If they relied only on ordinary investigative techniques, examining an ordinary corpse that had already dried out long ago would actually be extremely difficult.
Every damp, watery clue had been dried away by time, absorbed by the sofa cushions and sponge, leaving only a foul residue and jerky so dry even a dog would be too lazy to chew it.
Judging from that condition, the man had been dead for at least three months. His organs and soft tissue had long since become food for microorganisms, maggots, and ants.
So the two of them first went to the music restaurant for a good meal, indulged in a little romance, then returned to the cabin to continue their grand investigation.
Song Zang reluctantly put on a pair of latex gloves, carefully wrapping and protecting every bit of skin that belonged to Yin Chen before crouching down. He cautiously flipped through fragments of fabric on the corpse, searching for any useful identifying information.
“Male, in his forties. I suspect he was an old sailor. He’s missing several teeth, and the ones left aren’t aligned either. Looks like scurvy…” He gently pried the skull open, ran his fingertips across the two rows of teeth, then picked up a blackened piece of flesh stuck to the fabric. Narrowing his eyes, he urged softly, “Baby, come rub my head. I feel awful.”
Yin Chen calmly did as asked and more or less understood what Song Zang meant. Right now, he was essentially functioning as a garbage-information filter with an added high-powered air-purification feature.
With the crown of his head covered by Yin Chen’s warm, soft palm, Song Zang exhaled. His fingertips traced the obvious depression in the skull, then his gaze moved downward and he suddenly frowned. “Wow. Not only was the back of his head smashed, his pelvis was severely fractured too. There are also wounds on his right calf from a blunt weapon. Whoever did this was vicious.”
“Either a pirate or an old employee of this cruise line.” Yin Chen slowly rubbed Song Zang’s head and looked around. Unfortunately, the cabin had been renovated too many times over the years. Now it was so perfectly refurbished that no trace of a fight remained.
“There are coins in his trouser pocket. Let me see… several different countries. This fabric feels more like something a sailor would wear. And his bones developed very well, so at the very least he ate properly from childhood onward.”
“Then let’s go to the captain’s cabin, tie him up, interrogate him properly, and make him give us the crew list.” Yin Chen suggested it with perfect calm.
“Yin Chen, we’re on vacation. We’re not here to become some murderous duo on the high seas!” Although he said that, Song Zang could not find any more concrete clues. He simply pulled off his gloves, tipped his head back, and rubbed against Yin Chen’s hand. “That feels so good. I really want to wag my tail…”
He had not expected that, in his current state, whatever he said had a tendency to come true.
Song Zang’s voice trailed away. An itching sensation spread through his tailbone, and then his trousers suddenly tore with a ripping sound.
A huge, extraordinarily fluffy white tail sprouted just like that, bright and lively.
It was about eighty percent similar to Xiao Bai’s tail.
Yin Chen instinctively reached out and grabbed it. The strange itch made Song Zang let out a soft hiss, and a startled pale-pink flush rose across his cheeks.
“Baby, don’t…” Following his instincts, Song Zang collapsed naturally into Yin Chen’s arms and tried imitating a little dog with two soft whimpers. Unfortunately, Yin Chen’s body’s vocal cords were constructed somewhat differently. Song Zang experimented for quite a while, and the sounds only grew more and more erotic.
The instant Yin Chen realized what exactly he was holding, his breathing abruptly deepened and his Adam’s apple bobbed. “Song Zang, stop messing around. What did you do to my body?”
The strong, powerful furry tail had already broken free of its restraints and started wagging madly, making a huge show of it. Song Zang hugged him with a red face and complained, “You’re so mean. You can obviously turn into a cute giant dog, but you never do… Every time you just let some freezing giant snake swallow me. You even burn me with fire. So annoying. All you know how to do is scare me.”
Smack, smack, smack.
The big tail struck painfully against both of their legs.
“I didn’t realize I could…” Yin Chen genuinely had never thought of it before, and for a moment he was dazed. He really could do it, but somewhere in his subconscious, he had never conceptualized turning himself into a furry animal.
After all, only humans were especially fond of this sort of thing, even deliberately breeding and domesticating for it. Most ordinary organisms treated fur only as insulation or camouflage. They had no interest whatsoever in its aesthetic value.
But Song Zang liked it this much. Maybe that was a good thing.
They could develop plenty of new experiences.
As for Yin Chen himself, he had an even greater appreciation for Earth animals like cheetahs: sleek, athletic bodies, with tails that were both agile and strong.
Truthfully, now that he was thinking about it, he really wanted to try. A feline’s backward-facing barbs on the tongue sounded especially interesting.
…The prerequisite was that they switched their bodies back soon.
Yin Chen’s expression darkened. He grabbed that tail again and said firmly, “Change your pants. Hide the tail. We’re going upstairs to the captain’s cabin.”
“Ah, lighter. If you touch too hard, I’ll get excited…”
“Stop using my body to make that bizarre expression.”
“Baby, sometimes your face actually turns this red too. You just don’t know it yourself. Hehe, but I know.”
Yin Chen remained silent for a moment, then personally helped Song Zang change into another pair of trousers and mercilessly stuffed the tail into the back of his waistband.
There was no need to mention the several times things nearly got out of hand during the process.
＊
“This is killing me. My pants are all bulging. I look like one of those male models with a perky ass.”
“Mm.”
“I’m so buff!”
“Mm.”
“Yin Chen, I just realized you really are ridiculously handsome. In the elevator just now, someone slipped a little note into my pocket. It had a room number and a phone number on it.”
“I know. That’s happened plenty of times before.”
If Song Zang and Yin Chen had not swapped bodies, and if, technically speaking, the face currently being flirted with were not Yin Chen’s own… then the person who had secretly slipped that note into his pocket would already be dead.
Song Zang watched him with a smile. Yin Chen could not decide whether he ought to feel annoyed or guilty.
As they chatted, they casually knocked out several sailors they passed, swiped an ID card with high-floor elevator access, and made their way unobstructed to the captain’s room.
Through the round glass window, they could see the captain asleep inside. He was a middle-aged man with a slightly balding head, somewhat heavyset, and reasonably tall.
He wore a pale blue shirt, had not even taken off his trousers, and lay flat on the bed snoring. A blanket had been pulled only around his stomach.
Song Zang expertly bent a black bobby pin and jiggled the somewhat old lock a few times before pushing the door open.
A powerful salty, fishy odor mixed with rotten stench rushed straight toward them. Song Zang’s senses were so sharp that his face instantly wrinkled into a ball. He hurriedly retreated several steps and slammed backward into Yin Chen’s chest.
“What’s wrong?” Yin Chen, obviously unable to sense anything, reached up and casually felt around Song Zang’s waist.
Song Zang pinched his nose and spoke in a muffled voice. “I smell blue-whale saliva, and it’s the kind that’s been rotting for a long time… mixed with a human corpse, all stinking and decaying together.”
“Welcome to my world.” Yin Chen instantly understood what he meant. He tilted his head, kissed him lightly, and treated the kiss as air purification.
“It’s not that simple. Other middle-aged guys aren’t nearly this smelly.”
Song Zang casually picked up the rolling pin beside the bed and poked Captain Liu’s stomach.
Pfft.
A leaking sound resonated through the cabin, accompanied by the faint slosh of water.
“…Now I can smell it too. Don’t move. Wake him directly.” Yin Chen suddenly frowned. A shapeless sense of foreboding rose inside him, and he immediately pulled Song Zang farther away.
“Don’t you think he looks like he could explode at any moment? His eyes aren’t moving, but his stomach is slowly getting bigger.” Song Zang forced himself to calm down and watched carefully, letting the body’s abilities carry his sight even deeper and farther.
He saw a fish.
That was right. There was a fish inside the captain’s stomach.
It had no scales and looked more like a sea snake, curled in a ring around the stomach. Its skin was wrapped in dense clusters of tiny, translucent fish eggs.
The eggs were growing. The creature itself was growing too, reproducing slowly with every breath the captain took.
Little by little, the accumulation worsened. The captain’s stomach had become grotesquely deformed, like an enormous watermelon dominating his abdomen. His intestines were squeezed flat and piled into the lower half, and his bladder was visibly compressed.
“Wake up, Captain Liu. You’re going to die!” Song Zang shouted.
“Ah?! …Ah? Who are you? How did you get in here?!”
The captain woke in alarm, and that wet, bubbling pfft-pfft pressure sound became even more obvious.
“Quiet.” Song Zang’s expression turned cold. He folded his arms and stared at the man, speaking in a sinister tone.
The effect was exceptional. Yin Chen’s face was genuinely perfect for frightening people. The captain immediately shrank back like a startled quail, edging uneasily toward the headboard and not daring to say anything else.
“Over the past six months, you’ve had frequent urination and urgency, severe constipation, and neither medicine nor enemas has helped, right?” Song Zang continued coldly.
The captain went pale and answered in disbelief, “Big brother, no, uncle… you’re right! Miracle doctor!”
Song Zang gave a cold laugh and continued threatening him. “What guilty thing did you do? Did you violate a taboo at sea and still fantasize about clinging to life?”
“I, I…” The captain’s expression changed. He clearly felt guilty, but naturally he had no intention of confessing everything to two complete strangers. One hand hidden behind his broad body began to move and quietly gripped the pistol beneath the pillow.
At the same time, Yin Chen was studying the decorations in the room.
Large quantities of shells and conches were piled inside drawers. A small freezer held frozen meat and fruit. On the computer desk were several freshly opened sea-urchin shells, quite a few scented candles, and a small goddess statue carved from stone. The carving was extraordinarily delicate, and even the veil around the goddess’s head seemed to flow with the waves.
Yin Chen stopped in front of the statue, picked it up, and examined it carefully. Narrowing his eyes, he said, “Song Zang, call Chi Yan. There’s something wrong with this stone. It isn’t from Earth.”
Just as Yin Chen finished speaking, the captain suddenly jerked violently. One hand grabbed his own thinning hair and yanked hard.
His expression visibly twisted. Without hesitation, he raised the gun and chambered it, roaring as he frantically pulled the trigger. “It’s over, it’s over! It’s a curse, the sea demon’s curse… I failed, and she’s still chasing me?! No, no, that’s wrong. You came at exactly the right time. Mother Goddess already gave me new life. Useless fools should atone for my crimes in my place! Die!!!”
Bang, bang, bang! Bang, bang, bang!
Six bullets tore through the air.
Song Zang still stood in front of him without moving.
He lowered his eyes and looked at the bullet holes across his body. Hundreds of almost transparent pink tentacles surged wildly beneath the skin, pushing the bullets out of his body one after another.
The bullets dropped to the floor and rolled several circles, producing an unsettling scraping sound.
Song Zang was shocked. Yin Chen looked somewhat surprised too.
Ignoring the captain who was nearly fainting from fright, Yin Chen dragged Song Zang over and inspected him carefully. Then he prodded hard at the damaged skin of his own body.
“Ah, gentle, gentle… You really don’t care about hurting me at all. You don’t even care about hurting yourself.” Song Zang complained under the pressure.
Even though he had not voluntarily dodged the shots either, he still had to complain.
Yin Chen curved his lips. There was still no trace of pity in his voice. Instead, his interest visibly increased, dark and ominous enough to sound even more frightening than the sea demon.
“His bullets can hurt me. Interesting.”