Here Lies The Wicked

Chapter 51: Footsteps In The Old Library

The old third library in the Yuxiu District,

It was still night at that moment.

Wei Youran was also the only person on the third floor of the library.

[Eighth of April;

[The ninth day of baiting.

[Location: The old third library in the Yuxiu District.

Reading material: The Coroner of An Odd Corpse.

[There were quite a number of occupations that were predominantly viewed in an unfortunate light.

[These were the papier-mache makers, executioners, corpse collectors, the hearse drivers, the connectors…

[With regard to the obscurity of what exactly the connector was, many in the modern era would be quite unfamiliar with such an obscure occupation, however, there was an occupation most people in the modern world would understand.

[That was the mortician!

[One who dressed the dead, one who allowed the dead to look presentable upon burial.

[In the ancient days, since there were plenty of brutal death sentences, some methods seemed excessive which resulted in the brutal decimation of corpses. The dead would often look harrowing.

[Thus, the connector came to be. They specialized in reconnecting these corpses, preserving what honor the dead still had.

[This meant the connectors were not only responsible for reconnecting the corpses of the deceased, but they were also responsible for helping the deceased have a full corpse and aid the dead in transcending and reincarnating into their next life.

[Connectors, more commonly known as morticians, specialized in the field of the dead. Their livelihood stemmed from the dead.

[Hence, these occupations were often judged by people.

[Adults would often advise their children: stay away and completely avoid morticians and hide at a distance. It was because the occupation these people perform was known to be a grim omen.

[This was metaphorically similar to how people could feast on pork without a shred of guilt and, at the same time, look down on butchers, insulting them being cold-hearted and ruthless. However, these people would be eating pork for the rest of their lives.

[I was an abandoned child; it was my grandmother who had brought me back from the mountains.

[My grandmother was a connector.

[It was only natural and expected that I was shunned in my own village. People my age would not play with me, hence I spent most of the time by my grandmother’s side, watching my grandmother tend and care for the dead. Hence, I was used to seeing corpses ever since I was little.

[The most unfortunate cases were the ones without a complete corpse. Even after death, their brains were nowhere to be found, or in some cases, half of their bodies could not be recovered or found.

[When I was eleven, there was a hunter in my village. The hunter had not returned for a full day after he went hunting in the mountain. The entire village formed a search party to look for him in the mountain. His headless corpse was discovered in a rocky cavern.

[The blood had turned black, and his head was most definitely eaten by some unknown animal.

[Hence, everyone in the village had a concerned discussion that went on long after he had been buried. A corpse without its head would never find peace. If the corpse had been forcefully buried then his future grandchildren would never have a peaceful life. Hence the hunter’s family went to my grandmother for aid.

[That day, my grandmother spent an entire day in the home of the hunter’s family. She had locked herself in with the headless corpse, forbidding anyone from peeking. It was only until the crow of the rooster on the second day did my grandmother complete sowing the corpse.

[I was also finally able to look at the corpse: it was a complete corpse. A papier-mache head was sewn to the hunter’s neck. The size and facial features were uncanny to when the hunter was alive. She had replaced the hunter’s head with the one crafted from papier-mache.

[Within a blink of an eye, I was thirteen or fourteen years old, and it was all due to my enrollment into a school located in the city. I could only return to my village once every month, and that was my second encounter with an incomplete corpse.

[There was a man from a neighboring village who had been working out of state due to some unfortunate accidents that had happened on the job site. The supporting harness broke and that man had been crushed by the weight of the steel beams. He was split in two and since there was a river that flowed quite rapidly near the job site, his other half fell into the river and was washed away by the current.

[At least the employer was a kind man; he had his workers search tirelessly for the remains for more than ten days, however, the search was in vain as the remains were nowhere to be seen. Thus, under sheer heartache and pure desperation, that family came to my grandmother.

[Once again, my grandmother sowed the corpse together with the crow of the rooster on the following day, as punctually as she always had been. Half of the corpse had been replaced by papier-mache, however, as with her usual work, it was extremely life-like. Based on the size of the limbs and the body, it was uncanny to when the deceased was alive.

[Although my grandmother was a connector, she had never allowed me to get involved in her line of work. She would look at me with compassionately and tell me the only thing she wished to see was for me to graduate from my university, get married and have children without any wild hopes of insane wealth, and that all she wanted was for me to have a peaceful life.

[It was my grandmother alone. She had used her progressively weaker and frail body to nurture me and had paid for my education with the (perceived by society) filthy money collected by her own two hands. I would never forget the goodwill and kindness my grandmother had given me for the rest of my life. However, it was during my summer job, the chieftain of the village called me. He had told me the worst news of my life: my grandmother had passed.

[On the day of my grandmother’s death, there was a reputable boss from the city that had come to my grandmother with a coffin made of ice, begging my grandmother to fix and tend to the corpse. It was only after such news did I realize my grandmother’s status was not as simple as I assumed. However, my grandmother had died on the same night she tended to the deceased. The men from the city who had brought the coffin along had also vanished without a trace.

[I had almost broken down the instant I received the news of my grandmother’s death. A masculine man crying on the sidewalk, returning to my village in the shroud of darkness at night just to see my grandmother one last time.

[Upon reaching home, after travelling for two days by bus and train, I instantly realized that my grandmother had been set up. This was the result of me having been surrounded by corpses since my childhood.

[My first thought was of the reputable boss from the city and that coffin made of ice. This enraged me, and thus, I raced toward that coffin. That coffin was sitting in my house the entire time and not a single person from my village dared to even approach it.

[When I had opened the coffin’s lid, a gust of bone-chilling cold air rushed out the coffin. It was so cold that the tips of my fingers and toes were frozen solid, and when I had laid my eyes on the corpse that laid in the coffin, a loud buzz was ringing in my head and an indescribable bone-chilling feeling sprouted in my heart.

[Both of the corpse’s arms and legs were bound with thread.

[It was only natural for me to feel odd, as there had been a connector that had tended to the corpse earlier, and judging from the work on the corpse, this was not done by my grandmother. I would never mistake my grandmother’s work.

[That was not the main point. The only thing that set me off were the limbs of this corpse. The tone of the skin color and, although it was done in its best effort to match the corpse, the proportions of the deceased body were completely off.

[Which second-rate connector’s work was this?! To have committed the taboo act of sewing together two different corpses!

[That b*stard had sealed two different resentful essences in a single body.]

The time in the old library showed 20:50. Wei Youran proceeded to exit the online novel website.

After that, she proceeded to scribble in her journal: 19:11 to 20:50, everything was norma—

Thud!

Suddenly in the eerily silent library that seemed like an antique clock that had broken through the veil of darkness a man’s footsteps could be heard…

Wei Youran proceeded to hold her breath!

In that instant, Wei Youran’s eyes were completely calm, however, the details from the casefiles flashed across her mind.

[The series of disappearance]

Number of victims who had disappeared: 34.

Date of the first incident: March fifth.