# 225
**Chapter 225: The Severed Finger Deduction**
In the empty, pristine corridor, two figures walked one after the other.
At the end of the hallway stood a metal automatic sliding door. Beside it sat a young man leaning against the wall, yawning.
Seeing the two approaching, he immediately straightened up and stood.
"Please present your identification," he said solemnly.
Lin Qiye took out his Coat of Arms and handed it over. The young man examined it carefully, then said in surprise:
"So you're the new Night Watch member. My apologies." He bowed slightly to Lin Qiye and returned the Coat of Arms with both hands, glancing curiously at the person behind him.
"Brother Lin, this is...?"
"Oh, he's an expert I invited to take a look at the body," Lin Qiye said calmly as he put away his Coat of Arms.
"Understood, I'll open the door for you right away."
The young man opened a small box beside the metal door and entered a dozen-digit password. The door slid open, revealing a passage beyond.
Wearing a shirt and a mask, An Qingyu followed Lin Qiye inside, asking in surprise:
"The security here is this lax? I thought there'd be body searches and identity registration."
"This is just a morgue. No need for all that trouble. For truly classified places, you wouldn't even know they exist, let alone walk in so openly," Lin Qiye replied.
In the end, he had brought An Qingyu along—not for any other reason, but because An Qingyu’s ability to interpret corpses was absolutely top-tier in Great Xia. Even the most skilled forensic examiner might not match him.
With him here, they might actually find some clues.
The two pushed open the door to the morgue. Compared to a police station’s morgue, this one was significantly smaller. After all, only bodies related to mysterious incidents were stored here, and such events didn’t happen more than a few times a year.
After showing their identification to the forensic examiner, Lin Qiye was immediately handed an autopsy report. At his request, Sun Xiao’s body was wheeled out from the cold storage.
Lin Qiye gave the report a brief glance, then focused his attention on the body itself.
According to the report, this corpse was no different from the previous three. If they wanted a breakthrough, they’d have to examine the body directly.
An Qingyu had already entered his zone—calm, detached, and precise as he scrutinized every inch of the corpse. A faint gray light flickered in his eyes.
After thoroughly examining every detail, he instinctively reached into his pocket and pulled out a sharp scalpel...
Lin Qiye grabbed his hand and shook his head. “Look only. No dissection.”
An Qingyu nodded reluctantly. He lowered his gaze at the body, the lenses of his glasses reflecting the pale light as he spoke in a low voice:
“Overall, same as the previous three. Fatal wound to the chest. All ten fingers severed. No other injuries besides the nail wounds.”
He took the autopsy report from Lin Qiye and continued, “The severed finger stumps show signs of vitality, meaning the fingers were cut off while the victim was still alive—same as the previous three.”
“So, no anomalies?” Lin Qiye asked, disappointed.
“Yes, there is!” An Qingyu nodded firmly. “This body differs from the previous three in one key way!”
“Where?”
“The direction of the finger cuts!” An Qingyu’s eyes gleamed. “The previous three had fingers severed from top to bottom.”
He pressed himself against the wall, left hand mimicking being nailed to it, palm facing the wall, back of the hand outward.
His right hand formed a blade and chopped down on the fingers.
“Normally, if someone’s nailed to a wall like this, the fingers can only be cut from the back of the hand toward the palm. A knife can’t swing *out* from inside the wall. That’s how the fingers were severed in the previous three cases.
But this body is different!”
He traced a horizontal line from bottom to top across his left fingers with his right hand.
“His fingers were severed from bottom to top! From palm to back of the hand! But in the position I’m holding now, that’s impossible. So when his fingers were cut, his hand must’ve been like this...”
He flipped his left hand over—still nailed to the wall, but now palm outward, back of the hand against the wall.
Lin Qiye’s eyes lit up, but then his brow furrowed.
“But in the footage, the body was too far away and the lighting too poor. We couldn’t see the direction of the palm. Maybe he *was* nailed up like that? What can we really tell from just how the hand was nailed?”
“On its own, not much. But the issue lies here.” An Qingyu stepped to the body and pointed at the wounds on the palms.
“A nail driven through the palm versus the back of the hand may look similar, but they’re actually different. The wounds on this body... were caused by a nail driven *downward* through the hand.”
He mimed a nail piercing from the back of one hand through the palm.
“That means... the direction of the nail and the direction of the finger cut are *opposite*! Which proves...”
“That the fingers were cut *before* the body was nailed to the wall.” Lin Qiye’s eyes narrowed as he finished An Qingyu’s sentence.
An Qingyu nodded. “Exactly.”
“But the footage doesn’t match our deduction,” Lin Qiye frowned. “And analysis confirms the video wasn’t edited. What it shows *did* happen.”
“Then there’s only one possibility left...” An Qingyu said slowly.
“The person who died in the footage wasn’t Sun Xiao!” Lin Qiye and An Qingyu said in unison.
Due to distance and poor lighting, the camera couldn’t clearly capture the victim’s face. Everyone had assumed it was Sun Xiao simply because of the waiter’s uniform.
And the next day, Sun Xiao’s body *was* found nailed to the wall, identical to the footage.
No one had ever questioned the identity of the victim in the video.
“So someone else wore Sun Xiao’s clothes, was mysteriously nailed to the wall and killed. Then, after the camera died, the real Sun Xiao—already fingerless—was swapped in?” An Qingyu frowned. “But... why?”
“There’s a fatal flaw in our theory,” Lin Qiye said, taking a deep breath.
“If our deduction is correct, there should’ve been *two* different victims nailed to the wall. But... the blood at the scene only shows *Sun Xiao’s* DNA!”