Song Zang did not dare approach recklessly.
This time, his personal trip to Sen City was not only a journey to find family, but also a honeymoon-style road trip with Yin Chen.
If he casually walked into danger, he might drag the dogs into trouble again.
For the trip, Song Zang had specifically bought a tall SUV that could withstand rough roads and easily cover several hundred kilometers.
The dogs sat comfortably in the back seat, keeping each other company, so they were not particularly lonely.
Of course, ever since Yin Chen got his driver’s license, he had never let Song Zang drive long distances again. He seemed to like the feeling of having complete control.
Song Zang was happy to relax. He slept soundly in the passenger seat, and every time he woke up they were at a service area with a temporary folding table covered in drinks and food.
Yin Chen really was considerate and knew what Song Zang liked to eat, though he would also seize the opportunity to add a little something extra to Song Zang’s fried chicken and burgers.
Song Zang knew perfectly well that his craving for junk food came from experiences he had missed out on in childhood, but he absolutely refused to deprive himself now.
He would casually enjoy crispy fried chicken, pick up an even sweeter ice-cold cola, and drink more than half of it in one go.
As long as he obediently cooperated with Yin Chen, Yin Chen could maintain a good mental state over the long term.
They ate and played all along the way, looking at mountains, seas, and scenery, and eventually reached Sen City at an easy, leisurely pace.
The more Song Zang saw, the more he could understand Song Lan Jing’s choice.
There were too many beautiful sights in the human world. It would be far too tragic for all of them to be swallowed and annihilated.
Sen City also had one of Chi Yan’s chain hotels. Song Zang flashed his ID and went straight into the top-floor suite. The hotel was pet-friendly, and even the two dogs had their own dedicated room.
This was not some special back door Chi Yan had opened just for him, but one of the Future Research Institute’s luxurious employee benefits. Employees traveling for work did not spend a cent on accommodation, and the experience was excellent from start to finish.
No wonder she could be a big boss.
Song Zang arranged the two dogs’ food and especially instructed the clever Hot Dog.
“Your big brother isn’t very bright, so keep an eye on him. If there’s danger, hide. Don’t make trouble.”
Hot Dog obediently nodded and panted, while the “not very bright” Xiao Bai looked utterly confused, glancing around with his round black eyes.
Song Zang did not want to modify him. He did not want Xiao Bai to undergo some mutation beyond his control like Hot Dog had, much less fuse with some strange plant.
A puppy only needed to be happy.
To be safe, Song Zang dragged Yin Chen all around Sen City first. They donated money to several welfare homes, burned incense at different temples, and ate and played their way through the new district.
The orphanage that had once been rather shabby had changed completely. The new director was a stranger, and Song Zang did not recognize anyone there anymore.
Pretending to be an ordinary tourist passing through, he followed online travel guides step by step and slowly approached the center of the old district.
Yin Chen treated himself as half a bodyguard, wearing sunglasses and carrying their bags, obediently following Song Zang’s plan without complaint.
He even bought two enormous internet-famous ice creams, attracting countless stares along the way.
Song Zang cautiously probed for danger while Yin Chen lazily enjoyed the trip. As long as he could stick close to Song Zang, Yin Chen was happy wherever they went.
Jinyuan Residential Complex, Building 6, Unit 606, a spacious flat with excellent natural light.
When the old district had been prosperous, Jinyuan’s property prices had once reached one hundred thousand per square meter. After a bubble-like collapse, the complex had long since declined.
Although Jinyuan’s golden age was over, its property management was still top-tier, and the fees remained extremely high.
Song Zang used Mask’s ability to fool the muscular security guard, skipped visitor registration, and calmly walked right in.
The shared garden covered two levels and was beautifully maintained. Large and small paths were spotless, while koi lazily swished their tails through the clear artificial stream.
Most of the residents who remained in Jinyuan were elderly and spent their days enjoying grandchildren. Children’s laughter and running footsteps came from every direction.
“…Just how rich was my dad to afford a luxury complex like this back then?” Song Zang marveled.
He was wearing sunglasses too, holding his own enormous ice cream and guarding it carefully against children who might crash into him.
Yin Chen had investigated more deeply and calmly replied, “Not your dad. Your grandparents were rich.
“They used to manufacture automotive and aircraft glass for the entire country. Husband and wife each owned huge factories that were never publicly listed. They didn’t look like a wealthy dynasty, but at their peak they could earn money on the level of the world’s richest people.”
“…Aircraft glass?”
“Mm. Including glass for military fighter jets. They’ve transferred the businesses to other people now.”
Song Zang became thoughtful as the clouds of suspicion in his mind slowly gathered. “So my grandparents may have had contact with aerospace materials too. At the very least, they would have had connections in that field.”
Not just anyone could become a local kingpin in that kind of glass manufacturing.
“I suspect the same thing, but I can’t find much.”
There was no evidence in the open. Because of the limitations of that era, many traces from the past had vanished from history due to underdeveloped technology.
If someone wanted to erase certain records and data, all they had to do was throw the documents into a fire and burn them to ash.
Fortunately, Song Zang’s father’s identity could not be burned away.
Ji Yong Jia, only son, formerly a student at the University of Aerospace Science and Technology.
Immediately after graduating, he returned home, took over half the family businesses, and harbored ambitions of taking the company public.
Judging only by his grades and business performance, Ji Yong Jia had been a fairly capable second-generation rich heir.
No one had expected him to die during the cold winter when Song Zang was born.
Song Lan Jing’s family background was more ordinary. Both her parents were teachers with stable incomes, and she was their only daughter.
The two young people, close in age, had gotten together through a match arranged by their families.
According to what people said, when they reached the stage of discussing marriage, Song Lan Jing’s future mother-in-law made things difficult and refused to let her enter the family easily, afraid that she only wanted to marry in for money. Ji Yong Jia, weak and useless between the two sides, suffered as well.
Although they held a wedding banquet early on, the formal prenuptial property agreement had not yet been settled. As a result, Song Lan Jing became pregnant without ever obtaining that thin marriage certificate with Ji Yong Jia.
Then, after giving birth to Song Zang, Song Lan Jing left the child at the orphanage and vanished from the world.
Strangely, Ji Yong Jia, unable to find his wife, never called the police. He simply continued working… until he ultimately died suddenly in his office.
Middle-aged and suddenly bereft of their only son, with their pregnant daughter-in-law nowhere to be found, it was easy to imagine how devastating those years had been for his parents.
The Ji elders seemed to lose all desire to keep fighting after that. They transferred all their companies and factories, moved back into Jinyuan Residential Complex, shut themselves inside, and began living off their accumulated wealth.
Step by step, they became the strange old man and old woman of the neighbors’ stories.
Song Zang’s suspicions toward Ji Yong Jia gradually faded, and he became more focused on the strange elderly couple.
Even if losing their son had caused overwhelming grief and psychological problems, a husband and wife isolating themselves at home for twenty years without going outside was still far too abnormal.
Completely absurd.
Based on Song Zang’s experience in instance worlds, the couple’s behavior did not look much like people who had spent decades grieving their son.
They looked more like they were desperately hiding from danger… fatal danger that would inevitably strike the moment they stepped outside.
But had Sen City ever experienced supernatural phenomena?
Yin Chen had investigated personally. Local urban legends included stories about schools, subway stations, and hospitals, but there had never been a single genuine supernatural tragedy.
He himself had never sensed any energy fluctuations that should not exist.
That only made the Ji couple’s behavior even more suspicious.
Standing outside Unit 606, Song Zang rang the bell.
Click.
Creak.
The slightly old security door slowly opened a narrow crack, its chain swaying and knocking together with a crisp sound.
A cloudy eye crowded into the narrow opening and stared directly at Song Zang.
There was also a nearly imperceptible sound from the peephole built into the security door as its little light-blocking cover was quietly lifted.
Another eye pressed tightly against the tiny peephole, carefully inspecting Song Zang’s appearance from top to bottom.
Two people were crowded behind the door at the same time, silently staring at Song Zang.
No wonder unsuspecting children from the complex got frightened half to death when they came knocking.
Song Zang did not know whether to laugh or cry, but he genuinely was not very afraid of them.
He stood calmly outside and played a statue-like staring contest with the two elderly people.
What worried Song Zang most at the moment was that his ice cream might melt in his hand.
Yin Chen had bought it for him. Fresh chocolate ganache with mint-chocolate chips, half and half! It was ridiculously good!
So Song Zang secretly took one bite, then another.
They remained deadlocked for a long time. Seeing that Song Zang still showed no intention of leaving, the skinny old man wedged into the door crack finally could not endure it any longer.
“Who?” the old man rasped, his voice carrying a strange sandy echo.
“I’m your grandson, Song Zang.” Song Zang took another bite of ice cream and curved his lips into a bright, brilliant smile. “I also have a boyfriend. So now you have two grandsons.”
Old Mr. Ji: …
Song Zang’s bold, blunt statement stunned him so completely that he could not answer for a long while. The eye crammed into the crack resembled an ancient glass marble, gray and dull, covered in scratches and dust, unable to reflect even the faintest light.
“Grandpa, Grandma, you didn’t kill my mom and now plan to kill me too, right? Let me come in and sit for a bit.”
Song Zang tilted his head with an innocent, sincere expression and delivered the barbed remark in the gentlest possible voice.
The instant Song Lan Jing was mentioned, the dull reactions behind the door became violently agitated.
“Demon!!! Demon!!! You can’t kill me, you can’t kill me. I didn’t break the rules, I didn’t, I didn’t…”
The security chain shook violently as the iron door rattled back and forth.
Seriously, why had he suddenly started going insane?
Businesspeople often believed in a little mysticism, and the Ji elders were unlikely to be exceptions. But believing in things like God and demons was extremely uncommon in Sen City.
“Who are you calling a demon?” Song Zang grew even more curious. “Don’t tell me you mean my mother? But she’s already gone from this world.”
“…Really?”
After a moment, the old woman pressed near the peephole spoke hoarsely, her voice tentative and uncertain.
Song Zang nodded. “Really, really. She left this world a long time ago.”
Once she received confirmation, the crazed old man was struck hard in the back of the head with a rolling pin and collapsed unconscious.
Old Mrs. Ji did not release the bloodstained rolling pin. Hunched over, she shuffled forward on skinny bare feet, stepped onto the old man’s back as casually as though he were carpet, and abruptly leaned into the door crack.
Her equally cloudy, lifeless eyes trembled. “…You’re the demon’s child.”
“No, I’m your biological grandson,” Song Zang corrected seriously.
“Oh, that’s right, that’s right.” She seemed to show symptoms of dementia and only became suddenly kind after being reminded repeatedly. “Good grandson, where’s your boyfriend? I can’t see him.”
Song Zang smiled. “Grandma, I sent him out to buy health supplements and milk. He’ll be back soon.”
“Then come inside and have some snacks, good grandson.”
Old Mrs. Ji smiled too, looking like a genuinely gentle grandmother.
Song Zang stuffed the rest of the cone into his mouth and stepped into Unit 606 as though completely defenseless.
At last, he got a clear look at Old Mrs. Ji.
Her hair was white, her body extremely thin, her cheekbones sharply raised, and the corners of her eyes and mouth drooped, leaving several deep grooves in her face.
At a glance, she looked somewhat harsh-tempered and difficult to get along with. According to her identification documents, she was only in her early seventies and should ordinarily still have been in comparatively decent health.
But her spine was severely deformed.
Her wrinkled shirt clung to her skin, almost revealing the warped, distorted spine beneath it. It twisted like an underdeveloped snake.
Look at it for more than a few seconds and an instinctive chill crept up from the bottom of the heart.
Even more horrifying was the interior of the apartment.
A faint, stale smell of mold filled the room. Every wall was plastered with yellow talismans covered in red writing, packed together without the slightest gap. The glaring red formed an indescribably oppressive atmosphere.
Even a mentally healthy person would develop problems after living in a house like this for long enough.
The entryway and living room were packed so tightly they were almost impassable. Every possible place to set foot was occupied by cardboard boxes, magazines, and newspapers, some dating back thirty years, all covered in heavy dust.
Various reports about the glass factories had been placed in the most prominent locations and were apparently cleaned over and over, but the newspapers had long since yellowed and the ink had bled into great blurry black clouds.
It was the manifestation of severe pathological hoarding. Only one narrow route remained barely passable, with hardly enough room to turn around.
Without showing it, Song Zang looked everywhere around him while deliberately leaving his back exposed to Old Mrs. Ji, ready at any moment for her to attack.
Old Mrs. Ji gripped the rolling pin and muttered to herself while locking the door behind them. She followed Song Zang closely, fussing over him and asking how old he was, what job he had, how much he and his boyfriend earned, and whether they needed help buying a house and getting married…
She sounded no different from a normal grandmother, perhaps even more open-minded.
Until the final question came.
“Good grandson, what was your name again? You took your mother’s surname, didn’t you? That’s fine, that’s… fine.”
Song Zang smiled sweetly. “Grandma, you forgot? My name is Song Zang.”
“What?!”
“It’s you, you’re the demon, don’t come closer… I was wrong, I won’t do it again, go away!! Old man, demon…” Her eyes bulged as she became wildly agitated, fearful and horrified yet too afraid to approach Song Zang. She gasped until she could barely breathe, and the rolling pin slowly began to crack in her grip.
Great. Old Mrs. Ji was crazy too.
Song Zang thought for a moment and temporarily ignored her, exploring the apartment on his own.
When he opened the kitchen door, a powerful stench rolled out.
A delivery worker had been dismembered and stored in the upper refrigerated section of the refrigerator. Because the old refrigerator no longer stayed cold enough, the remains had already begun to rot and breed maggots.
“Grandma, why did you kill him?” Song Zang narrowed his dark eyes, the smile at the corners of his lips disappearing instantly.
Old Mrs. Ji flinched in terror and shook her head with a trembling voice. “It wasn’t my fault, it wasn’t my fault. He wanted me to go outside. I can’t go outside…”
“What happens if you go outside?”
“The demon will kill me!!!”
＊
Meanwhile, Yin Chen was investigating the other side of the spacious apartment.
He really had bought health supplements and milk, but he had not entered through the door with Song Zang. Instead, he jumped up from the outside of the building.
With a single slash, he cut open the tightly sealed window screen and slipped inside without anyone noticing.
Entering the elderly couple’s bedroom from the main-bedroom balcony, Yin Chen saw an equally incomprehensible sight.
Yellow talismans, Buddhist statues, offerings to little ghosts, crucifixes, even a beautifully made little sheepskin prayer rug… Almost every kind of mysticism a person could believe in was represented.
The wall facing the bed was also covered by an enormous whiteboard reaching all the way to the ceiling. Handwritten across it were the names of every Sen City resident who had died strangely that year, or died from heart attacks and cerebral hemorrhages.
There were too many names to fit, so the Ji elders had even bought a new rolling whiteboard and continued copying them there.
Beyond that, Yin Chen noticed one extremely strange sentence appearing again and again between the names on the boards.
【Satan’s most cherished Undertaker will bestow upon you the gospel of eternal rest and guide you into endless, silent nothingness.】
Elio’s Notes: The Chinese title here uses 送葬人, literally someone who accompanies the dead to burial or takes part in a funeral procession. It deliberately echoes Song Zang’s given name, 葬, which carries the meaning of burial.
Yin Chen stared at the sentence in silence for a moment, then turned and called Song Zang into the main bedroom.
“Song Zang, this is talking about you, isn’t it?”
“…It really does seem to be talking about me.”
＊
Song Zang once again began questioning his own identity.
Could Song Lan Jing, who had the ability to travel five hundred years into the future, have known long ago what kind of achievements her biological son would reach in that future?
“But I’m a peace-loving person. I never go around killing and hacking people for no reason. How could I end up with such a ridiculously edgy title?”
Satan’s Undertaker… Song Zang could barely stand to keep looking at it.
He even felt a little embarrassed.
Yin Chen gave him a meaningful look and curved his lips. “Song Zang, don’t assume you’re mentally normal.”
“You’re actually insulting me?!” Song Zang looked aggrieved.
“The last person who bullied Xiao Bai was ground by you into fine powder and washed down the drain. There wasn’t even one intact bone left. Would a normal person do that?
“Song Zang, at worst I hack people into pieces. You didn’t even spare the bones.”
Yin Chen calmly laid out the facts. Song Zang fell silent for a long while and could not argue.
“We Earthlings believe in crushing the bones and scattering the ashes when we take revenge…” he explained softly, a little embarrassed.
Yin Chen photographed the densely written whiteboards several times and checked whether any of the mystical objects were authentic. He found that every one of them was useless garbage.
Then he took Song Zang’s hand and led him toward the door.
“If I had never appeared, you would have faced a fully evolved Collective by yourself, along with insane humans infected and contaminated by it. They could brutally hurt your friends and companions at any time. What would you do?”
“Kill them.”
Song Zang answered almost without thinking.
“Then isn’t it perfectly normal that humans in the future might treat you as a god of slaughter, mythologize you, and give you a title?”
Song Zang froze. “You mean my grandparents know about the future too?”
“Maybe they aren’t from this spacetime at all.”
Yin Chen boldly guessed while glancing at Old Mrs. Ji, who had locked herself inside the kitchen.
He had inspected every inch of Unit 606 and found no unusual energy fluctuations, nor anything resembling an Infinite Game item.
The only thing that made him faintly uncomfortable was the Ji couple themselves.
Their mental state was clearly extremely abnormal, very much like minds that had been contaminated into chaos, yet they carried none of the Collective fluctuations Yin Chen knew.
Both were thin, little more than skin wrapped around bone. Their withered brains could almost no longer form normal cognition or thought pathways, yet the muscle mass in their arms exceeded the limits of ordinary elderly people.
Their behavior was abnormal too. They instinctively fled from “outside danger,” refused to leave the apartment, and reacted with fear to the names Song Lan Jing and Song Zang.
They were not merely strange. They were suspicious.
The problem was that if Yin Chen’s speculation was correct, things became troublesome. Anything involving time travel was always the most troublesome kind of problem.
If humanity had already begun using time travel, then no one could ever truly determine the origins of many major historical events, whether they came from the flutter of a butterfly’s wings or from an original timeline that had not yet been altered.
There might even be an ouroboros-like closed loop that could not be casually broken.
One wrong move could bring back the ending in which everyone died. Song Lan Jing’s refusal to meet Yin Chen almost certainly included caution related to this issue.
Song Zang stared thoughtfully at Old Mrs. Ji.
There was no supernatural energy, yet the brain showed obvious signs of contamination. They had brutally killed a delivery worker who did not deserve to die, become constant subjects of neighborhood gossip, and turned their apartment into a “haunted” place children were afraid to approach…
The Ji elders, if they had come from another timeline, absolutely should not exist here.
Even if their lifespan was supposed to continue, in order to survive at this point in time they had to exist as natural people who knew nothing about future events. Otherwise, they were far too uncontrollable.
“Let’s do this. We’ll take them outside first and see what happens.”
It was not especially ethical. But back then, the Ji family had tried so hard to keep their daughter-in-law from getting even a little of their money that Song Lan Jing had gone from an ordinary arranged match discussing marriage to being pregnant out of wedlock in a society that would not accept her… That was not especially ethical either.
Once Song Zang thought of it that way, all psychological pressure disappeared. He headed toward the entryway and chose the old man, who could not communicate normally, to bear the risk first.
Old Mrs. Ji had hit him far too hard with the rolling pin. His skull was fractured and the back of his head was bleeding. If he did not receive emergency treatment, he really would die.
Yin Chen calmly called 120 for an ambulance, while Song Zang took a portable medical kit from his travel bag, performed simple bleeding control and bandaging, and interfered no further.
Everything they had done was perfectly reasonable. Old Mrs. Ji had struck him, Old Mr. Ji was dying, and the people rescuing him and taking him out of Unit 606… were medical professionals.
In an emergency, no one could possibly call that “forcibly violating someone’s wishes.”
Everything afterward was even simpler. Old Mr. Ji needed hospitalization, and Old Mrs. Ji, whose mental disturbance had reached the point of endangering others, needed hospitalization too.
The old couple had extremely substantial savings, and with their biological grandson accompanying them, the admission process went remarkably smoothly.
While the old man was still being resuscitated, Song Zang had already called over a lawyer and transferred part of the property left by Ji Yong Jia into his own name.
His biological father had left no will, so half that money naturally ought to belong to Song Zang.
Old Mrs. Ji was highly aggressive, mainly refusing to let Song Zang or any handsome young male nurse approach her. Attractive female nurses in their twenties were not acceptable either.
Even psychiatric wards rarely encountered an elderly woman this difficult and aggressive.
She nearly tore ordinary restraint straps apart by brute force. It took two burly, broad-shouldered nurses surrounding her and a sedative injection to finally stabilize her.
“She’s not dead either.”
Standing beside the old woman’s bed, Song Zang muttered the rather unfilial comment under his breath.
Yin Chen tilted his head slightly, then suddenly raised a brow. “He’s dead.”
“Huh?”
The instant he finished speaking, a doctor from the emergency department knocked and entered. He said Old Mr. Ji’s resuscitation had failed after an extremely unexpected massive hemorrhage that several doctors working together had been completely unable to stop.
Old Mr. Ji was currently brain-dead. According to the doctor, his brain had almost completely deteriorated and his cerebral blood vessels were impossible to repair. There was no meaningful reason to continue resuscitation.
The doctor who came to speak with Song Zang had a deathly pale face and unfocused, wandering eyes, as if he had just endured something unimaginably horrifying. He nervously asked whether Song Zang wanted them to continue life support…
Song Zang refused without hesitation. The fact that he had not personally killed Old Mr. Ji, who appeared to be contaminated, was already the full extent of his respect for their blood relationship.
Accepting the body and removing life support both required a family member’s authorization. Conveniently, the lawyer Song Zang had called had not yet left.
The normally composed lawyer looked strange as he silently helped Song Zang inherit another large sum. The Ji couple had not participated in society for years, and their old legal adviser had long since vanished. If Song Zang were more ruthless, Old Mrs. Ji might not receive a single cent.
Rich. He was really rich now.
As long as he did not make reckless investments, this money could support Yin Chen for ten lifetimes.
“Baby, I’m so rich.” Song Zang was deeply moved.
A faint light gleamed in Yin Chen’s long phoenix eyes. Like some seductive demon consort, he twined his fingers around Song Zang’s and tempted him. “I want to buy a piece of land on the west side of Sen City. Can I?”
“Buy it! Once the money comes through, I’ll transfer it to you.”
The lawyer’s mouth twitched again. He looked as though he desperately wanted to say something.
After signing a mountain of documents, the two called a funeral-home vehicle. The cremation would happen that afternoon, with the funeral kept as simple as possible.
When they saw Old Mr. Ji one last time, his protruding eyes still looked disturbingly unnatural.
His skinny cheeks had collapsed severely, while both hands bore relatively recent traces of heavy manual labor.
“Weren’t they extremely rich? Why would he have calluses like these?”
Song Zang raised an eyebrow.
The abnormal clues kept multiplying, but this world contained no record of the future because such a future should never have existed here in the first place.
…Except for that bizarre and embarrassing Undertaker line.
After the surgery, the hospital’s midday break began and the emergency-department doctors changed shifts. Song Zang followed them at an unhurried pace, keeping a safe distance.
Their voices drifted over, kept deliberately low. “It’s too strange. I saw it clearly. Director Wu’s technique was flawless. How could something suddenly go wrong?”
“The scans were clear too. The patient’s brain atrophy was severe, badly deformed, and not one of the blood vessels had a sensible shape. It’s impressive he survived this long.”
“But it still shouldn’t have turned into a fountain of brain matter…”
“Enough. Everything we did followed procedure, and we absolutely didn’t touch anything we weren’t supposed to. Xiao Lin, you haven’t been in the operating room enough times. Remember, accidents can happen at any moment. Do your best and keep your conscience clear. That’s enough.”
“Ugh. I’m definitely having nightmares after this.”
Song Zang and Yin Chen exchanged a glance, seeing the same surprise in each other’s eyes.
“…A fountain of brain matter. That’s not normal, right?”
The cremation was put on hold. First, they would dissect Old Mr. Ji one more time and take a look.
They drove to a private campground in Sen City, rented it for the entire day, and opened the platform extending from the SUV’s rear compartment.
It turned out Song Zang’s insistence on buying the deluxe camping package had been an extremely correct decision.
All sorts of little tools intended for outdoor cooking happened to be useful to Yin Chen.
The corpse lying flat looked peaceful, clean, and neatly prepared. Apart from the surgical incisions, there was no visible sign of gore.
The doctors had clearly spent considerable effort preparing the body, and their technique had been excellent. The emergency surgery had nearly turned into a horror movie, and none of that could fairly be blamed on them.
Yin Chen cut along the sutured section of skull. Pale brain fluid immediately poured out, dripping onto the disposable protective sheet and carrying fragments of ruptured, malformed blood vessels with it.
“This isn’t just brain matter exploding. The whole brain looks like it exploded with it…” Song Zang grew even more astonished.
“Mm. Stay away from me.”
Yin Chen’s expression became a little more serious. He used even less force while cutting, but still could not stop Old Mr. Ji’s cranial contents from bursting outward like a watermelon.
The wildly unreasonable intracranial pressure forced out large quantities of trapped fragments of flesh. They flew up and fell like rain, leaving devastation everywhere.
Song Zang jumped in surprise and secretly watched Yin Chen’s expression.
Yin Chen had prepared in advance, wearing a thin protective raincoat along with goggles and a mask… but inevitably, a few drops of unidentified fluid still landed against the side of his face.
Yin Chen hated being dirtied by other people. It always made his temper worsen several degrees.
Of course, being dirtied by Song Zang did not count.
Xiao Bai’s fur puffed up in terror as several wary whines and growls rumbled in his throat. Hot Dog bit his fluffy tail and pulled backward with all his strength, desperately stopping him from charging over to rescue his owners.
Xiao Bai actually broke free of Hot Dog, sprinted to Song Zang and circled him once, then accelerated hard toward Yin Chen, grabbing his pant leg and trying to drag him away.
Some dogs, even after surviving life and death, still could not change their old habit of ignoring their own safety.
Yin Chen’s expression grew even darker. He stood motionless as though fixed to the ground by a magnet, practically a statue. “Take him away. Don’t let brain matter splash onto him. I just bathed him two days ago!”
Song Zang fought back laughter, grabbed Xiao Bai firmly by the collar, and dragged the fool away from the “crime scene.”
He rarely saw Yin Chen this flustered either. What a novelty.
Xiao Bai was beside himself nearby, whining in frantic anxiety. It was perfectly understandable that he liked Yin Chen this much.
After all, Yin Chen handled every comfortable bath.
His bright, soft white fur was groomed glossy and sleek with top-tier dog-care products Yin Chen had personally purchased.
Yin Chen had always taken the cleanliness and hygiene of every living thing in their home extremely seriously.
More importantly, Yin Chen also strictly handled the daily walks and regular meals.
Xiao Bai ate well and played happily. In no time at all, he had accepted Yin Chen as his new provider.
Yin Chen did not truly love dogs all that much, but as long as Xiao Bai remained healthy… Song Zang was far less likely to become emotionally unstable.
The two of them were always quietly monitoring each other’s mental condition. Neither needed to say it aloud.
By the time Song Zang calmed the agitated Xiao Bai, Yin Chen was nearly finished with the autopsy.
He extracted what remained of the brain tissue from inside the skull, packed it with ice packs, and sealed it inside an insulated box.
Finally able to remove his wet protective coat with obvious relief, Yin Chen silently pulled out a large fresh pack of disinfecting wipes and repeatedly scrubbed himself with a dark expression.
“I want a bath.”
“Baby, how about an outdoor soak? Let’s sleep here tonight. I brought an inflatable tub and a projector.”
Song Zang was visibly tempted.
Yin Chen raised an eyebrow. “Your grandmother probably won’t survive today either. Are you sure you’re in the mood to camp?”
“…Good question.”
After discussing it briefly, they decided to send the brain tissue to a regional branch of the Future Research Institute and have its researchers run tests first.
The branch laboratory was fully equipped and only five kilometers from the hospital, another result of Chi Yan’s aggressive expansion over the past two years.
A drone dispatched by the laboratory carried the insulated box safely into the sky.
Meanwhile, Yin Chen took off his clothes, stepped into extremely hot water, and slowly sat down.
Song Zang pulled over a chair beside the tub and openly looked Yin Chen over from head to toe with nothing left to hide.
Yin Chen leaned against the side of the tub and calmly let him stare, then naturally returned to the serious subject. “Your grandfather’s surgical accident looked a lot like the erasure force of the rules.”
“Mm. He wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment, wasn’t allowed frequent contact with outsiders, and had to buy huge quantities of religious objects to guard against mysterious forces breaking in… It’s obviously a behavioral pattern constrained by rules.”
Which raised the question: on an Earth where ghosts and supernatural gods absolutely did not appear, who was creating and enforcing these brutal rules?
“Earth itself.”