Chapter 198 - 198 190 Fragrance

Words : 1731 Updated : Sep 23rd, 2025

198: Chapter 190 Fragrance 198: Chapter 190 Fragrance The meeting room was shrouded in smoke, as if it were some celestial realm. In the corner, there were two pots of unnameable flowers with yellow leaves. The case analysis meeting was over quickly, mainly because there wasn’t much to analyze. Such matters are not made more useful by having more people. The autopsy report was uninspiring, and the conclusions given would require consuming vast resources to investigate. The information gathered from the investigation was insufficient, and no direction could be found for further inquiries. The squad leader could only urge everyone to continue working hard. In the end, after determining they should pursue the origin of a plastic bag, the meeting was essentially over. As everyone was dispersing, Liu Jinghui whispered to Jiang Yuan, “Let’s have a chat alone.” Wang Lan heard, glancing at Liu Jinghui. Liu Jinghui laughed, “If you want to join, feel free.” “Not going,” Wang Lan said with a wave of her hand and decisively left. Liu Jinghui went out first and waited for Jiang Yuan in the hallway before saying, “Let’s go eat something outside the police station. Chat about the corpse? What do you feel like eating?” Jiang Yuan, whose mind was also full of corpses, replied, “Frog.” Liu Jinghui didn’t react at first, then found a restaurant called Hop Hop Frog on the map and took a cab there. The restaurant served food quickly; no sooner had they ordered spicy bullfrogs than the dish was brought to their table. The chunks of frog, transformed by red chili peppers, became tender and tempting. Jiang Yuan picked up a piece and ate it, then another, spitting the bones onto a large flat porcelain plate. After a few bites, Jiang Yuan had arranged the frog bones on the plate to resemble the shape of a frog. Lifelike. Liu Jinghui, who wasn’t very hungry to begin with, lost his appetite even more at the sight and simply put down his chopsticks. “I’m not very optimistic about how the special case team is handling this,” he said. “Hmm? Why not?” Jiang Yuan hadn’t expected Liu Jinghui to bring up the special case team first. Liu Jinghui had been bottling up his thoughts for the past couple of days and said, “Qinghe City Bureau doesn’t have experience with this kind of case. The effort put forth isn’t sufficient and could easily mess things up.” Jiang Yuan responded, “I don’t understand.” “From my experience, with these murder cases, even though it starts with an eight-year-old case, once it is discovered, once it comes to light, we must hit the ground running with the force of thunder. We need an investigation even more intense than those for current cases. Otherwise, it can easily go south.” “Why is that?” “Because this isn’t considered a cold case. It’s like the case was hidden, along with the murderer, and once hidden, it could be for a decade. Now that the case has been exposed, it suggests that there’s been a change, or even a mistake made by the killer. Therefore, we must seize this change or mistake, because the next opportunity might take another decade. I once had a case...” “The change that has occurred must be the drought,” Jiang Yuan said. Liu Jinghui shook his head, “Pull one hair and move the whole body. We know about the drought and the dried-up reservoir, does the murderer not know? He might even be planning his escape. If he left before the case was made public, how would we know? We might miss him because of that...” Jiang Yuan seemed to understand; simply put, Liu Jinghui wasn’t satisfied with the Qinghe City Criminal Police Detachment’s investigation direction and methods. But from Jiang Yuan’s perspective, he didn’t see any difference in speed making an impact. Since ancient times, there’s been a saying: the slow have their sorrow, the quick their joy, the true path lies in combining strength and softness. Liu Jinghui may have a point in his dilemma, but Jiang Yuan couldn’t be concerned with these; he just earnestly ate his frog and then arranged the frog bones. After watching him assemble three frogs neatly and adorably, Liu Jinghui finally said, “Now, the biggest piece of evidence is the corpse itself. Wouldn’t you want to look for trace evidence or something? I can have the provincial lab cooperate.” The forensic doctor responsible for the case was Wang Lan, but in Liu Jinghui’s view, such a high-profile case could not be resolved by seniority. Jiang Yuan, while eating his frog, said, “The body bags were soaked through; the organic material inside is mostly decomposed, and as for inorganic... the body fluids have been sampled. We can run a mass spectrometry, but I doubt it will be very useful.” Liu Jinghui couldn’t help but sigh. “It’s just the start. Identifying the source of the corpses will happen step by step. At the moment we have six bodies, and I can’t say we’ll be able to identify each one, but the odds are good for identifying two or three more,” Jiang Yuan comforted him. Liu Jinghui was slightly surprised, “With bodies five and six headless, I thought there was little hope.” “It doesn’t affect much. If necessary, we’ll conduct a broad search just like with the first one.” “I’m not worried about a broad range—as long as it can be traced, I support you,” Liu Jinghui immediately replied. Jiang Yuan nodded and said, “I’ll conduct a more detailed investigation when I get back...” “However, even so...” Jiang Yuan glanced at him, kept silent, and continued to eat his frog. Liu Jinghui was talkative and relied on reasoning for a living. With so many thoughts pent up inside him, he couldn’t hold back. Sure enough, Liu Jinghui soon commented, “I’m not optimistic about starting from interpersonal relationships. With so many dead, it’s abnormal. It’s impossible for a killer to murder so many acquaintances...” His last sentence highlighted a fact: when there are too many victims, it creates noise, and the accuracy of deductions based on their social circles decreases. Liu Jinghui went on and on about his concerns. For those in criminal investigation, emotions can be very unstable during an investigation. Some people, not good at expressing themselves, just smoke incessantly; some devour packs of instant noodles. Then there are people like Liu Jinghui, who are reticent around strangers but become talkative around those they know well. After listening for a while, Jiang Yuan finished the pot of frogs and casually reminded Liu Jinghui, “The boss skimped on the frogs.” “How do you know...” Liu Jinghui stopped mid-sentence. Indeed, the frog bones were meticulously aligned on the big plate, with disproportionately more upper bodies than lower halves... “Boss!” Liu Jinghui called out loudly, ready to have a serious talk with the owner. The owner came over and saw the row of frog carcasses on the table, resembling fallen gangsters, and quickly, “Our frogs are pre-chopped before cooking. How about I give you a 15% discount?” With the money saved, Liu Jinghui bought a pack of Zhonghua cigarettes. His mood slightly uplifted, he eagerly escorted Jiang Yuan to the morgue. ... In the autopsy room, several forensic doctors worked tirelessly piecing together bodies, their movements similar to Jiang Yuan’s frog assembly. Of course, Jiang Yuan was taller, more robust, and younger. He looked cooler when putting things together, hence the nickname “Cool Emergency Frog.” “Have you eaten?” Jiang Yuan entered the room and greeted everyone coolly. “I lost my appetite.” Doctor Ye, who had taken a day off, looked at the pot boiling bones and appeared utterly exhausted. “There is instant noodles outside. Why don’t you cook some first?” Having eaten his fill, Jiang Yuan decided to show some respect for the elderly. Doctor Ye asked unenthusiastically, “On which stove should I cook it?” Both burners, with fierce flames, were topped with pressure cookers, hissing without yielding an inch. Even for a forensic doctor, cooking noodles next to a pressure cooker is unbearable. The steam condensing into droplets is too much even if it’s distilled water; no normal forensic doctor could bear it. “How about I make a bowl for you?” Jiang Yuan hadn’t started work yet, so slipping off his gloves to make instant noodles in the outer room was feasible. Doctor Ye hesitated for a moment. Meanwhile, the others began to call out: “Make one for me too.” “Thanks, add some sausage.” “Sausage and an egg, please.” Jiang Yuan counted the heads and agreed, then went out to cook the noodles. Liu Jinghui, no matter how anxious he was, couldn’t let a room full of forensic doctors starve to death. If they did die, it would be considered an unnatural death, merely adding to the workload of the living forensic doctors. In the outer room, there were two new boxes of instant noodles delivered by the store. They were bucket noodles, which are less of a hassle to prepare. Jiang Yuan opened one box and saw several large characters: Big Bone Broth Noodles. Jiang Yuan silently put it back and opened the second box: Rich Big Bone Soup. Underneath, there was a picture of a bone being boiled and a warm note: “Each one is the essence of rich bone broth captured in an instant.” After a moment of silence, Jiang Yuan brought back the first box, took a bucket noodle, opened it, poured water in, then turned to fetch a roll of tape marked “Caution” and covered all the characters on the bucket. Once the noodles were ready and after a little while, the four forensic doctors cleaned up and came out one after the other. Jiang Yuan, now fully dressed, entered the autopsy room. The forensic assistant from Qinghe City Bureau, a bespectacled young man in his twenties, smiled politely at Jiang Yuan’s arrival. “Didn’t you go eat noodles? I made some for you too,” Jiang Yuan said. “Let them have it,” the young man replied with a smile and then added quietly, “I bought those noodles. They were the only two types left in the whole box.”

Chapter 198 - 198 190 Fragrance

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