"Is this your family's ancestral burial ground?"

"Yes, we went to pay respects during Qingming Festival, didn't expect to come across something like this."

Li Xiang felt a bit helpless, stumbling upon a hidden body in a grave, as if it was destined by fate.

If it hadn't rained these past couple of days causing the grave to collapse, Li Huarong's family wouldn't have discovered someone else buried in their own father's grave.

Seeing the skeletal remains already reduced to bones, he estimated that the deceased had been dead for quite some time.

Thinking about last year's Qingming worship, inadvertently paying respects to someone else as 'father', he felt a bit uneasy.

"You're still better off, look at the person concerned, their face is green with this kind of situation."

After a brief chat, everyone got back to work.

Finding bones in the grave necessitated excavating the entire burial mound.

Technical officers borrowed shovels from the villagers to slowly uncover the buried remains.

Beside a dark wooden coffin, bone after bone was excavated.

After a preliminary examination by the forensic doctor, the skeletal remains belonged to a male.

"Male? Who the hell is this, doing such a wicked thing, bury two males together, are they fencing in the afterlife?"

The onlookers, upon hearing that it was a male skeleton buried in the grave, immediately indulged in unpleasant speculations.

This kind of thing wasn't happening to them, after all, so everyone was just there to watch the drama unfold.

As the forensic doctor pieced together the unearthed bones, a complete skeleton appeared before everyone's eyes.

The deceased was about 172cm tall, and his bones bore clear signs of chopping and hacking wounds, clearly suggesting a brutal murder case.

The victim's age and time of death still required a detailed autopsy to be determined.

As the excavation work was coming to an end, the forensic doctor packaged all the skeletal remains and took them back to the city bureau.

Aside from the bones, the only things left at the scene were the deceased's clothing, all autumn and winter styles, and the technical officers found nothing else.

As a result, everyone judged that the deceased had likely died in winter.

Just who was the deceased?

How did he end up in someone else's grave?

Was there any relation between him and Li Huarong's family?

These questions immediately surfaced in everyone's minds.

The first step in investigating a homicide is to identify the body and then trace the deceased's social connections.

Thus, identifying the body is crucial.

The scene offered few clues to the criminal investigation team.

But Li Xiang, upon seeing one of the jackets, confidently stated, "The deceased is a local."

"Oh? What makes you say that?"

Hearing Li Xiang speak so assuredly, everyone curiously inquired.

If it could be determined that the deceased was a local, solving this case would become much easier.

Li Xiang pointed at the jacket and said, "This jacket used to be the work uniform of a local small mechanical processing factory. Because the factory is small, with only a dozen machines and kind of operates like a family workshop, they generally only hired locals."

"Oh? That's great, where is that processing factory located?"

Everyone was excited to hear this information. Since the factory was small, it meant there weren't many employees. By checking those who worked there, they believed it wouldn't take long to identify the person.

"In the neighboring village, I'll take you there now."

Having grown up in the area, Li Xiang knew the place like the back of his hand, even with his eyes closed.

Riding in the car with Cao Gang and Mao Ji, they quickly arrived at the mechanical processing factory.

"Hello, we're from Jinghai City Public Security Bureau. Is the boss here?"

Cao Gang walked into the factory, a small workshop without even a gatekeeper grandpa, and upon seeing a worker, inquired.

"The boss isn't here, but the boss's wife is."

"Then let's speak to your boss's wife; we need some information from her."

The employee, seeing Li Xiang and others in police uniforms, wasn't suspicious and called towards the inner room, "Madam, the police are here looking for you."

Shortly, a fashionably dressed middle-aged woman in her forties came out from the inside of the factory.

"Hello, we are from the Public Security Bureau. There's a case that needs your cooperation for investigation."

Cao Gang reintroduced himself, then took out a phone and showed the photo of the deceased's work jacket to the woman, asking, "

"Is this work jacket from your factory?"

The boss's wife glanced at the photo on the phone, which clearly showed a work jacket dug out from the ground.

She immediately recalled hearing an employee say that a body was found in a grave in Li Family Village.

Finding a body in a grave wasn't unusual, as they're intended for burying bodies, but unearthing someone else's is bizarre, and when the police came showing this photo, she had a bad feeling.

The deceased, could he be one of her factory workers?

"Yes, that's our factory's work jacket."

"In recent years, has any of your factory employees gone missing?"

Hearing the police's question, the boss's wife was already convinced that the police were here because someone was dead, and that person was likely one of their factory workers.

"Missing? I don't know!"

"You don't have many workers; there probably haven't been many resignations either. Do you have a roster of them?"

"No, I don't, our company is just a small workshop, nothing very professional. I am the wife of the boss and multitask, I simply can't handle everything, let alone make time for those things."

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