Chapter 3347

The musty and putrid smell in the room hadn't dissipated for a long time. The clock hanging on the wall had no markings; one hand stayed in place, with the number "1" engraved on it, while the other hand had turned more than half a circle.

Standing in front of the clock were two plague doctors wearing black robes and bird-beak masks. One was holding an oil lamp to illuminate the face of a mummified corpse, while the other was wearing white gloves, using tweezers to lift the eyelids of the hideous face.

"Eyeballs missing, no blood, dried sand present, preliminary judgment as early-stage symptoms of 'Gazing into the Abyss'... syringe."

Strange reached out a hand toward Shiler. Shiler looked at him, and he also looked up at Shiler. The two stared at each other.

"Are you planning to let me do the work of both the chief surgeon and the assistant alone?" Strange asked.

Shiler only then reacted. He went to the tool shelf nearby to find a syringe and then said, "It's not that I don't want to help, the key is that in the operating room, I usually only need to be the person standing by the patient bed shouting 'come on.' You'd better not expect me to provide any professional help."

Strange snorted coldly and said, "You don't just shout 'come on'; you also mock and choreograph surgeons."

"You're wrong about that. I wouldn't say surgeons are bad in the operating room; after all, they have knives in their hands at that time." Shiler shook his head while picking out a syringe on the shelf.

"Do you think this one works?" Shiler brought over two syringes. Strange rubbed his eyes and said, "This is an injection syringe; bring that thinner one over, it's the one on the shelf below."

Shiler brought over a thinner and smaller syringe. Strange inserted the needle into the mummified corpse's arm and actually drew out a tube of liquid. It was just that the liquid was black, and it seemed to be mixed with some dust.

Strange paused slightly, handed the syringe to Shiler, and then said, "Take it to the inspection table and do a wax oil mixture."

Shiler walked over. He had seen this part in the book he had just been checking. Don't look at him as a psychologist; he was also a medical school student. Don't look at him as basically not participating in final exams in a normal way, but he had a natural photographic memory; basically, he could be called "never forgetting after one look."

He first picked up the purple candle piled on the wall shelf in front of the inspection table, lit the candle, and dripped two drops of wax oil into a small brass spoon. Then he used another thick white candle placed under the spoon to heat it continuously.

Holding the small spoon in one hand and taking a piece of tin foil in the other, he dripped the blood from the syringe into the wax oil to mix, then used a needle to pick it up and smear it on the tin foil.

"No color change." Shiler said after observing, "But the solidification speed is very slow; should we do another plant juice reaction experiment?"

"Test the toxicity with mandrake." Strange said while cutting open the mummified corpse's index finger with a sharp blade. After discovering the hollow under the skin and the flesh buds sticking out from inside, he said, "Forget it, no need to do it. It can already be determined that it's a burned witch. The limbs have already started to become pathological."

Shiler put down the things in his hand and just wanted to say something when he heard the clock make a "clang" sound.

The mummified corpse on the patient bed suddenly began to twitch.

"Is it overtime?" Strange looked up at the clock; the hour hand had turned more than half a circle, and the latter half was marked in red. This might mean that once a patient stayed on the patient bed for too long, abnormal reactions might appear.

Shiler rolled up his sleeves while walking over and said, "Doesn't this fall into my professional field? Be quiet! Otherwise, I'm going to use a sedative!"

"Is there a sedative?" Strange asked.

"No, but isn't there mandrake? Since it's a witch, it should be human, so poisoning it should be the same."

Shiler said while walking to the shelf nearby, picking up two green fruits with sharp thorns, pounding them twice with the grinding pestle on the workbench nearby, dropping many small black particles, and then smashing them hard twice, seeping out some transparent juice.

Shiler took out the injection tube from just now, poured some water into it with a water jar, added the juice, shook it hard, and handed it to Strange.

"I'm prepared to name it Mandrake Anesthetic; what do you think?"

Strange looked down at the injection in his hand and then said, "I really can't imagine what modern medicine would have been founded as if you had lived in the Middle Ages."

He was just saying that when the mummified corpse on the patient bed did a carp leap, and its left hand swung and hit Strange's forearm.

"Oh, damn it! Don't touch my hand!!" Strange quickly picked up the pliers on the tool shelf and gave it a fierce smash. With a "bang," the mummified corpse was smashed back onto the bed by him.

"You damn bastard, don't you know the importance of a surgeon's arm?! Shiler, come over and hold him down, do a secondary anesthesia!"

Shiler also put on gloves, took the pliers from Strange's hand, pressed the pliers on both sides of the mummified corpse's neck with both hands, and pressed her firmly on the bed.

Strange took the syringe and injected the liquid into the mummified corpse's vein, assuming it still had veins.

Facts proved that it might really have them. Less than 30 seconds after the liquid was injected, the mummified corpse twitched and stopped moving.

"Is he anesthetized or dead?"

"Don't you believe in my level of mixing potions?"

"If it's dead, just throw it into the fireplace." Strange said, "This can save some time for the next patient."

"I finally know how you do 20-plus surgeries a day."

Shiler walked to the door, looked out through the observation window, and said, "The head nurse isn't here, go."

The two, one carrying the arms and one lifting the legs, directly carried the mummified corpse to the fireplace. Shiler didn't know what the specific process for destroying a corpse was; he felt he might find a book on the bookshelf, but he really was too lazy to look now, so he just burned it.

Shiler glanced at the mummified corpse, then glanced at the fireplace, and then said, "No, have to dismember it first, otherwise it won't fit in."

"You're the professional in this regard, listen to you." Strange went back to get a bigger knife and then said, "Taking the legs off should be about enough."

"The head has to be taken off too. The skull burns too slowly; if discovered by the head nurse, it will be troublesome. I see sulfur and distillation equipment over there; I'll go prepare some concentrated sulfuric acid, just in case."

Strange immediately started working, cutting from the hip joint, and in two or three strokes, he took the leg off, then started to dismantle the other leg.

Shiler checked the quality of the sulfur and found that although it wasn't very pure, it could barely be used. Preparing corrosive chemical liquids was his specialty. Although he didn't expect to use this thing to completely destroy the corpse without a trace, using chemical methods could cover up most parts with strong human characteristics, such as the hair, finger joints, and genitals mentioned before.

Soon, the distillation equipment began to bubble "gududu." Strange's work over there was basically finished; he wiped his knife while saying, "We spent most of our time understanding the rules, which is simply unfair. So we can only do this. But we will treat the next patient well, right?"

"That's right." Shiler nodded, stepped over the corpse to take the head, smashed it with the hammer on the tool shelf, corroded it bit by bit with chemical agents, and then threw the remaining residue into the fireplace together.

Suddenly, a flash of light appeared at the front door. Shiler immediately turned his head to look, and sure enough, he saw those eyes deeply sunken in the sockets.

"Good noon, ma'am. It's a bit cold in the room, we need to roast by the fire." Shiler said without changing his expression, while using his toe to push a piece of thigh bone that had fallen out further inside.

Unexpectedly, the nurse actually spoke.

"Go to work! There are many patients waiting!"

Her voice was like a leaking bellows, the tone was slurred, carrying a slightly eerie breath, and it sounded very terrifying in the environment full of putrid stench.

"Alright, alright." Shiler immediately stood up and said, "Coming right away."

The two returned to the operating table.

The metal door on the wall in front of the operating table seemed to be where the patients came out. Shiler saw two levers above it. One lever handle had a downward arrow drawn on it, and the other was an upward arrow.

Shiler pulled the lever with the upward arrow, and the door opened. A rustling sound came from inside, and there were even some vague dialogue sounds coming from above, only the sound was too small to hear clearly.

Shiler and Strange looked at each other, but both tacitly didn't look into the passage.

Suddenly, with a "clatter," something fell out of the passage. Shiler picked it up to look, and it was actually two copper coins.

His eyes immediately lit up, observing those two copper coins, and then said, "Actually have money to take? Is this a salary? Or is it a reward for treating a patient?"

Before he could figure it out, the next patient arrived.

This time it wasn't a mummified corpse; it looked like a living person, brown skin, adult male. From the skeletal structure, it was somewhat similar to Latino, but it didn't look like an ordinary human, because his eyes had two pupils, which wasn't any kind of symptom, saying he was born like this.

His abdomen was bulging high, squirming abnormally, and one could vaguely see snake-like movement traces.

"God, what did you eat?"

"Save me, save me quickly! I have helminthiasis! Doctor, save me quickly!" The patient screamed constantly, almost rolling off the operating table.

"Helminthiasis? Oh, Helminth Feast Syndrome, right?" Shiler picked up the book next to him and glanced at it.

"Have to open the abdomen." Strange took out the scalpel again, adjusted the position of his gloves, and then said, "Give him an injection of anesthetic, then go get the insect cage..."

Shiler went to mix another injection of Mandrake Anesthetic, this time slightly reducing the dosage to prevent the patient from being poisoned to death. After the injection, the other party indeed stopped moving quickly, but still had breathing; it looked like the anesthesia should be successful.

Shiler didn't go to get the insect cage mentioned in the treatment manual; after all, that thing had to be opened and locked. He directly took the pliers and said, "You throw the bugs over, I'll throw them directly into the fireplace to burn, convenient and fast."

Strange glanced at the fireplace, didn't say anything, and directly started cutting.

He first drew a shallow mark, seemingly positioning. But the moment the skin was weakened, two earthworm-like black bugs drilled out. Strange disgustedly picked them out with a knife and threw them on the ground, and Shiler clamped them up and threw them into the fireplace.

He poked his head to look at the door, gave Strange an "OK" gesture, and then said, "The head nurse isn't here, continue."

Strange seemed to have lost patience from being disgusted by the bugs; he threw away the small scalpel in his hand, took out the big knife used for dismantling bones before, and cut the entire abdominal cavity open with one knife.

This was a bug explosion; Strange couldn't dodge in time, and the helminths sprayed directly onto his body.

"Damn it! Get away!! Get away!!! Damn bugs!!!" Strange danced around, wanting to get the bugs off his body.

Shiler hurriedly rushed over to help him pat the bugs off his body. Strange rushed directly to the sink and retched. Shiler didn't hesitate, picked up the sulfuric acid in the beaker next to him, and splashed it directly into the patient's abdominal cavity.

"AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!"

Mandrake wasn't a real anesthetic; it couldn't achieve the effect of modern anesthetics at all. The excruciating pain of the abdominal cavity being corroded woke the patient up, and he let out a terrifying scream.

Shiler turned his head sharply to look at the observation window, somewhat flusteredly stomped the surviving bugs to death, and shouted at Strange, "Stop vomiting! Hurry up and treat!"

Suddenly, a burst of urgent footsteps came from the door. Shiler dodged to block the patient's abdominal cavity. The nurse's eyes appeared in the observation window.

"Hello, ma'am."

"What are you doing?! Why is the patient screaming so miserably?!"

"The anesthetic failed, we'll supplement it immediately!" Shiler hurriedly said, "It won't be long, ma'am, it will be fine soon!"

The nurse was skeptical; Shiler inhaled sharply, directly picked up the scalpel Strange had discarded, and stabbed it into the chest cavity.

"SQUELCH!"

"Alright, ma'am, it's quiet now."

(End of chapter)