Records of the Cattle and Horses of Chang'an

Cui Bianxu swore that this was the most indescribable scene he had ever seen in the Dali Temple morgue.

Baskets of meat of different colors, some grayish white, some deep red, had been cleaned and some were placed on the table. Three coroners and two pale and shaky apprentices were busy working in them.

Cui Bianxu didn’t know whether it was because the smell of the sewer was too disgusting or because human flesh itself had a smell, but he felt a faint pungent smell at the tip of his nose.

This was different from the stench of corpses he had smelled before. Wang Leisheng had never dared to step inside the Dali Temple before. Now, as he forced himself to follow Cui Bianxu inside, his scalp tingled. "So much, is this really human flesh?"

Ding Yuan raised his head with a serious expression. This was the first time Cui Bianxu saw him so serious, which was completely different from his usual look when he couldn't wait to pounce on a corpse.

The same was true for the other two old coroners.

"Master Cui, these, there are so many." He counted all the pieces of human flesh, his tone filled with indescribable anger: "All of them are human flesh."

From the appearance, the texture of human flesh is partly like beef and partly like mutton, and its taste should be like a mixture of mutton and pork. If it is roasted over fire, the special smell will make you know it is human flesh.

However, although Ding Yuan loved corpses and dissecting them, he could not do such a thing. How could this murderer treat the bodies of the deceased in this way? After each autopsy, he would carefully sew up the bodies, trying his best to let them pass away cleanly and decently.

From this point, he could conclude that the murderer was even more ruthless than himself: "Shaoqing, please look at these body parts."

He held up a piece and handed it directly to Cui Bianxu: "Did you see it?"

Cui Bianxu also felt uncomfortable. Death and corpse abuse are two different things. How could a normal person do such a thing to his own kind?

He had heard of the story of vegetable people during famine, but this person was obviously not one of them.

He took the body part: "The cut is neat and sharp..."

After looking carefully for a while, he couldn't identify the specific spot and said hesitantly, "Why is there no grease on it?"

The fat of a normal human body is distributed in the chest, abdomen, around the waist, inner and outer thighs, back of the arms, and inside of the buttocks and knees.

However, in these pieces of meat, which are either grayish white or dark red, there is no yellow, grayish yellow or dark brown granular fat.

Cui Bianxu's understanding of the human body was all self-taught during this period, and his understanding was not deep.

"What Cui Shaoqing said is exactly what these subordinates find strange."

The coroner of Chang'an County straightened up, leaning back a bit wearily to ease the pain in his body. "My subordinates believe that these pieces of meat are indeed human flesh. Human flesh tastes different from other meats. It has a unique flavor and a different color."

The Wannian County Coroner also stopped, held his hands together, and stretched them out, twisting his neck. "But this is undoubtedly human flesh. Although the head hasn't been found, some of the hands and feet have been found. The bones are rough and broken."

Ding Yuan nodded and picked up a concave, relatively thin piece of meat with ribs attached. "It's a girl. We've also found part of her breast."

To be honest, if he hadn't said it, Cui Bianxu really wouldn't have been able to tell. There was no fat or skin. In this case, even Wang Leisheng, who had several concubines, couldn't have told it.

"So, are you sure now that these are human flesh?" Cui Bianxu confirmed with them again. It happened to be the New Year's Eve, and the case was so horrifying that Chang'an was likely to be in turmoil.

"Yes." The three answered in unison.

Cui Bianxu walked over and looked at the body parts they were piecing together. It was indeed not going smoothly, as most of this "person" was incomplete.

"There's no fat on any of them. Was it cut off on purpose?"

"What Shaoqing said coincides with what I said." Ding Yuan also thought so.

Wang Leisheng felt that he had eaten too much for dinner. "Why did the murderer only cut off the fat?"

The body will be cut into pieces and thrown away anyway, so why bother?

Ding Yuan and the others shook their heads. They were coroners, not investigators, so they didn't know this either.

"Wang Sizhi, we haven't eaten for a day and are really hungry. Could you please ask someone to bring us some food?" The Chang'an County coroner's stomach was rumbling with hunger, but he was called out to work overtime after having just breakfast. Working all day without any food is something even the strongest person can't stand!

Wang Leisheng slowly shook his head, his face full of admiration: "In this situation, you guys can still eat?"

He doesn't even want to eat tomorrow's meal!

Ding Yuan frowned and said unhappily, "Wang Sizhi, we are coroners."

They are professionals. How can they live without being able to eat after doing an autopsy? How can they do their job?

Cui Bianxu was already accustomed to Ding Yuan's peculiarities and didn't want to dwell on this issue any further. He said directly to Wang Leisheng, "Hurry up and send someone to bring some food over."

"Shaoqing...Yes, I will go right away."

As soon as he left, the coroners continued their work. Cui Bianxu watched for a while and noticed that something was missing. He asked, "The head is missing, but where are the internal organs?"

Ding Yuan put down what he was holding, removed the cloth covering a frame, and then revealed the object he was asking about: "We have found two stomachs, three sets of intestines, five kidneys, and two hearts..."

It sounded very professional and strangely like something out of a butcher's shop.

"Have you found anything?"

"No."

Ding Yuan also felt a headache. Generally, when performing an autopsy, he would open three cavities, namely the cranial cavity, thoracic cavity, and abdominal cavity. When facing women, he would be particularly careful to examine the perineum, spinal cord, waist, back, buttocks, and limbs.

Determine whether the person was pregnant and whether they had intercourse before death. Now, not to mention the difficulty of piecing together these parts into a human form, the main problem is: "The stomach, intestines, uterus... have all been cleaned out."

It is as clean as the offal bought from home, and needs to be washed carefully before being cooked.

Cui Bianxu sighed. It was impossible to determine what the deceased had eaten or when he had eaten. In addition, the body was thrown into the gutter in such weather, and after being picked up, it had to be cleaned before it could be pieced together. The possibility of getting clues from the body was very small.

Especially now that the head has not been found, even if people from Pingkangfang come to identify the body, they won’t be able to recognize anything.

Moreover, those delicate ladies would probably faint at the sight of this.

His eyes kept darting back and forth over the human body parts, when suddenly an idea struck him: "Why are these body parts without skin?"

Ding Yuan nodded: "Indeed not, but the fat and cream are gone, so it's normal to have no skin."

His stomach suddenly growled twice. He glanced outside anxiously, but found that Wang Leisheng was no longer there. Disappointed, he looked away. "The murderer's dismemberment technique is very skillful. I think he has a certain understanding of the human body structure."