Chapter 306: Bai Lu’s Secret

Chapter 306: Chapter 306: Bai Lu’s Secret

A night breeze blew past. Huangfu Miaomiao shivered and instinctively pressed closer to Feng Ling.

Feng Ling walked to the main gate of the incineration plant, drew out one of her Teeth and Claws, clamped it onto the top of the iron gate, and used it as leverage to pull herself up and over into the plant—

This was the place the Inspection Bureau used specifically for disposing of corpses. Compared to other waste incineration plants, its layout was relatively simple. On one side were the hearth and combustion chamber, and on the other was a factory building. There were no conveyor belts or shredders.

Feng Ling scanned her surroundings, then looked toward the factory building on her left. She could hear the constant, low hum of machinery coming from inside.

’There’s nothing to be incinerated right now, so what machine would be running?’

Taking a few steps closer, she discovered that the door to the factory building was wide open, its lock completely destroyed.

"How strange..." Feng Ling murmured. "Why would an Alien Species come to a place like this?"

She slowed her pace, entering without a sound.

Huangfu Miaomiao followed cautiously behind, on guard for any danger that might suddenly appear.

It was pitch-black inside, and the rumbling of the machinery was even more pronounced.

Feng Ling moved past several rows of stainless-steel worktables and walked to the very back of the factory building, where she found a corpse on the floor.

’Judging by the clothes, it must be one of the security guards.’

She turned the corpse over to inspect the cause of death, but with a slight bit of force, the body’s entire arm came off at the shoulder.

Feng Ling froze, holding the detached arm.

Huangfu Miaomiao gasped in shock.

After two seconds of stunned silence, Feng Ling examined the joint where the arm had detached. The break was smooth and clean. The flesh still had the elasticity of someone who had died recently, yet no blood flowed out.

The blood in this corpse had congealed into a solid, jelly-like mass.

’Just like the bodies in the photos from the dismemberment case file.’

Feng Ling put the arm down and checked the corpse’s clavicle and chest, but she found no eyes.

’This means the Alien Species that Little Third found isn’t this corpse.’

’But I’ve already scanned this place. Where else could it be hiding? Was I too late? Did the Alien Species already leave?’

’That can’t be right. If the Alien Species had left, Little Third would have definitely followed it. But the information Little Third sent indicates that the Alien Species entered this incineration plant and never came out.’

’It couldn’t have dug a tunnel and escaped underground, could it?’

Feng Ling couldn’t rule out the possibility. What if its Card was a groundhog?

She stood up and scanned the wide-open factory building again. It was a large, square space with no blind spots aside from a few support pillars. ’Where on earth did the Alien Species go?’

Just then, she noticed a door on the side wall. She hadn’t seen it earlier because it was the same pure white as the wall, and the lighting was dim.

Feng Ling walked to the door. A small LCD screen on its surface displayed the current temperature: 2°.

’It’s the door to a cold storage room.’

She tried the handle. This lock was also broken, and she opened the door to the cold storage room with almost no effort.

The lights in the cold storage room were sensor-activated. As the door opened, they flicked on, instantly illuminating the interior as bright as day.

Huangfu Miaomiao instinctively recoiled, thinking the sudden light would surely startle the Alien Species inside. But nothing happened. All was quiet, save for the persistent low hum of the refrigeration units.

She peeked her head into the cold storage room to have a look, and froze on the spot at the sight.

There were three corpses on the floor of the cold storage room.

Not only that, but the surrounding shelves held even more bodies! Or rather, body parts—a leg here, a section of an arm there, a complete upper torso—all sorts of dismembered remains, arranged with an unsettling neatness. They were wrapped in plastic, affixed with dated labels, and displayed like cuts of pork for sale at a butcher shop.

Huangfu Miaomiao was horrified by the sight.

Feng Ling stepped into the cold storage room. She frowned as she surveyed the scene, then crouched beside the three corpses on the floor. She reached out and dug the eyes out from the clavicles of two of the bodies.

’Little Third’s information was correct. These are the eyes I’ve been looking for.’

However, she had originally intended to find Xing Guang by tracking the Alien Species with the eyes on their bodies. She hadn’t expected to find them as corpses.

Feng Ling couldn’t make sense of it. ’Two Alien Species with parasitic eyes travel all this way to an incineration plant in the remote suburbs, pick a lock to sneak in, kill a security guard, and then just... die in the cold storage room?’

She searched the bodies but found no signs of trauma, nor had any Cards materialized from them. This most likely meant they had simply logged off.

The third corpse was even more baffling. It had the stench of rot, meaning it had been dead for at least two days.

She found a business card on the body belonging to a contracted Hunter from Hunting Star International named He Su.

’So, not only did two Alien Species travel all this way to log off in an incineration plant’s cold storage, they also dragged a Hunter’s corpse in with them? This is all too bizarre.’

"Feng Ling..." Huangfu Miaomiao came in, trembling as she looked around. "Why would the Inspection Bureau... keep so many bodies in an incineration plant? And... and preserve them in cold storage..."

Feng Ling thought for a moment. "The only person with the authority to do something like this would be Bai Lu."

She stood up, walked a few steps, and picked up a plastic-wrapped arm from a shelf, weighing it in her hand.

"Very fresh, and very solid," she said thoughtfully. "The bodies Bai Lu is keeping here... it seems there are no elderly people or children. They’re all strong young adults."

Huangfu Miaomiao recalled how Bai Lu had felt her up as she was leaving earlier. A shiver went down her spine, and she hugged her arms, trembling.

"It’s so cold in here... Feng Ling, can we go?" Huangfu Miaomiao whispered.

Feng Ling ignored her. She ripped the plastic wrap off the arm and saw a familiar tattoo on the skin: a combination of initials and a heart, representing the deceased’s love for their partner.

"Fan Ze said the body would be sent to the incineration plant for disposal. It looks like the body was sent here, but not for disposal. It was dismembered. The Centipede parts were destroyed, but the human parts were preserved."

’Now this is getting interesting,’ Feng Ling thought.

"Fan Ze isn’t just an accessory; he’s a participant," she analyzed with keen interest. "The dismemberment case is almost certainly connected to Bai Lu. The question is whether she’s the actual culprit, and what purpose she has for collecting all these body parts."

Huangfu Miaomiao found this all deeply unsettling. "Why didn’t she just have the bodies transported directly to the Inspection Bureau?"

Feng Ling pondered for a moment. "My guess is that the bodies require cold storage, and building a cold storage facility takes up a lot of space. The layout of the Supervision Building is more or less the same nationwide. If the structure of a certain area were to be altered, any Inspector transferred here from another region would notice immediately. So, Bai Lu had to take the long way around and build it in an incineration plant. After all, ordinary people aren’t interested in a waste incineration plant... Hmm, something’s not right..."

Feng Ling looked at the three bodies on the floor, her mind racing. ’Why would the Alien Species know about this place? They went to the trouble of breaking in, but didn’t do anything. They just logged off. What was their goal? It certainly made things convenient for me. Otherwise, I would never have discovered Bai Lu’s secret.’

As she came to this realization, her expression changed. ’Could it be... their goal was to let me know?’