Chapter 165: The One Turned Into a Pig

When we arrived at the slaughterhouse workshop, we saw a young man, disheveled and wild-eyed, dancing crazily while shouting at us, "You're all going to turn into pigs! All of you will be slaughtered!"

Huang Xiaotao looked embarrassed and asked, "Why is he acting so crazy?"

Old Li sighed deeply. "Xiao Sheng recently went on a blind date. When the girl found out he worked at a slaughterhouse, she immediately lost interest, saying his job was cruel and inhumane. Xiao Sheng has been gloomy ever since. Maybe all that pressure built up inside him, and then something triggered him today. That's why he's spouting nonsense."

Huang Xiaotao sneered, "These girls are so dramatic. Don't they eat meat themselves?"

Wang Dali said, "Back home, there's a monk who loves distributing little pamphlets preaching Buddhism, full of stories about how killing pigs means reincarnating as pigs and suffering in the next life."

Slaughtering pigs sounds dirty and brutal to most people. But how much meat does a city consume daily? Aside from a few vegetarians or those with religious beliefs, who can live without pork? So butchers are an indispensable part of society.

Huang Xiaotao instructed a female officer to take Xiao Sheng to the car to rest and calm down. Maybe later we could get some useful information from him, though chances were slim.

The entire production line was halted. Rows of freshly cleaned pigs hung on iron hooks. In the middle stood a massive electric saw, beneath which lay a pig cut in half, its entrails spilled into the blood trough below. Wang Dali covered his mouth and rushed out, and we cast him a disapproving look.

Old Li asked, "Should we take it down?"

...

I said no need. This is a crime scene, so better keep everything as is.

I put on the rubber gloves Xiao Zhou handed me and began sifting through the entrails. Thanks to my solid foundational knowledge of anatomy—my grandfather once showed me pictures of various animals' organs and trained me to identify human organs—I immediately recognized it. "This is human! And a woman too. Look, here's the uterus and ovaries!"

Everyone was stunned. I asked Old Li to bring me a step ladder. Climbing up, I carefully examined the cross-section of the 'pig's' body and was shocked.

Her body was covered in surgical stitches. The killer had amputated her forearms and lower legs, replacing them with pig hooves. Her pelvis had been ground down to allow her to stand on all fours like a pig.

The killer had stuffed her body with a large amount of fat, drastically increasing her weight so that the few remaining limbs bore her full mass. The joints between her limbs and pig hooves were already infected and festering—an appalling sight.

On her tailbone, the killer attached a pig's tail. The muscles on the back of her neck were cut and sutured in a way that forced her to hold her head up. Her nose bridge was broken and bent upward; underneath it, soft cartilage was inserted, wrapped with fat and skin to form a pig's snout.

Her ears were real pig ears sewn onto her head. Even her tongue had been cut out.

This was a person surgically transformed into a pig!

After I said this, everyone's face changed drastically. The officers clenched their teeth in rage. Even usually composed me felt a surge of intense anger.

Plastic surgery uses techniques like fillers, bone shaving, and cutting to reshape a person. Theoretically, it's possible to transform someone into any other form—even another animal. But such a process would require an immense amount of time and patience, carefully altering the victim's body while keeping her alive with drugs.

This cruelty rivals the ancient torture of slow dismemberment. The killer this time was truly deranged beyond measure!

Huang Xiaotao clenched her fists tightly, tears shining in her eyes, grinding her teeth as she swore to the corpse, "I don't know your name, but I swear—once I catch the monster who did this to you, I'll beat him so badly even his mother won't recognize him."

Others also vowed vengeance for the victim. Fearing things might spiral out of control, I quickly said, "Enough with the oaths. Let's focus on the autopsy."

After taking photos, with Old Li's help, we carefully removed the halved body. I put on a pair of rubber boots and stepped into the blood trough, pulling out the victim's organs one by one. I declined offers for help from several officers.

When finished, I asked Xiao Zhou to take blood samples from the body since the organs were already contaminated with pig blood.

Using tweezers, I extracted a piece of cartilage from beneath the victim's nose and examined it closely, then asked Huang Xiaotao, "How much do you know about plastic surgery?"

"Not much. Why?" she replied.

I pondered and said, "The killer must be meticulous. The synthetic cartilage used in plastic surgery is usually silicone-based and carries serial numbers that can trace it back to the manufacturer. But here, the cartilage was taken directly from pigs and from the victim herself—no way to trace it. For example, this cartilage under the nose is pig bone."

I moved the victim's forelimbs. "Although her limbs were altered, they could still move freely in midair. She must have been trying to write something—probably three words: 'I am human!' Because she was human, not pig, their anatomies are different. That one jab didn't kill her, just knocked her unconscious temporarily. When she was hung upside down, blood rushed to her head and she regained consciousness."

I glanced at the production line. She was still conscious when dragged into the dehairing machine—scalded with near-boiling water, scrubbed with wire brushes, then finally sawed in half by the electric saw. The torture was unimaginable.

Huang Xiaotao asked, "Song Yang, any key clues on the body?"

Honestly, this body was both easy and hard to examine. Easy because it lay fully exposed before me. Hard because the killer never truly killed her before mutilation, and the scalding washed away all trace evidence.

I said, "The entire body is the biggest clue. Who do you think could do this?"

Huang Xiaotao answered quickly, "A plastic surgeon?"

I nodded. "Precisely—a clinic-owning plastic surgeon. It takes a long time to turn a person into a pig. A hired doctor wouldn't have the means or time to do it."

Huang Xiaotao called over officers and assigned some to check every plastic surgery clinic in Nanjiang City, compiling owner information. Another team was to trace the origin of these pigs.

I added, "Also get the drug usage records from every clinic for the past month."

After the officers left, I stared blankly at the corpse. My grandfather never taught me how to examine a body like this—I felt a bit helpless.

Huang Xiaotao noticed my hesitation. "If you need, I can ask the medical examiner to take over?"

The body's appearance was heavily altered. Only the organs could reveal clues—something medical examiners handle better.

I hesitated, then said, "Have the organs sent to the medical examiner for dissection, but I'm keeping the body."

Huang Xiaotao was puzzled. "What do you plan to do?"

I grit my teeth. "I'm going to restore her back to human form!"