novelraw Chapter 354: Floating Corpses at the Dock
Chapter 354: Floating Corpses at the Dock
The heart-stopping expedition to Borneo had already passed two full weeks.
Singapore was in the midst of the most rain-abundant and irritating seasonal monsoon transition period of the year, with continuous gloomy rain shrouding this Straits Settlements city.
Lin Jie sat alone at the Eight Immortals table in the funeral parlor's side hall, holding a porcelain cup in his hand.
It was as quiet as a real tomb here.
William's body, having just undergone reshaping and strengthening, was still in a state akin to hibernation. Su Sanniang had deliberately placed him in an underground chamber surrounded by cold jade, using the extremely yin and frigid environment to stabilize the still somewhat restless life energy within him.
Julian had shut himself in the study upstairs, piled high with ancient texts. This scholar was working day and night to organize those bizarre data sets concerning stellar deviations and geographical displacements.
As for Evelyn, she had practically turned herself into a sleepless machine, immersed in the workshop day and night.
Only Lin Jie.
This "Scalpel" who had reaped lives like the god of death in the jungle now seemed somewhat at loose ends.
Since being parasitized by the White Vulture, his body's recovery ability far exceeded that of ordinary people. The wounds left from the battles had long since healed, leaving only faint pink traces. The spiritual force within him had also returned to its peak state after a few days of quiet recuperation."The tea is good."
Su Sanniang emerged from behind the screen, holding a long-stemmed tobacco pipe in her hand. A speck of crimson light in the pipe bowl flickered in the dim hall.
"Naturally."
This woman who controlled half of Chinatown's underground order sat down opposite Lin Jie. She took a deep drag from the pipe, then slowly exhaled a plume of bluish-gray smoke.
"This is a tribute tea privately hoarded by the Hongmen Mountain Master. Normally, even if the foreigners from the Governor's Mansion wanted a sip, they'd have to see if I'm in the mood."
Lin Jie nodded with a slight smile.
"Since I'm drinking your good tea, there must be something you need me to run an errand for."
Lin Jie set down the porcelain cup in his hand, calmly watching Su Sanniang's face, which couldn't conceal its weariness.
As an old hand who had scrambled in the inner world for half a lifetime, Su Sanniang was definitely not the type to invite someone for tea and idle chat without reason. The gloomy cloud that lingered between her brows and her slightly heavy footsteps when she entered just now betrayed her not-so-lighthearted mood at the moment.
"I really can't hide anything from your eyes."
Su Sanniang gave a bitter laugh. She lightly tapped the pipe bowl against the table leg, shaking off a scatter of pale gray ash.
"There is a troublesome matter."
"And it's one that... even an old woman like me, who's seen plenty of dead people, finds a bit unnerving."
Lin Jie leaned forward slightly, adopting an attentive posture.
"Late last night, the water police fished a body out of a backwater inlet at the lighter wharf."
Su Sanniang's voice was very low.
"It was an incense master from our Hongmen's 'Righteousness Hall'. People in the underworld call him Ironhead Liu. The man was a martial arts practitioner, with at least twenty years of tempering in his external martial arts. Normally, he was responsible for managing the livelihoods of over a hundred coolies on the wharf. Though not a top-tier expert, within this little patch of Chinatown, few could move against him without a sound."
"A revenge killing?" Lin Jie asked.
"If it were a revenge killing, that would be simpler." Su Sanniang shook her head. "Then we'd just grab our knives and go find them, settling it according to underworld rules with three cuts and six holes. But the weird thing is... the British coroner at the police station gave the cause of death as 'cardiac arrest due to excessive opium ingestion'."
"Opium?"
Lin Jie frowned slightly.
In the South Seas of the late 19th century, opium dens were as common as rice shops. Whether it was the high-and-mighty foreigners or the bottom-rung coolies, opium use was a commonplace, even government-tolerated pastime. People dying on the streets from drug overdoses happened every day; it wasn't particularly strange.
"The problem lies right there." A cold glint flashed in Su Sanniang's eyes. "I know Ironhead Liu best. He was an extremely disciplined, even somewhat rigid martial arts fanatic. He had an almost obsessive disgust for that black mud that turns people into useless wrecks. He strictly forbade his brothers from touching the stuff; whoever dared would have their fingers chopped off. He himself didn't touch a drop of alcohol or a whiff of opium. How could such a man possibly smoke himself to death in a ditch?"
"Could it have been forcibly injected or forced down his throat?" Lin Jie proposed another hypothesis. "To fake the scene."
"I thought of that too." Su Sanniang sighed. "But the brother I sent to retrieve the body reported that the corpse had no external injuries, nor any signs of struggle or restraint. And... his death state was very strange."
Su Sanniang paused, as if weighing how to describe the scene.
"He had become thin."
"Thin like a corpse buried in sand and dried for decades. All the fat and moisture in his body seemed to have been sucked out by something in an extremely short time, his skin tightly clinging to his bones. If not for the facial contours, no one would dare believe it was Ironhead Liu, who was just eating meat heartily at the restaurant yesterday."
"That appearance didn't look like opium use at all. It was more like being drained of essence and blood by the legendary 'drought demon'."
Lin Jie's fingers lightly tapped the tabletop.
Extreme dehydration.
No external injuries.
This indeed wasn't a phenomenon ordinary poisoning or disease could explain.
It sounded more like some kind of predatory behavior involving supernatural forces.
"What does the police station say?"
"What can they say." Su Sanniang snorted coldly. "Those foreign detectives only care about getting off work on time for their whiskey. Seeing it was a Chinese gang member found in a mixed-up place like the wharf, they just stamped it 'accidental death' and prepared to close the case. The body is still lying in the Central Hospital morgue, waiting for family to claim it."
"Since you feel something's off, why not just retrieve the body and investigate yourself?"
"Because the guards there are Sikhs; they only recognize foreign police orders." Su Sanniang sounded somewhat helpless. "And my identity is sensitive right now. Making a big scene to snatch a corpse at this juncture could easily attract the attention of the colony's Special Higher Police spies, bringing unnecessary trouble to the funeral parlor."
"So."
Lin Jie stood up, straightening his collar.
"You need a new face. An 'expert' who knows how to deal with foreigners, while also knowing how to deal with the dead, to go take a look."
Su Sanniang looked at Lin Jie, a satisfied smile curling at the corner of her mouth.
"Talking with smart people saves effort."
She pulled a waist token engraved with Hongmen's obscure markings from her sleeve and placed it on the table.
"This is Ironhead Liu's token; it might help if necessary. But I hope you can solve the problem in a more... professional way. I just want to know who did it, and what exactly that thing is that drains people into dried corpses."
Lin Jie picked up the waist token and tucked it into his inner coat pocket.
"Don't worry."
He picked up the black soft felt hat placed by the table and put it on, shading his eyes.
"If it's man-made trouble, I'll dig out the culprit."
"If it's something unclean..."
Lin Jie's fingers lightly brushed the dagger at his waist.
"Then I'll be responsible for helping it find salvation."
...
Singapore Central Hospital was located on a low hillside slightly removed from the bustle of the city center. It was a public medical institution established by the British colonial government to showcase its "benevolent rule" and modern medical technology.
The rows of ward buildings, whitewashed with lime and featuring typical Victorian-style verandas, appeared solemn and tidy amidst the lush tropical foliage.
But this tidiness was limited to the above-ground parts.
Lin Jie passed through the long corridors smelling of Lysol and arrived at the morgue area in the basement.
At the morgue's main entrance stood two tall Sikh guards with thick beards and bright red turbans wrapped around their heads.
They leaned on heavy batons, with revolvers at their waists, their bell-like eyes vigilantly watching anyone trying to approach.
For the vast majority of Chinese or Malays, these two door gods were insurmountable obstacles.
But for Lin Jie, this was just a small social hurdle.
He confidently straightened his well-tailored suit, carrying a black leather briefcase, and walked directly up to the two guards.
He produced an extremely convincing forged document.
It was a high-level identity certificate for a "Pathology Consultant of the Royal College of Physicians of London," specially procured by I.A.R.C. through special channels to facilitate hunters' operations in the Surface World.
The steel seal and signatures on it wouldn't reveal any flaws even if shown to the Governor.
"Good afternoon, gentlemen."
Lin Jie spoke in impeccably standard, even slightly arrogant, London-accented English.
"I am a special pathology consultant commissioned by Scotland Yard to assist in investigating a series of abnormal death cases at the wharves recently. These are my credentials and the special pass signed by the Governor's Mansion."
Though loyal, the two Sikh guards' literacy levels weren't sufficient to discern the document's authenticity. More importantly, in this strictly hierarchical colonial society, fluent English and that respectable attire representing the upper class were often more persuasive than any certificate.
They exchanged a glance. One took the document and gave it a perfunctory look, then immediately adopted a respectful expression, even clicking his heels together in a standard military salute.
"Sir, please enter."
"The person in charge here is taking a nap upstairs. Shall I wake him?"
"No need."
Lin Jie waved a hand, casually pulling two silver coins from his pocket and naturally slipping them into the guard's hand.
"I just need to work quietly for a while; I don't like being disturbed. You understand my meaning?"
The two guards knowingly pocketed the silver coins, saluted again, then proactively pulled open the heavy iron door for Lin Jie.
"As you wish, sir. There's no one inside; you can investigate at your leisure."
The iron door slowly closed behind him.
The temperature here was at least ten degrees lower than outside, with water droplets covering the walls.
Dozens of iron beds covered with white sheets were neatly arranged under the dim gas lamps, each white sheet concealing a stiff human-shaped outline.
Those lying here were all nameless corpses—whether they died from accidents, murders, or unknown plagues.
Lin Jie walked straight to the freezer section isolated in the corner of the room, marked with a "Special Cases" sign.
He stopped before the third freezer door.
The label, scrawled in English, read: "Unknown Asian male, suspected drug overdose."
Lin Jie pulled open the door and slid out the body wrapped in a body bag.
As the zipper was slowly pulled down, a corpse stench—though treated with refrigeration but still difficult to mask—wafted out, carrying a strange sweetness.
The corpse's appearance was indeed as terrifying as Su Sanniang had described.
It was a middle-aged man who should have been extremely robust. His broad frame and thick calluses on his hands proved he had engaged in heavy physical labor and practiced martial arts for years.
But now, this body was like a deflated balloon.
His skin showed a grayish, waxy yellow, tightly stretched over his bones.
His eye sockets were deeply sunken, the eyeballs completely shriveled. His mouth was wide open, as if he had uttered some silent scream before death.
This was definitely not a drug overdose.
Opium might cause emaciation, but that was a prolonged process.
This man's physical state was more like experiencing some kind of extremely violent dehydration and accelerated metabolism in a short period.
Lin Jie removed his black leather gloves.
In this morgue, quiet enough to hear his own heartbeat, he slowly closed his eyes and gently placed his right hand on the corpse's forehead, dry as tree bark.
[Reverberation Touch].
Activate.
The world plunged into absolute grayness and nothingness.
Disorderly streams of information flooded his perception—all the memory fragments left by this body over its long years.
Lin Jie quickly filtered out the irrelevant information about wharf hauling, underworld conflicts, and daily trivialities. His consciousness rapidly rewound along the timeline, heading straight for that endpoint moment named "death."
Normally, he would see the last image the deceased saw before dying.
The killer's face, or the murder weapon.
But this time, it was different.
Lin Jie didn't see any clear images.
His field of vision was filled only with an overwhelming, thick, blood-like... red mist.
The mist churned, writhed, surging from all directions, filling the deceased's entire field of vision.
An extremely bizarre "buzzing" sound exploded deep within his mind.
It sounded like the wingbeats of some giant insect, yet also like countless tiny voices whispering simultaneously.
Accompanying this sound, Lin Jie sensed extremely contradictory emotional fluctuations transmitted from the corpse's memories.
It was a... extreme pleasure.
The man greedily inhaled the red mist before death, like a drowning person craving air.
He felt his body become light, all worries and burdens disappearing. He saw heaven, saw the Pure Land of Ultimate Bliss, saw countless dancing celestial maidens.
And then in the next instant.
Darkness descended.
The pleasure ceased abruptly at its peak, turning into eternal nothingness.
Because his life force had been drained.
Lin Jie snapped his eyes open, pulling his hand away from the corpse.
"What a happy way to die."
Lin Jie commented coldly.
But this didn't explain why the corpse had become like this.
Hallucinations could only control the brain, not drain the flesh.
Something must have entered his body in a material form and completed a frenzied plundering inside.
Lin Jie retrieved a set of precise dissection tools from his briefcase.
In that residual memory, the man died after inhaling large amounts of red mist.
So the key lay in the respiratory system.
Lin Jie skillfully cut open the corpse's withered chest cavity.
He severed the ribs, exposing the internal organs.
The heart had shriveled to the size of a walnut; the liver had hardened.
Only the lungs.
That pair of lung lobes showed an extremely bizarre swelling.
They hadn't atrophied like the other organs; instead, they had become heavy and hard, their surface showing a morbid bright red.
Lin Jie carefully cut open the right lung's lobe.
"Crunch."
The blade encountered a gritty obstruction.
He used forceps to widen the incision.
At that moment, even someone as calm as Lin Jie couldn't help but feel a chill creep up his scalp.
There was no air or congested blood in the alveoli.
They were filled with something.
Countless tiny, crystal-clear, coral-like branching structures... red crystals.
They densely crowded every alveolus, like a miniature red forest growing inside a human body.
Lin Jie could sense they still had extremely faint spiritual reactions.
These were eggs.
Or spore aggregates of some parasitic organism.
They entered the human body through respiration, then rapidly hatched and grew in the warm, moist, oxygen-rich environment of the lungs.
During their growth, they frenziedly plundered the host's internal moisture, proteins, and life energy, converting them into these red crystal structures.
"Plant? Fungus? Or some kind of micro-insect?"
Lin Jie used forceps to pick up a small piece of red crystal and placed it into a glass vial he carried.
The thing quickly lost its luster after leaving the human body, turning into a pinch of grayish-white powder.
Clearly, they couldn't survive outside that special environment.
Lin Jie closed the body bag and shut the freezer door again.
He removed the gloves tainted with death's aura and threw them into the incineration bin nearby.
Though he still didn't know exactly what this thing was, he had found the direction for investigation.
Something with such high addictiveness and lethality, if circulating on the black market, must have a very appealing name.
And it must be something only the richest, most hollow, and most fearless could afford to play with.
Lin Jie packed up his tools, picked up his briefcase, and walked out of the morgue.
The rain outside had stopped.
But the gloom shrouding the city had grown thicker.
He walked out of the hospital's main gate and hailed a rickshaw.
"Where to, sir?" the rickshaw puller asked.
Lin Jie glanced towards the distant lighter wharf district, ablaze with lights and enveloped in smoke.
"To where the opium dens are most concentrated."
Lin Jie said calmly.