Chapter 440: A Strange Corpse

After reporting to school and coming out, standing at the school gate, watching the cars passing by, Lu Yibei’s mind suddenly flashed with the name “Qi Nanzhu.”

He frowned and thought for a while, then took out his phone from his jacket pocket, dragged Bai Kai’s number out of the black list, and dialed him.

The ringtone had barely sounded twice when Bai Kai’s excited, slightly tearful voice came through.

“Yibei, you actually called me on your own? I’m so happy!”

Lu Yibei’s brows knitted tightly, and he growled, “Cut the nonsense, Shui-Ge, I want to ask you something.”

“Go ahead, I’ll answer anything!”

“Shui-Ge…” Lu Yibei hesitated for a moment and asked, “Do you know who Qi Nanzhu is?”

Lu Yibei hadn’t intended to ask Bai Kai this question at first. If his old man had deliberately hidden Qi Nanzhu’s existence, Shui-Ge, as his childhood buddy who grew up with him, would probably help keep it secret too. Asking would be pointless.

But now, even the Void couldn’t find any clues about Qi Nanzhu, so he could only try his luck with Shui-Ge.

“……”

On the other end, Bai Kai was obviously silent for a moment, then his voice rose a bit as he answered, “No idea! Never heard of that name. Why are you suddenly asking about this?”

“It’s nothing,” Lu Yibei said, curling his lips. “Just happened to come across the name recently, and it popped into my head today.”

“That name sounds like a woman. Aren’t you the one who claims to know half the beauties in Hua City, from eighteen to eighty? I thought I’d call and ask you.”

“Oh,” Bai Kai replied, “then maybe this Nanzhu is the other half that slipped through the net?”

“Is that so? Then forget it,” Lu Yibei said. “Shui-Ge, I’ve got something to deal with here, let’s talk later.”

With that, he hung up skillfully before Bai Kai could start rambling again, and dragged his number back into the black list.

After finishing all this, Lu Yibei held his phone and fell into thought.

That moment of hesitation when Shui-Ge heard the name Qi Nanzhu probably wasn’t my imagination.

What did I say before? Shui-Ge really is helping my old man keep secrets, huh?

Looks like I’ll have to go back to the old mansion first and dig through the things my old man left behind for a good look.

If someone truly existed in this world, she must have left traces of her existence. Maybe the long years would erode those traces, but judging from the contents of Hu Yue’s notebook, Qi Nanzhu was still alive at least twenty years ago.

—-

Evening, Jingyi Apartment complex, Lu Yibei’s home.

After putting down the last box, Lu Yibei leaned against the sofa, slumped on the floor, looking at the three full boxes of relics left by his old man. He let out a long breath, then recalled the scene he’d just seen at the old mansion, muttering in confusion.

“This is so weird. No one’s been there for so long, and no one’s touched anything in the house, so why is it so clean? It’s like someone’s been living there all along, helping me tidy up.”

As he spoke, his gaze swept over the boxes in front of him. He slapped his cheeks to perk himself up.

“Forget it, forget it, that’s not important now. Studying my old man’s stuff is more important.”

He moved closer to a box, tore open the tape with a “rip,” and started exploring.

“<Dragon Tiger Leopard>? Uh, old man, you’ve been single for so long, it’s understandable you’d get lonely. I get it.”

“What’s this? Why do you have so many ticket stubs from Zhenwu Mountain Scenic Area?”

“<Is Writing Novels Really a Dead End?>… Old man, for you, it really was…”

It was as if Lu Yibei was having a conversation across time and space with his deceased old man. Every time he took something out of the box, he would mutter a few words to himself.

Several hours later, night had fully fallen.

Lu Yibei finally found a twenty-year-old black-and-white screen Nokia candybar phone in a metal box.

After examining the phone carefully for a while, holding onto a glimmer of hope, Lu Yibei plugged in the charger. When the screen lit up, he couldn’t help but marvel, Nokia is awesome!

“Alright, looks like there’s hope! Heh, old man, let me see if you had any unspeakable secrets!”

Lu Yibei muttered to himself, turned on the phone, and then stared at the big words on the screen: “Please enter the screen lock password,” falling into silence.

—-

The next morning, in the underground dissection room of the Hua City Folk Culture Administration Bureau.

Under the bright shadowless lamp, a grotesque corpse lay on the silver metal dissection table. On his chest was a black solar totem that had already been destroyed.

His height was about the same as an ordinary person, but his body was extremely bloated. From head to torso to limbs, he was much larger than normal, and the total number of his fingers and toes was one and a half times that of a regular person.

Yes, he had seventeen fingers and thirteen toes.

Wearing protective suits, gloves, and specially made gas masks, the fully equipped An Qing and Jiang Li stood beside the dissection table, looking at the thoroughly dissected corpse.

“Such a severe case of Nocturnal Syndrome,” Jiang Li couldn’t help but sigh, seemingly not very concerned about the presence of the Eclipse Society totem on the corpse.

An Qing smiled bitterly and shook her head. “If it wasn’t serious, it wouldn’t have been sent to me, would it?”

Normally, patients who died of Nocturnal Syndrome would be identified by the special task force of The Midnight Watchers Society stationed at the hospital, and then handed over to the families for private handling.

But today’s corpse was too unusual-not only was the illness bizarre and severe, but he was also a member of the Eclipse Society.

Jiang Li didn’t continue the conversation, but silently opened her notebook, preparing to record and establish a file.

Seeing this, An Qing shrugged, turned on the smart speaker next to the dissection table, and as the stirring heavy metal rock music played, she took a scalpel from her white coat and began the dissection.

However, as the tip of the scalpel cut into the corpse’s skin, An Qing frowned and let out a soft exclamation. Her rich dissection experience and the Spirit Pattern’s machine-like keen insight into flesh made her notice something unusual the moment the blade fell.

“Hmm?”

Jiang Li glanced at An Qing and asked softly, “Is something wrong?”

“Yeah.” An Qing nodded. “His skin is too strange.”

“Normal human facial skin is thin, soft, and elastic, but this corpse’s skin is extremely tough and unusually thick-almost like cowhide.”

Jiang Li looked at the corpse on the dissection table and said seriously, “Judging by his condition, he was almost undergoing haunting transformation before he died. His skin turning like cowhide seems understandable, doesn’t it?”

“No, no, this thickness of his skin isn’t normal.” As An Qing spoke, she bent over and used the scalpel to widen the incision a bit, then picked up the edge of the cut with forceps from the tray beside her.

Under the slightly lifted skin, two layers of skin were stuck together by a dense web of blood vessels and fascia.

Jiang Li was stunned for a moment and looked at An Qing. “Two layers?”

“That’s right, two layers, and they’re relatively independent. Now that’s interesting.” An Qing smiled. “I have a bold guess, but I don’t know if it’s right. Be quiet for a while-I need to do something a bit graphic. I’ll tell you when I’m done.”

Hearing this, Jiang Li nodded slightly and stepped aside.

This skinning step wasn’t particularly difficult, and An Qing was an experienced hand. Accompanied by the rhythmic, faint tearing sound, she quickly and perfectly peeled off the outer skin and placed it in a tray to the side.

After adjusting her state a bit, An Qing focused and continued the dissection. With the aid of her Spirit Pattern ability, she swiftly separated various tissues with just a scalpel, leaving only a skeleton behind.

Then…

Looking at the completed dissection, both of their expressions grew grave at the same time.

Inside the dissected corpse, they saw a terrifying sight: two complete rib cages overlapped vertically, and the fascia, bones, and muscle tissues under the skin of the arms and legs were twice that of a normal person, twisted and layered together. The left leg and right arm were especially severe.

The corpse’s organs all showed varying degrees of hyperplasia, and even though all the organs were already necrotic, the tumor-like mass on the heart was still faintly beating.

The whole corpse looked as if another person was about to grow out from inside his body, from the inside out.

—-

Thinking about what was on Lu Ming’s phone, Lu Yibei barely slept all night. Early in the morning, he went out and ran across half of Hua City, finally finding a master at a nearly bankrupt second-hand phone market who could unlock old phone passwords.

Unlocking the password would take some time. After leaving the phone at the market, Lu Yibei received a call from Professor Ma urging him to submit his thesis, so he hurried to the university.

Hua City University of Technology.

In an ordinary office in the Liberal Arts Building, through the clean glass window, one could see Cherry Blossom Avenue basking in the bright sunlight outside.

It was early spring, the rain carried the breath of spring, and the cherry trees washed by last night’s drizzle showed a touch of tender pink among the fresh green leaves, evoking a sense of gentle affection.

At this moment, in the office, Professor Ma sat behind his desk with a serious expression, frowning as he looked at the thesis Lu Yibei had handed in, his eyes flashing with barely concealed excitement.

After a long time, he put down the thesis and let out a long breath, looking as satisfied as if he’d just drunk a pot of aged wine.

“Lu Yibei, I didn’t expect you to improve so quickly. This thesis is almost up to my level when I was young. ‘The Transformation from Fertility Worship to Marriage Worship’? Hmm… from instinctive cognition to emotional cognition, from primitive totem to concrete deity-this angle is quite good!”

“Professor, you flatter me. I could only write this thanks to the help of Mr. Liu and his granddaughter,” Lu Yibei said modestly.

Rather than calling it a thesis, it was more like a memoir-a memoir from Grandpa Turtle’s perspective, recalling the birth of Gou Meng… Lu Yibei added silently in his heart.

“Very good. So, just like last time, I’ll help you revise it first, then send it off for publication?”

“No problem!” Lu Yibei replied.

Nowadays, he was no longer the same Lu Yibei as before; the thickness of his skin could be described with a whole book-How the Steel Was Tempered.

So, even if he submitted the paper he cobbled together just to deal with Professor Ma for publication, he wouldn’t feel the slightest bit of shame.

It’s just that…

“It’s fine to publish, but I beg you, please don’t drag me into being your assistant or joining any weird research projects again.”

I still want to live a couple more years… Lu Yibei secretly added in his heart.

Full-on survival instinct.gif

The first time he researched bamboo slips, he stirred up the Great Serpent God; the second time he studied Dongyi culture, he ran into the turmoil in Taoyuan. Each time was more dangerous than the last.

Lu Yibei felt that if this pattern continued, something big would happen next time.

If it involved someone like his pesky little sister, at least he could talk his way out, and those catastrophe-class hauntings that could be reasoned with were still manageable.

But if he provoked some mentally unstable evil god, nobody would even know how they died.

“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” Professor Ma smiled and waved his hand. “After I got back, I told my wife all about my trip to Tang City. Now she’s forbidden me from going out of town for projects. Recently, I’ve shifted my research focus to existing literature.”

“That’s good,” Lu Yibei breathed a sigh of relief.

Although Professor Ma’s luck was off the charts, he couldn’t keep flirting with death over and over! What if he slipped up one day? Lu Yibei still hoped his teacher would live well.

“Look, this is the ancient special characters stele I’ve been studying lately.” As he spoke, Professor Ma pulled up the stele’s rubbing on his laptop and turned the screen toward Lu Yibei.

“This was picked up by a friend of mine by Qinghai Lake not long ago.”

Lu Yibei glanced at the rubbing on the screen, and immediately felt a faint burning sensation in his eyes. In his ears, a strange humming echoed, as if giant boulders were tumbling down a valley. In a daze, he sensed a pair of emotionless eyes peering at him from a distant place.

“Bang-!”

Just as those eyes were about to lock onto him, Lu Yibei slammed the laptop shut without thinking.

“……”

Holy crap, what kind of freaky stele is this?

Just looking at the rubbing on a computer screen triggered a dangerous warning?

Lu Yibei thought, then looked at Professor Ma, staring him straight in the eyes, and said seriously, “Professor, have you ever considered changing your research topic-no, your job?”

“Have you ever wondered why you always come up with these terrifying things?”

“……”

It shouldn’t be like this. He’d already tossed the copper coin, and the result showed no danger to life! Professor Ma thought.

—-

When Lu Yibei left Professor Ma’s office, it was already mealtime.

He left the Liberal Arts Building and went to the cafeteria to buy three dishes that looked decent, wolfed them down, and had just found a corner seat when his phone vibrated with a message from Jiang Li.

Jiang Li: “Lu Yibei, come to the Hua City Folklore Management Bureau before 1:30 this afternoon. Qing-Jie dissected a Nocturnal Syndrome patient’s corpse this morning and found something strange. We’re having a short meeting.”

Ever since she got the chance to go to The Midnight Watchers Society headquarters for Spirit Pattern advancement, Jiang Li had been intentionally or unintentionally guiding Lu Yibei to participate in various Society tasks.

Even she wasn’t sure when headquarters would finish gathering the materials for Spirit Pattern advancement-it could be years, or it could be tomorrow.

To avoid suddenly leaving Hua City and causing her responsibilities to stall, it was necessary to find someone trustworthy to take over.

If she could get Lu Yibei busy handling the Hua City Society’s files by day and the King of Hauntings’ work by night, he’d have no time to stir up trouble and could obediently wait for her return in Hua City.

That was Jiang Li’s truest thought.

Lu Yibei: “Got it. I’ll head over after lunch.”

After replying to Jiang Li, Lu Yibei finished his lunch in a whirlwind, left Hua City University of Technology, and hurried toward Mudan Street.