As they got closer, the smell of blood hit them with a vengeance.
"Tsk..." Nicholas clicked her tongue in annoyance, but her gaze didn't leave the skeleton.
Everyone frowned at the scene, but no one felt any discomfort... no, they were all old hands. It was one thing to be afraid of ghosts or bugs, but this?
It was just a matter of having the flesh and blood sliced off a person piece by piece with a sharp knife...
"I can't take it anymore!" Shigure Kira covered her mouth and ran away. Salome's eyelids twitched, and she averted her gaze. Nicholas's expression became even more annoyed and disdainful, and Cecilia's was grave.
She had been here last night... but she hadn't noticed?
Siegfried stood before the mangled flesh and bones for a few seconds before pinching his nose and squatting down, looking for clues.
Ignoring the scattered pieces of flesh and the various hairs on them, Siegfried quickly scanned the area before standing up with an ugly expression, making way for Cecilia.
"The bones are intact... I don't think any of the meat is missing," Siegfried's voice sounded strange because he was holding his breath as he spoke.
There was too much blood. The smell was overwhelming. And this wasn't a battlefield, so there was no smell of gunpowder or anything else to mask it, just the pure smell of blood.
Even slaughtering a pig didn't smell this bad.
The smell of blood was a bit too much.
Siegfried fell into deep thought as Cecilia, having put on a pair of transparent disposable gloves, squatted down without a change in expression and picked up a piece of flesh from the foot of the skeleton.
The flesh was cut longitudinally. Cecilia could even see the cross-section of the various tissues on this piece of flesh.
The possibility of a mad surgeon could be ruled out. With just one glance, Cecilia knew that this was definitely not the result of a normal lingchi execution.
In a conventional lingchi, the size of the sliced meat could be controlled with a delicate touch to be exactly the same, but it was absolutely impossible for every piece of flesh to have a diamond-shaped piece of skin.
Based on Cecilia's years of experience, this cutting technique was more like pulling the delicate flesh of a bayberry from the pit...
She took a sealed evidence bag, placed the first piece of the body inside, and then picked up the second.
And in that instant, Cecilia's gaze suddenly paused.
"Siegfried, everyone," she said, standing up and taking two steps back calmly before speaking. "I've found something."
Everyone's eyes immediately focused on Cecilia.
"What did you find?" Siegfried quickly stepped forward and stood a few meters away from the body. It was only after Cecilia had retreated to stand beside them that she slowly spoke.
"The pieces of the body are arranged in order. It seems to have been piled up starting from the lowest part of the body," Cecilia said, pulling Shigure Kira over to demonstrate.
Cecilia bent down and touched Shigure Kira's small leather shoes. "The one buried at the bottom should be the deceased's feet, and the scattered circle is the deceased's legs."
Cecilia's hand slid up from Shigure Kira's feet, the speed perfectly matching her explanation. Even Shigure Kira shivered under the touch of her fingertips.
"So, the top is the hair," Cecilia continued, her hand still raised, reconstructing what had happened last night for everyone.
"If it was arranged, then these fragments shouldn't be so messy. And if it was thrown away randomly, then the fragments of these parts should be chaotic, not so orderly.
"Unless..." Cecilia raised her hand and gently tapped the space between Shigure Kira's eyebrows, who had yet to escape her fate as a model. "There's only one possibility for this to happen."
"The assembled blocks collapsed in an instant."
In that instant, everyone felt that Shigure Kira had become a doll assembled from countless small parts, which had then collapsed in an instant due to unstable assembly.
Only such an instantaneous collapse could result in that ring-like distribution.
"Could it be that the murderer is so sadistic that after cutting them up, they had to go to the extra trouble of putting them back together and then pushing them over?" Nicholas clicked her tongue in annoyance again, the disgust in her eyes almost overflowing.
What was this person if not a twisted madman?
"No, the smell of blood is very strong here. The person died here," Siegfried said, shaking his head seriously.
"Indeed..." Salome looked at the bloodstains on the ground, which were also scattered in a ring, and nodded. "This kind of blood spray is a bit like the bloodstains that a person who has been beheaded in an instant would leave, spreading out in all directions. The distance also matches arterial spray rather than flow."
"So, the murderer performed the torture of a thousand cuts on a guy whose blood was circulating normally? Starting from his feet, he skinned this person alive right here?" Nicholas, summarizing again, really felt a chill this time.
"I'm afraid... there's still a misunderstanding," Salome shook her head. "Cecilia, did you hear any drone sounds last night?"
Cecilia shook her head. "No."
Salome nodded. "It takes a long time to skin a person alive, so the blood must have been covered in a certain order, but I only saw bloodstains from one period, which means the time was very short.
"Moreover, to subject a living person to this kind of torture, you either need a strong anesthetic or you need to tie their hands and feet. But there are no signs of ropes here, nor are there any signs of poles, so the only possibility is that a person stood here and willingly accepted this torture."
"Scraping the bone to treat the poison?" Shigure Kira couldn't help but retort. "And it's a person who scraped their entire body off..."
"What if it was done in an instant?" Siegfried suddenly said seriously.
Everyone looked at him.
"In an instant... the flesh and blood of a standing person were cut, and then they were allowed to fall down naturally," Siegfried looked at the feet of the skeleton, where the flesh and blood were gathered.
Everyone fell silent. This ability was beyond normal understanding.
"Laser cutting?" Shigure Kira asked.
"There are no burn marks on the flesh or bones. A laser that can cut a human body so cleanly would definitely leave an impact on the bones," Cecilia rejected.
"A martial arts master?" Siegfried had a sudden idea.
"That's a bit too outrageous..." Cecilia thought for a moment, but still refused.
"What if the martial arts master is a Herrscher?" Nicholas added.
Cecilia fell silent. After a moment, she nodded.