**Chapter Four: A Strange Corpse**
After reporting to the school, Lu Yibei stood at the school gate, watching the vehicles passing by, when the name “Qin Nanzhu” suddenly flashed through his mind.
He furrowed his brow and pondered for a moment, then took out his phone from his pocket, pulled Bai Kai’s number out of the blacklist, and dialed it.
The phone rang twice before Bai Kai’s excited voice with a hint of tears came through.
“Xiao Bei, you actually took the initiative to call me? I’m so happy!”
Lu Yibei frowned tightly and growled, “Cut the nonsense, Water Brother, I want to ask you something.”
“You say, I won’t hold anything back!”
“Water Brother…” Lu Yibei hesitated for a moment and inquired, “Do you know who Qin Nanzhu is?”
At first, Lu Yibei didn’t want to ask Bai Kai this question. If his father deliberately concealed Qin Nanzhu’s existence, Water Brother, as his good friend who grew up together with him, would most likely help in keeping it a secret. Asking would be pointless.
But now, even the Void couldn’t find any clues about Qin Nanzhu, so he could only try his luck with Water Brother.
“……”
There was a clear moment of silence on the other end of the line, then Bai Kai’s voice rose a few pitches as he answered, “No idea! I’ve never heard of that name, why are you suddenly asking this?”
“Nothing.” Lu Yibei pouted. “I just happened to come across this name recently and suddenly thought of it today.”
“This name sounds like a woman’s. You claim to know half of the beauties in Huacheng, from eighty to eighteen, right? I thought I’d call and ask you.”
“Oh.” Bai Kai responded, “Then maybe this Nanzhu is just another fish that slipped through the net?”
“Is that so? Then forget it.” Lu Yibei said, “Water Brother, I suddenly have something to do, let’s talk later.”
After saying this, he hung up the phone smoothly, not waiting for Bai Kai to continue rambling, and put his number back on the blacklist.
After doing all this, Lu Yibei held his phone, lost in thought.
The hesitation Bai Kai showed when he heard the name Qin Nanzhu shouldn’t be my delusion.
What did he say before? Bai Kai really helped his father keep it a secret, didn’t he?
It seems that for now, he can only return to the old house and dig out those things left by his father to study them properly.
If a person truly existed in this world, they would undoubtedly leave traces of their existence. Perhaps the long years would erode these traces, but from the contents of Hu Yue’s notebook, it seems Qin Nanzhu was still alive at least twenty years ago.
————
In the evening, at the Jingyi Apartment Complex, in Lu Yibei’s home.
After putting down the last box, Lu Yibei leaned against the sofa, slumped on the floor, looking at the three boxes of his father’s relics. He sighed deeply and recalled the scene he saw at the old house, muttering in confusion.
“It’s really strange. Obviously, no one has been here for so long, and no one has touched the things in the house. Why is it so clean? It’s as if someone has been living inside, helping me clean up.”
As he spoke, his gaze swept across the paper boxes in front of him. He raised his hand to pat his cheek, trying to lift his spirits.
“Forget it, forget it, it’s more important to study these things left by Dad.”
Approaching a paper box, he tore it open with a “ripping” sound and began to explore.
“*The Dragon Tiger Leopard*? Uh, Dad has been single for so long, you must be lonely, I can understand that.”
“What is this? Why do you have so many tickets from the Zhenwu Mountain Scenic Area?”
“*Is Writing Novels Really a Dead End?*… Dad, for you, it really is…”
As if holding a cross-time conversation with his deceased father, Lu Yibei would mumble a few words to himself every time he took out an item from the box.
Several hours later, the sky had completely darkened.
Finally, Lu Yibei found an old black-and-white screen Nokia mobile phone from a metal box.
After examining the phone for a while, with a mindset of trying it out, Lu Yibei plugged in the charger. As the phone screen lit up, he couldn’t help but exclaim, “Nokia, NB!”
“Looks like there’s a chance! Hey, Dad, let me see if you have any secrets to tell!”
Talking to himself, Lu Yibei opened the phone, only to see the words “Please enter the screen lock password” on the screen, falling silent.
————
The next morning, in the underground dissecting room of the Huacheng Folk Culture Research Management Bureau.
Under the bright light of the shadowless lamp, a grotesque corpse lay on a silver metal dissection table, with a destroyed black sun totem on its chest.
Its height was similar to an ordinary person, but its body was unusually bloated, with its head, torso, and limbs much larger than normal. The total count of its fingers and toes was one and a half times that of a normal person.
Yes, it had seventeen fingers and thirteen toes.
Wearing protective clothing, gloves, and a special gas mask, “fully equipped” An Qing and Jiang Li stood by the dissection table, staring at the now fully dissected corpse.
“This Nightfall Syndrome is serious,” Jiang Li couldn’t help but murmur, seemingly indifferent to the existence of the Solar Eclipse totem on the corpse.
An Qing sighed and shook her head, “If it weren’t serious, it wouldn’t be sent to me, would it?”
Normally, patients who d*e from Nightfall Syndrome are assessed by the Special Action Team stationed in the hospital and are handed over to their families for disposal.
However, today, this corpse was especially unique. Not only was the illness extremely bizarre and severe, but it was also a member of the Solar Eclipse Society.
Jiang Li didn’t continue the conversation but silently flipped open her notebook, ready to record and establish a file.
Seeing this, An Qing shrugged and turned on the smart speaker beside the dissection table. With the pounding rhythm of heavy metal rock music in the background, she pulled out a scalpel from her lab coat and began the dissection.
However, as the tip of the scalpel sliced open the corpse’s skin, An Qing frowned and let out a light gasp. Her rich dissection experience and the keen insights given by the spirit patterns made her sense something was off the moment she made the incision.
“Huh?”
Jiang Li looked at An Qing and softly asked, “Is there something wrong?”
“Mm.” An Qing nodded. “His skin is really strange.”
“Normal human skin on the face is thin and soft, elastic, but this corpse’s skin is incredibly tough and unusually thick, almost like cowhide.”
Jiang Li glanced at the corpse on the dissection table and said seriously, “Given his condition, it’s understandable that his skin has become cowhide-like as he was nearing urban legend status before he died, right?”
“No, no, this thickness of his skin is not normal thickness.” An Qing said, bending down to slightly widen the incision with the scalpel, then picking up a pair of forceps from a tray beside her to lift the edges of the incision.
Beneath the slightly lifted skin, two layers of skin were glued together with a dense network of bl**d vessels and fascia.
Jiang Li was taken aback and looked at An Qing, “There are two layers?”
“That’s right, two layers, and they are relatively independent, which is quite intriguing.” An Qing smiled and said, “I have a bold hypothesis, though I’m not sure if it’s correct. You stay quiet for a moment; I need to do something more explicit, and I’ll explain afterward.”
Upon hearing this, Jiang Li nodded slightly and stepped aside.
The skin removal operation, though not particularly difficult, was executed perfectly by the experienced An Qing. With the rhythmic tearing sounds filling the air, she quickly peeled off the epidermis and placed it into a nearby tray.
After adjusting her state, An Qing focused her energy on continuing the dissection. With the enhancement of her spirit pattern ability, she swiftly separated various tissues using only the scalpel, leaving behind just a skeleton.
Then…
Looking at the finished dissection of the corpse, both of their expressions grew serious.
Inside the opened corpse, they witnessed a horrifying sight. Two complete rib cages overlapped each other, while the muscles and tissues under the skin of the arms and legs were twice that of normal humans, twisted and overlapping, with the left leg and right hand being particularly severe.
The organs of the corpse exhibited varying degrees of hyperplasia, and even with the organs having decayed, the fibrous mass-like hyperplastic tissue on the heart was still faintly pulsating.
The entire corpse looked as if another person was trying to grow from within it, from the inside out.
————
With the contents of Lu Ming’s phone on his mind, Lu Yibei had hardly slept all night. Early the next morning, he went out and ran around half of Huacheng, finally finding a master at a nearly closing second-hand phone market who could unlock old phones.
It would take some time to unlock the password. After placing the phone at the market, Lu Yibei received a call from Professor Ma urging him to submit his paper and hurried to the university.
Huacheng University.
In a plain office of the Science and Liberal Arts Building, through the clean glass window, the cheerful sunlight outside illuminated the cherry blossom avenue.
In early spring, with the rain bringing spring essence, the cherry blossom trees washed by last night’s drizzle showed fresh greens interspersed with some appealing pale pink.
At this moment, Professor Ma sat behind his desk with a serious expression, frowning as he looked at the paper Lu Yibei submitted. Excitement flashed in his eyes, difficult to mask.
After a long time, he set the paper down and sighed deeply, his expression resembling that of someone slightly intoxicated after drinking a bottle of old wine, contented.
“Lu Yibei, I didn’t expect you to improve so quickly; this paper is almost up to the standards of my youth. ‘From Reproductive Worship to Marital Worship’? Hmm… from instinctive cognition to perceptual cognition, from primitive totems to personified deities, this approach is quite good!”
“Professor, you’re too kind. It’s all thanks to Elderly Gentleman Liu and his granddaughter helping me that I could write it.” Lu Yibei modestly replied.
Rather than a paper, it was more of a memoir, a memoir recounting the birth process of Jumeng from Yuan Ye’s perspective… Lu Yibei added silently in his heart.
“Very good, then just like last time, I’ll help you revise it first and then send it for publication?”
“No problem!” Lu Yibei replied.
By now, he was no longer the Lu Yibei he used to be; the growth of his thick skin could well be described in a book—*How Steel Is Tempered*.
So even if he took the paper he had prepared to deal with Professor Ma for publication, he wouldn’t feel even a bit of shame.
Only…
“But, publishing is fine, I just beg you not to drag me into any more weird project research groups again.”
I still want to live a couple more years, Lu Yibei silently added in his heart.
The desire to survive was strong.GIF
The first research on bamboo slips resulted in the Great Serpent God, the second research on Eastern Yi culture encountered the turmoil in Peach Source, each time more dangerous than the last.
Lu Yibei always felt that if this pattern continued, the next time might be a big event.
Involving a Stinky Sister, who could still make sense and reason, was manageable.
But if they unleashed some abnormal evil god, who knows how everyone would d*e at that point.
“Don’t worry, don’t worry!” Professor Ma smiled and waved, “After returning, I told my wife about my recent experience in Tangcheng, and she has now forbidden me from attending projects outside the city. I’ve recently focused my research on existing literature.”
“That’s good.” Lu Yibei sighed in relief.
Even though Professor Ma was lucky, he couldn’t afford to flirt with d*ath so many times! What if he slipped one day? Lu Yibei still hoped his teacher would live a good life.
“Look, this is the ancient special text stone tablet I’ve been researching recently.” Professor Ma said, pulling up the image of the tablet on his laptop and turning the screen toward Lu Yibei.
“This was found by a traveler by the Qinghai Lake not long ago.”
Lu Yibei glanced at the tablet image on the screen, and his eyes instantly felt a slight burning sensation. A strange humming filled his ears, as if giant stones were continuously falling into a valley, and in that daze, he felt a pair of emotionless eyes peering at him from afar.
“Bang——!”
Just as he was about to be locked in by those eyes, Lu Yibei instinctively closed the computer.
“……”
What the hell is this stone tablet?
Just by looking at the image of it through a computer screen, it triggered a threat warning?
Lu Yibei thought, looking at Professor Ma, he stared directly into his eyes, and said seriously, “Professor, have you considered changing your research topic? Oh no, changing your job?”
“Have you ever thought about why you always manage to unveil these terrifying things?”
“……”
It shouldn’t be, he clearly tossed the copper coins and the results showed no life-threatening danger! Professor Ma thought.
————
When Lu Yibei left Professor Ma’s office, it was already mealtime.
He left the Science and Liberal Arts Building to the cafeteria, bought three dishes that looked decent, and wolfed them down. Just as he found a corner to sit down, his phone vibrated, receiving a message from Jiang Li.
Jiang Li: “Lu Yibei, get to the Huacheng Folk Customs Administration before 1:30 PM. This morning, Qing Sister performed an autopsy on a Nightfall Syndrome patient and found something strange. We need to hold a short meeting.”
Since gaining the opportunity to go to the Siye Association headquarters to complete his spirit pattern advancement, Jiang Li had been intentionally or unintentionally directing Lu Yibei to participate in various tasks for the Siye Association.
When the headquarters can fully collect the materials for spirit pattern advancement, even she wasn’t sure; it could be years from now or perhaps tomorrow.
To prevent her from leaving Huacheng suddenly and leaving the work she was responsible for in a standstill, it was necessary to find someone trustworthy to take over.
If Lu Yibei could keep busy handling the Huacheng Siye Association’s archives during the day and the tasks related to the king of urban legends at night, he wouldn’t have time to cause trouble and could obediently wait for her return to Huacheng.
This was Jiang Li’s most genuine thought.
Lu Yibei: “Got it, I’ll go after I finish eating.”
After replying to Jiang Li, Lu Yibei, like a whirlwind sweeping away leaves, finished his lunch, left Huacheng University, and headed towards Mudan Street.
