In the antechamber of the examination room, the stench hit him straightaway; he knew camphor swabs wouldn’t be much good but stuffed his nostrils with them nonetheless. Just then, Bo appeared.
“Here it is; sorry it took a while,” he said, bringing out the lance Cí had asked for.
He looked the lance over, checking its weight and alignment and nodding in satisfaction; it was exactly what he needed. Then he carried on with his preparations, mixing white thistles and bean-tree pods and setting fire to them—another way of counteracting the smell. He also had some ginger to chew, but that was about all he could do. He took a deep breath and entered the examination room.
The corpses were once again crawling with worms, in spite of having been cleaned only the previous day. He picked the larvae and worms off with a wooden stick dipped in vinegar and water and completed the cleansing by pouring bowls of water over the corpses.
He made no new findings with either the corpse of the older man or that of the eunuch; the decomposition had gone so far in both that the blackened flesh had begun peeling away from the muscles in stiff sheets. But on the face of the younger corpse, the one he’d had the portrait made of, he discovered a myriad of tiny pricks like poppy seeds. These scars looked to be old and were scattered across the face like tiny burns or pockmarks. There were also odd squarish rings around each of the eyes. He quickly sketched the marks in his notebook, and then found exactly the same marks on the hands.
Then Cí took the lance and went over to the older man’s corpse, introducing it into the crater wound on the chest and carefully nudging and applying pressure. He asked Bo to help him turn the body and discovered that, as he had suspected, the wound went all the way through from front to back. So, there were not two separate wounds at all. He was about to remove the lance when something gleamed on it, catching his eye. Picking up his tongs, he removed the object; it turned out to be a stone chip. He couldn’t tell where it might be from, but he saved it as evidence.
Cí turned to Bo.
“I need another corpse,” he said in a serious voice.
“Well,” said Bo, looking worried, “I’m not going to help with that!”
Cí let out a laugh and Bo a sigh; they weren’t going to have to kill anyone, but Cí did ask if it would be possible to have access to a corpse so he could test a hypothesis. Bo immediately suggested they go to the Great Cemetery.
“No. It has to be from somewhere other than the Great Cemetery,” he said, remembering Xu’s threats straight away.
Next he took out two large sheets of paper, one with an anatomical drawing of a human from the back, the other from the front. Bo had never seen anything like them.
“I use them as a screen,” explained Cí. “These black points indicate the places in the body where it is fatal to receive a wound, and the white points are where, though not fatal, wounds would have grave consequences.” He spread them out on the floor and marked on them precisely where the wounds had been inflicted.
Cí cleaned the lance and put away the sketches. After giving the order for the three corpses to be buried, he and Bo left the palace.
They went to the Central Hospital. People died there with such frequency that Cí was sure there would be some corpses on which he could practice. He wanted to find out what kind of wound the lance would make when passed through the body fully. However, the sanatorium director informed them that the most recently deceased patients had already been taken away by their families. When Bo suggested they use a sick person instead, Cí thought surely he was joking, but the director didn’t see why they couldn’t. Still, Cí rejected the idea.
“I don’t know how I could have dared to suggest it,” said Bo apologetically.
“What about convicts who have been executed?” asked Cí.
The prison was located just outside the city walls. Its director, a military man covered in scars, seemed to relish the idea of skewering a dead prisoner.
“We strangled one just this morning,” he said brightly. “I know dead prisoners have been used in the past to test the effects of acupuncture, but nothing like this. At least the scum will be put to good use. And if it’s for the good of the empire, all the better.”
He showed them to where the body of the recently executed prisoner was being kept. It was sprawled out and in tatters.
“The bastard raped two little girls and threw them in the river,” the prison head told them.
Taking out his drawings, Cí tried to mark on this corpse the exact locations of the wounds he had found on the other corpses. He decided against undressing the body so as to better reproduce the conditions of the other deaths.
“And it would be best to stand him up,” he said.
The prison head ordered a number of soldiers to help, and they eventually hoisted the body up with a rope slung over a beam and then under the armpits. The dead man hung there like a rag doll. As Cí approached, wielding the lance, he felt a moment of compassion for the criminal whose half-open eyes seemed to issue a challenge from beyond death. Cí pointed the lance at the body and, bringing to mind the girls this man had killed, thrust the point into the body with all his might. There was a crack, but the blade snagged halfway through the torso.
Cí cursed. He removed the blade and prepared to thrust again. Summoning all his energy and bringing the girls to mind again, he struck harder this time but still didn’t make it through the torso. He removed the lance and spat on the floor.
“You can take him down.” He kicked a stone in frustration, shaking his head.
He didn’t feel the need to explain anything to anyone there, but he thanked them for their efforts and said he was done.
When he met up with Gray Fox later on in the afternoon, Cí had no qualms about keeping his findings secret.
“The only thing I’ve really managed to ascertain is that, in the eyes of his colleagues, Soft Dolphin was an honest person, a good worker,” said Cí. “But that’s about all. What about you?”
“Honestly, this case is a poisoned chalice. A body without feet or head! They haven’t got the slightest idea, and then they’re going to make it seem like you and I are totally inept.”
“Any ideas how to move it forward?”
“I’ve decided to work on something else. The case with the dead sheriff. No way am I going to let these bastards smear my career in shit when it’s only just getting started. I’ve decided to go to Fujian myself and hurry things along. I have a feeling I can work this one out, and that’ll be a good early success to help me make my name.”
“But what about our orders?”
“Oh, I’ve chatted with Kan; he’s fine about it.” Gray Fox smiled nonchalantly. “Blood’s thicker than water and all that…You’re going to have to work this one out without me, I’m afraid!”
Cí couldn’t be happier that Gray Fox was going to be out of his hair, but at the same time he felt sure that Gray Fox would figure out that Kao had been tracking him, and that would be the end of everything.
“So, when do you leave?” Cí asked, trying to keep his voice level.
“Tonight,” said Gray Fox. “The longer I stay here, the more of this disaster gets pinned on me.”
“Well, good luck to you,” Cí said, turning to go up to his quarters. He had a lot to think about.
