Corpse Transformation?

(Evening update to come...) The mage was still some distance away. He had only glanced toward them, yet everyone waiting to welcome him had already stepped aside without thinking, opening a path and putting on humble smiles.

The mage gave a slight nod and walked past them. Only after he had gone into the building did a child cry out, and the crowd seemed to come alive again.

The mage gave a slight nod and walked past them. Only after he had gone into the hospital ward building did a child cry out, and everyone seemed to wake from a dream.

The tense silence vanished. Children cried, adults scolded them, people rushed about in confusion, and the hum of conversation rose again.

The General's Temple had hardly sent anyone down the mountain in nearly twenty years, but its standing throughout Lower River still struck awe into people's hearts!

Tang Changsheng had not seen this particular scene, but he had experienced it often enough to think nothing of it.

As an heir of the General's Temple, he naturally inspired reverence in ordinary people.

For centuries, across a thousand miles of Lower River, who among the young or old, men or women, had not held the mages of the General's Temple in awe?

Who did not know that every mage of the General's Temple could command ghosts and spirits?

When they set out to save someone, they could bring that person back even if the King of Hell himself had come to claim their life.

But once they set out to kill someone, nobody could save that person. Not even the police!

The cleverest course was to go obediently to the General's Temple and accept death. Then, at least, the suffering afterward would not be so terrible...

In short, to everyone else, the mages of the General's Temple possessed vast powers and could do almost anything.

But when Tang Changsheng entered the room, he found the doctors and nurses on duty pale as earth. The atmosphere was oppressive and strange.

Tang Changsheng asked no questions. He stepped forward and lifted the blanket, and a foul stench struck him in the face.

He had prepared himself, yet when he arrived at the hospital and saw what had become of Song Da and the others, he was still startled.

"Damn... what a vicious method!"

In the light, he could see that the person on the stretcher had almost lost all human semblance...

A closer look revealed festering sores and swelling all over the person's body. It was a ghastly sight...

Apart from a faint trace of breathing and the rough outline of a human body, the person no longer looked human. Even the head was twice its normal size!

Tang Changsheng had steeled himself long before coming, but the sight still sent a chill through him.

"Corpse Poison," he said coldly. "Make the arrangements. Once someone is in this state, there's no saving them... Cremate them at once. Don't let the body lie overnight!"

"Ah?"

"Ah!"

They had expected as much—the person barely looked human anymore—but hearing Tang Changsheng say it made the relatives in the room break down in tears.

With his verdict, their last shred of hope was gone.

As for the doctors...

They had started shaking their heads the moment they saw the patient!

Tang Changsheng paid them no mind. He was no doctor, but he had seen enough partings by death that he felt nothing in particular.

"Where's Song Da? Is he in the same state? If so, we can only cremate him as soon as possible!"

Tang Changsheng sounded ruthless, but Zhang Dacheng hurried to say, "No, no. Song Da's condition is much better..."

Tang Changsheng nodded and said gravely, "These people have been poisoned by Corpse Poison. Anyone I can save, I will! Anyone I can't must be cremated quickly, before they undergo Corpse Transformation!"

Everyone around him voiced their agreement.

Just then, someone called out, "Wait! Do you have any grounds for this 'Corpse Transformation' you're talking about?"

Tang Changsheng looked over in surprise.

A tall, long-legged woman doctor with a model's figure was questioning him coolly. She adjusted her gold-rimmed glasses. "Or is this 'Corpse Poison' of yours actually an infectious virus that can turn people into zombies?"

Everyone turned to look at the hospital's director.

Cold sweat broke out across the director's forehead. He knew exactly what they meant: Where did this fool come from?

"Chen Xin, leave us. This doesn't concern you!" the director said coldly after clearing his throat.

So she's one of the Chen Household. No wonder she became a doctor so young!

Understanding dawned on the others, and they paid her no further attention.

But Chen Xin did not obey. "Director, these patients' conditions are truly unusual. I've never seen cases like these before. If this really is an infectious virus, as this gentleman says, then we need to study it carefully..."

The director was nearly in tears, especially when he saw Zhang Dacheng and everyone else looking at him with displeasure!

The Chen Household was a powerful family with considerable influence in Lower River. Even so, it had no wish to offend underworld leaders like Zuo Xingfa and Zhang Dacheng...

And the General's Temple was involved as well!

The Chen Household was an Aristocratic Clan. It had flourished in Lower River for centuries.

An Aristocratic Clan had a long heritage and knew there were lines one must not cross. In Lower River, the General's Temple was unquestionably one of them...

Only someone like Chen Xin, who had studied abroad and absorbed foreign learning while remaining ignorant of her own home, would know nothing of the General's Temple and question Tang Changsheng!

Just as the director was so embarrassed he could barely find a way out, the patient on the bed began to gasp violently. The patient's lungs sounded like torn bellows.

These were a person's final moments. Once the last breath left the patient's chest, death would follow.

The medical instruments connected to the patient sounded their warning alarms. The heart monitor's trace was already flattening into a straight line.

Everyone's attention turned to the patient, and they fell silent.

At that moment, faced with death, which came for all without favor, everyone instinctively showed reverence.

Looking at the state of the patient's body, they thought that living must have been an agony. Perhaps death would be a release.

Tang Changsheng took a few steps back. A person's final, foul breath was nothing good, and he had no wish to be touched by it!

But the long exhalation he expected never came.

He Da drew a deep breath. Before he could let it out, he died.

Under the light, his face was swollen with sores, but a bluish tinge was still visible, along with a hint of something ferocious...

"This is bad! He died with resentment in him—he couldn't accept it!" An old man who saw this went pale. He stumbled two steps backward and nearly fell to the floor.