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墨書 Inktalez
Chapter 0: The Mystery of the Alley (Nineteen)
"He saw me turn around and left, his eyes were abnormal. He also had a stiff demeanor and a pale complexion..."
"His finger got caught on the corpse's teeth, and it was bleeding profusely. After being bandaged, he should be fine; you must have seen it wrong." Qin Jian didn't believe that Zhang Section Chief would be in trouble. Besides, the corpse had already been removed from the concrete and placed in the freezer.
"Then pull it out for me to see." Qin Jian nodded in agreement and walked over to Freezer Drawer No. 1. With a swift motion, he opened the drawer, only to find a dirty white shroud inside—nothing else.
"That's not right; it has to be Freezer Drawer No. 1. There's no way I could have remembered incorrectly."
"This is bad."
At that moment, a scream echoed from nearby—a woman shouting about something. Both Qin Jian and I felt an inexplicable tension and rushed out of the Autopsy Room, one after the other.
A cleaner was holding half a bucket of water while wiping down the railing. She must have seen something shocking because she dropped the bucket, spilling water everywhere. Clutching her chest, her face was ashen as she exclaimed, "Zombie..."
"What did it look like?"
"It had no flesh at all, like it was smoked meat. Its mouth was twisted open; I could see its gaping mouth wide enough to swallow my head..." The cleaner was still shaken, her voice trembling as she recounted the incident. Although she might have exaggerated a bit, there was a chance she really did see a zombie.
Qin Jian also doubted the cleaner's words but asked, "Which way did it run?"
"That way." The cleaner pointed in the direction I feared most—behind the City Bureau lay a vast green area connecting to a street garden. If that corpse, which resembled a mummy, had come to life and escaped into the street garden, it would spell big trouble.
While Qin Jian and I searched frantically without finding anything, Chi Xinrong and Dengke Qi couldn't wait any longer and approached us.
Qin Jian walked over to them, indicating that we still had matters to attend to and that they could handle things on their own if they wanted to leave.
Chi Xinrong wore an expression of frustration as she stormed off.
The disappearance of a dead body was a serious omen. If those above found out, both he and I would be in deep trouble. After walking around for several laps, my hair was drenched, and sweat poured down my face—it was terrifying. In my panic, I recalled how Zhang Section Chief had looked earlier and felt increasingly concerned about his situation. I urgently said to Qin Jian, "Why don't you contact Zhang Section Chief and ask him for details?"
"Okay." Qin Jian replied as he pulled out his phone and quickly dialed Zhang Section Chief's number. When the call connected, he said, "Zhang Section Chief, you were the last one to leave the Autopsy Room; how did that corpse go missing?"
"Missing?" Chief Zhang seemed startled, his voice slightly wavering.
"Chief Zhang, come over to the backyard."
I heard Chief Zhang say one word on the phone: "Okay."
"Don't keep your phone on speaker so loud. The body is really here; if it is disturbed, it will run away faster."
"Oh." Qin Jian adjusted the volume and anxiously waited for Chief Zhang to arrive.
Finally, Chief Zhang showed up, wearing a pair of sunglasses. He was nearsighted; why was he wearing sunglasses? I questioned silently but kept my doubts to myself.
"Are you sure you've checked every freezer drawer in the Autopsy Room?"
"No, we only looked at number one. We didn't find a body, just a shroud."
"I just received a call and wasn't paying attention. Should we go back and check each one again?"
"A stiff body that has been dead for over ten years can't just mysteriously disappear," Qin Jian firmly believed that a frozen corpse wouldn't just walk away on its own. He instructed me to accompany Chief Zhang back to the Autopsy Room for further inspection while he went alone to the monitoring room to check the surveillance footage.
I walked behind Chief Zhang towards the Autopsy Room.
Chief Zhang led the way, and I followed closely behind.
At that moment, the sun was setting, casting a warm glow on the exterior walls of the City Bureau. The light reflected off the white tiles of the courtyard wall, making Chief Zhang's shadow appear faint while mine was heavy. I couldn't help but gasp.
"Chief Zhang, can you show me your injured finger?"
One of Chief Zhang's fingers was tightly wrapped. He instinctively raised his hand, and I noticed that his finger seemed swollen; the thin bandage looked more than twice the size of his other fingers.
"Take off the bandage so I can take a look."
"Let's forget it for now. We need to focus on finding the body. It's Sunday, and it's just us on duty. If more people show up and we still haven't found the body, we'll be in trouble."
"It doesn't matter; we can look while we walk," I replied, noticing his face growing increasingly pale, a bluish tint creeping in with a hint of blackness behind him.
If my master saw someone radiating black energy, it meant they were on the Underworld's Blacklist.
Chief Zhang ignored my request, deliberately tucking his injured finger into his pocket to hide it from me. I couldn't pry it out of his grasp.
When we reached the Autopsy Room, I searched through the drawers one by one with Chief Zhang, but there was nothing—just emptiness.
At that moment, Qin Jian rushed in and told us, "Not good! The surveillance footage shows a charred body hopping toward the backyard. We arrived too late."
"Did you pull up the footage from the backyard?"
"Yes, I saw it hopping into a cluster of Poppy plants and then disappearing."
"The backyard connects to the break room through a back window. That window is only used for pouring water; could the body have escaped through there?"
"That's not possible. Dengke Qi and Chi Xinrong are in the break room; they didn't mention anything alarming when they came over."
Since Qin Jian saw the body hopping away on the surveillance footage, it meant there couldn't be a body left in the Autopsy Room. So we immediately dashed out toward Main Road. Vehicles flowed continuously along Main Road, and people were bustling about; no matter how formidable that body was, it should have startled those walking by.
Unless the body never left the City Bureau at all.
At that moment, Qin Jian, Chief Zhang, and I conducted a thorough search of every corner of the City Bureau until we found nothing. Just then, Chief Zhang suddenly went missing.
"Is Chief Zhang's phone unreachable?" Qin Jian asked, drenched in sweat. He had initially hoped to downplay the situation, but that was no longer an option. Chief Zhang couldn't afford to disappear now; could his disappearance be related to the body? What if the body had done something to him?
I replied, "No, Chief Zhang's issue existed before I arrived."
"Are you talking about his finger being cut?"
“Hmm, I suspect his fingers have been infected by Corpse Poison. He’s in grave danger; we need to find him as soon as possible.”
“But how can we find him if his phone isn’t working?”
“Let’s go to his house.”
I didn’t find the body with Qin Jian, and it was getting dark quickly. Anxious, we had no choice but to head to Zhang Section Chief’s home.
I wasn’t sure how many times this was for Qin Jian, but he didn’t seem to like Zhang Section Chief very much.
I thought Zhang Section Chief was fine; I couldn’t understand why Qin Jian disliked him.
“He always tries to take advantage of female colleagues.”
“I can’t see it. He seems like someone who wouldn’t do that, especially since Wenwen agreed to work with him.” I believed Zhang Section Chief wouldn’t act that way. Qin Jian wasn’t one to spread rumors either, so I couldn’t jump to conclusions about the real situation. Right now, our priority was to locate Zhang Section Chief.
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