The third basement level of Binhai City Mortuary felt like a frozen coffin. The shadowless lamp bathed the stainless steel autopsy table in bone-white light at 1:17 AM, the air thick with the pungent sting of formalin and the faint sweetness of decay. Lin Wan's gloved fingers paused over the lividity on the corpse's left arm.
"Postmortem lividity fixed, but rigidity suggests death within two hours," she murmured into the recorder, her scalpel-sharp gaze tracing the moss-like markings on the grayish-blue skin. The "tomb-raider" exhumed three days ago from an ancient burial site had an abdomen hard as granite.
The bone saw teeth touched the sternum—
C-r-r-rack!
A sound like splintering wood shattered the silence! Lin Wan slammed backward into a steel cabinet, her scalpel clattering across the tray.
*On the table, Corpse C-037 slowly rotated milky eyes toward her, desiccated lips parting:*
"Mmmmy...brriiide..."
The skeletal claw clamped her wrist—agony and glacial cold speared up her arm! Fragmented memories exploded behind her eyes:
Flickering candlelight in a burial chamber...a blood-red jade bracelet rolling from a coffinShovels dumping earth...fingernails scraping bloody grooves in wood"Gaaah—!" As she screamed, fire blazed across her wrist! Golden tattooswrithed under her skin. The zombie recoiled with an unearthly shriek.
Her phone vibrated violently on the steel tray. The cracked screen lit up with a pixiu icon glowing like molten gold, beneath it pulsed blood-red pixels:
[WARNING: MALIGNANT QI CORRUPTION - 89%]
[SYSTEM BOUND: CORPSE ASCENSION PROTOCOL]
[MISSION: AUTOPSY C-037 (0/1)]
[REWARD: E-PIXIU HATCHING AUTHORITY｜PENALTY: UNDEAD TRANSFORMATION IN 24H]
Lin Wan huddled in the corner gasping, her lab coat soaked with cold sweat. The zombie's rigid finger suddenly snapped toward the northeast—fluorescent moss glowing like phantom fire in its nails.
"A...marriage proposal from a corpse..." She wiped blood from her bitten lip with a grim laugh. Yet her trembling hand seized the bone saw. The blade screamed against the sternum:
"...is hereby VOIDED!"