I was certain it was a skirt buried in the ground, not rags because of the obvious stitching on it.

The others were rooted to the spot, and even Li Meijing was left tongue-tied. "Song Yang…” she faltered. “Is that really a corpse?"

I asked Wang Dali to bring me my bag from which I grabbed a brush. "How slow would a brush take?” Dali frowned. “I have a spade in the car. Isn’t that better?"

"Do you think we’re digging for treasure?!" I chided.

Ding Xu burst into tears and begged hysterically, "Don't dig! Stop investigating! Let's go back now!"

I left Dali and Zhang Cheng the task of holding down Ding Xu while I slowly brushed the soil off the top. A rotting pink dress gradually emerged, as well as a white arm-like skeleton. As the body was unearthed, the others turned ashen with fear. Everyone had previously assumed the corpse was one of DIng Xu’s fabricated stories.

I turned to look at Ding Xu who was kneeling on the ground. "Why did you lie?" I asked.

"I-it’s got nothing to do with you!” he trembled. “I don’t need you to interfere."

I quickly phoned Xiaotao to inform her of a new case, and asked that she bring the other criminal investigators.

“Are the police coming?” Li Meijing shivered with fear. “I need to continue revising! I don't want to be involved in a murder!”

"Song Yang, um… We shan’t disturb you then," Zhang Cheng faltered.

The two left me bereft of speech. Their actions had sparked off the entire incident and it was their insistence that led them here, yet now they clamored to leave. "There are no cabs out here,” I said.” When the police arrive, you can follow them back!"

"When the police come, won't they ask for our statement?" Li Meijing asked uneasily.

"The police aren’t that inefficient in their work,” I sneered. “You’re not the ones involved in the murder so they’ll ask you a few questions at most. Now, will you please stop talking? I'm going to start the autopsy!"

“Song Yang, you’re doing an autopsy here?!” exclaimed Li Meijing. “What did you major in?"

I flickered a stony glare that got her zipping her lips.

I slowly brushed the soil aside until the corpse was half exposed. It was dressed from head to toe in Ding Xu's exact description, covered in famous brands of good quality, so the garments hadn’t completely rotted away. Only the Givenchy handbag described by Ding Xu was missing.

The soft tissue and flesh had fully decomposed, leaving an intact skeleton in good condition, though I noticed a slight fracture in the throat. Judging from the pelvis, it was indeed a woman. When I uncovered the cloth on her abdomen, I found the remains of several rodents in the uterus.

The details were so accurate I couldn’t help but wonder if Ding Xu had really been possessed by Qiu Wanxia’s ghost.

I asked Dali to bring me my Echolocation Rod, to which he retorted, "The corpse is completely decomposed. What’s there to listen to?"

"Have you ever heard of bone age?" I quipped.

Bone age was the interpretation of skeletal maturity, used to determine the victim’s age at the time of death. Forensic pathologists used instruments, while I used my ears. I placed the Echolocation Rod on the musculoskeletal bones of the deceased and gently tapped the tibia with my fingers, finally reaching the conclusion that the victim’s age was about twenty-five years old.

I straightened my back and uncovered the upper part of the victim’s dress. "What’s her cup size?" interrupted Dali.

I glared at him. In fact, I was observing the soil. If the victim had been buried alive and suffocated to death, soil particles would have been sucked into her lungs. As the body decayed, these soil particles would remain in the chest cavity. Therefore, special care had to be taken in the inspection process to prevent the soil particles from escaping.

But strangely, I found the chest cavity very clean, without a speck of other substances.

Wasn't the cause of death asphyxia? I mused, turning to Dali for my Autopsy Umbrella. "The sun’s not out," he reminded.

Only after looking around did I remember my surroundings. "Forget it,” I sighed. “Hand me the bag!"

I rummaged through the bag and found what I was looking for–a vial of liquid. The only injury the victim suffered was on the neck, so I placed a few drops there. Dali curiously asked what the liquid was and I explained it was ant honey.

"Can ants make honey?" Dali asked in surprise.

Apart from bees, many insects made honey, though the taste wasn’t as delicious. The nutritious liquid that ants secreted in the colony was meant for the ant larvae. This liquid had a special characteristic–it was unabsorbable in soil. When enough of the honey was present, it would stick to the soil like a membrane, picking up tiny traces in the ground that were otherwise imperceptible.

Bingxin and me collected the contents in this little vial after much effort on our hike up the hill during the Lunar New Year.

The body was still half-buried in the ground. As I spoke to Dali, the ant honey formed geometric-like patterns around the neck. Dali exclaimed in surprise, "Is this mysterious symbol related to a cult?"

Once again, Dali’s stupidity astounded me. "You idiot!” I rebuked. “It’s a shoe print!"

I turned to Ding Xu, who had plunged into great grief, still kneeling on the ground with his hands covering his face. "How did you die? Why is there a footprint on your neck?” I interrogated. “Someone trampled on your neck so you suffocated to death, am I right?"

The absurdity of the situation suddenly hit me; here I was questioning the deceased about how she died while I was performing the autopsy.

The others looked at Ding Xu with consternation. "I don't remember! At the time I was already unconscious," he blurted.

I had to reexamine Ding Xu's account of the murder since his words couldn’t be taken for the truth. A person's memory was biased and some details would have been deleted or rationalized, especially after two years.

I swept away the soil around the skull and picked up a few strands of long hair. Bringing them close to my eyes, I carefully studied each strand and discovered another point of contradiction! There was no evidence of the victim’s hair being pulled. Human hair could be stretched to one and a half times its original length, but if you pulled hard enough, the hair cuticles would be damaged. Yet the hair I found was smooth to the touch.

The burial spot was about fifty meters away from the highway, which was a considerable distance to drag someone by the hair. I wouldn’t be surprised if the victim lost half her hair during the process. So the murderer must have carried her over.

There weren't many details on the corpse observable to the naked eye which called for the Thrice Steaming Bone Test.

Right then, Dali shouted, "Xiaotao-jiejie and her team are here!"

I heard the sound of an engine but it was a lone vehicle. When I looked over, I noticed a man alight from a car parked on the side of the road. He stood motionless in the dark, then a sudden flicker of light flashed, as if he had lit a cigarette.

"Why would anyone be out here at this time of night?” Dali asked with a slight tremor in his voice. “Could it be another murderer trying to dump a corpse?"

As soon as his words fell, the atmosphere seemed to thicken with tension. I placed my finger against my lips, gesturing for the others to be quiet. We were currently in complete darkness so the man across the street wouldn’t notice us from such a distance.

When he finished smoking his cigarette, the man headed in our direction. About thirty meters away, he stopped abruptly and turned around, sprinting back to his car.

His actions alerted me to the abnormality of the situation. I yelled for him to stop at the top of my lungs and ran after him. But before I could get very far, Ding Xu rushed over and tackled me to the ground. By this point, the car had already driven off.

I was so angry I kicked Ding Xu aside. "You know him, don’t you?"

"I sent him a dream last night,” Ding Xu’s face grimaced into a sinister smile. “Looks like he really came to see me. He hasn’t forgotten me after all. He still loves me! You’re not allowed to arrest him!"

I was tempted to slap Ding Xu. Even if he was now possessed, the spirit was obviously a contemptible wretch without a shred of dignity!

At the thought that the murderer had just escaped, I was so upset I immediately phoned Xiaotao and told her to pay close attention to a black Porsche driving in the opposite direction. I explained that the driver was most likely the murderer.

"Aren’t you a force to be reckoned with!” chuckled Xiaotao. “You’ve just discovered the body and you’ve already located the murderer!"

It was impossible to clarify the situation through the phone. Wouldn't Xiaotao be even more surprised to hear that the victim herself stopped me from pursuing the murderer?