Chapter 175 - Heart Grows Cold

Chapter 175: Chapter 161: Heart Grows ColdThe air conditioning in the forensic office was cold, but Jin Haoguang’s heart was even colder.

He stood against the wall like a schoolboy who had done something wrong, nervous and uneasy, while Li Cheng stood opposite him, holding a Glock pistol, frowning as he examined the female corpse laid on the autopsy table.

From her appearance, the female corpse was undoubtedly Jiang Wanyong’s wife, Jiang Shaoxi, who had mysteriously disappeared a week ago. The clothes she wore matched those in the photos on the cell phone gallery.

Li Cheng suddenly asked, "Did the person who brought the body mention Jiang Shaoxi’s time of death, cause of death, or place of death?"

Jin Haoguang was startled and replied subconsciously, "Yes, they mentioned it. She died a day ago, from an overdose of sleeping pills, and the place was an abandoned apartment in Seoul Gangnam District—Mrs. Jiang had lived there when she was just married."

Jin Haoguang reported an address, and indeed, Jiang Wanyong’s cell phone album contained photos of the couple living in a shabby little house, poor but happy, back when their eldest daughter was just born.

Li Cheng observed the dried vomitus remnants at the corner of the corpse’s mouth, as if deep in thought.

Sleeping pills often contained emetic phenol alkaloid and other emetic substances. A small intake was tolerable, but a large, single dose would cause a strong vomiting reaction.

Someone attempting to commit suicide by taking sleeping pills would vomit while falling asleep in a dazed state, subsequently choking on their own vomit and suffocating. The whole process was far from peaceful and painless, let alone dignified.

Li Cheng pinched the arm of the corpse and felt a stiffness that was different from rigor mortis.

Raising an eyebrow, in the face of Jin Haoguang’s shocked and bewildered gaze, he casually picked up an autopsy scalpel and made an incision along the centerline of the lower jaw downward.

The scalpel was razor-sharp, cleanly cutting through clothes, skin, pleura, diaphragm, and exposing the thoracic and abdominal cavities.

Clang.

Jin Haoguang turned pale, stepping back two paces in fright, his palms sweeping over the tabletop in panic, knocking papers and pens to the floor.

Organs, all organs were gone from Jiang Shaoxi’s thoracic and abdominal cavities.

"Don’t be nervous, this isn’t a person, just a body model."

Li Cheng reached into the body model’s abdominal cavity and pressed on it, feeling the silicone texture. The eyes were made of special glass prosthetics, the skeleton from fiberglass and carbon fiber, and the hair was high-grade wigs glued on.

Such a lifelike and high-end body model would cost at least tens of thousands, or even over a hundred thousand US dollars to produce. Only a handful of facilities in the world, including Hollywood special effects studios, could make one.

The question was, what was the necessity?

The Jiang couple were ordinary people who came from a small town to the big city to make a living, and they didn’t have any notable family background or wealth, nor had they offended anyone they shouldn’t have.

Why would the perpetrator behind Jiang Shaoxi’s disappearance spend so much money and effort to create a fake corpse model to deceive others?

Wouldn’t it be simpler to just let Jiang Shaoxi remain missing?

You have to understand that South Korea is a country with a large number of missing persons. Every year, there are 50,000 cases of adult disappearances reported alone. On average, 5 bodies of missing persons who’ve left home are found nationwide every day.

Jiang Shaoxi was just one of them, so why go through the extra trouble of staging a suicide, increasing the risk unnecessarily?

As he listened to the timely system broadcast, Li Cheng stored the body model in the Backpack, and suddenly turned to look at Jin Haoguang, "Director Jin, are you cold?"

Jin Haoguang’s complexion became even paler, stammering, "Please, please don’t kill me, I have a family, and although I know Song Canhui and the others, I haven’t done any bad deeds with them."

Li Cheng ignored his rambling. With a chop to the side of his forehead, he knocked him out, then took Jin Haoguang’s phone and car keys, handcuffed his hands behind his back, bound his thumbs to his wrists with a zip tie, and finally threw him into a compartment in the morgue with a temperature close to freezing, and shut the compartment door.

To prevent Jin Haoguang from waking up midway and calling for help, Li Cheng also stuffed a towel into his mouth—a lot of movies and TV shows have kidnappers simply use a cloth to gag the hostages, but this was ineffective, as hostages can easily spit it out.

The towel must be bundled into a wad, stuffed fully into the hostage’s mouth; thus, due to the limited curvature of the open mouth, oral muscles wouldn’t suffice to expel the towel.

At the same time, consideration must be given to the softness and stiffness of the towel and the position of the tongue, to avoid stuffing it too full and causing the hostage to suffocate or compressing the root of the tongue and triggering vomiting.

The whole principle is actually similar to not stuffing a light bulb into one’s mouth.

Li Cheng exited the morgue and came to the surface parking lot, got into Jin Haoguang’s sedan, and drove into the bustling city.

Gangnam District, Seoul’s most important and bustling commercial area.

Below the white pendant lights in the basement, rows of long tables were arrayed with men and women, clad only in underwear and wearing breathing masks, sitting behind the tables, processing and packaging white powder like a factory assembly line.

Although South Korea has always prided itself as a "drug-free country" and a "clean drug country," that is just a slogan.

The post-World War II U.S. military bases in South Korea fostered the industry chain of gambling and drugs, and South Korea’s own rapid economic development and the repressive atmospheres of society greatly stimulated the market.

To the extent that every sewage treatment plant in South Korea could detect prohibited substances, including methamphetamine and ketamine.

Beneath the calm surface, evil silently breeds.

A middle-aged man named Song Canhui, who once served as the section chief of the Seoul Metropolitan Police Agency, inspected the underground factory like a leader and suddenly gestured to a Southeast Asian woman, signaling her to stand up, "You, come with me."

The pointed-out Southeast Asian woman trembled and stood up stiffly, following behind Song Canhui, towards a secretive room at the end of the underground factory.

Inside South Korea, there is a large number of foreign laborers who mostly can only engage in the so-called "3D" jobs that Koreans are unwilling to do: dirty, difficult, dangerous. Moreover, because South Korean policy stipulates that foreign laborers need employer permission to change jobs, this places them in a vulnerable position, easily exploited, discriminated against, and abused.

The setup of the secret room was relatively simple, a bed, and a crudely separated shower area with glass dividers.

"Go take a shower first."

Song Canhui’s tone brooked no refusal, shoving the Southeast Asian woman into the bathroom.

The stench of the drug production line was fetid, and requiring workers to wear only underwear was not just to prevent the smuggling of drugs, but also to facilitate the removal of body odors.

’Today, I went to the police station...’

While waiting for the woman to shower, Song Canhui stared at the light bulb on the ceiling, his eyes slightly unfocused as he couldn’t help recalling when he first graduated from the Seoul Police Academy over twenty years ago.

Back then, he was full of ambition, longing to make a name for himself and uphold justice. However, reality dealt him a heavy slap in the face.

All his colleagues at the police station tacitly consented to forcing confessions from suspects with no background, and the higher-ups of the police were in cahoots with rich businessmen. Those who fawned over superiors and bullied inferiors were promoted with ease, while a police senior who held fast to principles was obstructed and suppressed at every turn, eventually dying on the front lines of combating crime, with his family not receiving proper support even after his death.

Having witnessed all this, the once idealistic Song Canhui had died. He gradually conformed to the worldly dust, increasingly becoming morally compromised,

Retiring from his position as the section chief, he was employed by an amicable businessman, managing this underground drug factory. Everything was so natural.

Snap.

Suddenly, the lights went out, and the room plunged into darkness.

Song Canhui froze, then quickly stood up from the bedside, approaching the door to peer outside.

To prevent accidents, the drug factory had specifically purchased a diesel generator to ensure seamless power supply.

Outside, the lights were also out.

The underwear-clad male and female workers had no idea what was happening; around fifteen security guards held flashlights in one hand for illumination and carried machetes and baseball bats in the other, ensuring everyone remained silent.

At the far end of the factory, an upward staircase led to a heavy blast-proof iron door, with several guards stationed outside, responsible for barring anyone from entering or leaving.

In the suffocating stillness, fresh blood seeped under the blast-proof iron door, spreading down the stairway and quickly pooling into a puddle of blood.

Creak—yah—

The blast-proof iron door slowly opened, and due to the blind spot, all one could see from the bottom of the stairway was a pair of police boots.