tweezers to point out the areas of bleeding to everyone, then cut into parts of the neck that were not affected by the hanging, allowing them to make comparisons.

Having done all this, Ran Yan looked up sharply and locked eyes with a pair of shiny black pupils. She paused slightly and saw Xiao Song nodding with interest. Feng Sanxun was initially astonished to see Ran Yan’s proficient use of the knife, and though he was reluctant to show it on his face, he was secretly thrilled as he listened carefully to her explanation.

The others were pale with faces turning green, lips tightly sealed to prevent vomiting and losing composure, even Xiao Song’s guard looked uncomfortable.

As long as some understood, that was enough for Ran Yan to continue her deeper exploration, cutting near the hyoid bone, she said, "The transverse cervical artery is ruptured, the hyoid bone is fractured, and there are petechiae and congestion under the mucous membrane of the posterior pharyngeal wall..."

Ran Yan, while speaking, pointed out these spots to them one by one, knowing that even if the rest could not bear to watch, at least Feng Sanxun and Xiao Song would.

The autopsy blade continued downward, peeling away the attached muscles to reveal stark white bones, "Cervical vertebrae fractured, dislocated, and showing signs of bleeding."

After inspecting these, Ran Yan did not stop. She immediately started dissecting the thoracoabdominal region. The knife in her hand moved as if alive, controlled superbly. The precision of where to cut and how deep was remarkable; a single incision opened the skin and subcutaneous fat without damaging the internal organs.

Xiao Song’s gaze involuntarily shifted to Ran Yan’s face. (To be continued. If you like this work, welcome to Qidian (qidian.com) to vote with your recommendation ticket and monthly ticket. Your support is my greatest motivation.)

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