The Mutated Corpse

Victoria Central Hospital.

This was one of the oldest hospitals in all of Inverwig, and matching its long history was its top-tier medical care. The hospital had expanded several times over the years and was now one of the few buildings in Old Dunling that spanned two districts. To ensure its medical operations, the Mechanical Institute had even built a dedicated energy pipeline for it.

Suaran Hall, Old Dunling's highest security force, was not far from Victoria Central Hospital. If necessary, mounted police could arrive here within ten minutes of receiving orders, carrying rifles loaded with ammunition.

Due to its enormous size, Victoria Central Hospital had taken on many other functions in recent years, including cooperating with Suaran Hall.

The bodies from cases were all sent here for autopsies, and sailor Wall's corpse was clearly not worth much attention. No one had claimed it, and it did not matter. By procedure, his body would have been sent directly to the Royal Medical Academy for students to practice cutting into. Yet at someone's insistence, this worthless corpse underwent a rare autopsy.

The police officer looked at the young girl standing in the corridor, his face full of impatience.

If she had not insisted on an autopsy, he should have been at his desk enjoying some rare rest. In Old Dunling, people from the Lower District barely counted as citizens of Inverwig in the eyes of the police. Unless a case involved someone from within the Outer District, they never took it seriously.

But this young girl was different. This was the first case she had taken on, and she was determined to uncover something.

She was full of passion and drive.

The officer had once been like that too, but now he was like someone whose edges had been worn smooth by life. Perhaps he saw his former self in the girl, so he endured it. In his eyes, life was dull. The girl would give up within days, and all he had to do was wait a little.

"Is the report still not ready?"

The girl finally grabbed another nurse and asked anxiously.

"Officer, you know the procedure. The report needs the Director to review and sign it. He may be busy right now, so please wait a little longer."

The nurse wore an awkward smile. The young officer had been waiting here ever since the corpse arrived that morning, asking once every hour. It was truly annoying. What did she think an autopsy was, slaughtering pigs? Even slaughtering pigs required half a day to drain the blood. What could possibly be examined in so little time?

"Oh, all right."

A trace of disappointment appeared on her excited face, but a violent explosion quickly reignited her spirits.

The blast came from the street. The powerful shockwave shattered the outer windows, people screamed in panic, and grayish-white mist filled every corner.

"Eve!"

The officer shouted her name and pulled out his baton.

"Was that a terrorist attack, Officer Press?"

As a newly promoted detective, Eve excitedly drew her sidearm.

"It was probably just an aging underground steam pipe exploding and blowing off a manhole cover... Put your gun away. We're going to maintain order."

Looking at this energetic rookie, Press felt a headache coming on. He rather hated his own luck. Otherwise, why had he been the one chosen to train this newcomer?

Scalding steam spread through the streets. After a brief panic, the crowd settled down. Old Dunling was vast, not merely in land area. It also possessed enormous underground facilities. Beneath people's feet lay the world's most complex network of pipelines, growing wildly beneath Old Dunling like a dense spiderweb.

Maintaining such a massive facility was obviously difficult. Accidents caused by aging pipes occurred from time to time and were no longer anything unusual.

The irritated officer and young detective left the hospital together. Mist filled their vision. It seemed as if someone had slipped past her line of sight and through the fog beside her. Eve turned back blankly, staring at the grayish-white vapor at her side.

"Eve, hurry up!" Press shouted.

Eve continued staring at the cloud of vapor, dazed for several seconds. She glanced at Press on the other side of the mist, then, as if making up her mind, turned and followed that faint, strange feeling in her heart.

A simple explosive was enough to cause a disturbance in Old Dunling.

That was the lesson Lorenzo had learned from living in Old Dunling these past years. Within its steam pipes, any random explosion would stir up layers of mist, and this mist happened to be perfect for Lorenzo's infiltration.

It would draw the guards' attention, and all he had to do was get the report before they finished dealing with the pipes.

He strolled into the hospital lobby with carefree ease, showing no awareness whatsoever that he was here to steal something.

He had successfully diverted the guards and infiltrated the hospital... by walking right in through the front door.

But now came the question: where was that important report?

A figure in white entered his field of vision, and Lorenzo quickly got an idea.

Lorenzo adjusted his emotions and squeezed several tears from his gray-blue eyes. Wearing an expression of utter grief, he waved to a nurse.

"My nephew was killed in the Lower District today. The guards told me to come back this afternoon for the autopsy report. Could you tell me where it is?"

His eyes were sincere and sorrowful, as if Lorenzo truly had a nephew.

The nurse first expressed sympathy for Lorenzo's misfortune, then told him that Suaran Hall's officers should be the ones to hand it over. But perhaps moved by Lorenzo's genuine emotion, she still made an exception and told him where the Director's office was. He might not be able to get the report, but he could at least learn the exact cause of his nephew's death.

A few minutes later, the balding middle-aged Director sat obediently in his chair, with Lorenzo seated opposite him.

He desperately wanted to scream at the uninvited guest, but the ornately decorated Winchester pressed against his gleaming forehead left him no choice but to try his best to remain calm.

"Here is the autopsy report you wanted. Is that enough?"

He handed the documents to Lorenzo, cold sweat running down his smooth forehead.

"Are there copies?"

After flipping through several pages, Lorenzo asked without looking up.

"No, no!"

It seemed this was very important to him, and the Director hurriedly answered.

"Is that so... Can you make another copy?"

A strange request.

"It should not be a problem to have those coroners write another report, right? Then give that report to Suaran Hall. Finally, do not mention any of this to anyone. Can you do that?"

Though Wall was an insignificant foreigner and no one cared whether he lived or died, if the autopsy report went missing or Suaran Hall's attention was drawn for some other reason, it would undoubtedly cause Lorenzo a great deal of trouble.

Lorenzo's eyes were cold, like those of a ruthless killer.

"Director Buscalo, you live at 147 Hammerling Street in the Outer District..."

His gaze swept over the document envelopes on the desk as thoughts surged through Lorenzo's mind. Across from him, Buscalo faintly felt immense terror.

"You are not wearing a ring... I am guessing your wife divorced you, right? She took your son with her?"

Like a master detective, Lorenzo's eyes swept back and forth, gathering every clue he could see. In his eyes, Buscalo was almost transparent.

His heart pounded violently. These unseen words filled him with even greater terror and revulsion. Compared to them, the Shotgun pressed against his head seemed far gentler.

"She left you a daughter. You dote on her dearly, and she likes candy... am I right?"

Lorenzo proudly delivered the final crushing blow.

At that, Buscalo's mental defenses collapsed completely. He could not understand how the man before him knew everything so clearly. His hands trembled uncontrollably. He might have entertained other thoughts before, but the moment his daughter was involved, he broke down.

Lorenzo left Buscalo's office laden with spoils. He believed that middle-aged man would make a good father.

Seeing the figure at the other end of the corridor, he smiled broadly.

"Thank you so much, Nurse. Director Buscalo agreed to thoroughly examine my nephew's body. The killer will not continue to roam free."

It was the nurse who had given Lorenzo directions earlier. Speaking to her with such familiarity, Lorenzo approached and secretly slipped several silver coins from his pocket into her hand.

"And thank you even more for providing the address, dear Nurse. Director Buscalo is looking forward to the gift I will send him."

Under the smiling gaze of the young nurse, Lorenzo strode away.

There was no astonishing deduction. This had all been premeditated.

Lorenzo was a second-rate detective, an amoral and violent detective. Yet in a sense, he was also a genius, a gifted swindler capable of manipulating everything available to him.

Perhaps he did not possess superhuman deductive skills, but when it came to improvised crimes, he truly was a hero of his generation.

There was only a thin line between a genius detective and a genius criminal. That line might be called principle, or perhaps conscience, but Lorenzo clearly possessed neither. He leaped back and forth between the two.

He pushed open the iron door, and the temperature immediately dropped several degrees.

This was the morgue. Few people came to such a chilling place, so Lorenzo reached it with ease.

The report lay in his pocket, but Wall's bizarre state before death compelled Lorenzo to take a look himself. Like a demon from a dream, he had remembered it for a long time.

"Which one is it?"

Following the serial number on the autopsy report, Lorenzo checked the plaques on the metal cabinets one by one.

Gripping the handle, he pulled out a frost-covered metal drawer and dragged it directly onto the floor. Lorenzo crouched beside it and looked at the man he had killed not long ago.

Several incisions had been added to the corpse. Lorenzo pulled hard and opened it, revealing the organs beneath.

On the way here, he had briefly scanned the report. According to the coroners' examination, there were some problems with Wall's bones and internal organs, though he had not read the deeper details carefully.

Inside was a twisted, disgusting sight. He wondered whether those coroners had vomited when they dissected this far.

The organs were completely twisted together, wrapped in dark-red clots like jelly. The intestines had contracted and were clearly much shorter than a normal person's, as though part of them had been surgically removed, yet there were no traces of surgery.

There was also far less fat than normal. Fat was used to store energy and retain heat, but this Viking's body-fat percentage was astonishingly low.

That should not have been possible.

The place where Vikings lived was freezing cold. With Wall's physique, he should have frozen to death rather than survived until now.

There were stones inside his body, mostly distributed across the surface of his skin and around his joints. They were extremely hard. Though they were merely clumps of crystalline material and flesh, they resembled armor. This was what had protected Wall, which was why Lorenzo's first Shotgun blast had failed to kill him outright.

Lorenzo's brow furrowed tightly. It reminded him of something unpleasant.

He picked up a chair beside him, sat down, and took out his cigarette case again. After thinking carefully, he still drew one out. After the flare of flame, intoxicating smoke slowly rose.

The lights in the morgue went out one by one until only the ember at the tip of his cigarette remained.