Chapter 209: The Conclusion

However, being the king of this monkey mountain wasn’t so easy.

The working conditions of this time were truly unacceptable to her. She had brought several complete forensic toolkits and related spare parts with her, and had even secured a share in the general material reserves, but even so, she was often plagued by shortages of equipment and materials.

Many things that were readily available in her old world were gone. The stainless steel autopsy table was replaced by a tile-covered concrete one, and there was no electric craniotomy saw, forcing her to rely on her own arm strength to pull a saw. Fortunately, after recruiting a few students, she delegated this rough work to them.

The dissection tools painstakingly made by the industrial sector were far from being as user-friendly as those from her old world. The lack of stainless steel, in particular, made cleaning and maintaining the equipment very complicated, and even so, the problem of rust was unavoidable. Fortunately, disinfection wasn’t a major issue for autopsies, so it was manageable, but it still made her very uncomfortable.

There weren’t even plastic bags for disposing of “waste” like organs after an autopsy; they had to use oiled kraft paper bags… Everything had to be done simply and crudely. As for protective equipment, although it was a bit rudimentary, they had at least managed to produce masks, isolation gowns, and safety glasses. However, the safety glasses, with their flat glass lenses and leather frames, were so heavy that they always left deep marks on her nose when she took them off. The indispensable latex gloves were also a persistent problem; they had to be carefully cleaned and disinfected for repeated use. The only thing that satisfied her was that the chemical plant could provide enough formalin and other chemicals to preserve the bodies.

“The stingy Executive Committee can’t even provide a standard set of autopsy equipment, and they expect me to be the Song Ci of the Australian Song Dynasty?” But then she thought, Song Ci himself didn’t even perform autopsies, and my predecessors didn’t have all this stuff either, yet they still solved cases. What am I complaining about?

Her mind wandered again, this time even more aimlessly. From whether she was a true Han chauvinist or a fifty-center disguised as one, to whether she should join the Huaxia Society or the Zhai Party. From whether to support the Manchus or Li Chuang in bleeding the Ming Dynasty dry, to whether her relationship with the young military officers Wei Aiwen and Zhang Bolin was friendship or love. Finally, as she pondered when her virginity would finally end, the food arrived.

The meal brought by Lei En’s personal secretary was sumptuous. The venison steak, served sizzling on a hot iron plate and seasoned with a generous amount of spices, was particularly fragrant. Other dishes, like stir-fried pheasant slices and stewed rabbit, were delicacies rarely seen in Lin’gao. But Su Wan was not interested in any of them. She focused her attention on a large bowl of vegetable salad.

As she ate, she got carried away and pulled the large salad bowl in front of her, munching away without a care for anyone else.

Lei En ate sparingly. Chen Baibin sat at the table, his eyes glazed over, not having eaten a single bite. The table was filled with the sound of a rabbit having a feast.

This woman can really eat, Lei En thought, watching her finish the entire bowl of salad before looking up. Tomato juice dripped from the corner of her mouth, and she was still chewing on a carrot. “Got any potatoes?” she mumbled.

“Yes, yes,” Lei En replied. Since the successful introduction of potatoes from Jeju Island, ships from there always brought a large supply of fresh potatoes, dried potatoes, and potato flour. Kaohsiung had an ample supply.

“Bring me a sauerkraut and potato soup!” Su Wan said loudly. “Lots of potatoes!”

“We can’t make sauerkraut here. How about a green vegetable and potato soup?”

Su Wan had no objection. A large bowl of potato soup with green vegetables floating on top, with not a speck of oil, was quickly brought out. Su Wan, not being a picky eater, slurped it all down.

After she finished eating and drinking, the personal secretary cleared the table and brewed fresh tea.

“This is genuine Taiwanese oolong tea…” Lei En said as he poured her a cup. “From my own tea garden here. I grow it and ferment it myself. A pity it’s not Dongding.”

“I can’t drink any more,” Su Wan waved her hand. “Let’s talk business. Get me a toothpick.”

Despite her ferocious eating, her mind hadn’t rested a bit while her stomach was working hard. She had been continuously summarizing and analyzing the various findings from the autopsy.

“The Executive Committee’s intention is basically to figure out if this person is another transmigrator,” Su Wan said, picking her teeth, one leg now propped up against her chest. “Right now, it’s a bit hard to say…”

Lei En said, “Didn’t you just say it was very likely? The evidence of his pen grip? Besides modern people, who would hold a pen like that?”

“Don’t forget that our modern way of holding a pen was actually introduced from Europe,” Su Wan said, taking out a large handkerchief from her pocket to wipe her mouth. “I didn’t notice this before. But last week, I was teaching an anatomy class at the Ministry of Health, and the cadaver we used was a Spaniard who had died of illness in the detention camp. He used to be a clerk on a ship, and his fingers had similar calluses. Because it was quite rare, I even made a specimen of it…”

Chen Baibin quickly cut off her further elaboration on dissection and preservation. “Let’s not talk about that. So you can’t be sure?”

“That’s right,” Su Wan nodded. “And I just thought of another problem. Since the popularization of computers, except for students who still have a lot of written assignments and a few other professions, the calluses from holding a pen are no longer very obvious in modern people. Some don’t have them at all. So using this as a basis for judgment is clearly not reliable.”

“But he’s of the yellow race, and look at his photo,” Chen Baibin said, taking a photo from his folder and handing it to her. “This is the face of a Chinese person. If he were a native of this time, he shouldn’t be using a European style of writing.” Chen Baibin immediately realized his deduction was too absolute. The Political Security Bureau’s investigation report had mentioned that some merchants engaged in foreign trade and some church personnel in the Ming Dynasty also used quill pens, though they were very few.

Su Wan took the photo. “The young man is quite handsome. One more thing: I found no vaccination scars on his arm.”

Modern Chinese people of an older generation generally have a smallpox vaccination scar, while the younger ones have a BCG scar. The BCG scar is usually not very obvious, but it can still be identified through an autopsy.

“He has no signs of surgery, no vaccination marks, no fillings or extractions,” Su Wan said. “He’s as ‘original’ as a native of this time. Speaking of teeth, there’s another piece of evidence.”

She took out a kraft paper bag and from it, a clay dental impression box containing the bite mark of Hao Yuan’s teeth.

“I took a dental impression and also checked the wear on his tooth enamel. It’s definitely not the teeth of a modern person.”

Modern people have a high incidence of cavities due to higher sugar intake.

However, because food is generally highly processed, they rarely eat overly hard food or chew on bones. The wear on their tooth enamel is much lighter than that of ancient people. In the medieval period, grain was often ground with stone tools, and was often mixed with a large amount of tiny sand and stone particles. Even the upper class, who were meticulous about their food, had more severe enamel wear than modern people.

“This person’s tooth wear is quite severe, not only more severe than modern people, but even more so than the bodies of several wealthy people I’ve dissected.”

“Finally, there are the strange, thick calluses on his knees,” Su Wan said, finally feeling thirsty and downing the oolong tea in her bull’s-eye cup in one gulp. “I really can’t explain it.”

All this evidence, taken together, basically confirmed that Hao Yuan was not a modern person. However, he was clearly different from the native Chinese of this time.

Chen Baibin had to cling to one last hope:

“Forensic Scientist Su, can you verify if this body is the person in the photo?”

Lei En thought to himself, The facial damage to the body is severe, so from a certain perspective, this suspicion is reasonable. The problem is, the body was recovered directly from the scene by personnel from the Hangzhou Station’s security department and the special reconnaissance team, led by an Elder. Such a suspicion is tantamount to suggesting there’s a traitor in one of those groups.

No wonder they say the Political Security General Bureau is ruthless, Lei En grumbled inwardly, remaining silent.

“No problem. Although the face is severely damaged, we can still do a facial reconstruction,” Su Wan nodded, then asked, “Do you have a pot here? It doesn’t need to be too big, just large enough to boil a human head.”

Chen Baibin’s face turned pale again. Lei En said, “We don’t have a dedicated one. But I can have someone bring a new, large clay pot.” As he said this, Chen Baibin had already stood up and left the table.

“Take it to the basement in a bit, along with a charcoal stove and everything. It will take a while to cook,” Su Wan said. “I also need some clay and thin wooden sticks.”

Su Wan worked all afternoon and obtained a cleaned skull. She carefully reconstructed the facial model. This skill was supposed to be handled by a specialist, but the county-level forensic center where she used to work had used up all its staffing quotas on administrative positions. With no new positions available, she had to learn it herself.

The reconstruction was not perfect, but when compared with the photo, it was clear that the main features matched. It was Hao Yuan himself.

Chen Baibin was stunned. He had originally been convinced that Hao Yuan was a modern transmigrator, but the forensic conclusion leaned more towards “native of this time.” This made the already ambiguous 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 inspection team, he had little work to do in Kaohsiung. The task Wu Mu had given him was mainly to ascertain Hao Yuan’s identity. Now, after all this effort, he had found out nothing. How was he supposed to report back to the bureau?

He flipped through the illustrated autopsy report Su Wan had given him over and over again, and went through the intelligence he had on Hao Yuan back and forth several times, but still couldn’t reach a conclusion.