Plague Doctor

Chapter 14: Corpse Guides

Translator: Larbre Studio

Editor: Larbre Studio

This was not the first time that Gu Jun has come to the mortuary of the Dissection Building.

A day or two before the anatomy classes were released, the teacher would assign male students to come here to work in their spare time. They transferred the cadavers required for anatomy from the laboratory dissection table to the refrigerated storage box.

The outside world was always floating with all sorts of rumours about how those medical “slaves” would carry dead bodies in the middle of the night and come here to sleep and train their courage. All of those were not true.

For these medical “slaves”, their threshold of fear had already been raised by various human specimens and corpses of experimental animals. There was nothing particularly terrifying about entering the remains storage room. In the past, there were even students standing at the dissection table and watching a dissection while eating breakfast.

However, those were not Gu Jun or Cai Zixuan. Although they liked to maximise the value of experimental animals, they dared not to show any childishness or profanity towards cadavers. They only showed respect and seriousness.

At the silent ceremony before the first dissection class, Gu Jun shed tears. He knew that some of these cadavers originated from corpse donors or from unnamed bodies that had not been claimed. At that time, he remembered his parents who were unaccounted as well.

On the way to the remains storage room, Gu Jun felt a palpable change in the atmosphere.

There were more unfamiliar-looking people in the corridor along the way. Although they were also wearing white lab coats and medical masks, they did not look like school personnel at all. They were all uniformly wearing black military boots. The clacking of their boots against the cold pavement seemed as though they were treading on people’s hearts and leaving a sinking feeling.

These people did not look at Gu Jun and merely walked straight.

“Who are these guys?” Xu Hai looked at his companions questioningly. Cai Zixuan was about to scratch his head, and reply that he didn’t know as well.

However, Gu Jun saw another group of people coming to the other side of the corridor and came to a sudden realisation. “Corpse guides.”

Corpse guide? The name seemed to have come from a corner of his mind, and he immediately uttered the term. The term seemed to carry strangeness that he could not put a finger on.

Cai Zixuan also saw the group of corpse guides pushing a transport vehicle. Each vehicle had a rectangular storage tank coated with white paint, like a coffin. Even though they were still far away, the strong smell of formalin left their eyes itching and uncomfortable.

The group of four stood to one side and let this cart-pushing group pass by first.

Like the other people just now, when the group of corpse guides passed by, they paid no heed to Gu Jun’s group as though they didn’t exist.

But indeed, this was the first time they had seen these “Corpse Guides”.

What’s going on? Xu Hai and Zhang Haoran started murmuring amongst themselves.

Even at Eastern University, the resources of the school regarding cadavers had been tightly guarded for a long time with strict rationing of teaching resources. Every corpse has a specific objective to fulfil before the school purchased them. Nothing more, nothing less. With the sudden organisation of the city-wide competition, the 12 groups of Frontier Cup students were required to undergo anatomy training. This, of course, required the support of additional cadavers. Hence, the appearance of these corpse guides.

“This inference seems reasonable, but…” Gu Jun muttered, yet he felt like things weren’t as simple as it seemed.

Suddenly, his heart felt like it had been struck by lightning, piercing through the dark ominous clouds that were his doubts. He thought of a reason! From these people, he felt the same gloominess as the man who followed him behind their masks that covered a large part of their faces.

Who exactly were these guys?

After waiting for a while, the team of corpse guides came back while pushing empty carts. The long white tanks were gone.

Gu Jun deliberately studied these people carefully, but still could not notice any abnormality.

“Let’s go, now” Xu Hai immediately urged everyone to hurry up. “We really arrived at the right time!”

One must understand that the quality of cadavers varied. Many of the remains came from the aftermath of a tragic accident. Some were broken into several sections, and some swollen like a ball. When they previously cut a cadaver’s abdomen during body dissection in Clinical Class 3, the organs inside were all rotten. Evidently, the results of an internal injury caused by a severe car crash.

However, if you want to learn anatomy well and quickly, you cannot do so without using high-quality cadaver.

Therefore, there had always been a silent battle between classes and groups within the classes. The boys who were responsible for moving the corpses would always assign high-quality cadavers to their own groups.

To have a whole intact head on the dissection table was a matter of envy and jealousy for countless people.

However, it was simply a matter of luck since the professor would usually redistribute the anatomy.

Now that there were 5 people in their group, 6 including Gu Jun, they actually had the opportunity to dissect a whole cadaver! Moreover, they were just in time to catch the corpse guides delivering fresh cadavers. As Xu Hai walked, he couldn’t hide his excitement. “We have to choose the best intact corpse. What a rare opportunity!”

Yes, this was a rare opportunity. Gu Jun thought that as long as the malformed body could be found, then the DIFFICULT mission could be completed.

“We should choose a malformed body,” he said. This was not a bad offer.

“Oh, right. Sure.” Cai Zixuan immediately nodded like a pecking chicken. “If there was a malformed human, choose the malformed one.”

Xu Hai and Zhang Haoran, of course, also agreed that Tycoon Jun was right for once. Although the integrity of the body was great and all, deformities were the most precious.

During the conversation, the four came to the front desk outside the body storage and finally saw a familiar face. The front desk administrator, Old Cui. He was a middle-aged man with a bulging beer belly and a greasy facial countenance. He looked like the spitting image of Hu Tuhu from the images in “Fan Jin Zhongju” in Chinese language texts.

“Mr Cui,” Xu Hai scrambled to give an explanation, “Professor Gu asked us to come.”

“I know. I know. Professor Gu already told me.” Old Cui looked at his mobile phone without looking up and kept playing. “Go in by yourself. I won’t help you. The ones that the school initially had and the new arrivals today, all the cadavers can be used.”

“Mr Cui, what are the backgrounds of those corpse guides just now?” Gu Jun asked.

“Why would I know,” Old Cui grumpily snapped. “Everyone there had a stinking glum face, What background would they have? If they had any background, they would have nothing to do with this work.”

Gu Jun was silent. That’s not necessarily true. For example, most administrators are ordinary people, but some librarians were influential.

Xu Hai had already hurriedly opened the iron door of the storage room and was urging them to hurry. Gu Jun thus followed in.

Even if they were all wearing tight face-hugging masks, they were still hit by an overpowering stench of formalin.

The storage room was very spacious, with the surrounding walls full of all kinds of debris. There were discarded instruments, dust-sealed tables and chairs, and commonly used pushcarts. This debris was piled up to block the windows. Not even a speck of light could enter, and the ceiling lights were dark and murky.

In the middle of the storage room, two different corpse storage tanks were arranged neatly. The original ones in the school were stainless steel storage tanks, each of them covered in dust and placed at the back. The ones placed in front were the newly arrived white paint storage tanks, leaving only enough space for people to walk through and move equipment.

At a glance, there were fifty white storage tanks.

“Ai…” Cai Zixuan could not help but sigh. These were fifty people who were once alive.

Gu Jun frowned and looked at these white storage tanks with a weird restlessness in his heart.

“Hurry up. Professor Gu and the rest are still waiting.” Xu Hai took the lead and went to a white storage tank in the middle of the front row. He and Zhang Haoran both stood at one end and held onto the handle of the storage tank cover at the same time. Immediately, the thick smell of formalin rushed out.

The two of them looked at the cadaver in the storage tank, and suddenly exclaimed in unison, “Hmm? You guys come take a look!”

Gu Jun hurriedly walked up in doubt and looked into the shadowy storage tank.