When we reached the workshop, we saw a guy dancing in disheveled clothes. He shouted at us, “You’re all going to turn into pigs! And then you’ll get slaughtered like an animal!”

“Why is he so affected by this?” asked Xiaotao.

Old Li sighed and replied, “Xiaosheng was dating a girl a while ago, but when she found out that he worked at a slaughterhouse, she called him cruel and inhumane and dumped him. He’s been unhappy ever since. Seeing what he did this morning probably broke him because he was already vulnerable in the first place.”

“Silly girl,” scoffed Xiaotao. “Doesn’t she eat meat?”

“There was a monk in my hometown,” said Dali, “who’d hand out these pamphlets that said those who slaughter pigs would reincarnate as pigs themselves in their next life!”

Slaughtering pigs might be seen as a dirty and cruel job by many, but it was necessary in order to cater to the demands of pork consumed every day. Needless to say, butchers and those who worked in slaughterhouses were essential to society.

Xiaotao asked a female police officer to escort Xiaosheng to the car and calm him down. We might be able to get some statements from him later, although the chances of that happening looked slim.

The entire assembly line had been stopped. Rows of dead pigs hung on the iron hooks. There was a huge chainsaw in the middle, and the ‘pig’ that had been cut in half was hanging beside it. All its internal organs fell into the blood tank below. Dali rushed out while covering his mouth the minute he saw that.

“Would you like me to take it down?” Old Li asked.

“No,” I replied. “This is the murder scene. It’s better to keep everything as is.”

Xiaozhou handed me a pair of latex gloves. I put them on and began to examine the internal organs. Grandpa had trained me about the inner organs of human beings, so I was very familiar with how they looked. To test me, Grandpa would show me photos of the internal organs of different animals and asked me to pick out the ones that belonged to human beings.

“It’s a human being,” I said after glancing at the organs. “In fact, I’m pretty sure it was a female. Look, here are the womb and the ovaries!”

Everyone was stunned. I asked Old Li to get me a step ladder. I climbed up and examined the cross section of the ‘pig’s’ body. What I found was shocking.

There were many surgical sutures on her body. Her forearms and calves were cut off and connected to pig’s trotters. Her pelvis was modified so that she could stand on four limbs like a pig. Her body was also filled with a large amount of fat, which caused her weight to increase dramatically. This meant that her broken limbs had to support extra weight, causing the joints between her limbs and the trotters to be infected. She must’ve been in excruciating pain before she died!

Her coccyx was also attached to a pig’s tail, using the muscles on the back of her neck to connect them. The muscle’s tensile force made it impossible for her to lower her head, so she had to lift up her head permanently. The bridge of her nose was broken and her cartilage, fat and skin were used to connect that part to a pig’s snout. Even her ears were cut off and a pair of pig ears were attached. Her tongue had been removed too.

In short, this woman had been turned into a pig by plastic surgery!

Everyone’s expressions changed when they heard my findings. All of the police officers gritted their teeth, trying to hold back the fury. Even I was barely able to keep calm.

Cosmetic surgery was often used to change a person’s appearance. In theory, a human could be transformed into another animal, but it would require a long and complicated operation and a lot of patience to modify the structure of the human body while using drugs and anaesthetics to prevent them from dying.

This cruel procedure would be comparable to the ancient torture method called Lingchi[1]. The murderer in this case could be said to be extremely psychopathic!

Xiaotao clenched her fist tightly. Hot tears welled up in her eyes as she gnashed her teeth.

“I don’t know what your name is,” she said to the corpse, “but I swear to you that I will hunt down whoever did this to you and beat them to a pulp so that even their mother can’t recognize them!”

I could see everyone’s anger in their eyes. I was afraid that their emotions would get out of control, so I quickly added, “Come on, let’s examine the body and collect evidence!”

After taking pictures of the scene, I took down the corpse with Old Li’s help. Then I put on a pair of rubber boots and stepped into the blood tank to pick out every internal organ that I recognized to be from the victim. A few police officers offered to help, but I refused.

Finally, all of the victim’s internal organs were picked out. I told Xiaozhou to take blood samples from the corpse for testing because the internal organs had been contaminated with pig blood.

I borrowed a pair of tweezers from the forensics team and took a small sample of cartilage from the victim’s nose. I held it in front of my eyes and examined them closely, then asked Xiaotao, “How much do you know about plastic surgery?”

“Not much,” she answered. “Why?”

“Well,” I continued, “for the murderer to do this kind of thing, it shows that he must be a very meticulous person. The artificial cartilage used in plastic surgery is generally made of silicone. The silicone used would have a serial number, which could then be used to trace back to its manufacturer and distributor. Unfortunately, in this case, the cartilage used is solely pig cartilage, so we’re at a dead end.”

I then turned my attention to the victim’s limbs.

“Although these limbs were drastically modified, they remained flexible enough when the victim was hung upside down. My guess is that she tried to write the words ‘I am human’ with her hand. Also, because she was human, the stab to her neck didn’t kill her like it would immediately kill a pig. She was probably only unconscious. Then when the blood rushed to her head when she was hung, she regained consciousness again.”

I glanced at the assembly line. The victim was still conscious when she was dragged into the hair removal machine. She was plunged into boiling water before she was scrubbed with the iron wire, and finally her body was cut in half by the chainsaw. I dared not imagine the pain and suffering that she went through in the moments before her death.

“Are there any clues on the body, Song Yang?” Xiaotao asked.

To be frank, there wasn’t much information to gather from the body at all since the murderer didn’t actually kill her—they just mutilated her. Besides, after being submerged in the hot water, any trace of the murderer on the victim’s body would’ve been washed off.

“This body is a valuable clue in itself,” I said, “Who do you think could do this?”

“A plastic surgeon?” Xiaotao responded immediately.

“Yes,” I nodded. “To be more precise, a plastic surgeon with their own practice. It would take a long time to turn a human being into a pig. A surgeon who works at a hospital would never be able to complete this task.”

Xiaotao called some police officers over and ordered them to investigate all of the plastic surgery clinics in Nanjiang City and gather information about all the doctors involved. Another group of officers would track down the truck that delivered the pigs that were with the victim.

I then added that they should acquire the lists of medicines used by each clinic in the past month.

Once the officers left, I went back to examine the corpse even more closely. I was almost at a loss because Grandpa had never taught me how to examine a dead body like this one. Xiaotao noticed the helpless expression on my face and asked, “If there really is nothing you can do, maybe we should let the forensics team take over?”

Because of the conditions of the victim’s body, the only clues to be obtained would have to be gained from the internal organs, and in that regard, utilizing modern forensic science would be much more efficient.

I contemplated for a while and said, “Hand the internal organs over to the forensics team, but leave the body to me!”

“What are you trying to do?” Xiaotao wondered.

“I want to restore her to her human form!”

1. Also known as Death by a Thousand Cuts, a form of torture and execution used in Ancient China where a knife was used to remove portions of the body over an extended period of time, resulting in slow and agonizing death.