Chapter Thirty-One: The Mysterious Wound

"Wait!" Just as Lin Ran was about to move forward, he noticed a white cloth strip on a distant pipe.

He walked over, put on rubber gloves, and picked it up. The cloth resembled a burial shroud, and it didn’t look as if it had been torn off, but rather yanked forcefully from something it was attached to. When a cloth is torn by hand, the force is uneven, and the edges are ragged. But this strip had clearly been ripped off in one go, with even force, forming a neat, long strip.

"This strip is strange! The whole sewer is filthy, yet this cloth is so clean!" Guo Ting looked curiously at the fabric Lin Ran was holding.

"Do you remember whether those bodies were wearing clothes when they jumped from the windows?" Lin Ran suddenly asked Guo Ting.

"Yes!" Guo Ting thought for a moment and replied. She distinctly remembered the bodies were clad in white garments as they leapt, almost like white dresses.

"That fits! If those corpse walkers really moved the bodies, they must have done it here. But why go to such lengths to remove the bodies? Is it just to destroy the evidence?" Lin Ran couldn’t make sense of why the bodies had been stolen.

At that moment, Guo Ting’s phone rang.

"Hello? Yes, this is Guo Ting. Okay, we’ll head over right away. Ran, there’s been a murder in the northern district!" Guo Ting looked gravely at Lin Ran.

"Has anyone gone to the scene?" Lin Ran frowned. How could there be a murder at this time?

"Yes, our colleagues in the North Branch have already secured the scene," Guo Ting nodded.

"Let’s go check it out! Put the strip in an evidence bag and bring it back." Lin Ran handed the cloth to Guo Ting; she took out a transparent bag and sealed it, and they left the sewer.

The three of them quickly drove a police car to the North Branch. By the time they arrived at the crime scene, the local officers were already waiting.

"Hello, you must be Lin Ran? I’m Li Feng, head of the North Branch." A policeman approached as Lin Ran got out of the car.

"Hello, I’m Lin Ran. Let’s head to the scene," Lin Ran replied, shaking his hand briefly.

"Of course, follow me," Li Feng nodded.

The crime scene was in a small, remote village on the outskirts of the northern district. The North Branch was a local station, understaffed and underequipped, mostly handling civil disputes.

The body was found on a mountain outside the village. To preserve the scene, the officers had cordoned off the entire mountain.

Lin Ran carefully avoided the path, so as not to disturb any footprints, and approached the corpse. There were clear signs of a struggle. The victim had bruises of varying severity and the body appeared shriveled. There were two puncture wounds on the neck, resembling snake bites, and two clear scratches on the chest, likely from fingernails.

Fan Beixiao took out a camera and snapped some photographs for the record.

"Where’s the person who reported this?" Lin Ran asked Li Feng.

Li Feng spoke to a nearby officer, and soon, an elderly man in his sixties arrived with a policeman.

"Officer! I have no idea what happened! This afternoon I went up the mountain to check my rabbit traps. On my way back, I heard a scream, then the sounds of a fight! At first, I thought it was just some village kids scuffling, but when I arrived, I found him dead here!" The old man slapped his thigh and squatted on the ground, the rabbit he’d caught tossed aside.

Lin Ran glanced at the old man and the rabbit, convinced he was telling the truth.

"Sir, we’re just trying to understand what happened," Lin Ran said gently. The old man was clearly agitated, and any harshness might make him clam up.

"Young man, I’ve told you everything I know! That’s how I found things when I arrived," the old man replied.

"Thank you. You can head home now. Beixiao, see him off," Lin Ran nodded, knowing the old man had said all he could.

"Thank you, young man! You folks work harder than we do!" The old man thanked them profusely and headed down the mountain.

"Ran, these wounds look bizarre! They seem more like scratches from human fingernails," Guo Ting said, shining her flashlight and leaning closer to Lin Ran.

"Why human nails and not an animal’s claws? If it was an animal, wouldn’t the wounds match those on the victim’s neck?" Lin Ran asked.

"Look—if an animal scratched someone, the wound would be wide at the outside and narrow deeper in, forming a triangular groove. But the wounds on the victim are wide and not very deep," Guo Ting explained.

"But a person couldn’t have that much strength! Human nails couldn’t tear through clothes," Li Feng interjected.

Lin Ran nodded. Both of them had valid points—these were the case’s two main mysteries.

"There are footprints here!" Just then, Fan Beixiao returned, shining his flashlight and taking pictures of the ground.

Lin Ran and Guo Ting hurried over to where he was photographing. There, they found a single footprint. Lin Ran frowned—it was odd. The mountain path was rough and heavily trodden by farmers, packed so hard that an average person’s weight wouldn’t leave any impression. That was why, despite the signs of a struggle, there were no footprints from the victim.

But this footprint was different—it was left by someone standing together, feet side by side, pressed half a centimeter deep into the earth. How much weight would it take to make a mark that deep?