The Forensic Doctor Better Than a Detective

As soon as he said this, Director Hou and Qin Feng exchanged a glance, and in each other’s eyes they both read the same confusion.

”Hemorrhage?... What do you mean by that?”

Qin Feng couldn’t help but jump in first, his tone laced with obvious puzzlement and urgency.

Standing opposite, Li Yan had always been straightforward. Seeing their reaction, she explained bluntly, ”What Mr. Guan means is that based on the current examination findings, this area should have damage caused by an external force—in concrete terms, the cervical vertebrae were subjected to an external impact.”

In that instant, the expression of Mr. Qin, who had been relatively composed, changed abruptly. His gaze fixed blankly on the barely twenty-centimeter segment of neck in front of him, as if he couldn’t believe his ears.

His mind was in chaos: in such a small piece of human tissue, what lethal problem could possibly be hidden?

However, the seasoned Director Hou seemed to smell something unusual in this silence.

He frowned slightly, pondered for a moment, then asked slowly, ”Are you sure it’s hemorrhage?”

”This body has been stored for some time. Under these conditions, we can’t afford even the slightest mistake.”

The question was so direct that Li Yan was momentarily at a loss for words. She subconsciously lifted her eyes toward Jiang An beside her, seeking his opinion.

Jiang An understood and gave her a slight nod.

Then he turned to Director Hou, his tone steady and firm: ”All current examination results support this conclusion—it is indeed hemorrhage.”

”Although in terms of extent, the amount of bleeding at the time wasn’t large, the damage it caused was extremely severe.”

”Look here, between the third and fourth cervical vertebrae is exactly where the cervical spinal cord passes. Damage of this degree to the cervical cord can absolutely cause acute failure of the respiratory and circulatory systems.”

He paused briefly, his gaze sweeping over everyone present. ”In my view, this is the most crucial examination finding in the case so far.”

When his words fell, the air in the room seemed to solidify.

Standing off to the side, Mr. Qin suddenly felt his heart skip a beat, a faint cold sweat breaking out across his back.

Just a few minutes ago, he had thought this was an ordinary case, even approaching it with a somewhat relaxed mindset.

But now, all the clues were pointing to a conclusion completely beyond his expectations.

Li Yan couldn’t hold back and blurted out, ”But there are no obvious injuries on the surface of the limbs or neck, and the skull is intact as well—on what basis do we determine that death was caused by a neck injury?”

”This... this really sounds somewhat unbelievable.”

Jiang An thought for a moment, then answered slowly, ”It’s similar to the type of injury we’ve been repeatedly mentioning just now—whiplash-type injury.”

”Its precondition is that the head undergoes violent whipping motion, but it’s usually seen in traffic accidents.”

”For example, when vehicles collide at high speed, a person’s neck is snapped forward and then recoils like a whip.”

When Mr. Qin heard this, he furrowed his brows and almost blurted out, ”Traffic accident?”

”But the scene was a construction site, where would a car come from to hit him?”

”Besides, there are no obvious marks of injury on the body surface. There are a few heavy machines around, but we checked them one by one. The machines were functioning normally, and we found no impact traces.”

His words tumbled out fast and urgent, like a string of firecrackers going off.

When he finished, it felt as though something had suddenly clenched tight in his chest—this case was under his charge. If in the end it couldn’t be classified as an accident or death by illness, but as homicide... the consequences were unimaginable.

At best he’d be warned and given a demerit; at worst he’d be dismissed and investigated. Wouldn’t that be dereliction of duty?

At this thought, Mr. Qin felt his heart pounding wildly, a buzzing in his ears, even his palms growing clammy with sweat.

He instinctively turned his head, his gaze shifting from the cold corpse to Jiang An’s face, and finally landing on Professor Zhang Kai, who had been standing off to the side.

He saw that Professor Zhang’s forehead was already beaded with fine sweat, glistening faintly under the stark white lights of the autopsy room.

In fact, at this moment, the pressure weighing on Zhang Kai was probably even greater than on Mr. Qin.

For him, this was more than just one examination, more than just a job; it concerned the reputation he had built up over half a lifetime.

He had once vowed to have students all over the country, and indeed many of the current mainstays of forensic science were his disciples. Yet now, in the very field he was most specialized in, there might have been such a fatal oversight...

If this got out, where would he put his face?

Mr. Qin, after all, was a veteran investigator, and he immediately saw through Zhang Kai’s panic.

He deliberately paused, then asked in a low but clear voice, ”Professor Zhang, when you conducted the original examination... you didn’t find this problem?”

The words were like a needle, suddenly puncturing the already taut atmosphere.

The direction of responsibility instantly came into focus—if the cause of death really was whiplash-type injury and the initial report failed to point it out, then the root of the problem most likely lay in the appraisal issued by the university.

Zhang Kai opened his mouth, sweat sliding down to the tips of his eyebrows.

He wiped his forehead with his hand, but his voice trembled slightly. ”This... we really didn’t notice it at the time. It was a lapse in our work...”

At this point, his words were almost incoherent.

The composure and confidence he had displayed when he entered the room were long gone.

The facts were right in front of him; any explanation now seemed pale and powerless.

The autopsy room fell into silence, broken only by the low hum of the machines, like a soundless knocking at everyone’s nerves.

At this moment, He was like a student suddenly called on in class, standing stunned beside the autopsy table, unable to move.

His gaze was locked on the hemorrhagic area in the deceased’s neck—that, in his view, was anything but ordinary.