Rebirth

"The founder of induced pluripotent stem cells, honorary chair of the World Medical Organization."

"The very foundation of medicine in the New Calendar."

"Regarded as the greatest doctor in the four thousand years from the Old Calendar to the New Calendar, the man we all deeply admire, Mr. Zhou Zhi."

"Died at the age of thirty-three."

"Zhou Zhi's death is a grave loss to all of humanity, to an entire era..."

The voice in his mind grew fainter and fainter.

The woman's voice echoing through the television wall drifted farther away.

Zhou Zhi let out a faint breath. Before he could even see the world, the heavy smell of disinfectant filled his nostrils.

"It reeks."

The man reached up and pulled the white sheet off himself. He sat up straight, feeling an inexplicable, stabbing pain inside his body.

It was as if some kind of insect were crawling back and forth inside him.

"Am I... not dead?"

Zhou Zhi raised his left hand. A deathly pale cuff revealed his wrist as he pressed it against his brow. Beneath him, the metal trolley creaked, the sound echoing through the dim room.

Zhou Zhi remembered clearly: he was already dead.

He had contracted that mysterious disease, and within less than half a month, his life had been snuffed out.

The last thing he remembered was lying in a hospital bed, dying alone.

"Resurrection?"

Zhou Zhi lightly hopped down from the iron trolley.

At the edge of the room, a dim yellow light glowed.

By its light, Zhou Zhi made out the scene before him.

In the dimly lit, modest-sized room, bodies covered with white sheets lay scattered in disarray.

There were so many of them, piled here haphazardly like discarded objects.

Silence. Not a sound.

The shapes of people showed through the sheets, as if they might climb out at any moment and whisper in his ear.

A morgue.

Zhou Zhi immediately figured it out.

Had the hospital staff pushed him into the morgue because he had died?

"But this is far too informal."

Zhou Zhi's expression darkened, though he felt little else, as he surveyed the room.

There were more than a hundred corpses in the small room.

The deathly white brick walls reflected the bodies.

In a corner of the room, a metal door was set into the wall.

It had a strangely shaped lock.

Zhou Zhi lightly touched the lock's cold surface and furrowed his brow.

Who puts a lock on the inside of a morgue?

Were they expecting the corpses to unlock it?

As Zhou Zhi wondered this, the stabbing pain in his chest suddenly intensified.

It felt as if countless tiny bugs had burrowed into his flesh and were gnawing away.

[Time until vital signs disappear: five minutes, sixteen seconds.]

What was going on?

Zhou Zhi froze.

Where had that voice come from? It didn't seem like a voice at all, but some inexplicable... knowledge that had appeared in his mind.

But Zhou Zhi's first reaction wasn't to the mysterious voice. He abruptly unbuttoned his deathly pale shirt.

He looked down.

What he saw was...

A body ravaged beyond recognition.

And... empty left and right chest cavities, with a lone heart suspended between them.

Zhou Zhi's pupils widened.

"Eh?"

"My... lungs?"

At last, he spoke aloud, voicing his question.

Then came the second question, right on cue.

Without lungs to exchange air for breathing, how was he still alive?

As a doctor, this defied everything Zhou Zhi had ever learned.

"I'm still breathing normally..."

"But from what I can tell, I've got no more than four minutes left to live."

Zhou Zhi calmed down.

The room was locked from the inside, so there had to be a key.

So where was it?

The sealed room held little besides corpses. It was almost entirely in view.

The answer was obvious.

Zhou Zhi lifted the sheet covering one of them.

A corpse with a stiff expression lay in an odd position on a small iron trolley.

The air was freezing cold.

In his mind, inexplicable knowledge surfaced.

"[A useless corpse]."

"[Died of influenza. The lungs were completely diseased and were removed to prevent the formation of pestilence]."

Zhou Zhi noticed it at once.

Just like him.

This corpse's chest cavity was empty.

Its lungs had been removed.

He turned the corpse over. Finding no key, he went straight to the next body and pulled back its white sheet.

It was the same: a petite woman, her pupils fully dilated, with no lungs.

"[A useless corpse]."

"[Died of influenza. The lungs were completely diseased and were removed to prevent the formation of pestilence]."

Just as he'd thought.

Zhou Zhi spent a short while lifting the sheets from dozens of bodies around him.

Every last one...

Was the same.

Something was very wrong.

"Some kind of unusual flu...? With so many deaths, at current medical standards, the number of people it affected would have to be astronomical."

Zhou Zhi seriously considered the strange situation he found himself in.

"Could it be that I've been dead for a long time?"

And these words: diseased, the formation of pestilence...

He had never heard of such terms.

But there wasn't much time left.

The chance to come back from the dead was rare to begin with. Zhou Zhi didn't stop moving.

Instead, he inspected the many deathly pale corpses one by one.

They had all died of [influenza].

And it couldn't have been very long ago.

"At most, one day."

Zhou Zhi judged this from the state of the bodies.

The corpses were all in different poses, their expressions even more bizarre.

Zhou Zhi's gaze finally settled on the center of the room.

[There seems to be something different.]

A sudden flash of insight. Without a word, Zhou Zhi walked toward the trolley in the center.

He lifted the sheet.

It was the corpse of a small, thin man.

The man was naked, his skin pale.

Unlike the other corpses.

This one was...

Whole.

"[A somewhat useful corpse]."

"[Has mastered a tiny amount of useless Plague Extermination Art]."

"[Died of the pestilence influenza (pathogen)]."

Zhou Zhi's fingers brushed over the nameless male corpse's smooth skin.

Following his arm, he found a key clenched in the palm of the right hand.

A key.

Zhou Zhi didn't rush to take it.

Instead, he kept examining the corpse.

There were signs of an incision on its chest.

In an instant.

Zhou Zhi's body.

Became restless.

"[Usable, low-quality lungs]."

"[The best organs for the current situation]."

"[Can be removed with a scalpel]."

A scalpel. Removal.

How could an organ-removal operation be described as something so simple?

Zhou Zhi's expression didn't change.

His gaze shifted to the nameless male corpse's left hand.

A strangely shaped blade.

"[Worn Scalpel]."

"[By ordinary standards, it could hardly be called a scalpel. Its owner treasured it above all else]."

"[At the end of his life, its owner completed a surgery—his one and only—riddled with mistakes]."

"[Does a life without talent have no meaning?]"

"[The scalpel's owner once asked]."

Zhou Zhi raised his eyes.

A scalpel.

It was completely different from the scalpel in his memories.

This one looked much larger.

It was covered in cracks and looked as if it might fall apart at any moment.

[Time until vital signs completely disappear: two minutes, three seconds.]

Zhou Zhi had always been this calm.

He gripped the scalpel.

Although its shape was completely different,

that inexplicable sense of familiarity welled up inside him.

As if it were connected to his body.

[Surgery Start].

Never before had Zhou Zhi begun an operation in such crude conditions.

The blade severed the connections.

Meticulous, without a single slip.

Zhou Zhi's hands were frighteningly steady, like an ancient well untouched by ripples.

The oversized right lung.

Then the left.

The operation went perfectly, just like it had in the past.

From beginning to end, it took one minute and sixteen seconds.

The instant he severed the final connection,

Zhou Zhi's expression changed slightly.

A scorching heat flared up inside him.

The lung beside the corpse held an irresistible appeal for him now.

A surge of desire stirred in his chest.

Some of his flesh began to grow tumors, spreading toward the lung.

Contact.

The moment they touched,

it was as if Zhou Zhi's body had sensed the lung. A strange sense of satisfaction welled up.

Then they fused.

His skin grew,

covering the organs exposed to the outside.

[Seventy-three hours until all vital signs disappear.]

[Pathogenization Index: 21.7%.]

[Source of Pathogenization: Influenza.]

Zhou Zhi's pupils shifted slightly.

He lowered his head,

looking at his unfamiliar hands.

"Another new problem has appeared..."

"Am I still human?"

The setting's done, and I've outlined the first volume. I'll take it slow.