The Genius Female Forensic Pathologist, The Psychological Anatomist

Mu Mian's little mice not only escaped harm but, under the care of everyone, especially Zhang, turned into a group of plump rodents.

The once smartest of them, Rainbow Seven, now refuses to navigate mazes for food.

Mu Mian poked Rainbow Seven's head and sighed, "A comfortable environment can dull a mouse's intelligence!"

"Could it be that it was never particularly smart but just had a keen sense of smell?" Fang Rui suggested.

"Of course not. The food I placed at the maze exit had no scent," Mu Mian pondered. "Should I install an electric shock device to give them a little danger now and then, to boost their motivation to solve mazes?"

Mu Mian felt someone's resentful gaze on her.

She turned around and saw it was Zhang.

"Mu Mian, how could you be so cruel? You want to electrocute them?" Zhang scolded.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

Mu Mian explained, "Psychologists do this all the time. Skinner's theory of operant conditioning was developed through 'abusing' mice. Electric shocks are a common way to apply stimuli."

Zhang stood protectively in front of the glass enclosure and corrected her, "They have names. Call them by their names—Little Red, Little Orange... Little Purple. Come on, Uncle will play some music to soothe your frightened little hearts."

Over the days, Zhang had come to treat these mice as pets.

Mu Mian whispered to Fang Rui, "I told you not to give the mice overly anthropomorphic names. It makes people too attached. See, this is what happens."

Fang Rui smiled helplessly.

Two ​​‌‌​‌‌​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌‌​​​​‌‌​​​‌​​​‌‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌‌‌​‌‌​​‌​​​​‌‌​‌​‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​​‌‌‌​​‌​​‌‌​​​‌​​‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌​‌​​​​‌‌​‌‌‌​​‌‌​‌​‌​​‌‌​​‌‌​‌‌​​​‌​​‌‌​​​​‌​​‌‌​‌​‌​​‌‌​‌​​​‌‌​​​‌​​​‌‌​‌​​‍weeks later, Mu Mian's undercover bait plan ended in failure.

On Monday morning, as Fang Rui and Mu Mian were on their way to work, they received a notification: a child's body had been found in the greenery by the roadside in the suburbs.

The scene was a small flower bed by the road. A sanitation worker had discovered the body while cleaning in the morning. At first, he thought it was an abandoned child, but upon picking it up, he noticed the baby's eyes were closed, unresponsive, and the body had a faint odor.

He checked the child's heart and found no heartbeat or breath. Realizing it might be a death, he immediately called the police.

Arriving at the scene, Mu Mian saw the deceased's body placed by the roadside.

The victim was a very young boy, no more than two years old based on his height. He was dressed in light blue cotton pajamas and wore a black knitted hat with a cartoon character on it.

His abdomen was slightly swollen, and his back showed signs of greenish decomposition. Mu Mian lifted the child's eyelids—his corneas were heavily clouded, and black spots had appeared on the sclera. The body emitted a faint stench of decay.

"The ambient temperature is 27°C, and the body temperature is 30.5°C. Based on other postmortem signs, the time of death is over 24 hours ago," Mu Mian noted.

The child's appearance was unusual—wide-set eyes, small eye slits, upward-slanting outer corners, a flat nose, and stubby fingers. Mu Mian noticed some deformities in his hand bones.

Chen Xue remarked, "This child looks strange, not like a normal child. Could he have Down syndrome?"

Down syndrome, also known as trisomy 21, is caused by an extra chromosome 21. Children with this condition have distinct facial features, delayed growth, physical deformities, congenital heart diseases, and intellectual disabilities.

Mu Mian agreed, "Yes, this is likely a child with Down syndrome. His height is 61.5 cm, and children with Down syndrome are generally shorter than average. Based on his height, he's probably between one and a half to two years old."

"Could it be that his parents didn't want to raise him and abandoned him here?" Zhang speculated.

Mu Mian was puzzled, "Isn't Down syndrome detectable through prenatal screening? It's a standard part of prenatal care. Why would his mother have given birth to him? Moreover, 60% of Down syndrome fetuses miscarry early on. Without medical intervention, it's unlikely he would have survived."

Chen Xue added, "Doctors usually advise mothers to terminate such pregnancies. But I've heard of extreme cases where mothers, out of deep love for their child, choose to give birth despite knowing about genetic issues."

Zhang said, "But a child with such disabilities wouldn't have a happy life. This kind of maternal love seems too blind."

Mu Mian noticed a faint smell of blood on the child, but upon closer inspection, she found no external injuries. Then, she removed the small hat on the child's head, revealing a bald scalp.

"His skull has been cut open," Mu Mian announced.

Everyone turned to look. The child's hair had been shaved, and a ring of black stitches, crooked like a centipede, circled the top of his head.

Suddenly, they realized this might not be a simple case of child abandonment.

"Did this child undergo brain surgery?" Zhang asked in shock.

"The technique is professional, but this wasn't a surgery. The wound shows no signs of healing, meaning the scalp was cut after death," Mu Mian explained. "No doctor would perform surgery on a dead patient."

Fang Rui speculated, "Could it be that a doctor performed an autopsy to determine the cause of death?"

"Possibly."

Mu Mian checked the child's eyelids and mouth. There were no foreign objects in the mouth, and no signs of compression on the neck. "We can preliminarily rule out mechanical asphyxiation. Based on the body's condition, it doesn't seem like death by poisoning either."

Mu Mian placed the child's body in a body bag, and she and Chen Xue loaded it into the car. They drove back, eager to uncover what had happened to this child.

Her intuition told her that the killer might have taken something from the body.

Fang Rui carefully examined the surroundings. The flower bed was next to a service road, surrounded by vast, sparsely populated wasteland. However, it was near the intersection of several provincial highways, with a gas station and a water station nearby. At night, many trucks parked in the area.

This wasn't an ideal place to dump a body.

There were no surveillance cameras near the flower bed, but the road had several speed cameras.

The road had heavy traffic, being close to a highway entrance, with many large trucks passing through. Investigating these vehicles would be challenging.

Zhang speculated, "Could it be that the child's mother, driven mad by grief, wandered here and left the child in the flower bed?"

Wang found Zhang's theory somewhat plausible but also absurd. He couldn't help but say, "Have you been watching too many dramas?"

"Think about it. A child's body is so small. It would be easy to dispose of it unnoticed—put it in a suitcase, dump it in a ravine, or throw it into the sea. Even burying it would be better than leaving it in a flower bed. If the killer had any sense, they wouldn't have dumped the body here."

Wang was convinced. "That makes sense!"

Fang Rui said, "What if the person who killed the child and the one who dumped the body are not the same?"

"Then what was the dumper trying to achieve? To draw our attention? Why not leave the body in the city center to create a media frenzy?"

Fang Rui replied, "Let's start by identifying the child. His appearance is distinctive, and with Down syndrome, such children are rare. It should be easy to find out who he is."

At that moment, Wang called out, "Come and look at this!"

Everyone gathered around and saw a symbol "დ" drawn in the soil of the flower bed. The symbol was dark red, seemingly written in blood.

After taking a photo of the symbol, Wang sprayed it with luminol, and it fluoresced.

"This symbol was written in blood."