Tai Sui

At three in the morning, the Dissection Department's office building was brightly lit.

A group of dissectors, more accustomed to slacking off, gathered in the department head's office with dark circles under their eyes, yawning nonstop.

Li Fan sat among them, just as bleary-eyed.

It was settled. The Unity Society couldn't stay.

At the very least, it couldn't stay in Gu City.

Forget everything else. This place was supposed to be a laid-back department where everyone took it easy, just as advertised. Now it had somehow turned into a midnight overtime hub.

Li Fan felt this was an insult to his colleagues.

A desecration of their dreams.

"I wonder which bastard's been stirring up trouble behind the scenes. That damn director's got rocks in his head, too. What the hell can the Dissection Department even do here? If something really happens, can we stop an anomaly? We'd just be a burden on the Investigation Department!"

Wu Qian's eyes were bloodshot, too. Before the guys in the department could start complaining, he'd already let the director have it.

At once, the tension from being dragged out of bed and deprived of sleep eased.

Right, this wasn't the department head's fault. He couldn't do anything about it, either.

The director was the one with no brains.

What an idiot.

Then Wu Qian, having calmed his subordinates down, changed tack and said, "But no matter what, the bureau's still the one paying our salaries. Nothing we can do about it. The job's already in the Dissection Room, and since we're here, we might as well get it done. There's still some reception budget left. Once we finish, we can go sing karaoke and grab a meal together. What do you say, brothers?"

Deputy Department Head Liu Dalong laughed. "Department head, why are you even asking? Everyone in our department works hard. It's just a little overtime... It's settled, then. Xidelong Hotel. Ah, they've got a full-service foot massage parlor and everything..."

Zhang Hongbing slapped the table and stood up. "Department head, that's where you're wrong. The guys are only working overtime because you said so. No need to make a big fuss about it. Let's just get to work! Xidelong sounds great."

The whole Dissection Department shook off its gloom and instantly sprang back to life. They clustered around their leaders and headed for the Dissection Room.

Seeing this, Li Fan was moved, too.

The work atmosphere in the Dissection Department really was great. It truly felt like coming home.

By contrast, living in that huge villa of his was nerve-racking. It didn't feel like home at all.

If it came to it, he'd have to give his family a few pointers later and change the Cleaning Association's style and atmosphere. They shouldn't be so serious.

At least, that was how things were in the Southwest Pastoral District...

Before long, the group had changed into protective suits and arrived in the Dissection Room. They stood staring at the thing before them, stunned.

"What a terrible thing..."

Zhang Hongbing muttered, then took a long drag on his cigarette inside his protective suit. Smoke filled the whole face shield, obscuring his face.

Hu Zhengqi, the head of Section Two, clicked his tongue. "I've been in this department for years, and this is the first time I've seen something that makes me want to throw up..."

As he spoke, he vomited inside his protective suit.

Li Fan stared at the thing before him, his expression dark.

It was a group of people.

No, they could hardly be called people anymore.

Before them lay a huge, irregular block of flesh.

It was seven or eight meters long, and about a meter high and wide.

Arms and legs stuck out all over it. Some had been rubbed raw, exposing muscle and bone.

Distorted faces, crushed together, could be made out along the edges of the mass.

All kinds of clothes and shoes had been fused into it, too.

It was a monster formed from many people fused together.

The only thing worth being thankful for now was that everyone inside was already dead.

Looking at the faces, some with their eyes closed and others open, Li Fan's eyes narrowed involuntarily.

He thought of Wang Haitao, whom they'd dissected earlier, and the two shoppers who'd tried to save people.

And the archaeological team members who'd fused with a tree.

As he stared at the scene with narrowed eyes, a sudden crack came from his hand. He jerked back to his senses and realized he'd unknowingly cracked the Mental Radiation Detector in his grip.

He casually tossed the detector aside. His mind was made up at last.

The Unity Society really couldn't stay.

Faced with the horrific scene, the Dissection Department staff, who'd just been complaining about overtime, grew solemn. Without a word of complaint, they split into teams, picked up their tools, and began the dissection.

People naturally felt compassion for the suffering of their fellow human beings.

Wu Qian picked up his tools and got to work alongside everyone else.

Anomaly Containment File No. E212940

Code Name: Tai Sui

Infection Symptoms: Bodies fuse together; those absorbed gradually lose consciousness and die.

Case Details: The police had recently received a series of missing-person reports. An investigation led them to a wooded area on Cloud Mountain, outside Gu City. When officers were sent to search the woods, Tai Sui attacked them. However, it lost the ability to move several minutes after fleeing, then quickly died.

Outcome: After the Southwest Bureau of the Anomaly Administration's Support Center Transport Division detected abnormal mental infection levels at the scene, it took Tai Sui back and transferred it to the Dissection Department.

Mental Radiation Level: 0–10.

Anomaly Infection Rating: D.

The electronic file for the anomaly-infected body appeared on a screen nearby. Everyone glanced at it, sighed, and continued dissecting.

This anomaly-infected body had clearly been formed from the missing people.

They didn't know whether the victims had still been conscious after being fused together.

And they'd been trapped alive in the woods for so many days. No one could imagine the despair and terror they'd gone through.

Tai Sui's body was so huge that the dissectors' first task was to slowly cut it apart, following the gaps between the fused bodies and pulling out the corpses one by one.

Or, more accurately, cutting them free.

Afterward, they'd record all kinds of data and search for any other anomalous objects.

Once they'd overcome their revulsion, the dozen or so people made quick work of the task.

Liu Dalong did most of the cutting.

Only then did Li Fan realize that Liu Dalong hadn't opened a butcher shop for nothing.

He never would've guessed that Liu Dalong, who looked so burly and rough, had such nimble knife skills.

Using nothing but a butcher's cleaver, he swiftly cut along the gaps between the bodies fused together. Before long, he'd carved out a mostly intact corpse.

Some parts had been fused too tightly, so it was only mostly intact.

The people who received each corpse immediately carried it to a dissection table in pairs and began examining it carefully.

Li Fan and Ke Ke were assigned a young girl.

Li Fan lifted the girl's eyelids, shone a light into them, and quickly said, "No foreign objects in the eyes. No obvious signs of infection. Forceps."

Ke Ke recorded his findings and handed him the forceps.

Li Fan opened the corpse's mouth again and examined it under the light. "No foreign objects in the mouth. No obvious signs of infection."

Then he frowned, looking at the corpse before him. He suddenly noticed something caught in her twisted hand.

He gripped it with the forceps and pulled hard. It was a fragment.

It was a piece of a subway card.

Li Fan examined the fragment carefully, then took out his battered windproof lighter and lit it.

A blood-red flame flared, illuminating the entire Dissection Room.

Li Fan looked around and saw wisps of black mold, symbols of abnormal mental radiation, on every corpse—including Tai Sui, which they were still cutting apart.

But that was all.

Aside from a little black mold on their skin, there were no filaments growing inside these corpses.

They were different from the infected they'd examined before.

There was no source of infection inside them.

Li Fan examined the corpse's limbs more carefully and found that one of her hands was badly corroded.

That was clearly the hand that had touched Tai Sui first. It was also the hand in which they'd found the subway card fragment.

Her other hand had been exposed outside the mass. It still clutched a broken hair clip, with traces of blood on it.

"There are words on this corpse," Zhang Hongbing said from the dissection table beside them.

Li Fan immediately looked over. On one side of the corpse's waist, someone had crookedly scratched out the characters "help," "me," and "ground."

There was another scratch beside them.

These two corpses had been pressed together before.

That meant she'd still been alive at the time. With all her strength, she'd clutched a hair clip in her exposed right hand and scratched three characters onto Tai Sui.