Fang Rui took advantage of his time off and had a good rest at home for several days. But when he opened the door, he saw Mu Mian squatting in front of his house, her eyes vacant, seemingly lost in thought.
"Mu Mian, why are you squatting in front of my house? Looking for a loan?" Fang Rui frowned at her.
"Fang Rui?" Upon seeing Fang Rui, Mu Mian looked surprised, "What a coincidence, so you also live here!"
"What are you doing?"
"Eliminating potential threats. The good news is, the danger alert has now been cleared!"
Mu Mian's new home almost perfectly met her requirements: quiet surroundings, no blind spots for surveillance, and close to her workplace.
The only thing that worried her was her unseen neighbor.
Fang Rui looked at the peeling door. Except for being a bit run-down, it seemed nothing special.
He asked in confusion, "What risks? Someone is planning to break into my room?"
"I thought my neighbor was a violent adult male. But now I see it's just you, I feel more at ease."
"Why would you think I'm violent?"
"During my inspection around the new house, I noticed that the neighbor's doorknob was loose and the bottom of the door frame had lots of shoe prints—evidence of frequent violent treatment."
"..."
"So, I deduced that the occupant could be a quick-tempered, violence-prone danger."
Mu Mian explained gravely, not noticing Fang Rui's rapidly darkening face.
"You're pretty unlucky then, to have a dangerous neighbor like me."
"Not unlucky at all!"
With Fang Rui there, she felt her safety was secured. She wouldn't have to worry about being captured by a murderer and taken to the rooftop for chills anymore.
"Congratulations, you've got a very dependable neighbor." Mu Mian pointed at herself, beginning to enumerate her own virtues, "I won't make any noise, won't litter; if you fall ill, I'll be the first one to take you to the hospital."
"You sure you won't be squatting by my bed, waiting for me to pass away and then steal my body?"
Fang Rui imagined the scenario in his head and felt it quite humorous. Mu Mian being so tiny, she probably wouldn’t be able to move his corpse.
"Stealing bodies is illegal!" Mu Mian corrected him.
"…You sure respectful of the law."
"I will take you to the hospital first, then stay by your sickbed, get the body donation document from you before you die. Don't worry, I'll take good care of your body..."
"..." Why did he even bring up this subject?
At this point, Fang Rui's phone rang. Mu Mian tried to avoid it, but saw Fang Rui put his hand on her shoulder, his expression becoming serious.
"Call the firefighters for a fire! The fire department reported it? Give me the address."
"The villa area on the outskirts of the city. Boss, I've already sent you the coordinates on your phone, hurry up!"
"Mu Mian, your vacation is over." After finishing the call, Fang Rui turned to Mu Mian, "There's a new case, we'll go straight to the scene."
"Let's go immediately!" Mu Mian's eyes instantly lit up.
Fang Rui was speechless, why was Mu Mian so interested in dead bodies?
By the time Fang Rui and Mu Mian arrived at the scene, the fire had already been extinguished. Zhang and his team also made it to the scene of the homicide.
The once lush green lawn was burnt bare, strewn with a variety of objects and shards of glass.
Mu Mian paused in her steps as she felt like she stepped on something. Something soft was prickling her feet. She looked down and was startled to find a charred severed finger.
Mu Mian put on her gloves and picked it up for closer inspection.
The finger had a silver ring on it. The ring was uniquely shaped and irregular, much like a Möbius strip.
The ring's silver sheen glimmered under the sunlight.
"What on earth are you holding, Doctor Mu?" Zhang suddenly exclaimed, "Is that a broken finger?"
Everyone turned their attention towards Mu Mian.
"I picked it up from the ground." she said, putting the finger with the ring into an evidence bag.
"The impact of the blast shredded the victim’s body, you all might come across many body parts."
Mu Mian further explained: "So be careful not to step on the body parts. Also, please mark the spots where you find the remains.”
"My God, I used to think it was just drama in those war stories, but it seems even minor explosions can shatter bodies!" exclaimed Zhang.
Fang Rui gave Zhang a look, "Do you want to check out the state of this building? Can you call this a minor explosion?"
The mansion’s owner, Ye Zeming, was a renowned sculpture artist in the city. He enjoyed a surge in his net worth as his works sold at high prices over the recent years.
The targeted villa was his workshop, stocked with inflammable materials such as paints, varnishes, and plaster, which aggravated the fire. The villa had been reduced to its frame, even the lawn outside was left scorched and explosions occurred in several parts inside the house.
The floor-to-ceiling windows on the second floor were completely shattered with a part of the roof collapsed too. The place was in complete disarray.
The body of the deceased was buried under shards of glass and bricks. The body had scattered into several pieces, and due to the prolonged exposure to the fire, the remains had turned charred black, emitting a revolting smell.
"Oh God, this smell is unbearable! I guess I won't be having barbecued meat for at least half a month!" lamented Zhang.
Someone immediately responded, "Oh, please. The first time you saw a corpse, you declared to quit meat forever, and look at you now, eating more than any of us.”
Old Zhang, the captain of the fire brigade, knew Fang Rui. On his arrival, Old Zhang quickly briefed him about the situation on site.
"Captain Fang, we believe the victim's fragmented body is due to the blast. This building was filled with explosive materials, which on meeting a spark ignited an explosion. But the victim’s sister insists he was murdered and demands an investigation."
Fang Rui asked: "Have we identified the point of the fire's origin and where the explosion occurred?"
"The building was filled with combustible materials, pinpointing the exact location where the fire started is proving difficult, we are still investigating."
Mu Mian, wearing gloves, started collecting the remains of the deceased.
With the help of Zhang and others, Mu Mian quickly gathered the deceased's torso and limbs.
The upper half of the body was relatively complete, but the portion below the thighs had mostly been blasted into fragments. Many of the soft tissues, including the reproductive parts, were still missing.
Preliminarily, all these fragments were believed to belong to a single deceased individual.
The face of the deceased was carbonized and covered in ashes. Therefore, the appearance was not identifiable.
But from the pelvic part of the corpse, it could be concluded that the deceased was an adult male.
"Fang Rui, he was already deceased before the fire broke out. This could be a murder case!" Mu Mian turned to Fang Rui and said.
Old Zhang doubted Mu Mian's expertise, seeing as she seemed young and freshly out of college.
He retorted, "It's not possible! Ye Zeming's sister saw him at the scene of the fire. How could he have died before the fire?"
"There are no signs of life response on the burns and the severed body parts, which indicates that the deceased was already dead when the fire and explosion occurred. In fact, the time of death was at least two to three hours before the fire broke out."
As Mu Mian explained, she continued to scrutinize the breakage on the body parts.
She frowned in puzzlement – the rupture sites of these fragments were too smooth, neither explosion-induced nor caused by a cutting tool, the wounds were strange.
Moreover, body fragments in previous explosion cases would often have soft tissues separated from the skeleton, torn apart. However, these fragments were relatively intact, as if a sculpture had fallen and shattered.
Old Zhang stubbornly claimed, "Multiple witnesses saw the victim at the window on a phone call before the fire. The victim's sister also affirmed that she saw her brother at the scene of the fire. She was the last person to see him alive."
"What they saw might not be the deceased."
"What?"
"What those eyewitnesses saw was a living Ye Zeming."
Fang Rui asked, "Mu Mian, are you suspecting that the deceased is not Ye Zeming?"
"Let's start with a DNA test on the body. Does Ye Zeming have any close relatives?"
