Chapter 136 - 136 133 Reconstruct the Scene

Words : 1033 Updated : Sep 17th, 2025

136: Chapter 133 Reconstruct the Scene 136: Chapter 133 Reconstruct the Scene 2 a.m. There are no streetlights, and occasionally a car passes by on the road, its headlights glaring, its noise grating. In the sky, a few more stars than can be seen from the city center dot the expanse. However, few people bother to look up, and even fewer have the leisure to count them. Even the children are too preoccupied with their studies to care. The air still carries hints of a sweltering heat—not the actual temperature but more an atmosphere of restlessness. It’s as if those workers coming off the late shift all wear expressions of utter exhaustion. The vendors selling late-night snacks by the road all have stony faces, half-heartedly soliciting passersby before wearily retracting their arms. Stray dogs loitering around hardly bother begging for food from the people passing by since the enthusiasm and initiative to feed them are lacking at this hour, and the dogs are unwilling to risk begging for attention. Among those passing by, many are glued to their phone screens; some ride electric scooters, still holding phones, steering erratically without care, occasionally losing balance and stopping by the roadside to check their phones before moving on. In the yard of the scavenger, glaring white lights have been switched on. Ordinarily, this would attract many onlookers, yet most just snap a photo and leave, not even interested enough to stay and watch. There are too many hot topics, too many “melons” to dig into, and everyone is too busy to pay attention. Whatever happens in the urban village, locals hardly care. Those who like to post on social media tend to avoid tagging the urban village as their location. The death of a scavenging elder didn’t stir any waves. Jiang Yuan couldn’t help but recall life in Jiang Village before its demolition. Back then, though everyone was poor, there was indeed an abundance of time. Being both lazy and poor somehow gave off a relaxed and cheerful vibe. Life in the urban village of Longli County, however, is different; here, people are not only poor but also lack time. The entire urban village looks like what is left after an eviction. There’s no hope in sight. The air is saturated with weariness and helplessness. Young entrepreneurs returning to their hometowns gain little besides the proximity to their families. Jiang Yuan sits under a tree, drinks a bottle of water, but still feels exhausted. However, he’s young and doesn’t feel like he’s about to drop dead, so he should be able to make it through another all-nighter. Jiang Yuan looks at the technicians from the Criminal Science and Technology Squadron of Longli County not far away and feels a sense of helplessness. They work diligently, busily scurrying about like ants in a colony, yet their work seems to have no end. Jiang Yuan can’t help but sigh. The skills of these technicians, at best, might reach LV0.8. If they are diligent enough, the likelihood of finding the murderer’s DNA within a specified area is quite high, assuming the perpetrator actually left behind DNA. However, human energy is limited, especially when focusing on meticulous, minute tasks for extended periods of time. It’s a challenge. The small yard of the scavenger amplifies the difficulty as if it were cubed. Had this been any other case, it might not have been so apparent. An ordinary house, an ordinary husband beats his ordinary wife to death—such a domestic environment usually operates at a 2D level. If the crime occurred in a house with full custom features, at most it would equate to a 3D level. Assuming it cost 150,000 yuan to fully customize the home, committing murder therein would merely waste an additional 50,000 yuan of the police department’s budget, at most. But what about the structure of the scavenging elder’s small yard? It’s 4D! Not only does it have a plane and height, the items within it also bear blood and DNA evidence. That is to say, when cleaning up evidence in the scavenger’s yard, you can’t just wipe the surface; you need to pick up the complex objects and clean the insides too. The place where the scavenging elder was beaten saw items repeatedly struck, each impact overlaying previous evidence, creating a staggering level of complexity. To be even more thorough, one should consider the element of time, as different objects fell at different moments, with varying sequences, potentially contaminating the evidence differently at each moment. Lastly, and most importantly, even if these LV0.8 technicians could wipe away the murderer’s DNA, proving whether it was contaminated on the day of the incident or beforehand is challenging. If it were up to Jiang Yuan, with his LV4 crime scene investigation skills, he might have some ways to distinguish, but for technicians below LV1, it’s pointless to even contemplate. Moreover, even if Jiang Yuan had LV4 crime scene investigation skills, he wouldn’t want to use them for such differentiation. It’s too complex, how to explain it during court proceedings to judges and prosecutors? So, the best method of proof, Jiang Yuan thinks, is still to focus on bloodstains and the murder weapon. To put it bluntly, even though these men are now wiping DNA to the point of exhaustion, bending over until their bodies are almost crooked, the usefulness of their efforts is more difficult to establish than the DNA cleaning itself. Jiang Yuan decides to rescue them... and in doing so, save himself as well. Jiang Yuan returns to the scavenger’s small yard, stands at the entrance, and looks at the busy technicians. He clears his throat and says, “I have an idea.” A group of technicians, who have become numb to their work, look at Jiang Yuan with lifeless eyes. “I want to prioritize finding bloodstain evidence to see if we can find blood left by the murderer.” Seeing everyone looking his way, Jiang Yuan continues: “If that’s not feasible, we can also use bloodstain pattern analysis to determine which objects at the scene the murderer might have touched, which would narrow down the range for DNA testing.”

Chapter 136 - 136 133 Reconstruct the Scene

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