Taoist priest goes to America

Chapter 123 Eating

"The public has the right to know! Are you going to shoot an old man?" the person holding the phone shouted back as they backed away.

Flashbulbs went off, red camera lights lit up everywhere, and reporters aimed their long lenses and microphones at the cordon from all angles. A female reporter wearing glasses had already begun reading her opening remarks into the camera.

Faced with increasing cameras and onlookers, the police officers clearly panicked and quickly put down their Taser guns.

A middle-aged man dressed in plain clothes, with a detective badge hanging around his neck, who looked like a captain, strode out from beside the tent, waving to the armed police officers as he walked, signaling them to put down their weapons.

He wore a well-trained, amiable smile and spread his arms to make a reassuring gesture toward the crowd.

"Please calm down, everyone! Please don't misunderstand, we are just worried that the old man might have accidentally entered the crime scene and destroyed evidence. We have absolutely no intention of using excessive force!"

"Please remain calm and cooperate with the police. We will keep you informed of the situation soon."

After the sheriff finished speaking, he turned his head, his smile vanishing instantly. He leaned close to a young policeman next to him and whispered through gritted teeth, "Go arrest that old man! Don't let him spout nonsense in front of the cameras!"

The young policeman hesitated for a moment, stood on tiptoe to look at the old soldier's back as he ran into the tent, and then whispered to the captain, "Boss, I feel like I've seen this old man somewhere before."

,

"His face just now reminded me of what I saw this afternoon—the executive order the new president signed, looking for some kind of savior."

,

"The young man in the photo looks a bit like this old man, I think they look very similar. Could it really be that veteran?"

The captain's face darkened. He glanced at the growing number of reporters and the live-streaming phone cameras around him, then at the back of the old soldier kneeling on the ground inside the tent. His Adam's apple bobbed, and he swallowed hard.

"I feel like I've seen this before—what should we do? No, we can't take the risk!" The sheriff gritted his teeth, then his eyes lit up as if he had thought of a good idea.

"That's right! Send Lia! Lia is the best at calming people down. Let her go and appease that old man. Make sure he doesn't say anything inappropriate in front of the camera."

""

"You—" the sheriff pointed at the young officer, "quickly check the missing person notice in that executive order to confirm if it's the same person. Hurry! Execute it immediately!"

"Yes, sir!" The young policeman straightened his back and quickly jogged to find the person and check the information.

After shouting those words into the crowd, Ang Lee quickly withdrew from the crowd.

He circled around to a forensic vehicle outside the police cordon, and while everyone was watching the standoff between the police and reporters, a long, thin tendril silently extended from his arm.

The tentacles reached in through the window in the back seat of the car and hooked a neatly folded white forensic coat and an unopened pack of face masks.

The whiskers retracted, and the forensic coat fell into his hands. After a while, when he came out from behind the police car, he had transformed into a forensic doctor wearing a white coat, a mask, and rubber gloves, with only his eyes showing.

No one noticed him when he blended into the cordon; everyone was still caught up in the chaos of the "veteran's challenge."

At that moment, the veteran Boone, who had rushed into the tent, collapsed to the ground, his hands braced against the weeds.

Ang Lee looked at the old man lying in the tent. The old man's chest and abdomen had been completely cut open. The skin and muscle layers had been neatly cut open and turned to the sides, revealing the empty chest and abdominal cavities inside.

Blood was everywhere, soaking the old blankets and newspapers at the bottom of the tent, forming a small dark red pool of blood outside the tent fabric.

The heart was gone, the liver was gone, the kidneys were gone, and the stomach and intestines were turned inside out and piled up on the sides of the body, as if someone had ransacked the place.

Veteran Boone's face appeared even more ashen under the white light of the survey lamp. He was completely deflated, his cloudy old eyes staring blankly at his friend's hollowed-out body, his eye sockets empty.

"The heart is gone, the liver is gone, both kidneys are gone, and the lungs have been removed."

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"The small and large intestines were left at the scene. Look at that pile in the corner over there; they were just thrown there after being taken out."

The speaker was an elderly forensic doctor with gray hair and blood-stained gloves, pointing with his fingers to several incisions on the inner wall of the corpse's abdomen.

"Look here, the cut on the abdomen is very clean. It was cut with surgical scissors, not with a knife."

"This killer is most likely to have studied medicine or have extensive experience in slaughtering; the way he harvested organs was too professional."

""

Within minutes, all the valuable organs were removed, and the wounds avoided major blood vessels, resulting in far less blood accumulation in the corpse than normal.

"Organ trafficking?" the detective asked.

"Organ trafficking?" The old forensic doctor glanced at the detective, his eyes looking at him like he was looking at a newly recruited intern.

"How is that possible?" The old forensic doctor sneered.

He took off a blood-stained glove and used the back of his relatively clean hand to push up his glasses, which had slipped down to the tip of his nose.

"Have you ever seen an organ trafficker randomly hire people to kill and harvest organs?"

"Human organs are not parts; you can't just take them off one machine and install them on another."

"Organ transplantation requires strict matching, including blood type and tissue compatibility antigens—if any one of these is not a match, it will result in an acute rejection reaction."

,

"The probability of a patient dying on the operating table after a transplant is higher than that of someone who doesn't receive a transplant."

"In the real organ trafficking chain, the recipients are all found in advance, the matching is completed, the harvesting time is extremely short, and the organs are immediately placed in a low-temperature perfusion fluid and transported directly to the operating room by special personnel and vehicles."

"Do you think they'd randomly grab a homeless person, cut open their stomach, remove all their organs, and then slowly find a buyer? By the time they find a buyer, the organs will have already died."

The old forensic doctor paused, then squatted down again, pried the blood-stained hand off the corpse, and examined it carefully under the light for a long time.

"There's another place that can prove it—"

The elderly forensic pathologist straightened up and wiped the fog off his glasses with his sleeve. The young forensic assistant next to him stopped writing and cautiously asked him what he meant.

The old forensic doctor did not answer immediately, but looked down at the hollowed-out body on the ground.

"This incision was designed to expose the chest and abdomen to the maximum extent possible, without protecting the integrity of the organs at all."

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"If the purpose is to sell it for money, the aorta of the heart must at least be preserved as a complete vessel, so that there is room for anastomosis during transplantation."

"He ripped his heart right out of his chest cavity, like scooping out a watermelon with a spoon—"

,

The old forensic doctor's gaze shifted from the chest to the abdomen, and he pointed with tweezers to where the liver should have been. "The liver, too, was just brutally ripped out."

"No organ trafficker would do this, but if you just want to take the organs back home, this is the fastest way."

The old forensic doctor turned to the detective, who was completely stunned, and finished stating his conclusion.

"This is most likely not organ trafficking. It's more likely that the organs were harvested and consumed."

""

"Quickly notify the police; this is the same serial killer who liked to eat organs from last time."

As Ang Lee squatted beside the pool of blood, his heart skipped a beat when he heard these words.

His request to Nigel was clear: kidnap the man, but don't kill him; just take him to a safe place.

Who exactly did Nigel hire? Did she even know that the person he hired was capable of such a thing? Or had the person Nigel hired already gone out of control?

Ang Lee put these questions aside; now was not the time to delve into them. Once the intelligence was gathered, he should take the veterans and leave.

He took a step back, silently turned around among the group of forensic doctors who were taking notes, and walked out of the tent.