Speaking of the project, the man’s emotions stabilized considerably.

"This campground is a municipal project, planned for construction as early as eight years ago, but the bidding only started five years ago."

"A project planned eight years ago, why did it only start bidding five years ago?"

Municipal projects generally proceed slowly, but taking three years to start bidding definitely indicates a problem.

As expected, the man wiped his forehead: "This project was considered a vanity project at the time. After all, this campground is quite far from the city center, requiring significant investment but with low returns."

"The associated funding never came through, and on top of that, the planners back then were replaced, almost causing the project to fail."

"It wasn’t until five years ago, when our company acquired a piece of land in the city to develop new real estate, that according to the requirements, we had to aid in the development of this campground."

"Tied bid?"

"Yeah, something like that. It wasn’t exactly written into the bid documents, but everyone knew that whoever got that land, had to build this campground."

"Because the campground was quite large, the construction period was originally planned for two years. Five years ago we started, with the requirement to complete it three years ago."

"However, because this place is indeed too remote, the construction period took longer than expected... So, roughly over a year ago, the entire camp was completed and put into use." 𝚏𝕣𝐞𝗲𝐰𝕖𝐛𝐧𝕠𝕧𝚎𝚕.𝐜𝚘𝗺

Zhang Hui, although not in the construction business, wasn’t particularly clear about the tricks involved, but he had caught quite a few people in the construction industry.

So he had some understanding of their little tricks.

A project, as long as there’s no cutting corners, the materials invested are fixed.

But the longer the construction period, the less manpower is invested.

This includes both the quantity and quality of construction workers.

Required to deliver three years ago, but ended up delayed by about a year and a half.

This is equivalent to a project originally planned for two years actually taking three and a half years to complete.

Meaning that work requiring originally 100 people, could possibly be done by only hiring 50 people.

Although the increase in time would lead to longer work hours, who said these people were working on this site the whole time?

This is an important cost-saving measure for the construction side, especially when they have more than one project.

Zhang Hui, being just a criminal police officer, didn’t care when the construction was completed; what he was most concerned about was when the stone statue in the small garden entered the premises.

"Tell me, who ordered the stone statue in the small garden? Who built it? Who brought it here? When was it brought over?"

The man shook his head, then nodded.

"The stone statue was originally part of the planned construction drawings, but I’m not particularly sure who ordered, built, or transported it."

"I’m only responsible for the basic construction; the stone statue is considered a decorative material, and our parent company’s procurement department is in charge of purchasing it."

"The transportation and installation were also handled by the seller, I’m not particularly clear about that."

"As for the time, I remember it clearly, it was transported here during New Year’s Day the year before last."

"Because the statue was relatively large, we brought it here and installed it in the center of the fountain before we started working on the fountain."

"I remember it well because it was snowing heavily that New Year’s Day when they came for the installation."

The information from the construction side was limited.

According to the man in charge from the construction side, although the statue was purchased by their company, the specific production and installation were all done by the company selling the statue.

Zhang Hui reported the general situation to Qin Yong.

Even though this case was bizarre, and the murderer hid the body inside the statue, generally speaking, as long as no one moves the statue, it might never be discovered in this lifetime.

But now that it’s been discovered, the direction of the investigation is actually quite clear.

That is to find the origin of the statue, who made the statue?

Why is there a body inside?

If even the people who made the statue don’t know, then maybe no one does.

"Check with the construction side about the source of the statue, find the company that made this statue."

"Yes, I’ll arrange that right away."

While Zhang Hui was investigating the statue’s origin, Lu Chuan’s crime scene investigation was in full swing.

The entire on-site investigation was divided into two parts: the first part was the examination of the body itself, the second part was the examination of the statue’s interior.

The examination of the body was conducted together with the forensic doctor.

"The deceased, male, height 1.73 meters, approximately 30 years old, with a history of long-term heavy labor."

The shriveled corpse had slightly bowed legs, and from the shape, it was not congenital but resulted from long-term heavy labor and pressure.

The human skeleton is generally similar in shape at birth, but after prolonged physical pressure, it can become slightly deformed.

The extent of this half-deformation varies over time.

Lu Chuan’s skeleton identification analysis abilities included a lot of data on this aspect.

This was also the basis for Lu Chuan’s rough estimation of the deceased’s age.

After all, from the appearance of a shriveled and desiccated corpse, age cannot be determined.

"The time of death was at least over a year ago."

Wang Changjiang lightly tapped the dried abdomen of the corpse with a small hammer, producing a dull sound like knocking on decayed wood.

In fact, the one-year period Wang Changjiang mentioned was the minimum time, as it takes a long time to form such a mummified corpse; it wouldn’t appear in such a state of severe dehydration over a short period.

"Haizhou City’s climate is relatively humid, being near the sea, making the natural formation of such a mummy unlikely."

Shen Yan was puzzled about the cause of the mummy formation.

Liu Guodong nodded as well.

"The natural formation conditions for a mummy are quite harsh; Haizhou City’s natural conditions aren’t very conducive to forming such a mummified body."

"Transported from elsewhere?"

Yang Lin frowned, but this also seemed a bit illogical: "The murderer hid the body inside the statue to cover up their crime."

"If the body dried out naturally, such natural environments are generally remote areas. The perpetrator wouldn’t need to go to such lengths to bring the body into the city and seal it inside a statue."

Old Bai, who worked his whole life in criminal investigation, was seeing such a dried corpse for the first time.

"Is it possible that the body was rapidly dehydrated using other methods, like a drying machine, to form this mummified state?"

They exchanged glances; indeed, this possibility existed.

But drying a human body would require more than a small dryer.

"I suggest performing an autopsy on the body to determine the cause and time of death."

The exterior of the body showed no wounds, and it was currently unclear what the fatal injury was. Lu Chuan proposed starting with an autopsy.

"I’ll also check the interior of the statue again to see if there are any clues."

The body itself was relatively clean.

It had no clothing, and Lu Chuan had just scanned the body’s surface with a UV light, but no fingerprints or other clues were temporarily found.

Now it’s up to the statue’s interior to see if the perpetrator left behind anything.

Additionally, forensic analysis should extract genetic material to determine the identity of the body if possible.

As for fingerprints, even a shriveled body can have fingerprints extracted, which Lu Chuan plans to do later.