Chapter 822 - 692: Accident

Chapter 822: Chapter 692: Accident

Chang Erbing’s eyes flickered slightly as he committed this information to memory.

He exchanged a few more perfunctory words with the buzz-cut man, then, ignoring the other’s repeated attempts to dissuade him, insisted he still wanted Jia Zhuang to do the renovation.

minutes later.

Chang Erbing and his people appeared in a mid-range apartment building and found the door of the unit Jia Zhuang was renting.

They knocked for a long time, but there was no response from inside.

Chang Erbing motioned with his hand. The burly constable behind him stepped back half a step, then suddenly slammed a vicious kick near the lock.

With a loud "bang," the lock broke and the door flew open.

As soon as the door opened, a faint rotten stench that had been blocked by the door wafted out.

Chang Erbing’s heart tightened at once. He immediately reached for his gun in alarm, at the same time ordering his men to enter first and check the place.

The interior of the apartment was relatively tidy, with no obvious signs of fighting or rummaging; the items in the living room were arranged almost overly neatly.

Holding their breath, they followed the increasingly distinct stench of decay, carefully moving toward the bathroom.

The bathroom door was ajar. Chang Erbing gently pushed it open.

They saw a middle-aged man, completely naked and gone soft with middle-aged flab, collapsed in a large bathtub.

His head was tilted back, the back of his skull immersed in a pool of blood that had already turned dark red and black. The blood had run along the edge of the tub down onto the tiled floor.

On the floor beside the bathtub lay a slippery bar of soap.

The shower hadn’t been turned off and was still spraying water, splashing noisily as it rinsed the floor and diluted the bloodstains.

At first glance, the scene looked very much like an accident—he slipped on the soap while showering, fell, and smashed the back of his head hard on the hard edge of the tub, bleeding out and dying.

Chang Erbing’s eyes went wide. "Dead?! And... an accident?"

hours later, inside the autopsy room of the Patrol Office’s forensic department.

Bai Ye and Qin Liang had just finished a preliminary dissection of a limbless unidentified corpse and hadn’t even had time to catch their breath when they heard wheels rolling behind them.

They turned their heads to see six more gurneys being pushed in one after another, lined up neatly beside the cold row of mortuary slabs.

The six corpses, without exception, were covered with white shrouds.

The first body was Jia Zhuang’s, and the other five were exactly the renovation workers under Jia Zhuang.

Based on the preliminary scene surveys, Chang Erbing’s suspicions were:

Jia Zhuang: slipped in the bathroom, back-of-head impact causing death (suspected).

Workers A, B, C: found in the shared apartment they rented; there were several bottles of "Awakening Liquid" on the table, suspected overdose.

Worker D: using a phone while it was charging, suspected phone leakage, electrocuted to death.

Worker E: vomited after getting drunk, vomit blocked airway, died of suffocation.

How to put it...

Looked at individually, each scene was very much like accidental death, but in such a short time, a project manager and all his renovation workers under him died together.

Even a ghost would know there’s something fishy here.

However, the Patrol Office has to investigate using scientific evidence, so the final conclusion still hinges on the medical examiner’s autopsy reports.

Qin Liang took the autopsy list, pulled back the white sheets one by one, and his pupils suddenly contracted.

It wasn’t that these corpses scared him. He’d been doing autopsies for decades; he’d handled hundreds if not thousands of bodies, and there isn’t a manner of death he hasn’t seen.

To be blunt, aside from the occasional "gifts" from his good friend, which are somewhat original and can make his well-tempered heart beat faster, the vast majority of corpses in his eyes are nothing more than "items" requiring him to complete the work process—utterly unremarkable.

It’s just that...

Bai Ye followed behind him and also gave them a rough look, then stepped forward and firmly shut the door to the autopsy room.

He turned his head to look at Qin Liang, who was standing there lost in thought, and asked in a low voice:

"What is it, is there something wrong with these bodies? Did you notice something off?"

Qin Liang licked his somewhat dry lips, opened his mouth wanting to say something, but swallowed the words at the last second. In the end he only slowly shook his head and said:

"No... nothing special. At first glance, the causes of death all seem to point to accidents."

Bai Ye was taken aback for a moment at this, his expression growing even more perplexed. He couldn’t help but lower his voice and remind him:

"But... but that’s not the direction the Patrol Office seems to be leaning toward, right? When they brought the bodies over, their faces were pretty grim."

Qin Liang didn’t answer right away. He silently walked over to the sink and very slowly washed his hands again, using the process to sort through his thoughts.

He couldn’t very well tell Bai Ye that over the past two days a Prison Guard from the Second Prison had been sounding him out, asking him about some forensic medicine knowledge.

And back then, in the spirit of friendly exchange and mutual professional improvement between colleagues, he’d given a rather detailed and professional explanation.

The key procedural details covered in that explanation and the manner-of-death characteristics presently displayed by these six corpses—he couldn’t say they were simply similar. They were practically identical, okay!

Qin Liang’s heart gave a jolt:

"So this is putting what you just learned straight into practice, selling fresh knowledge hot off the press, and at such efficiency?!"

But the next second, he immediately spat mentally several times:

"Bah, bah, bah... coincidence, it has to be coincidence! There are tens of thousands of accidental deaths in this world; it’s perfectly normal for a few cases to share similar features!"

Although the person who’d consulted him wasn’t Feng Mu, the Second Prison nowadays, under Feng Mu’s "universal love," had long since fused into one big family with no blood ties.

Once you walk through the gates of the Second Prison, you’re family!

And family members help each other, share resources, and make progress together~

So it’s only natural—indeed, downright wonderful—for certain "professional knowledge" to circulate among "family members" and be "effectively applied."