Chapter 111 - 103: Walking Corpse (3)
A sickening collection of severed limbs and mangled body parts came into view.
A lower leg, twitching faintly.
Half a torso, clearly frozen solid, yet still rising and falling with a shallow, unnatural breath.
What unsettled Lin Ye the most was a drawer containing half a brain, frozen solid, yet still quivering like a heart.
He forcibly suppressed his nausea and reached out, grabbing the severed hand he had first seen.
It was cold and stiff to the touch, showing no signs of life, yet it continued to struggle violently in Lin Ye’s palm.
Lin Ye soon discovered the cause.
In the center of the hand’s cross-section, nestled between the stark white bone and the decaying gray flesh, was a faint pinprick of blue light.
Lin Ye’s eyes narrowed. The index and middle fingers of his other hand shot out like lightning, precisely pinching the cross-section.
He steadily plucked out a blue crystal, no larger than a grain of sand.
Source Crystal!
The instant the Source Crystal was removed, the hand, which had been struggling wildly, suddenly went rigid.
As if all its energy had been drained in an instant, it completely lost all signs of activity, becoming a cold, stiff, dead thing.
"Guh...!"
Just then, a pained whimper, as if squeezed from the depths of a human throat, came from outside the morgue.
Lin Ye whipped around to look.
A shaky, humanoid silhouette was walking slowly down the hallway outside the morgue.
[Level 2]
The moment he saw the marker above the monster’s head, the caution that had just risen in Lin Ye’s heart slowly subsided.
He stepped out of the morgue and got a clear look at the silhouette.
It was indeed a "person."
A dead person.
Its corpse was in a bizarre state of post-mortem bloat, extremely swollen, as if its skin were filled with gas.
But then it seemed to have been flash-frozen, causing severe dehydration of the skin’s surface. The shriveled skin clung to the bloated body, creating countless grotesque folds.
It just walked, its movements devoid of any logic, more like a marionette controlled by invisible strings.
Its mouth opened and closed unconsciously, its throat constantly emitting incomprehensible whispers in a language Lin Ye didn’t recognize.
A storm of shock raged in Lin Ye’s mind.
’Source Crystals!’
’They can actually make these long-dead tissues, even entire corpses, "move" again!’
An icy chill, a thousand times colder than the morgue itself, shot up Lin Ye’s spine.
’This stuff... it’s just plain unholy!’
’Source Crystals actually have such a bizarre effect. They corrupt the living and even desecrate death itself!’
Lin Ye felt like some pieces were slowly falling into place, the truth gradually unraveling.
But he was missing some key information and couldn’t see the full picture.
Suppressing his doubts, Lin Ye backed out of the morgue.
In the hallway, he encountered a few more shambling corpses.
After some close observation, Lin Ye confirmed that these things had no independent consciousness whatsoever.
They didn’t even have the desire to attack, merely wandering aimlessly within the confines of this third basement level.
Most of them were still wearing tattered, blue-and-white striped patient gowns.
Lin Ye’s gaze fell on the identification tag hanging from one of the corpse’s wrists.
The plastic tag had yellowed, but the writing on it was still clear.
Liu Dexing, Department of Oncology, September 2047.
Lin Ye’s eyes narrowed.
’That dating system... it’s the old calendar, from before the cataclysm.’
And right now, it was year 167 of the Martial Era.
This person had died two hundred years ago.
A chilling inference flashed through Lin Ye’s mind.
’Could it be... that he’s been wandering aimlessly in this silent underground for nearly two centuries?’
’No.’
’That conclusion is too hasty.’
’He only died before the cataclysm. There’s no way to determine when the Source Crystal was implanted, or when he was "awakened".’
’These walking corpses probably can’t wander here forever, either. The energy contained within their Source Crystals is finite.’
’Once the Source Crystal’s energy is depleted, they should revert to being simple corpses.’
Lin Ye searched the entire third basement level meticulously.
Other than more cold storage lockers and—just as he’d guessed—corpses that were completely immobile because their Source Crystals had lost power, he found no hidden doors, passages, or any other noteworthy clues.
This place really did seem to be just an abandoned morgue.
Lin Ye raised his wrist and glanced at the time on his CR watch.
It was already 5:45 in the morning.
He recalled that the two brothers, Shi Lei and Shi Hao, also only started moving about the ruined city after daybreak.
The night’s investigation had come up empty-handed.
Lin Ye, of course, had wanted to find the Level 20 Overlord directly.
But things hadn’t gone as planned.
Perhaps his own abilities were too limited, making it impossible for him to thoroughly investigate the entire ruined city on his own.
This lead could still be investigated, but its value was now far less than making a direct trip to Dawn Creatures.