Chapter 62

Chapter 62

This meant that anyone entering had to traverse the entire corridor along the outside of the morgue and unlock the door at the far end.

Then, once inside, they had to retrace their path through the morgue to search for the body they needed.

The design was unbelievably absurd.

That was precisely why Liu Xiaofeng refused to accompany us inside.

Never mind entering a morgue late at night. He did not even want to step into the terrifying corridor outside it.

I found the arrangement ridiculous too. Anyone with a grain of sense would know the morgue entrance belonged at the beginning of the corridor.

In the language people later used online, the morgue was designed straight from hell.

Then again, considering its purpose, perhaps a hellish design was appropriate.

Old Cao said, “All right, Dr. Liu. Give me the key. Will you wait here or return to your office first?”

After handing him the key, Liu Xiaofeng cautiously looked around.

The streetlamps were dim and yellow. Mist filled the air. Dead silence surrounded us.

He immediately gave a cowardly answer.

“I’ll go back to the Administration office. Master Cao, return the key after you’re finished.”

“Thank you for the trouble.”

Old Cao remained very polite, and Liu Xiaofeng turned to leave.

I thoughtfully warned him, “Brother Liu, a hospital is where yin and yang, life and death, meet. It’s normal for wandering ghosts to roam here at night. A person alone in a remote part of the hospital after dark is especially likely to encounter one. If you see anything strange or hear unusual noises on your way back, don’t stop. Just run faster.”

Liu Xiaofeng fell silent.

He looked back at me, apparently even more frightened, then broke into a run and quickly vanished.

A question mark seemed to appear in my mind.

I scratched my head in confusion.

“Old Cao, Uncle Yuan, I was only offering Brother Liu a friendly warning. Why did I seem to make him more afraid?”

Yuan Fei laughed loudly, and Old Cao smiled as well.

“Young Brother Wu, are you certain you weren’t frightening him deliberately?”

“Well, actually, I was.”

The innocent expression left my face, and mischief filled my eyes.

I might have matured much earlier than other children my age, but I was still a boy. An occasional wicked joke was perfectly normal.

After exchanging a few more jokes, the three of us entered the corridor and walked forward.

An enclosed hallway already created an oppressive feeling. Knowing that the morgue lay immediately beyond the wall on our left made it even more uncomfortable.

Honestly, the two police officers who had dared enter at night were quite courageous.

Then again, a coward could never work as a police officer.

At the end of the corridor, Old Cao inserted the key into the lock.

Click!

A soft sound came from the mechanism. Then the iron morgue door opened with a long creak.

A cold draft carrying a stale odor immediately rushed into our faces.

Whether through imagination or reality, I faintly smelled decaying flesh.

The morgue was kept cold all year, so it should have had no odor. But perhaps because I was also an esoteric practitioner, some intuitive perception had become a physical smell.

“Let’s go. We’ll examine the scene.”

Old Cao entered first, and Yuan Fei and I followed.

The morgue door slammed shut behind us.

My heart jumped with it.

No ghost had closed the door. The morgue was refrigerated throughout the year and had to remain cold, so the entrance should not be left open. Yuan Fei had reached back and shut it.

One could say he possessed excellent public manners.

But I silently complained: couldn’t he have closed it more gently?

This was my first visit to a morgue. Even with a powerful coffin bearer and folk Taoist master beside me, I felt both nervous and curious.

Under the cold white ceiling lamps, I began surveying the room.

Refrigerated compartments had been built into the surrounding walls.

Anyone could guess that they contained old bodies. If no one claimed them, they had to remain frozen inside.

Rows and columns of mortuary tables covered the floor.

These held people who had died more recently so their relatives could identify and claim them easily.

Some tables stood empty.

Others held bodies beneath white sheets, which outlined the general shape of the corpse below.

The three of us walked through the morgue’s unimaginable silence.

Even our breathing and heartbeats sounded abnormally clear.
No matter how carefully we walked, our footsteps clicked against the floor.

The room was simply too quiet.

The sense of a thin white haze veiling my vision refused to disappear. Even silently reciting several incantations did nothing to dispel it.

Perhaps it came not from any evil being, but from some invisible force at the boundary between yin and yang.

The oppressive silence became so uncomfortable that I whispered a cold joke.

“There must be dozens, perhaps a hundred people here, yet it’s so quiet. Everyone is very considerate.”

Yuan Fei answered softly, “What do you want, Young Brother Wu? Should they all stand up and dance disco?”

Video halls and dance clubs were flourishing in those years. Lianghe Town had many dance halls, and young people reportedly loved discos.

Old Cao was speechless.

He told us not to jinx ourselves by spouting nonsense. If the hundred or so corpses here truly rose together, we would all be thoroughly finished.

“Fifth row, fourth and fifth positions from the left… Found them. According to Officer Li, these are the two tables where the cook and saleswoman we discovered the night before last were placed.”

Old Cao shone his flashlight over the numbers at the heads of the tables and stopped.

White ceiling lamps lit the morgue, but the room remained too dim. Seeing specific details required a flashlight.

Yuan Fei rolled up his sleeves.

“Fine. Let’s each use our own methods and start investigating. We need to see how two bodies vanished without a trace. Did they transform and walk out by themselves?”

Old Cao smiled at him.

“You’re a famous folk Taoist master. Surely you can track a corpse with talisman arts. Since you’re here, why trouble this coffin bearer to act? My other methods are rather inconvenient.”

Uh…

Yuan Fei stared at Old Cao and me from the corners of his eyes.

“You two aren’t working together to take advantage of me, are you?”

I hurriedly shook my head. “Uncle Yuan, don’t falsely accuse a middle-school student. You’re violating the law that protects minors, you know!”

“You don’t know a damn thing!”

Grumbling and cursing, Yuan Fei took a talisman from his back pocket. The pained expression on his face showed how much he hated using it.

“A Tracking Talisman is very difficult to draw. I wasted several pieces of talisman paper before producing this one. It’s expensive!”

I nodded rapidly like a chick pecking grain.

“Yes, yes! I’ve already practiced with Master for two weekends, but I still can’t draw a proper Tracking Talisman. Mine work poorly and burn away after only ten or twenty seconds. They don’t last long.”

Yuan Fei gave me a sideways look and smiled.

“Young Brother Wu, a man should never say he can’t last long.”

What did he mean?

I did not understand.

I was still young and innocent then.

He offered no explanation. Pinching the talisman between the fingers of his right hand, he gripped his right wrist with his left and began stamping the floor in a measured pattern while muttering an incantation.

I watched without blinking, afraid to miss a single detail.

The Tracking Talisman was a relatively complex, high-level art. It was nonaggressive and possessed no destructive power, but it was extremely useful.

The next instant, it ignited with a rush.

It became a small ball of flame suspended before us.

Yuan Fei blew gently.

Whoosh!

The little fireball floated away and circled the two mortuary tables several times.

I clearly saw wisps of pale gray gas rise from both tables and merge into the flame.

“Let the talisman reveal its power and the evil reveal its trail. Seek–swiftly–go!”

Yuan Fei pointed forward, and the fireball flew away.

Then, to my astonishment, footprints appeared on the floor.

Two separate trails.

Each began beside one of the mortuary tables and extended toward the morgue entrance. The steps wandered and twisted, showing that whoever made them had walked unsteadily.

At the sight, a scene immediately appeared in my mind.

In the dead silence of the morgue late at night, two bodies lying beneath white sheets suddenly sat up.

They climbed from the tables, dragged their rigid limbs across the floor, and walked step by step toward the door.

Merely imagining the scene made my scalp prickle and my blood run cold.