Chapter 52: Cat Paw Prints

“It... It’s moving!” Luo Weiwei cried in horror. She couldn’t keep her mouth closed and kept stepping away from the corpse.

“It’s a zombie! It’s a zombie!”

“How is this possible? The head has been cut off!”

The whole room was full of flustered screams. Some policemen were scared witless and ran desperately outside.

Dali shouted for help, ran in circles in a daze, and slammed into a chair, almost falling to the ground. Huang Xiaotao’s almond eyes were completely rounded, and her mouth was opened so wide that it could be filled with a handful of walnuts. I even noticed slight changes in the expressions of the usually straight-faced Wang Yuanchao—his pupils shrank ever so slightly.

At this moment, the body on the table was slowly raising his right hand, as if holding an invisible knife in his grasp, and then the knife slowly moved toward his own neck!

At first, the movement was not so obvious—only the wrist was quivering. But then, under the support of the elastic bands, the whole arm began to move, making repeated slashing motion along the neck!

In truth, human muscles could remember movements. It was the same as how people who had learnt to ride bicycles before never needed to learn it again even after years of not riding one. By the same token, at the moment of death, the central nervous system would shut down and the body’s magnetic field would collapse instantly, but it would still save a small record of the last movement, or muscle memory.

But of course, muscle memory varied from individual to individual, and those severely decomposed or corpses with broken spines could not be ‘reanimated’ anymore. However, the muscle tissues of this particular dead body stiffened immediately after death and maintained a subtle tension which made it perfect for Corpse Reanimation!

When I thought of it this way, I couldn’t help but feel a little proud, just as a craftsman would feel proud when he completed a perfect piece of art. I was aware that this kind of thinking made me sound crazy, but I was a Traditional Coroner after all! If I couldn’t stomach these kinds of things, then I had no business choosing this career!

I was going to explain the principles of Corpse Reanimation to Luo Weiwei, but when I looked around the room, I couldn’t find her at all. All I saw was the door which was wide open and the police officers who ran out were screaming in the hallway.

“Has Luo Weiwei gone out?” I asked.

Dali pointed to the ground. I almost laughed at the sight—Luo Weiwei had fainted. She was lying on the ground, and that air of cool haughtiness was nowhere to be found.

“How can she be a coroner if she can’t even stand that much?” I scoffed.

“Yeah, that’s right…” came a voice from behind me. It was Huang Xiaotao. She was visibly shaken and pale, but didn’t lose her mind the way the other police officers and Luo Weiwei did. “Song Yang, can you make the dead body stop moving now? It’s too terrifying to look at!”

“Okay, but I’ll record a video of it first,” I said. “In case Luo Weiwei won’t admit her defeat later.”

I then used my mobile phone to record a short clip of the dead body’s movements, wondering how viral this video could become if I uploaded it to the internet. But it was just a thought, of course.

Once that was done, I pulled out the magnetic needles from the body, after which it was as if an electric device had been unplugged—the movements completely stopped—only an arm was still hung high in the air.

“Holy freaking shit, dude!” Dali sighed with relief. “Why didn’t you warn me there was going to be that kind of freak show?”

“What do you mean I didn’t warn you?!” I countered.

“You said something shocking was going to happen, but this is...” Dali stopped mid-sentence because he had a big sneeze. Only then did I notice that while all three of us were wearing jackets, Dali was only wearing a T-shirt. I told him, “You should go get your coat, Dali. You might catch a cold in here.”

“Don’t worry about me,” he replied. “I’ve got a strong immune system!”

I woke Luo Weiwei up. She was still so frightened when she woke up that she desperately backed away from me and screamed in panic, “Go away! Don’t come near me!”

“It’s me!” I comforted.

Luo Weiwei leaned aside and peeked at the body behind me. Her lips quivered as she asked me, “Did you... Did you use witchcraft to do that?”

I laughed and briefly explained the principles behind the method.

“If you still don’t believe it,” I said, “you can try it yourself next time. You have access to dead bodies all the time anyway.”

“No!” she screamed. “I believe you! I believe you!”

“So you admit that the husband could cut his own head off?” I asked.

She nodded, but still looked puzzled.

“But it makes no sense,” she said. “There are a lot of major nerves in the neck, and he only used an ordinary kitchen knife. It’s impossible to cut the neck off in one swipe with a kitchen knife, so he should’ve stopped halfway…”

“You’re right, this is exactly what I was trying to find out!” I looked around at the people in the room and said, “Someone was controlling the husband’s body.”

Huang Xiaotao was taken aback. “You mean he was hypnotized?”

“Not exactly,” I replied. “I think it’s a kind of magic or curse that can control the body, so that the victims couldn’t help but act out certain movements.” I then pulled up the white sheets covering the victims’ bodies. “Didn’t you see the expressions of the dead? Weren’t they full of pain and sorrow?”

Luo Weiwei got up to her feet and came over and said, “It’s true, their expressions looked like they suffered a lot.”

Huang Xiaotao glanced at the door. After the shocking scene, many police officers were scared away. Only four or five people remained in the room.

“Should we check the crime scene again for some evidence?” she asked.

“There’s no rush,” I answered. “Besides, I still have one thing left to test.” I then asked Luo Weiwei, “Did you check for fingerprints at the scene?”

Luo Weiwei nodded. “The forensics team did that, but they only found the victims’ own fingerprints on the bodies and their clothes, no outsiders.”

“Then let’s check it again. Go get me an alcohol burner,” I ordered.

Luo Weiwei nodded and left. Huang Xiaotao smiled and said, “Song Yang, you must’ve scared her a lot. That woman is so obedient to you now.”

“She got what she deserved, considering how arrogant she used to be.”

I took out the olive oil, midnight horror and the pot from the bag, then poured a lot of oil into the pot and added the midnight horror into the oil.

“You’re doing it wrong, dude!” said Dali. “You should wait until the oil is hot before you fry the vegetables.”

“Shut up, idiot! Come and lend me a hand,” I said.

“What do you want me to do?”

“Watch the pot and keep stirring.”

Luo Weiwei soon came back with an alcohol burner. I put it underneath the pot to heat the oil. Soon the oil burned hot, and the midnight horror inside began to fry and sizzle. Smoke came out constantly, blackening the insides of the pot.

After about five or six minutes, I noticed that Dali was getting tired, so I told him that it was good enough and extinguished the burner.

I pulled out a penknife and scraped the soot on the insides of the pot, yielding about 100 grams of the substance.

Huang Xiaotao commented, “It’s such a pleasure to watch you perform your autopsies, Song Yang. Every step looks so interesting!”

“Of course it’s a pleasure to just stand there and watch,” I teased.

“That’s mean! It’s not like I never helped you!”

“Really? How have you helped, exactly?”

“I… Didn’t I hand you something a while ago?”

“That’s what you call helping?” I couldn’t help but laugh.

Huang Xiaotao glared at me.

I asked Wang Yuanchao to carry the husband’s body back to the metal table, and then gently applied the soot on his chest. Dali asked, “What’s that for, dude?”

“Midnight horror and olive oil are very light substances,” I explained. “The ashes that they produce are therefore very light too, much lighter than the aluminum powder used by the police. Hence, it can detect something that is not easily detectable.”

Because of their very lightweight nature, I didn’t even dare to breathe during the whole process, for fear that the soot would be blown away.

After the husband’s chest was covered with a layer of soot, I gently blew it off and found nothing.

Then I did the same thing on the chest and the abdomen of the wife’s body. This time, when I gently blew the soot away, a line of small footprints appeared—yes, tiny footprints!

“These are…” Huang Xiaotao said with amazement. “Cat paw prints?!”