Autopsy

It was a perfect opportunity to take advantage of the situation, and it didn't even count as a lie.

The exhumed corpses had finally found a use, but the townsfolk who had been duped by the steward into defending their ancestors were out of luck.

Back in primary school, Lynch had often been tricked into voluntary labor, so he was all too familiar with this kind of routine. Since you were already there, when the person in charge told you to do something outside the plan, could you really refuse?

Naturally, that included light, straightforward, beginner-friendly work like hauling rotting corpses.

A walk in the park.

Before long, someone ran over to the West Gate guards to borrow a handcart and a huge pile of straw. Grumbling bitterly, they hoisted several rotting corpses onto the cart, hastily covered them with hay, and then pushed the cart toward the fortress barracks to the north—vomiting the entire way.

A “fragrance” trailed behind them across the streets, drawing stares from every passerby, who all engaged in serious discussions about whether these people had surrendered to the ghouls and were preparing lunch for them.

Privilege was indeed delightful. Lynch and his companions didn't have to touch any of this foul, exhausting labor; they didn't even have to walk alongside the cart to take in the bouquet, content to merely follow from a comfortable distance.

Steward Locke did not accompany them. Loyal to the core, he stayed behind with the remaining five or six burly servants to guard the cemetery. Far from shrinking back because their numbers had thinned, he patrolled with even greater vigilance.

This made Lynch and the others sigh softly as they departed. Perhaps the steward truly had no idea what he was helping his master accomplish, but that only made it all the more tragic.

To each their own fate, he supposed. There was no need to fret over a story NPC, or Officer Natalie would lecture him again. Getting this close to Dr. Sven had already made her anxious; if he started worrying about anyone else, the girl would probably pin him to the ground and thrash him. Hiss, why is she suddenly glaring at me? Can this girl read minds?

Withered under her sharp glare, Lynch dared not let his thoughts wander any further. He dutifully trailed behind, crossing paths along the way with Knight Terry, who had rushed over with troops after hearing the news.

Sure enough, nothing had been found outside the South Gate. After a thorough sweep, Terry had simply sealed the gate under the pretext of an unknown danger. The knight had been feeling downcast until a citizen rushed up to report that a gang of ghouls had stormed into the city with emergency rations, spitting acid along the roadside as they went, obviously staking out their territory.

He had hurriedly charged over with several soldiers, only for the civilian laborers who were puking as they walked to be swapped out for soldier laborers who were puking as they walked. The men cast resentful looks back at the esteemed knight, who had ducked to the rear under the guise of “getting briefed by Dr. Sven.” They couldn't fathom why something that could be explained in a couple of sentences required the valiant knight to discuss it for the entire journey. But they didn't dare ask, so they could only resign themselves to hauling the corpses.

Returning to the barracks, they avoided the enclosed dungeon—otherwise, nobody would be able to set foot inside for years. Instead, they wheeled the corpses directly into the open courtyard training ground at the heart of the fortress, cordoning off the perimeter to keep prying soldiers from peeking.

There were seven bodies in total—the six dead travelers plus Kemitt—along with... Leonard and the four South Gate guards, who were theoretically still alive.

Indeed, the living dead were to be dissected as well. To be precise, the living dead held far greater value.

Soon, the chained living dead were dragged into the training ground. Though gagged, the five infected still let out stifled, continuous snarls.

Foul stench, dead bodies, hideous faces, and frenzied roars—for a moment, the training ground felt like the set of an R-rated horror film.

‘Current time: morning... approximately 10:00 AM. Weather: clear. Lead examiners: Stephen Sven, Diana de Valente. Observers: Natalie Angel, Lynch Levive, Judy Won't-Say.’

Lynch swiftly jotted notes in his pad, mimicking the forensic autopsy habits from his past life.

All six participants wore thick garments that left not a single patch of skin exposed. The two lead examiners even wore the bird masks provided by Miss Diana, the beaks stuffed with purifying herbs to minimize the risk of infection.

Everything was ready to begin.

With Dr. Sven leading the incision and Miss Diana assisting, they started with a rotting corpse. A hatchet rose and fell, cleaving open the chest and abdomen. An even more overpowering stench instantly flooded the open-air yard.

Yet everyone present possessed an iron will. Bolstered by the purifying herbs, they suppressed their visceral revulsion and kept their eyes fixed on the dissection.

“Hiss...”

As the sharp blade slit open the abdominal cavity, several people inhaled sharply in unison. Even Dr. Sven's hands froze, and she looked up to exchange bewildered glances with the others.

“First corpse, male, moderate external decay, fatal wound is a puncture to the neck. After opening the chest and abdomen, the heart and lungs have ceased functioning, internal organs show mild decay, stomach and intestines...” Miss Diana had initially reined in her emotions, reciting a dry, neutral description as Lynch had instructed, but the shock in her voice could no longer be masked. She forced herself to continue, “The stomach and intestines maintain a slow peristaltic movement, showing no signs of decomposition.”

“No wonder they crave tearing into flesh and blood,” Officer Natalie whispered, wiping the sweat from her palms. “If they can still enter a state of starvation after death and be governed by primal hunger, their behavior makes complete sense.”

“I'll proceed.” Though Dr. Sven's expression was hidden behind the bird mask, her voice sounded raspy. “Judging by this, our chances are slim.”

Saying so, she kept her hands as steady as possible and sliced open the corpse's stomach.

The stomach was as empty as if the man had starved for half a month; there were no gastric contents whatsoever.

“Damn it, is he alive or dead?”

Knight Terry muttered in a dialect Lynch couldn't understand, already questioning reality.

In this world, mysterious heteromorphs like reanimated corpses did exist, so a dead man moving around, while dangerous, was not enough to terrify a professional soldier like him. But reanimated corpses were merely bodies raised by the push of mysterious powers; at their core, they were still dead. An example like this, where the digestive tract retained its biological activity, was extraordinarily rare.

“What about the brain?” Lynch asked, frowning. “Cut it open and take a look.”

“That's not so easy to cut.”

Dr. Sven grumbled, but her movements were terrifyingly practiced. She cracked open the corpse's cranium in short order.

“The brain has lost vitality, showing moderate decay with normal coloration,” Miss Diana continued her description. “Other examination results show no anomalies, consistent with the estimated time of death.”

“Next one.”

“Wait.”

Seeing Terry prepare to wheel another rotting corpse forward, Lynch stopped him. After a brief pause, he personally pushed one of the South Gate guards before the doctor.

“Those are probably failed specimens. Besides, if their digestive tracts have remained active for this long, whatever was in their stomachs has long been digested away. There's no rush to dissect them. These guards are successful specimens, and their symptoms only manifested around ten hours ago. Maybe we'll find something here.”

“Are you sure?”

Looking at the restrained infected man still struggling wildly and roaring, even Dr. Sven hesitated. After all, the psychological burden of a vivisection wasn't something just anyone could shoulder.

“Let me do it,” Lynch sighed. “I was the one who suggested this. It's my duty to get my hands bloody.”

Yet Dr. Sven shoved him aside, and Miss Diana promptly shoved him even farther away. Both women glared at him, picked up the tools, and set to work on the living man.

“Roar!”

The crazed infected man continued to howl, thrashing against his chains until they rattled violently. Even with his chest and abdomen laid bare for all to see, he remained brimming with monstrous strength.

Staring at the contents of the opened torso, all six people fell silent.

Most of the infected man's internal organs had already ceased functioning, displaying an ominous brownish-black hue, particularly the respiratory and circulatory systems.

The heart had completely stopped beating, and the lungs only attempted to inflate when he roared; otherwise, they hung withered like deflated balloons.

Theoretically speaking, this was already a dead man—aside from the fact that he was still thrashing with violent vitality.

“The blood has clotted, but muscle tissue retains vitality and exceptional explosive power. Digestive organs exhibit activity far exceeding normal organisms. Eight hours since symptom onset, and the gastric contents have been completely broken down. The organs themselves are even autolyzing at a slow pace. Hiss, they must bite and devour things, or they'll end up digesting themselves.”

Miss Diana's voice had grown hoarse from sheer shock, but no one paid it any mind. Everyone was profoundly rattled by this half-dead, half-alive affliction.

“What about the brain?” Lynch felt his breathing quicken, his pulse racing.

At this point, their group was no different from the villainous mad scientists in horror films from his past life—perhaps even crazier. But there was no time to care about that now. Every clue discovered here could become their lifeline to surviving and escaping this mystery relic.

More crucially, the plague in the real world outside was very likely of the exact same origin, perhaps even identical. That meant the more they uncovered here, the fewer missteps they would make out there, and the more real lives would be saved.

Lynch was no bleeding-heart saint. He had no interest in debating whether people in a relic memory counted as real humans or possessed human rights. To protect the real people in the outside world, he would gladly play the mad researcher.

Besides, theoretically, these subjects were already dead. Necrotic organs could never regain vitality. Conducting experiments on corpses did not violate his moral compass.

Desperately rationalizing it to himself, Lynch kept his eyes glued to Dr. Sven's hands. He watched as she secured the victim to the table like a certain notorious professor, deftly cracking open the skull to reveal the brain within.

“Brain shows no visible trauma, no blood flow, grayish-white coloration. Faint tremors observed in the cerebral tissue, providing evidence of vitality,” Miss Diana dutifully recorded. “Wait, Ms. Sven, what are you...”

Dr. Sven had already raised a blade, poised to strike. “I recall we only managed to kill an infected person yesterday by crushing the brain. Now that the skull is opened, he still retains vitality.”

The bird mask on Miss Diana's face trembled slightly, revealing her inner turmoil, but she ultimately nodded.

“Commencing lethality testing. The subject's internal organs were removed sequentially: heart, lungs, liver, spleen, stomach... The digestive system has been excised, yet the subject maintains vitality. The final test is the brain. Exposure to air does not diminish its activity, but once damaged...”

Her narration halted abruptly. After a brief pause, she sighed softly. “Once the structural integrity of the brain is compromised, all vital signs in the infected subject immediately vanish. The organs still attached to the body that previously retained vitality cease functioning simultaneously.”

Lynch kept his head down, scribbling furiously. He didn't have time to look up, nor did he dare to; merely listening and writing sent chills down his spine. Watching it in a movie was one thing, but having a creature right in front of you that could roar at the top of its lungs with most of its internal organs removed was utterly unbelievable. This had completely exceeded anything physiological science could explain—only mysterious power could sustain such a bizarre state.

Only after Miss Diana finished her report did Lynch pen the final entry into his notebook:

‘11:27 AM: Subject Two has lost all vital signs. Death confirmed.’

“It seems our attempt today has failed,” Dr. Sven said, taking a few steps back with a heavy sigh. “This was our most recent afflicted patient with no external trauma. If we can't find anything in their stomachs, slicing open the other corpses won't help either. What a shame.”

Her words cast a pall over everyone present. In truth, they had all been thinking the same thing, but hearing it spoken aloud left a bitter taste in their mouths.

Officer Natalie bit her lip. “At least we resolved some questions and proved a few theories. We can confirm that the dead travelers were sacrifices used by the culprit for experimentation, and those horrific wounds were just a cover to conceal their real purpose. Now that the experiment is complete, we have these genuine living dead. The only way to deal with them is destroying the brain; otherwise, even if you decapitate them and the body goes limp, the head remains aggressive.”

Saying so, she pointed toward Leonard, whose cervical vertebrae had been severed by Miss Diana; his head still remained active.

“So today wasn't in vain, even if we couldn't confirm whether the source was ingested.”

“Actually, we still have one card left to play—maybe even our trump card.” Lynch finally set his pen down and looked up from his notes, eyes narrowing thoughtfully. “We haven't lost yet. It's too early to declare that the source can't be found.”

Hm?

In an instant, five pairs of expectant eyes locked onto him.

“Ten hours isn't our shortest sample from symptom onset. We have another specimen who went from onset to death in no more than an hour.”

With that, Lynch turned his gaze toward Kemitt's corpse.

Everyone's eyes lit up.

Of course! Although Kemitt was covered in wounds, he was just like Leonard—one of the first successful plague specimens, a primary case rather than a secondary transmission.

“When I treated him the night before last, he still had blood circulation, and all his vital signs were normal, meaning his symptoms hadn't manifested yet,” Dr. Sven murmured. “So his true onset was in the early hours of yesterday morning, and he was killed shortly after. Yes, he survived for little more than an hour at most. You're right, Lynch!”

Even as she muttered, Dr. Sven had already lifted the knife coated in filthy blood and mucus. The petite Miss Diana couldn't even wait for Lynch and Terry to wheel the gurney; she rushed forward to push Kemitt's corpse into the center of the courtyard herself.

The two doctors exchanged a look, nodded firmly, and brought their blades down.

For a moment, the other four held their breath in suspense, as if watching the final card turn over in a high-stakes gamble between life and death.

The abdominal cavity was cut open. Immediately afterward, both doctors cried out in unison.

Resting within the abdominal cavity was a half-full stomach. Yet in everyone's eyes, it was not merely a stomach—it was the hope of uncovering the truth.