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Chapter 569 Death from Exhaustion
Guided by the old constable, Zhu Yu arrived at the room where the body was kept. In accordance with his agreement with He Min, he did not let Lu Qing and the others go in, but instead pushed open the door and stepped inside.

"Master... are you sure you don't need to go in and help?" Fu Wen was a little worried. Although he knew that his wife was incredibly brave, she would not be afraid at all if she were to face He Min's daughter's corpse alone.

But he had also heard what the old constable had said. There were two hunters whose bodies had been gnawed to pieces by wild animals on the way up the mountain. Having other people around might have given them courage, but if the lady went in alone, with two unrecognizable corpses beside her, it was a completely different story.

"It's alright." Lu Qing shook his head calmly and sat down on the stone bench next to him.

The structure of this mortuary is quite unique; all the shady spots are reserved for the rooms used to preserve the bodies, while the courtyard is the sunniest place.

Fortunately, autumn is in full swing and the air is getting chilly, so sitting in the sun is actually quite comfortable.

Lu Qing invited the old constable to sit down in the sunlight in the courtyard, and they began to chat casually.

Zhu Yu, on the other hand, was not so idle. She was busy examining the body of the He family's daughter, trying to find some clues.

The room was particularly cold and damp. Zhu Yu was wearing only a thin shirt inside, and soon he felt the chill seeping in layer by layer.

She carefully removed the clothes from the He family's daughter and saw that the woman's skin was deathly pale and her figure was extremely thin. She looked like she was suffering from severe anemia and qi deficiency, and had been worn down to death.

Zhu Yu pried open the woman's lower eyelids and looked at her lips, nails, and other areas. He found that everything was bluish-white, and there were no obvious signs of lividity on the woman's body. This clearly indicated that she had lost a lot of blood.

However, after carefully examining the He family daughter's entire body, she found no external injuries that could have caused excessive blood loss, and there were clearly no signs of her body being washed, nor any bloodstains remaining in her seven orifices.

Zhu Yu took out his tools and deftly cut open the woman's chest and abdomen. To his surprise, he found that her organs were intact, with no signs of excessive blood loss due to internal injuries.

Judging from the condition of the organs, this person died entirely from organ failure caused by severe anemia.

No wonder the previous coroner asked He Min those questions, and couldn't help but suspect that his daughter had starved to death.

Zhu Yu used the finest stitches to sew the wound back up, his brows furrowing as he looked at the withered, pale corpse before him.

Even water cannot simply disappear into thin air. When dried by the sun, it turns into water vapor that condenses in the clouds, and when it accumulates enough, it falls back as rain.

Therefore, it is obvious that the blood in the He family daughter's body could not have disappeared on its own for no reason.

If the blood didn't flow out of the external wound or accumulate in the abdominal cavity due to internal injury, how did it disappear?

The image of that vibrant red that Zhu Yu had seen on the third floor of the Zhelufang store flashed through his mind.

In Jin Kingdom, there is no tradition that brides must wear red wedding dresses, so red dresses do not have any special meaning.

Those self-proclaimed elegant ladies from noble families usually don't particularly favor overly bright and vibrant colors, finding them somewhat gaudy and not very presentable. And the supposedly magical fabric that can make unmarried women look better and more beautiful, thus attracting better marriage prospects, is, according to He Min, quite expensive.

But this "magical" fabric is dyed in colors that the wealthy ladies who can easily afford it and who yearn for a high-status marriage dislike the most. Could it be that after running a fabric and clothing business for so long, Gu Lingyun still doesn't understand the taste preferences of her female customers?

Zhu Yu doesn't think so.

In her view, Gu Lingyun clearly understood the preferences of female customers who had enough money; otherwise, she wouldn't have been able to launch fabrics that the noble ladies of the capital would flock to so quickly, allowing them to keep up with the fashion trends started by the favored concubines in the palace.

So, the reason why that so-called "Red Jade Fragrance" was woven and dyed a bright red was either because it had a certain purpose and needed to be bright red, otherwise it would reveal some flaw; or it was done intentionally, with the purpose of making those self-proclaimed elegant and refined noble ladies in the capital look down on it. Even if they were thinking about becoming more beautiful and finding a good marriage, they would be too embarrassed to wear such thoughts so openly and let everyone see them.

After all, if something happens to a woman from an ordinary family, they can use money to solve the problem.

If something were to happen to a noble lady, Zelufang wouldn't have the same confidence.

Of course, there is another possibility, which is that both of the previous possibilities are combined.

What we need to figure out right now is exactly how the He family's daughter lost her blood.

After all, even a morgue can't prevent a body from decaying. The fact that this woman's body was preserved to this extent is not only due to the cold and dry environment of the morgue, but also related to her emaciated and blood-loss state.

Even so, judging from the current situation, it's impossible to hold on for much longer.

Zhu Yu thought for a moment, then used a white sheet to temporarily cover the corpse. He turned around and went to the door, opened it a crack, and said to the talisman guards outside, "Go and get me some soot from the bottom of a pot, the blacker and finer the better. Also, prepare a basin of clean water and a cloth, and bring them over together."

Upon hearing this, Fuwen Fulu didn't ask why, immediately agreed, and pulled the old constable to go find the soot from the bottom of the pot.

"How is it?" Lu Qing asked, standing in the courtyard, without taking a step closer to verify the promise.

"She did die from exhaustion due to excessive blood loss, but I haven't yet figured out exactly how the blood was lost from her body," Zhu Yu replied.

Lu Qing shook her head: "I'm asking you, did you feel uncomfortable inside? If you did, come out and rest for a while."

If the other two mutilated corpses, bitten beyond recognition by wild beasts, frighten you, I can blindfold myself and go in with you.

His words brought a smile to Zhu Yu's face, and his eyes turned into two crescent moons.

"Don't worry, if those three inside can actually sit up, it'll save me a lot of trouble," she joked with a smile.