I traverse America, using holy light to quell American terror!

Richmond is a long way from Grantham.

It would normally take at least 4 hours to get there by car.

However, Li Yuan, who had been speeding all the way, only took a little over two hours.

Then I saw the Grantham County sign by the roadside.

Although the police lights went off several times along the way.

But how could those state troopers possibly catch up with Li Yuan's Holy Light motorcycle?

With just a slight acceleration, Li Yuan shook off the state police who were chasing him.

Li Yuan slowly parked the car on the side of the road. He looked at the fork in the road under the sign.

He took out his phone and called Sheriff Burke.

Meanwhile, Burke, who had just returned home, was standing at the door taking off his clothes.

Burke was busy all day because of the murder case.

Feeling a bit tired, he decided to take a good rest.

After hearing the phone ring.

Burke picked it up casually and asked in a deep voice:

"Hello, who is this?"

"Hello, Officer Burke, my name is Li Yuan."

They came to help the church examine the body.

Then, Li Yuan glanced at the road sign and said to Burke:

"I've reached the crossroads leading to Grantham."

You'd better come pick me up; I don't know how to get there.

"My God, you came pretty fast."

As Burke put his clothes back on, he said:

"I thought you would come tomorrow morning."

The local pastor had mentioned to him that he would send someone to take a look, but Burke didn't take it seriously.

Burke was not a big believer in ghosts and spirits.

He picked up the car keys from the key tray by the door and instructed Li Yuan:

"Just wait for me under the road sign. There's a fork in the road there, and it's easy to get lost."

"Okay, I'll wait for you there."

Li Yuan hung up the phone and put the motorcycle back into the system space.

He then leaned against the road sign pole and looked up at the stars in the night sky.

Meanwhile, the Tilden father and son set up their cameras.

The current condition of the unidentified female corpse is being recorded.

"An autopsy will be performed on the unidentified woman. The autopsy will be conducted by myself, Chief Coroner Tommy Tilden, with assistance from medical technician Austin Tilden."

After introducing the personnel involved in the dissection,

Tommy walked toward the body while recording the autopsy process.

"This autopsy will be conducted in four stages."

First comes the appearance assessment, followed by the internal assessment.

Targeting the heart, lungs, and digestive organs, and finally the brain.

At the same time, the weather forecast came on the radio.

The host announced the good weather forecast in a cheerful voice.

Austin picked up his camera and photographed the body, while simultaneously recording its external appearance:

"Generally aged 20 to 30, Caucasian white,"

The skin looks normal, with no bleeding or external injury; the hair is brown; the eyes...

As he spoke, Austin lifted the woman's eyelids.

However, when he saw the color of the woman's pupils, he became somewhat confused.

He glanced at his father, who was preparing, and said uncertainly:

"grey?"

Hearing his son's words, Tommy turned around in surprise.

He put on his glasses, bent down, and carefully examined the corpse's pupils:

"That's true, but these eyes only appear several days after a person has died."

Tommy pinched the woman's arm in confusion.

The corpse's joints were moved again:

"There was no livor mortis, nor was there rigor mortis."

The unusual state of the corpse puzzled Tommy.

Austin looked at his father and asked curiously:

"When do you think she died?"

Tommy shook his head, placed his hand on the corpse, and felt around for a moment.

A moment later, his brows furrowed even deeper.

"Her body was even colder than the temperature in the autopsy room; it felt icy to the touch."

"Maybe it's the air conditioning?"

In response to his son's words, Tommy raised an eyebrow and said:

"There are many possibilities, maybe."

To find out the answer, we need to continue the investigation.

Austin reached out and squeezed the corpse's unusually slender waist, then said to his father:

"Her waist is too thin; it's even somewhat disproportionate to the rest of her body."

"It might be congenital; we'll need to perform an autopsy to determine that."

Tommy pointed to the blackboard and instructed his son:

"Write it down on the blackboard, we'll discuss it again later."

Austin nodded, picked up the photos he had taken, and walked towards the blackboard.

Tommy then suspiciously squeezed the joints of the corpse's limbs.

After a moment, Tommy said in a deep voice:

"She has fractures in her wrist and ankle."

Austin unexpectedly walked back to the body and asked in confusion:

"How did they manage that? A broken wrist and ankle, yet no visible signs whatsoever?"

Tommy turned to get his tools, and casually remarked:

"It's probably just a simple fracture."

Austin, however, pinched the corpse's ankle in disbelief.

They discovered that even bone fragments could be pinched out:

"This isn't just a simple fracture; her bones are shattered like this."

Tommy, still unsure, didn't continue the topic of bones.

Instead, he picked up tweezers and scraped the dirt out of the corpse's fingernails.

Austin looked at what his father had scraped out and asked curiously:

"What's that? Is it soil?"

"No, this isn't soil; it looks rather sticky."

Tommy picked up the black substance he had scraped into the box and examined it closely:

"This is...this is peat? How can there be something like this?"

This discovery greatly shocked Tommy.

Because a person who has just died would not have peat under their fingernails.

That thing only exists in swamps or deep soil.

Austin, holding the woman's feet, said to his father:

"She also has them under her toenails."

"Not only that."

Tommy muttered as he scraped peat from the woman's hair with tweezers:

"It was in her hair too, it looked like it had been covered in peat."

"Perhaps she was buried in the peat?"

After Austin finished speaking, he found it somewhat laughable.

He looked at his father with a puzzled expression and asked:

Where can we buy that around here?

"The nursery, you can buy the seedlings there."

Tommy raised an eyebrow and continued explaining to Austin:

"There will be peat further north, but we don't have any in Grantham County and the surrounding area."

As he spoke, Tommy picked up the flashlight.

Begin examining the other parts of the female corpse.

"The nostrils were clean, without any inflammation, fluid, or foreign matter, and the ear canals were the same."

However, just as Tommy got up to make way for his son to pry open the woman's mouth,

A startling scene was discovered.

The female corpse had no tongue!

"Oh, damn it!"

Tommy gazed at the mangled piece of tongue in the woman's mouth and said with some regret:

"This situation is truly beyond my expectations."

"Her tongue was cut off."

Austin frowned and muttered something, turning his face away as if he couldn't bear to look.

Tommy, being well-traveled and knowledgeable, recovered quickly.

However, he still instinctively took out a tongue depressor and pressed it down on the woman's mouth:

"The technique was very rough; it didn't look like a surgical procedure."

Austin didn't want to think negatively, so he could only try to guess:

"Maybe... he bit it off himself? Like, a drug overdose, causing spasms or something..."

"No, this isn't a bite mark."

Tommy shook his head and pointed to the wound on the back of his tongue, saying:

"The wound is striped, indicating that it was roughly cut off by some kind of sharp weapon."

Hearing his father's description, Austin suppressed his discomfort and glanced again at the gruesome scene inside the corpse's mouth.

It turned out that what my father had said was indeed true.

Tommy, standing to the side, seemed to remember something.

He pointed to the corpse and said in a deep voice:

"I've seen this before, about 15 years ago, near Norfolk."

He walked to the blackboard, picked up the chalk, and started drawing on it.