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Chapter 599 Suffocation
Lu Qing originally wanted to go in and take a look, but after smelling the odor, based on her experience watching Zhu Yu perform an autopsy, she immediately abandoned her original plan. She reached out and opened the window wider, then pulled Zhu Yu to stand against the wall, waiting for the smell inside the room to slowly dissipate while keeping an eye on the surrounding movements.

The courtyard was deathly silent, except for the occasional bark of a dog in the distance.

After a while, Zhu Yu felt that the room was well ventilated, so he took out a small paper packet from his pocket, took out two small items from it, and stuffed them into Lu Qing's hand.

Lu Qing took it, touched it, and found it to be about the size of two peanuts, narrower at one end and wider at the other. He glanced at it in the dim moonlight but couldn't tell what it was, though it had a cool, refreshing scent.

This refreshing feeling finally reminded him of what it was—it was one of the little gadgets he had helped Zhu Yu find outside, a paste made of beeswax with mint mashed into a paste and then mixed with oil.

It was said that when this thing was out and about, if it encountered a humid and hot area in the south where miasma was rampant, it could be put into the nose for a short time to protect against the miasma and prevent it from being poisoned by the miasma.

At the time, he thought that since this thing could withstand even miasma, it should be able to withstand the stench of corpses as well, so he bought a lot for Zhu Yu.

I didn't expect this little thing to come in handy so quickly.

The two of them stuffed the thing into their nostrils. Lu Qing took out a dagger and swiped it through the crack in the door. He found that the door was not locked, but only slightly ajar. He quickly pushed it open and went inside with Zhu Yu. Then he closed the door again, took out a tinderbox, and let the flickering flame bring a little bit of light to the room.

Using this little bit of light, Zhu Yu quickly surveyed his surroundings.

The room was sparsely furnished: a broken table with an uneven surface, a narrow wooden bench, and a dilapidated wooden bed with a tattered quilt piled on it, the cotton batting almost showing.

Beneath the tattered cotton wadding, a roughly shaped human figure could be vaguely discerned.

Zhu Yu quickly stepped forward and carefully lifted the quilt.

Lu Qing's tinderbox followed, and a small patch of warm yellow light shone down, illuminating the female corpse lying face down on the bed.

Judging from her figure, she was indeed extremely similar to Gu Lingyun. However, she was not wearing the pretty dresses that I had seen at the Tze Lu Fang before. Instead, she was dressed in a plain color. At first glance, she looked very simple. Only when you got closer could you tell from the fine stitches that the material was something that the lowlifes living here could not afford.

The woman's hair was somewhat disheveled and not styled into a bun; it was simply draped loosely behind her.

Zhu Yu carefully turned the corpse over so that its face was facing up, and Lu Qing also moved closer to try to see the deceased's appearance clearly.

Even though he was usually very brave and rarely afraid of anything, he still subconsciously looked away when he saw that face before finally looking at it again.

That face looked like a demon, bluish-purple and mottled, making it almost impossible to see its original skin color; it was utterly terrifying.

"How could this happen?" Lu Qing frowned and asked Zhu Yu in a low voice, "Did you get poisoned and end up like this?"

"No, it's not that. It's just that after being murdered, the body was always face down, so the blood congealed here, resulting in this appearance." Zhu Yu shook her head, somewhat amused and exasperated. With the help of the firelight and her extensive experience in autopsies, Zhu Yu had no difficulty identifying the deceased's face through the bluish-purple lividity. She quickly recognized that it was indeed Gu Lingyun, the person they had been inquiring about.

She pressed her hand against the bruises on Gu Lingyun's face a few times, and seeing that the bruises did not disperse, she said, "It seems that when someone deliberately spread the word outside, the person was already dead."

"Not poisoning? Then the cause of death...?" Lu Qing asked softly.

Zhu Yu remained silent, bending down to carefully touch down the top of Gu Lingyun's skull.

When she turned the corpse over, she felt something was a little strange. As she touched it inch by inch, she gradually figured out the answer.

“The clothes are clean, without any stains,” she said, carefully slipping her hand under Gu Lingyun’s thin clothes. “There are no obvious wounds on her chest or abdomen, and no signs of stitching.”

I just discovered that her neck was broken, and as I continued to feel around, I found that it wasn't just that; every joint and every bone in Gu Lingyun's body... was broken.

As she spoke, she pulled her hand away, grabbed Lu Qing's wrist, and made him bring the tinderbox a little closer. She then squatted down by the bed and leaned in to observe Gu Lingyun's terrifying face.

“Died of asphyxiation.” After a while, Zhu Yu came to a conclusion: “His eyes were slightly protruding and covered with blood vessels, and there were many small bruises on his face, which are consistent with the appearance of death by asphyxiation.”

And her fractured neck could indeed have caused such a death.

However, there wasn't a single trace of external injury on her body, yet every bone was broken. I couldn't tell whether her neck bone broke first, causing her to suffocate, or whether she was tortured inch by inch by breaking every joint and bone before her neck was finally snapped.

"To be able to break every joint and every bone without leaving any visible marks... that's truly masterful," Lu Qing muttered, then whispered to Zhu Yu, "Should we examine it?"

"No." Zhu Yu had changed his mind. "If it weren't for the blood clots on her body, she should still be stiff right now. But when I moved her, I found that her body was soft. I'm afraid we can't tell the cause of death from the surface."

Since the other party intends to create such an effect, they will definitely ask the coroner to examine it carefully afterwards.

I've checked it. No matter how well it's sewn, there will still be traces that will be detected. That would be like taking someone else's blame and putting it on your own head, which is unacceptable.

Didn't you see I didn't even take off her clothes to check her?

"Put out the tinderbox. I'll turn her body back over and put it back the way it was before. We don't need to linger here any longer."

Lu Qing nodded and extinguished the tinder.

In the darkness, Zhu Yu quietly restored Gu Lingyun's body to its original state. The two of them tiptoed out of the house, closed the doors and windows again, and silently climbed back onto the wall, disappearing into the night.