National Forensic Doctor-Chapter 1084 - 1015: All Night Long

When Xu Juan returned to Qingshi Municipal Bureau, she drew a lot of attention from the bureau’s leadership.

Fang Gang, the captain of the Criminal Police Brigade, was equally astonished and remarked, "Among all the cases we’ve spent a fortune on solving, this one has the fewest suspects and the lightest total weight. So, if we calculate by poundage, this case has the highest cost per pound of suspect! Incredible, just incredible!"

The officers present chuckled silently, mentally updating their view on Fang Gang’s math skills.

Huang Qiangmin laughed along and said, "This case is pretty straightforward and plain. Good thing you don’t feel it’s a waste."

"The sooner we solve a case, the better. We’re not the type to pretend everything’s fine just to make work harder for ourselves," Fang Gang replied smoothly.

Now that the membership fee was already paid, it wasn’t like Huang Qiangmin could demand a refund.

Besides, as Fang Gang had pointed out, solving cases quickly and efficiently is the priority. Qingshi City covers a long stretch of the Tai River, and bodies floating up are inevitable. Most of these cases are likely to be straightforward too. Jiang Yuan’s ability to resolve such cases quickly and accurately was exactly what Fang Gang needed.

Even the simplest film has high costs after shooting starts. Prolonged filming would bankrupt any production company. Task forces work similarly—once they’re fully operational and in case-solving mode, while the subsidies for everyone remain pathetically low, the funding flows out terrifyingly fast.

Seeing that Fang Gang understood, Huang Qiangmin visibly relaxed and joked, "Captain Fang, you really know your stuff. This case seems easy to solve, but pinpointing the victim’s drowning point, exact age, and sketch—all of these individually are tough tasks for an ordinary task force."

"You’ve got a good point there," Fang Gang agreed readily. This was actually a conclusion they had reached in private discussions.

The location where the victim fell into the water was determined using silicon detection techniques. The time of death was pinpointed through forensic pathology, and as for the sketch—well, it was entirely completed by Jiang Yuan himself using forensic sketching skills.

If these three tasks were handled by an ordinary task force from Qingshi City, conclusions would surely be reached, but how accurate could they be? How narrow would the scope be?

Take the victim’s drowning location, for example. Jiang Yuan confidently narrowed it down to a 200-meter radius, whereas Fang Gang’s habitual range was often measured in kilometers.

The area around the victim’s residential complex would be drastically different in scope with a kilometer-wide radius—how many more people would get pulled into the investigation? The police might have to conduct checks at the neighborhood level instead of door-to-door. This would massively increase the time spent on each household, necessitate more personnel, and lower the ratio of experienced detectives working the case...

The same principle applied for age. Jiang Yuan pegged it precisely at 38—no more, no less. This generated a shortlist of several hundred individuals for the task force. But if the age range were to fluctuate by one or two years, the workload for sorting through the list would increase significantly.

As for the sketch, Fang Gang hadn’t even considered it. Their Criminal Police Brigade had never been known to splurge on something like that.

"Who’d have thought that all three lines of investigation could yield results?" Now that the case was discussed openly, Fang Gang switched to a high EQ mode, showering Jiang Yuan and the Cold Case Squad with praise.

Huang Qiangmin nodded with a smile, while Jiang Yuan refrained from excessive humility.

All three approaches led to identifying the suspect, showing that the suspect’s methods, though plain and ordinary, did not make the breakthrough in solving the case any less significant.

Murder cases always boil down to results—and if all three approaches produce strong leads—they are exemplary indeed. The Criminal Police Brigade at Qingshi Municipal Bureau couldn’t even take notes fast enough.

After completing the requisite social interactions, Jiang Yuan took advantage of the suspect’s interrogation period to return to the autopsy room. There, he signed various forms, checked and tidied the victim’s remains, and finally...

...from the victim’s head, extracted a faintly glowing blue orb.

Sun Youqiang’s Legacy: All-Nighter (LV2) — Sun Youqiang lived a painfully ordinary life. Born into a rural family, he went through twists and turns, taking extra years to retake his exams and get into a vocational college. During his time in school, he made some friends but failed to win female attention. After graduation, he returned to his hometown, got a mediocre job, and eked out a living. He neither had the charm to attract women nor dared to visit prostitutes. He scrimped and saved over the years until, in his early thirties, he managed to marry through an arranged match. Post-marriage, his life remained dull; he was an unexciting middle-aged man with no knack for enjoyment and mediocre work skills, now simply marked as "married." As he aged, his skills declined, forcing him to work longer hours and exhibit a stronger work ethic to keep his job. In the process, he reluctantly acquired a skill exceeding the average level: All-Nighter (LV2)—the ability to endure two more hours of sleep deprivation compared to others under identical physical and health conditions!

Jiang Yuan quietly accepted Sun Youqiang’s legacy.

At the moment the glowing orb vanished, Jiang Yuan could even sense a trace of Sun Youqiang’s emotions. It was calm and relieved, akin to how an average student feels after completing a midterm exam.

Sun Youqiang was neither bitter nor at peace but had no anticipation for what lay ahead. He lacked any clear goals and didn’t know what he could achieve—only pushed forward by his environment.

His sources of joy were all things society disapproved of. He loved drinking, hanging out with shady buddies, bragging online, singing karaoke on his phone, sneaking small games onto his workplace computer, taking extended bathroom breaks at work, and ogling pretty girls. None of his pleasures produced any value.

Pleasures that bring joy only to oneself but yield no contribution to others—perhaps that’s what one might call bad habits.

Jiang Yuan lightly patted Sun Youqiang’s body bag and turned to the forensic assistant beside him. "Have the victim’s family come by? Who came?"

"His sister, I think. Their mother stayed in their hometown to care for his father," the assistant recalled.

"How’s she holding up?"

"His sister? She cried for a bit and then left. She’s in her forties and has a high school-aged son to look after, so she had to go back. The person staying around here is the victim’s brother-in-law."

"Got it." Jiang Yuan nodded, a fleeting thought to offer some gesture of comfort fading away.

Walking out, Jiang Yuan didn’t get far before spotting a girl with long straight hair hesitating at the mortuary entrance. She looked unsure whether to go in, but upon seeing Jiang Yuan, she jumped up excitedly.

"If you hadn’t come out, I would’ve bolted," said the girl, none other than Qiao Shengli, a doctoral student of botany professor Sulei.

"What’s up?" Jiang Yuan asked.

"Of course something’s up—this is my first time at a mortuary..." Qiao Shengli shrank her neck and added in a small voice, "I heard the case in Qingshi City solved, right?"

"Yes."

"But we haven’t fully analyzed the silicon samples from the 20-kilometer range yet." Silicon readings trickle in bit by bit, and truthfully, cases don’t require such an extensive range.

Jiang Yuan understood Qiao Shengli’s unease and nodded. "You can continue the analysis. The project is the project, and the case is the case—they don’t interfere with each other."

"A completely independent project? Then we can keep working on it?" Qiao Shengli looped her arm around Jiang Yuan’s and leaned in, saying softly, "You’re planning to build a database for the Tai River, aren’t you? Twenty kilometers surely isn’t enough, right?"

"Exactly."

Realizing she had asked too many questions at once, Qiao Shengli repeated one of them, "You want to build an entire Tai River database? Can we handle it for you? Our project’s startup took a lot of time—establishing reference systems, software calibration, etc.—so letting us continue would cut costs significantly."

"Letting you handle it is fine, but we have one particular limitation," Jiang Yuan replied.

"Go ahead," Qiao Shengli said, clinging tighter to Jiang Yuan.

"We can’t survey the Tai River sequentially. There’s no telling where our next funding source will come from or if we’ll get uniform approvals. So we can only work in segments."

"That’s fine," Qiao Shengli quickly agreed, visibly relieved, and immediately followed up, "Who’s the next funder?"