I prized open the victim’s mouth and observed. According to The Chronicles of Grand Magistrates, if the victim was burned to death, there would be a lot of dust and ashes collected in the nose, mouth, and trachea. But the mouths of these two victims were completely clean.

So what was going on?

One more thing that bugged me was the victims’ body posture. Whether someone was burned to death or burned after death, the body’s proteins would be coagulated by the intense heat. The body would tense up into a boxer’s stance—it meant that the arms were lifted and the fists were clenched.

But that didn’t happen to the two bodies at all. So were they burned?

I asked Xiaozhou for a scalpel and cut a small piece of skin to check it. I found that the skin was very brittle and the blood inside the blood vessels had congealed, which was clearly a common feature of burning.

I could only say that these bodies were full of contradictions from beginning to end!

The difference between bodies that...