National Forensic Doctor

Chief Medical Examiner Niu, gasping for breath, clutched the Lock&Lock box filled with human bones and jogged towards the meeting room.

Everyone who has read up on the subject knows that the bones of an adult male from the north weigh about 8 kilograms, while those from the south are slightly lighter, averaging about 70 to 90 percent of that weight; however, when reduced to ashes, they all weigh roughly the same, about 2.5 kilograms. Therefore, it was genuinely tiring for Niu Tang to run with the Lock&Lock box.

The instructor, with nothing in his hands, followed on the run and still felt tired. He was getting older, spending more time working on documents than in the field, running and shouting, "Slow down, Niu, slow down, there’s no need to rush like this."

"It’s not like I would have to run if you hadn’t held me up preaching about the right mindset," Niu Tang, who normally equates moving bodies with weightlifting and is not adept at running, half pushed, half walked, saying only, "Captain Jiang and Lei Da must be getting impatient."

"Even if you get there, they’ll just pick out your mistakes. Why the rush?" The instructor shook his head at Niu Tang’s regular-sized, non-long legs and said, "I wanted you to understand the situation, not to send you off to your doom. There’s no need to be in such a hurry. Lei Da and I both understand there’s a problem with the report, so don’t worry."

"You’ve got to stand upright when taking a beating. We’re cops who grew up watching gangster movies; we know the basic principles," Niu Tang quipped, jokingly.

The instructor, being old, couldn’t stand hearing such things and shook his head, "Don’t talk nonsense. I’m just worried you’re fixating on it. Jiang Yuan’s standards are very high, and he can be unrealistic..."

"If there are flaws in the autopsy report, then there are flaws. Don’t say Jiang Yuan sets the bar high; no matter how high his standards, he can’t make what’s right wrong," Niu Tang was aware of where his problems lay.

Ultimately, it was related to Niu Tang’s own decision-making approach. Many forensic autopsy reports could be written very conservatively; for instance, an estimated age could be given as "approximately thirty years old" or "under forty." The time of death could be broadened from "within 3 hours" to a particular day or thereabouts...

Even if Chen Shixian from the Eight Tigers came over, he couldn’t fault them; at most, he would say they weren’t meticulous enough.