Chapter 19: Who Moved my Corpse Mountain?
Translator: Pluto Editor: Tehrn
The tangerine yellow sun rays were already shining down on the last two steps of the escalator. The strong sunlight was like an eraser, it erased all the darkness from the spaces and revealed the original color of every object. As the sunlight reached her light amber eyes, Lin Sanjiu narrowed her eyes slightly—surviving in the dark for 48 hours, she could not really adapt to the sudden presence of sunlight.
Aside from the brightness, the surrounding temperature was unmistakably rising rapidly. The heat wave engulfed Lin Sanjiu as though it was going to eat her up alive, for a moment, she almost felt as if her blood was starting to boil. If she had not suddenly attained her【Overall Physical Enhancement】passive skill last night, there was a high possibility that she would not survive the way back.
It was said that such an ability would modify one’s body to a large extent, Lin Sanjiu was beginning to slightly believe that now.
She blinked her eyes a few times, trying her best get accustomed to the high definition vision that her third ability provided. On the ground, not too far from them, she saw the fully detailed splatters of sepia blood stains, dirt stains, putrid pus and chunks of flesh.
She had just knitted her brows together, not having enough time to process the feeling of disgust, when he suddenly realized the implication of the scene in front of her. Lin Sanjiu’s eyes widened instantly, she exchanged looks with Luther who standing beside her. The two of them took a deep breath simultaneously.
Today, they came up to clear away the corpses. Since yesterday, the pile of corpses which was just by the escalator had started to give off this funky stench. It was akin to having a rotting cadaver on one’s doorstep. If there were a sudden outbreak of contagion due to this, they wouldn’t be spared even with their enhanced bodies. That was why Lin Sanjiu decided to come upstairs to burn the heap of corpses under the glaring heat of the sun.
Yet, now the two of them found themselves a little confounded— the bloodstains and chunks of flesh were undeniable there, but those were the only remnants left at that spot which once housed that mountain of corpses.
“Those… bodies?” Luther muttered as he walked a few steps forward, not noticing that the soles of his shoes were now in a dirty, smelly puddle of fluid. “Don’t tell me… Kong Yun absorbed all the dead bodies here last night?”
Even though Kong Yun mentioned that living organisms were more beneficial to her that dead ones, but who knows if she was swayed when she saw that readily-available pile of corpses and absorbed them all.
Lin Sanjiu scanned the area a few times as her face got whiter and whiter. She whispered, “It’s not her.”
“Huh? How can you be sure?”
“There are a few reasons. Firstly, there were no less than twenty to thirty dead bodies here, it has only been over ten hours from the time she appeared here last night till this morning… she doesn’t have enough time. Secondly, she can absorb the corpses entirely but what about their clothes? Where are all the clothes on those bodies?” Lin Sanjiu forced herself to calm down, restraining herself from looking at the streets outside.
From the large glass doors of the shopping mall, it was easy to see the same car queue that jammed up the road in front of it. “Thirdly, take a look outside.”
Luther squinted his eyes and looked into the cars in the queue using his Eagle Eyes. He figured out what Lin Sanjiu meant almost immediately. Last night, when they walked through the lines of cars, there were still quite a few people banging on their car windows, requesting for their help to reach here. But now, the cars were all empty, there wasn’t even a single person left. Some of the car windows have been shattered, and some others had their doors opened. At a glance, Luther noticed a gray men’s shirt and a pair of jeans on the road, one of its sleeves was folded upwards while the other downwards. It was as though the owner froze on the spot when he was still wearing that shirt. Luther had an impression of that outfit. Last night, they were still worn by a young man with a fashionable hairstyle.
They overlooked this indeed. A whole street packed full with cars, and there was at least a single living person in most of the cars. To Kong Yun, this must be no different from an all-you-can-eat buffet! Luther shuddered for a moment. Even if he had seen a countless number of dead bodies, he could not help feeling creeped out by it.
Lin Sanjiu scolded a vulgarity, uncharacteristically. “I really didn’t see that coming, she was actually so… One live person per hour, she actually had the heart to do this!”
“Let’s go out later to see if there are any other survivors. We can decide what we should do then… Otherwise, if we just leave them outside, I am worried that Kong Yun might come here again tonight,” Lin Sanjiu said vexingly. After responding with a sigh, Luther frowned and took his glance away from the scene. He tried not to think about how Kong Yun tricked each of the drivers or passengers in the car one by one to open their doors and forced himself to focus on the strange phenomenon in front of him.
“That’s weird. If it wasn’t the work of Kong Yun, where did the dead bodies go?”
“I don’t know too.” Lin Sanjiu had an unpleasant look on her face. She paced around the area but couldn’t find anything.
“Who will waste their time and energy to move those corpse away for nothing?” Luther followed her and paced around. Just as he was about to ask Marcie to come upstairs to take a look, he heard a squeak under his feet. He suddenly lost his balance. In his panic, he tried to maintain his balance in a fluster, but his feet was too slippery. With a “Pak!” sound, his whole body fell on the puddle of foul blood. He immediately groaned in disgust.
The “culprit” which caused his fall slid away into the distance — Lin Sanjiu gave it a sweeping glance and felt her gastric acid churning inside her — was a human eyeball which had been half-smashed by Luther. Luther saw that as well. He quickly stood up from that rancid smelling puddle of blood and started coughing, shaking his arms and stomping his feet. From the way he reacted, he must have been totally grossed out.
“Come on, come on! Stop it. Let’s go downstairs and see if we can find some wet wipes so that you clean up yourself…” Lin Sanjiu said as she avoided Luther while walking.
When she walked to the escalator, she turned back to look at Luther who was shaking his head like a dog with wet fur. She could not help scolding in a teasing manner: ”What the use of shaking like that? Let’s just go back… huh?”
The latter half of her sentence stopped as if she stepped on the brakes of a car, she stood motionless, seemingly startled. Luther, who was almost soaked in corpses’ fluid, couldn’t help taking notice of her sudden peculiar behavior, ”What’s wrong? What are you doing?”
Lin Sanjiu did not say a word. She lifted her finger pointing to a distance, upward. Perplexed, Luther followed the trajectory of her finger, still unable to figure out what was wrong.
The rays of the sun seeped down like melted gold from the high glass ceiling on the top floor. A white reflection covered the floor tiles, the green leaves of the plants and the gold-plated door handles of various shops, just like echoes of the sunlight. Items made of plastic melted in the day and hardened overnight, forming a collection of odd sculptures. At first glance, it was just like a modern art museum.
If it wasn’t for the murderous temperature, the scenery was considerable fascinating—yet what was wrong with it?
After looking at it once more, he suddenly exclaimed, ”Ah!” He only realized it now, his face was suddenly filled with awe, ”Why is it totally unharmed?”
The ”it” refers to the five stories high tropical forest featured in the center of the shopping mall. Even if those were tropical plants, there wasn’t a single plant in the world that could tolerate such high temperatures which could even melt plastic. Despite that, the small swathe of tropical forest in front of them was still dense, green and full of vitality as if the Hyperthermal Hell was just an illusion. It formed a juxtaposition to the trees on the walkway, separated by the glass walls.
Each of the tree trunks of the ornamental trees outside was like charcoal, black and dry. All their leaves had fallen to the ground, they gathered in a black patch, and it was almost impossible to tell their original form. Some of the trees on the walkway even broke into two because their thin trucks became too dry and brittle to support their weight.
Contrasting the two, Lin Sanjiu even thought that the tropical plants in the shopping mall looked even healthier than before.
Encountering these two weird phenomena one after the other, they really could not come out with any explanation in such a situation. Lin Sanjiu thought for awhile and said to Luther, “These plants are really quite a mystery… That’s right, why don’t we call Marcie up to look at this? Three heads are better than two!”
“Fine! Sigh, I don’t find it that strange.” Luther did not care much for the few green plants in front of him. “Maybe, the glass is special, so it blocks whatever UVA or something like that.”
“Even so, we shouldn’t take it lightly.”
“Sure, sure. But can I change out of my clothes first? It is so uncomfortable.” Obviously, Luther’s focus was still on the smelly fluid that was on him. It was simply too easy for him to change his clothes since the shopping mall lacked no branded stores. Luther looked around for a while, and smiled at Lin Sanjiu asking, “Do you think I should go for Armani or DG?”
Lin Sanjiu could not stand it any longer, “I hope that as you can still run as quickly wearing an s-sized suit.”
“Fine, I know…” Luther gave a look of resignation, saying that as he climbed up the staircase. Lin Sanjiu did not want to stay in the area where the corpses mysteriously disappeared, so she followed quickly, “Wait for me!”
Luther stopped in the middle of the staircase turning to laugh, “Why? Do you want to look for a few outfits as well? I wanted to say this a long time ago, why is a beautiful lady like you wearing clothes like you are going to practice T‘ai-chi?”
“Why does it have to be T’ai-ch—”
Before she could finish her question, a strong gust of wind followed a long, dark shadow as it attacked the two of them on the staircase at lightning speed.