Chapter 1410 - Conclusion

However, being queen of a monkey mountain wasn't so easy.

The working conditions in this time-space were truly hard for her to accept. She had brought several complete forensic toolkits and related spare parts, and had even managed to claim a certain share from the general material reserves. But even so, she was constantly plagued by shortages of equipment and materials.

Many things readily available in the old time-space simply didn't exist here. The stainless-steel autopsy table had become a tile-covered cement slab; there was no electric cranial saw, so she could only rely on her own arm strength to work a hand saw. Fortunately, after recruiting a few students, such rough, heavy labor was delegated to them.

The dissection knives that the Industrial Sector had laboriously produced were also far less effective than those from the old time-space—especially since the lack of stainless steel made cleaning and maintaining equipment painfully complicated. Even so, rust was unavoidable. Fortunately, cadaver dissection required no sterilization, so making do wasn't a critical issue—it just felt uncomfortable.

There weren't even plastic bags for the "waste" such as internal organs after dissection; she had to use cowhide paper bags coated with tung oil. Everything required making do with limited conditions. As for protective equipment, though crude, at least masks, isolation gowns, and safety goggles had been produced. But those safety goggles—flat glass lenses in leather frames—were really too heavy; every time she took them off, deep marks remained on her nose. And the essential latex gloves still couldn't be manufactured; they had to be carefully cleaned and disinfected for repeated use. The only thing that satisfied her was that the chemical factory could provide enough formaldehyde and other agents for preserving bodies.

Stingy Executive Committee—can't even come up with a standard set of dissection equipment, and they want me to be the Song Tixing of Australia-Song? But on second thought, the actual Song Tixing back then hadn't known the first thing about dissection, and her predecessors had solved cases without all these gadgets. What did she have to complain about?

Then came another bout of random thoughts, and this time her mind wandered even further afield—from whether she was truly a Han nationalist or a paid government shill wearing Han nationalist skin, to whether she should join the Huaxia Society or the House Party; from whether to support the Manchu Qing or Li Zicheng in bleeding the Ming Dynasty dry, to whether her relationship with the Young Officers' Club's Wei Aiwen and Zhang Bolin was friendship or love. Finally, when she got to wondering when she would finally lose her virginity, the food arrived.

The meal sent by Lei En's domestic secretary was quite lavish—especially the venison steak on the sizzling iron plate, heavily spiced and giving off an enticing aroma. Other dishes—stir-fried pheasant slices, stewed rabbit—were rare treats even in Lingao. But Su Wan showed no interest in any of it. She focused all her attention on a large bowl of vegetable salad and, without a word, simply pulled the bowl in front of her and began devouring it.

Lei En only nibbled. Chen Baibin sat at the table staring blankly, not eating a single bite. The entire table was filled with crunching sounds, as if rabbits were dining.

This woman can really eat! Lei En thought, watching her finish the entire bowl before finally looking up, tomato juice running down the corner of her mouth, still chewing on a carrot, and saying indistinctly: "Do you have potatoes?"

"Yes, yes." Ever since the successful cultivation of potatoes on Jeju Island, ships from Jeju always brought a good supply of fresh potatoes, dried potatoes, and potato flour. Kaohsiung had plenty.

"Make me a sauerkraut and potato soup!" Su Wan said loudly. "Extra potatoes!"

"We can't make sauerkraut here. How about vegetable and potato soup instead?"

Su Wan had no objection. Soon another large bowl arrived—not a single drop of oil, with green leafy vegetables floating atop the potatoes. She slurped it all down without complaint.

After finishing, the domestic secretary cleared the table and brewed fresh tea.

"This is real Taiwanese oolong tea..." Lei En poured for her. "I grow and ferment it myself in my tea garden here—unfortunately, it's not Dongding."

"I can't drink anymore." Su Wan waved her hand. "Let's talk work—give me a toothpick."

Though she had eaten vigorously, her brain hadn't rested for a moment even while her stomach worked hard. She had been continuously summarizing the various findings from the autopsy.

"What the Executive Committee really wants is to find out whether this person is another transmigrator." Su Wan picked her teeth, one leg already hugged to her chest. "Right now, it's hard to say..."

"But didn't you just say it was very likely?" Lei En asked. "That pen-grip evidence? Who else but a modern person would hold a pen that way?"

"Don't forget that our modern way of holding pens was actually introduced from Europe." Su Wan pulled a large handkerchief from her pocket and wiped her mouth. "I hadn't noticed this before. But last week I was teaching an anatomy class at the Ministry of Health. The cadaver we used was a Spaniard who'd died of illness in the detention camp. He'd been a ship's clerk or something while alive, and his fingers had similar calluses. It was unusual enough that I specifically cut it off and made a specimen..."

Chen Baibin hastily interrupted before she could elaborate further on dismemberment and preservation: "Let's not discuss that—so you can't confirm it?"

"That's right." Su Wan nodded. "Also, I just thought of another issue. Since the widespread adoption of computers, except for students who still have a lot of handwriting work and a few specific occupations, pen-grip calluses on modern people have become very faint. Some people don't have them at all. So using this to make a judgment is obviously insufficient evidence."

"But he was a yellow-race person, and look at his photograph—" Chen Baibin took a photograph from his folder and handed it to her. "This is a Chinese face. If he was a native of this time-space, he shouldn't have used European writing methods." Chen Baibin immediately realized his reasoning was too absolute, because their investigation reports mentioned that some merchants engaged in overseas trade and Ming Dynasty church personnel also used quill pens for writing—though such people were extremely few.

Su Wan studied the photograph. "Good-looking young man. And there's one more thing: I didn't find any vaccination scars on his arm."

Modern Chinese people—older ones generally had cowpox scars; younger ones had BCG scars. BCG scars were usually not very obvious, but they could still be identified through dissection.

"He has no surgical scars, no vaccination scars, no fillings or tooth extraction marks." Su Wan said. "He's as pristine as a native of this time-space. Speaking of teeth, there's another piece of evidence."

She took out a cowhide paper bag and removed a clay dental mold box containing the bite impression of Hao Yuan's teeth.

"I took a bite impression and also examined the wear on his tooth enamel—this is absolutely not the teeth of a modern person."

Though modern people had high rates of cavities due to greater sugar intake, because food was generally processed extensively and people rarely ate very hard foods or gnawed on bones, tooth enamel wear was much lighter than in ancient times. In medieval society, grain was milled using stone tools, and the resulting flour often contained large amounts of tiny sand and grit particles. Even the upper class who ate the finest foods had much more enamel wear than modern people.

"This person's tooth wear was quite severe—not only worse than modern people, but worse even than the wealthy individuals' corpses I've dissected."

"Finally, there are those strange thick calluses on the knees." Su Wan was finally thirsty; she drained the ox-eye cup of oolong tea in one gulp. "I really can't explain them."

Taken together, this evidence basically confirmed that Hao Yuan was not a modern person. But he was clearly also not quite like a native Chinese person of this time-space.

At this point, Chen Baibin could only grasp at one last hope:

"Forensic Examiner Su, can you verify whether this corpse is the person in the photograph?"

Lei En thought: The face is severely damaged, so from a certain angle such suspicion is reasonable. The problem is: the body was recovered directly from the scene by personnel from the Hangzhou Station Security Department and Special Investigation Team, led by an Elder—such suspicion practically accuses one of those two of being a traitor.

No wonder people said the Political Security General Administration showed no mercy to anyone. Lei En groused inwardly but said nothing.

"No problem. Though the face is badly damaged, I can still do a facial reconstruction." Su Wan nodded, then asked: "Do you have a pot here? Doesn't have to be big—just big enough to boil a human head."

Chen Baibin turned pale again. Lei En said: "Not a specialized one. But I can have someone bring a large new clay pot." As soon as he finished speaking, Chen Baibin had already risen and left the table.

"Take it down to the basement in a bit, along with a charcoal stove and so on. It'll take quite a while to boil." Su Wan said. "I'll also need some clay and some thin wooden sticks."

Su Wan was busy all afternoon and obtained a cleaned skull. She carefully reconstructed the facial model—by rights this work should have been done by a specialist, but her county forensic center's staffing had all been consumed by administrative positions; there had been no opening for one, so she had been sent to learn it and taken on the job herself.

The reconstruction was not perfect, but comparing it with the photograph, the main features all matched. This was indeed Hao Yuan himself.

Chen Baibin was dumbfounded. He had been certain Hao Yuan was a modern transmigrator, but the forensic conclusion leaned toward "native of this time-space." This made the already murky case even more confusing.

He returned to the inspection team's office. Yi Fan and the others were not there. As a member of the team, he had little work to do in Kaohsiung. The task Wu Mu had given him was mainly to clarify Hao Yuan's identity, but after all this, nothing had been clarified. How was he supposed to report to the Bureau?

Over and over he flipped through the illustrated autopsy report Su Wan had given him, going back and forth through all the intelligence about Hao Yuan in his possession several times, but still could not reach a conclusion.