Ning Yan did not understand why Pei Yan was interested in the case. Still, there was no point dwelling on it. She walked over to the body and got to work.
A large crowd had gathered, buzzing with speculation.
“Does she even know what she’s doing?” Qiao Lu frowned.
Qin San stood stiffly with a cold expression, watching silently.
After examining the corpse from front to back, Ning Yan asked the coroner, “Have you checked for rigor mortis and livor mortis?”
The coroner rolled his eyes. “Little girl, you clearly don’t understand. The man only died recently. His body is still warm. How could rigor mortis have set in? As for lividity, we’d have to wait at least another hour.”
“Trying to sound knowledgeable when she doesn’t know anything,” Qiao Lu sneered.
“But rigor mortis has already appeared,” Ning Yan replied, glancing at the coroner. “Take off his clothes. If I’m not mistaken, lividity should already be visible on his chest.”
“Impossible,” the coroner said flatly. “You’re the one who doesn’t understand. It’s hot weather. Rigor mortis couldn’t possibly appear this soon…” As he spoke, he reached down to examine the body. Then he froze.
Rigor mortis had indeed set in.
“H-How is this possible?!” the coroner cried in shock.
Qin San crouched to check for himself, and his expression changed too.
Both men had handled countless cases over the years. They knew these matters well.
The coroner hurriedly turned the body over, loosened the front of the victim’s clothing, and held up a lantern. Sure enough, a faint layer of lividity appeared on the chest. “This… I… this can’t be right,” he stammered. “Rigor mortis and lividity shouldn’t appear this early.”
The surrounding spectators clicked their tongues in amazement. Ning Yan identified what the coroner missed at a glance.
“This young lady really knows her stuff,” someone whispered.
Nearby, Pei Yan found the noise irritating. He swept his gaze across the crowd, and everyone fell silent.
“No rush. Let’s wait a little longer,” Ning Yan said. She had no interest in embarrassing the coroner. After inspecting the extent of the victim’s fractures, she slowly walked toward the pagoda under everyone’s watchful eyes. After pacing back and forth twice, she stopped. “The distance from here to the base of the pagoda is approximately four zhang.”
“What does that prove?” the young constable challenged, still unconvinced. To him, the matter of the lividity was only a lucky guess.
“You went up the tower earlier. Are you certain the footprints stopped on the seventh level?”
Qin San nodded.
“How tall is the pagoda?”
“Ten zhang.”
Ning Yan nodded. Her gaze swept across the crowd before she suddenly asked, “Who actually saw the man jump?”
No one answered.
“Then who shouted that someone had jumped from the tower?”
A handsome young man stepped forward. “It was me. I shouted.”
Ning Yan looked at him. “Please tell me exactly what you saw.”
Qin San had already asked these questions. A statement had been taken, and the witness had signed it.
“It’s all right here. Read it yourself,” Qiao Lu said, tossing the written testimony to Ning Yan. “Hurry up and stop wasting everyone’s time.”
Looking down at the report, Ning Yan read the witness’s name: Xu Tiao. He had come with his mother that evening to release lanterns and pray for blessings. As he was climbing down from his donkey cart, he suddenly saw the victim hit the ground without warning. The impact produced a loud bang. Many people had heard it.
“Did everyone hear the sound?” Ning Yan asked.
Quite a few nodded.
“Yes, we heard it. It was very loud. I thought somebody’s furnace had cracked.”
Ning Yan asked no further questions.
“Why don’t you go up the tower and take a look?” Qiao Lu mocked. “You’re certainly putting on a convincing act.”
Ning Yan cast him a calm glance. “So many of you have already gone up there. The scene has been contaminated. There’s no point making another trip.”
“What do you mean by that? Are you implying we don’t know how to preserve a crime scene?” Qiao Lu looked thoroughly annoyed.
Ning Yan ignored him. Once more, she pushed through the crowd and headed toward the tower, circling it slowly.
The riverside was brightly lit by lanterns. Vendors lined the riverbank in a long row, selling all kinds of goods. But since the pagoda had already closed, the area around its base was completely dark. No one was walking there. Only a few donkey carts were parked sporadically in the open space.
Everyone watched her, whispering among themselves. No one could guess what was going through her mind.
“Did she run away?” someone suddenly asked.
They could no longer see Ning Yan at all.
“As if she’d dare,” Qiao Lu said, drawing his saber. “If she’s been playing us for fools, I’ll cut her down.”
As soon as he finished speaking, someone tapped him on the shoulder. Startled, he spun around to speak, only to find Ning Yan emerging from behind him. She merely gave him a cool glance.
“Y-You’re a ghost or something! How did you get over here?”
“I walked over normally. It was just too dark for you to see me.”
Qin San asked coldly, “Did you find anything?”
“I have.” Ning Yan returned to the corpse.
Qin San paused. What did she mean by have?
Pointing at the body, Ning Yan began her explanation. “This man did not die by jumping from the pagoda.”
“Furthermore, his time of death should be pushed back by at least another two hours.”
The crowd immediately erupted in uproar.
Qin San had already begun to suspect as much from the appearance of rigor mortis.
“How is that possible?” Qiao Lu exclaimed. “Are you saying he was already dead before he fell?”
Ning Yan said nothing.
Instead, the coroner objected, “That can’t be right. This man clearly died from the fall.”
“Could someone have carried a man who had already died from a fall up to the seventh floor and then thrown him down?” another constable guessed. “Who would have the strength to carry a corpse all the way up there?”
“Impossible. The footprints upstairs were perfectly clear. If someone had been carrying a corpse, the tracks would have been much more chaotic.”
The crowd began tossing out theories, one after another.
After they had argued for quite some time, Pei Yan suddenly coughed. “Enough. Shut up, all of you. Is she solving the case, or are you? You’re quacking like a flock of ducks. It’s deafening.”
Everyone immediately shrank their necks and fell silent, though they didn’t hide their resentment.
Frowning, Pei Yan turned to Ning Yan. “Go on.”
Ning Yan nodded. “This man was indeed killed by a fall. However, he did not die from falling off the pagoda.” Having said that, she crouched beside the corpse.
“If it wasn’t the pagoda, then it must have been somewhere else?” Qin San asked, his brows knitted together. “Do you have any evidence?”
Ning Yan nodded. “First, the fractures throughout the victim’s body are relatively minor. The pagoda is ten zhang tall. If he had fallen from the seventh level, his bones would have been shattered far more severely than what we’re seeing now.”
“Second, the distance between the body and the pagoda is wrong. A person falling from the seventh level would normally land about one and a half to two zhang away from the base.”
The body, however, lay a full four zhang away. An ordinary person simply could not leap that far.
“Third.” Ning Yan raised her lantern, illuminating the blood around the corpse. “The bloodstains are partially separated and have begun to coagulate. The direction of the blood flow is also inconsistent. If I’m not mistaken, the blood beneath him isn’t human blood at all. It’s pig’s blood.”
A chorus of shocked gasps swept through the crowd. Everyone was stunned by her conclusion.
A butcher stepped forward voluntarily. “Let me take a look.” He bent down, sniffed it carefully, then looked up with astonishment written all over his face. “It really is pig’s blood.”
This time, when the crowd looked at Ning Yan, their expressions were filled entirely with admiration. She might be young, but her abilities were anything but ordinary.
“Fourth. While I was walking around the pagoda just now, I found this.” She opened her palm, revealing a milky-white object that looked like a lump of fat.
The crowd stared in confusion.
Ning Yan handed it to the butcher.
“Could I trouble you to identify it?”
The butcher sniffed it and exclaimed, “It’s a pig’s bladder.”
“Exactly. That loud bang everyone heard wasn’t the sound of a person hitting the ground. It was the sound of this bladder bursting under pressure. Because everyone then saw the corpse lying there, they immediately assumed the noise came from someone jumping from the pagoda and hitting the ground.”
Qin San took the bladder from the butcher and examined it. His expression immediately darkened as he ordered his men to search for the remaining fragments. Sure enough, several more pieces were quickly found nearby.
When Qin San looked at Ning Yan again, every trace of disdain had vanished from his face.
Ning Yan continued, “So, based on the evidence currently available, the victim never went up the pagoda. The reason he ended up here is because, after he was killed by a fall elsewhere, someone transported his body to this location.”