Chapter 223

Sun Jian looked toward the window in the corridor; outside was the pitch-black night. The city in the distance was still ablaze with lights, but only the courtyard of this police station had vanished into the darkness, like a Black Hole in the city.

A dull sound came from the morgue at the end of the corridor. Sun Jian shuddered; it sounded a bit like the noise the forensic doctors used to make when pushing out a corpse, but also a little different.

Sun Jian realized belatedly that this kid couldn't be over twenty at most, so there was no way he could be a police officer. If he had come to steal a corpse during a power outage, and he had actually stood there like an idiot being fooled, he wouldn't be able to explain it if his superiors saw it on the surveillance footage later.

This thought poured down his spine like a bucket of ice water. He snapped back to his senses and shivered, as if he had wet his pants on a winter night.

Sun Jian hurried through the corridor, but even though it was short, he walked for a long time without reaching the end. Every time he tried to lift a leg, his feet felt as heavy as they did in a nightmare. Sun Jian didn't think too much; for most of his life, he had been a simple-minded person, and he hadn't used his brain since graduating from school, which now turned out to be a good thing. He steeled himself and focused all his attention on his legs, struggling to lift his feet, trudging toward the end of the corridor step by step as if he were in a swamp.

The harder he tried, the more his heart raced, as if he were truly in a dream. He hesitated for a moment: could he have fallen asleep while watching a live stream? At this thought, he raised his hand and slapped himself. A crisp sound rang out, his cheek throbbed with pain, and the corridor was still before his eyes, but his heart felt a bit better—it didn't feel like a dream if it hurt this much. He gritted his teeth and exerted himself, forcing himself to finish the last two steps.

Stumbling sounds kept coming from inside the morgue. He gritted his teeth, blocked out the distractions, and focused entirely on opening the double doors in front of him. He reached out and gripped the door handle; the metal handle was a bit cold, and for some reason, the cold, slick sensation in his palm was clearly imprinted in his mind, becoming the clearest Beacon in his muddled brain.

The Gatekeeper pulled the door open. The outdoor wind blew into the morgue, which was filled with the smell of disinfectant and preservatives, and stirred the female corpse's hair.

Sun Jian began to tremble, his teeth chattering together. The dead woman stood on the ground, wrapped in a shroud, with only her young face exposed. She kept her eyes closed and tilted her head slightly, as if listening to something, but her complexion was already the greenish-white of a dead person, and corpse spots had begun to erode that beautiful face.

"Hey."

The dead young woman smiled at him. He knew it must be a hallucination, but suddenly the white shroud moved. He opened his mouth wide, screaming silently, too terrified to make a sound. The woman's arm lifted under the shroud and waved at him, like a terrifying marionette beckoning him.

His knees buckled toward the ground. He stared at the woman desperately, his knees slamming hard against the cold, hard floor. Oh no, he thought, he had knelt down in fear, and this was bad; he definitely wouldn't be able to stand up, he couldn't run.

"Hey, I'm over here," that voice said again.

Sun Jian stiffly turned his neck, not daring to take his eyes off the female corpse, only daring to check his surroundings with his peripheral vision. Catching a glimpse of a living person's face, he froze, then risked another look.

It was that young man; he had almost forgotten that he had come in to catch that young man.

"You..." he called out half a word with a hoarse voice. The big boy was sitting on a chair; he recognized that chair, it was a folding chair that had been in the room, which he had pulled into the middle of the room. Now that he had regained his senses, he realized that the boy was sitting directly facing the female corpse, but his attention had been entirely drawn by the corpse after he entered. Now that he thought about it, those two sentences had also been spoken by the boy, not the woman's voice.

As if to confirm his guess, the boy looked at him helplessly and said, "Hey, I've called you several times. How did you struggle your way here? Your willpower is surprisingly strong."

He couldn't speak. The boy wasn't afraid, not even nervous; he sat on the chair in a relaxed manner, his expression at most a bit sorrowful, which was very incongruous with his youthful face. As he spoke, the boy's face turned toward the female corpse again. "I didn't want to let you in; I didn't mean to scare you. I just came to identify the body; it's not convenient to go through official channels during the day."

"You..." He was kneeling on the ground, his legs too heavy to stand, and he couldn't speak. He raised his trembling arm and pointed at the corpse, hoping the boy would understand what he meant.

"Oh," the boy nodded in understanding. "You can't expect me to take the body out myself, right? I'm still so young, I've never touched a corpse before, and I can't quite bring myself to do it."

He still couldn't understand what the boy was talking about, but his years of listening to audiobooks gave him a little help. Could this young man make the corpse come out by itself? Was he a Corpse Handler? A modern Corpse Handler?

"I am not a modern Corpse Handler," the boy suddenly said, voicing his inner thoughts.

He finally let out a scream; he didn't know which was more terrifying: seeing the corpse rise or this moment.

The boy didn't answer. He looked at the female corpse and raised his hand, making a rotating gesture. As if by an invisible pull, the female corpse also turned slightly, and the boy examined the body carefully.

He thought about what the boy had said—that he was here to identify the body. Although the method was bizarre, his behavior did indeed look like he was identifying a corpse.

"I came here to identify the body to confirm one thing," the boy said suddenly, startling him again. He heard the boy continue, "Now it seems there is more than one thing I can confirm."

He thought that a teenager who could be this badass should be more arrogant, and these words should sound like bragging, but the boy spoke with such sorrow that he felt the kid was about to cry.

Suddenly, a sharp cat's meow rang out in the room, scaring him so much he almost wet himself. The boy stood up abruptly from the chair, and in that instant, his whole body tensed up, as if facing a formidable enemy. He sat down hard on the floor, and a black ball of fur jumped out from the boy's arms and onto his shoulder. He vaguely identified it as a black cat. The cat stood on the boy's shoulder and let out two sharp cries.

Almost at the same time, a bone-chilling cold pierced his spine and heart, and his teeth began to chatter again, as if the breath of despair blowing from a tomb passage had swallowed him; he felt as desperate as if he had been thrown into hell. If a corpse were truly going to rise, he was certain it would be this moment.

Chapter 221: The Corpse Rises