Chapter 100: Top Ten Unsolved Mysteries (2/2)

“Wait a minute, Empress? Am I like Wu Zetian to you?” she asked me angrily.

“But Wu Zetian was rumored to be a beautiful woman!” I quickly explained.

“Fine, I’ll accept that as a compliment,” she laughed.

I put my ear on the body and began to listen using the Organ Echolocation technique. I put a sheet of paper between my ear and the corpse for hygiene. Generally, there would be some changes in the internal organs of a burned victim, such as congestion of the lungs, blisters, swelling of the kidneys, etc.

But these two victims showed no such characteristics. Judging from the changes of the internal organs, I determined the time of death to be about ten days ago.

I asked Huang Xiaotao to hand me a pair of scissors. When I cut the clothes of one of the deceased, I made a shocking discovery. The victim’s underwear and burnt skin were completely adhered together, making it almost impossible to take off.

I came to a conclusion, “The victims were burned in their clothes!”

”But their clothes are not damaged at all!” Xiaotao cried in amazement. “Could this be a case of spontaneous human combustion?”

Spontaneous human combustion was one of the world’s top ten unsolved mysteries. One example was when an old man was lying in bed and sleeping and his children caught the smell of flesh burning. When the blanket was pulled away, half of the old man’s body had burned to ashes, yet the blanket was intact.

There had been several reports of spontaneous combustion in this country too. The victims were out shopping. Suddenly, they just burst into flames. After the passers-by used water to extinguish the fire, the victims did not move. When their bodies were dissected, they found that the insides of the bodies had burned into gray mass.

There was also a woman who suddenly fell down when she was praying in the church. The people around her didn't find anything out of the ordinary at first. Later, they found that smoke was coming out of her nose and mouth, and to their surprise, she had been burned, and her internal organs were all burned to crisp. Yet, her skin was still intact.

When I thought of this point and compared it to the mysterious conditions of these two bodies, I sighed and exclaimed, “I’m not sure. It’s hard to say!”

Xiaotao smiled. “This is my first time seeing you so stumped. It’s quite a sight!”

“Stop with your schadenfreude! It’s not me who’ll be reprimanded if this case isn’t solved!”

“Okay, okay. Anyway, where’s your buddy?”

“I told him to go back to school and bring me...” I began to explain, but speaking of the devil, Dali appeared before I could finish my sentence. He rushed into the room and stopped to greet Xiaotao cordially when he saw her, then handed my bag to me.

I took out the Organ Echolocation rod and listened carefully to the body again. But I still found nothing new.

This time, I had fixed the Autopsy Umbrella, so I opened it up and got ready to check the body for any handprints or fingerprints. Dali held up the UV lamp for me.

The ultraviolet light shone through the red umbrella, and the body was flooded with rays of dim red light. I slowly turned the umbrella, but didn’t find any signs of handprints or fingerprints on the bodies. I turned the bodies over and checked for some fingerprints on the clothes, but none was left behind. I called for Xiaotao to take pictures anyway.

I shut my Autopsy Umbrella and grumbled, “When will I run into a murderer who leaves fingerprints on the body?”

“You say that,” Xiaotao remarked, “but deep down you’d feel bored if you encountered an ordinary case, wouldn’t you?”

I smiled and replied, “How do you know me so well?”

“Hmph! You’re so transparent I can see right through you!”

Dali stared at us and listened to our exchange with fascination. “Jeez, both of you! We’re at a crime scene! Stop teasing each other like that!”

Xiaotao’s almond-shaped eyes rounded and she yelled, “Shut up! Or I’ll put handcuffs on you, I swear to God!”

“Ah, forgive me Xiaotao-jiejie!” he pleaded.

I then went to another room and examined it. I found some fingerprints and hair strands near the two sleeping bags and immediately collected them.

I turned the red umbrella and kneeled onto to the ground. The footprints on the ground were very messy, but I could still identify them all. I told Xiaotao to take pictures of them so we could compare them later. There were two pairs of footprints, which should’ve been left by the shoes worn by the victims. The footprints painted a picture of the victims encountering something terrifying here which made them panic and run out to the other room. But before they could escape, they were both burned alive.

Just then, we heard a scream from downstairs!

1. The only officially recognized in her own right in China’s long history. Xiaotao took offence because she was rumored to be cruel and tyrannical.

2. When a living body without any external source of combustion.

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