Chapter 133: Acquaintance
The moment the stainless steel drawer slid open, the frost-encrusted corpse inside sat bolt upright. Its stiff, frozen arms shot straight out, reaching ruthlessly for Lin Huai’s throat.
Right behind her, the heavy latch of the vault door slammed shut.
Lin Huai whipped around just in time to see Xia Wan—who had been affectionately calling her “good sister” only moments ago—wearing a vicious, bloodthirsty grin. The preserved eyes inside the specimen jar floated with manic excitement. Waving her hand, the crystal-studded press-on nails caught the sickly green light, sparkling with a sharp, dazzling gleam.
“Bone Ashes Mixed with Rice, my precious little sister… the ninth floor isn’t a place just anyone is allowed to visit, you know,” she sneered through the reinforced glass panel. “Since you insisted on coming down here, you can just stay forever.”
She tapped the glass with a studded nail, her tone mocking: “A little piece of friendly advice: when you’re on the verge of freezing to death, just pick an empty drawer and slide yourself in. Then you can sleep down here with me for all eternity.”
With a final thud, the heavy iron bolt fell into place, sealing the cold storage vault.
A flicker of raw panic crossed Lin Huai’s face. She rushed forward and slammed her palms against the metal door. “Xia Wan! Why did you trick me?!”
No answer came from the corridor. The only response was the hollow, final click of the exterior lock.
Lin Huai kept pounding on the thick plate, straining her ears to track the sounds beyond the door until the low, rhythmic hum of the elevator gears echoed through the shaft, groaning as the lift ascended toward the upper floors.
The moment she was certain Xia Wan had taken the elevator back to the surface, the panic on Lin Huai’s face vanished without a trace.
Behind her, the frozen ghoul had lunged forward to snap her neck. Without even turning her head, Lin Huai’s right hand shot out behind her back like lightning, clamping with iron precision onto the corpse’s throat, pinching its vital spiritual conduit.
Only then did she casually turn around. Her gaze was steady and icy cold—completely stripped of the helpless terror she had put on display moments before.
Channeling her Corpse Suppressing Arts, she neutralized the creature’s violent Yin energy in a matter of seconds, shoving the stiff corpse straight back into the compartment and kicking the drawer shut with a crisp slam.
Lin Huai had known from the very beginning that Xia Wan was rotten to the core. In her previous life, she had suffered plenty at the hands of this attendant. The nurse was naturally sadistic, petty, and pathologically envious, harboring a deep hatred for every female survivor who stepped foot into her domain.
She treated male survivors even worse; out of ten men who crossed her path, at least nine ended up slaughtered and stuffed into her vaults.
Lin Huai had never believed for a single second that Xia Wan’s twisted nature had magically changed, nor did she imagine a simple set of press-on nails could truly buy her loyalty.
Sure enough, the moment they reached the ninth basement floor, the monster had torn off her mask.
Fortunately, Lin Huai was never one to walk into a trap unprepared. When stepping through the threshold earlier, she had quietly jammed the inner frame with a subtle obstruction, ensuring the latch mechanism couldn’t seal completely from the outside.
Now that the fake nurse had cleared out, Lin Huai actually felt a wave of relief.
With plenty of time left on her schedule, she could take her time searching the ninth floor to track down the genuinely troublesome corpse.
Starting from the very first locker, she methodically pulled open each drawer, subduing any restless dead before forcing the trays shut.
Unlike the upper levels, the lockers down here held almost no personal mementos. They were packed with gruesome remains. Some drawers held severed limbs, some contained a single preserved heart sitting on frost, and others held only a frozen head staring blankly at the ceiling.
She continued her systematic search until she yanked open drawer 09-27.
The moment her eyes caught the floating system name hovering above the body’s forehead, a spark of pure recognition flashed across her face.
It was an acquaintance!
It truly seemed that fate worked in mysterious ways.
Using the specialized sight bestowed by Old Man Ren, seeing through the true identity of any corpse was child’s play. Under ordinary circumstances, she could simply record the name and pass it to Sister Hanba at the Crematorium, who would pull up the deceased’s full mortal records from the underworld database.
When Sister Hanba had learned that Lin Huai was heading to the Morgue earlier, she had vehemently warned her to stay on guard against that lunatic nurse, calling her mentally unhinged and deeply malicious.
Lin Huai had merely nodded along without revealing her current predicament. She knew Sister Hanba’s straightforward, fiercely loyal temper; if the fiery woman learned about the trap, she would have stormed over to tear the hospital apart. An open clash between official domain attendants would only bring down severe punishment from the underworld administration, and Lin Huai had no wish to drag her friend into trouble.
In the case of the familiar body resting before her, however, she didn’t need anyone to look up his files. She already knew his entire story.
The corpse lay perfectly still on the tray, missing both arms and legs, its pale torso covered in brutal wounds. A jagged fracture marked his brow. The blood-soaked white T-shirt and dark trousers were encrusted with thick frost, turning the dried stains into crimson ice blossoms.
This was the very same police officer Lin Huai had encountered in the City of Wrongful Death. Because she had already crossed into another district and avenged his murder with Qing Qi’s severed head, his mortal obsession had long been laid to rest. Even with the drawer pulled wide open, the body showed no signs of reanimation.
Lin Huai carefully lifted the remains from the frosted tray, gently setting the officer onto a mobile hospital gurney so she could carry him out when she departed.
In traditional burial customs, a body missing its limbs could not be properly laid to rest. She had originally considered fashioning temporary limbs from woven spirit straw, but then she remembered the stray arms and legs she had seen in the earlier lockers.
Hurrying back along the wall, she pulled out the ownerless limbs and brought them over for comparison. After checking them against the officer’s wounds, she managed to match only a single severed hand; the rest belonged to different victims.
Could the rest of his limbs be scattered across the upper floors? Lin Huai mused. Do I need to comb through all eight levels above?
She studied the quiet form on the gurney, wondering if this was the troublesome case the nurse had spoken of. After a moment’s thought, she shook her head. Given how peacefully his soul had settled, he hardly fit the description of an uncontrollable anomaly.
Leaving him on the gurney, she resumed her search down the row of drawers.
When her hand pulled open drawer 09-44, the horrific sight inside made Lin Huai’s chest tighten instantly.
This was the one.
Hovering above the mangled head was a glowing name: Xia Wan!
The body in the drawer had suffered unimaginable torment. Both eyes had been gouged out, her nose had been sheared off, and deep, crisscrossing blade wounds scarred every inch of her face. Her lips were crudely stitched shut with heavy black thread, and both ears had been severed at the root, completely erasing any trace of her original beauty.
Her body had suffered the same cruel fate. Every limb and removable organ had been carved away, reducing her to a mutilated “human pig.”
Lin Huai had witnessed countless horrific scenes across two lifetimes. She had personally scraped roadkill remains off the asphalt with an iron shovel. Yet staring down at this calculated, sadistic butchery, she couldn’t help but furrow her brow, turning her head away for a second to swallow the sudden knot in her throat.
The mutilated form twitched, attempting to rise, but with neither arms nor legs to support her, and with her vocal cords and mouth destroyed, she could only tremble faintly on the steel tray before falling motionless once more.
A heavy pang of sorrow and pity softened Lin Huai’s eyes. She murmured under her breath, “What kind of monstrous hatred could drive someone to torture another human being like this…?”
Reaching down gently, she lifted the battered torso from the frozen tray and placed it reverently beside the officer on the gurney.
As she moved the body, an aged, yellowed photograph slipped from the hollow cavity beneath her chest, fluttering softly down to the frosted floor.
Lin Huai bent down and picked it up.
The worn photograph showed two little girls standing with their arms linked. They shared identical features, wore matching red dresses, and sported identical cone-shaped party hats, smiling brightly into the camera.
A sudden realization struck Lin Huai like a bolt of lightning.
One of the smiling girls was the mutilated Xia Wan resting on the gurney. The other—the cold-blooded attendant masquerading as the night-shift nurse upstairs—was her identical twin sister, Xia Ye!
Thanks to Old Man Ren’s mystical sight, Lin Huai could clearly read the authentic names hovering over every spirit’s head. The nurse at the reception desk had clearly displayed the name Xia Ye, yet she had introduced herself with a sweet smile as Xia Wan.
From the very moment that lie had left the attendant’s lips, Lin Huai had never dropped her guard for a single second.
