Song Bin's teeth were chattering as he watched Jing Shu reach for the zipper of the sealed body bag. Lao Wang drawing on his years of grim experience, moved several steps back and quickly covered his nose with a thick, grimy cloth.
Immediately, a pungent stench like nothing Song Bin had ever smelled filled the stagnant air. It was a cloying mixture of ammonia and a sickly sweet rot that seemed to coat the back of the throat. His stomach lurched, and he almost vomited his leftover meal onto the floor. Jing Shu merely frowned, holding her breath as she stayed completely composed, her eyes scanning the remains with clinical precision.
Lao Wang let out a low, gravelly chuckle. "See? It's still fresh. No decay has set in yet, and the bugs haven't burst out through the skin. Otherwise... tsk tsk. That scene would make your scalp crawl for a week."
Song Bin's legs went weak at the imagery, and he almost collapsed against a nearby support pillar. Four years into the apocalypse, he had spent most of his time sheltered in temperature-controlled greenhouses, surrounded by the scent of damp earth and growing herbs. He hadn't ever seen anything as visceral or disturbing as this.
The corpse's face was twisted in a permanent mask of agony. The skin was pale with a sickly bluish tint, and the hair stood on end as if the person had died in a state of absolute terror. The body was stiff, and the belly was noticeably swollen, though to an untrained eye, it might have looked like a relatively normal death caused by malnutrition or disease.
Jing Shu started her examination at the head. She pressed her thick, rubber-gloved fingers against the eyes, ears, and nose, checking for any unusual discharge. Everything seemed normal at first glance.
There was no livor mortis, no greenish discoloration of the abdomen, and no sign of common post-mortem bloating. After ten years of collecting corpses for survival points in her previous life, Jing Shu had plenty of experience judging a body's time of death. The old man was right: death had occurred within the last six hours.
She continued the examination meticulously, leaving no detail unchecked. The corpse felt strangely stiff on the outside, but the internal structure was horrifyingly soft. This specific texture was familiar to her; it felt like a steak that had been pierced with countless needles before cooking to make the meat tender. The underlying flesh felt loose and disconnected, almost like a fine sieve.
And that smell... it wasn't the standard stench of a decomposing human body. At this early stage, such a scent shouldn't have existed. It was the unique, sharp smell of the parasites themselves.
Jing Shu frowned and continued her work. She pressed a single finger onto the center of the belly, and the skin instantly sank. The surface rippled outward like water waves on a disturbed pond. Then, a terrifying scene unfolded before their eyes.
The corpse's stomach began to writhe violently. Waves of motion rippled across the torso, and under the pale skin, countless long, thin shapes twisted and turned in a frantic dance. Some of the shapes even bumped into each other, forming small, hard bulges that traveled toward the ribs before disappearing back into the depths.
Soon the belly deflated as the pressure shifted. The chest and neck puffed up, and the internal movement became relentless. In some areas, the skin stretched so thin it nearly burst. In the flickering firelight of the crematorium, the long, thin shapes of the mature bugs were clearly visible through the epidermal layer.
Some of the parasites had been pushed to the edges of the body's cavities. They started slipping out from the corners of the eyes, the nostrils, and the ear canals, yet they desperately tried to crawl back into the host to remain submerged in the blood.
"These... these are all parasites? Will they come out? Will they jump on me?" Song Bin stammered, backing away until his shoulders hit the cold stone wall. This wasn't anything like the academic descriptions he had imagined. "My God," he thought, his mind racing with horror. "Is this corpse even human anymore, or is it just a vessel for the bugs?"
The thought of being parasitized was terrifying. If he got infected... no, just the mental image made him physically sick.
Even the unflappable Jing Shu showed a flicker of a reaction. It wasn't because the bugs were disgusting—she had survived by eating red nematodes before—but because she hadn't realized the original parasite outbreak in the capital had been this brutal. It was far worse than the rumors she had heard. Perhaps it was a form of cosmic karma; humans had barely survived by eating red nematodes, only for the parasites to evolve and feast on them in return.
Lao Wang tucked away his half-smoked cigarette and looked at Song Bin with undisguised disdain. "You inexperienced people don't need to worry so much. The parasites don't leave their host on their own volition. Even if one managed to enter your body, you have never eaten red nematodes, so they can't reproduce inside you."
Song Bin finally exhaled a long, shaky breath. "So they aren't that big a deal, huh?"
Jing Shu glared at him, her eyes sharp behind her visor. "In these few years of the apocalypse, very few people haven't eaten red nematodes to stay alive. Think about all the people who have. If the infection spreads, the numbers will be catastrophic."
The consequences would be truly unimaginable.
Soon, the mature parasites began to spread further from the host's orifices. Each one kept one end firmly anchored inside the flesh, while the other end explored the air with a blind, questing motion. They were long, much longer than ordinary red nematodes found in the wild. These mutated parasites could reach lengths of 30 to 40 centimeters. Half of their bodies hovered in the air, soon probing beyond the edges of the body bag.
"They... they are coming out!" Song Bin cried.
Jing Shu raised an eyebrow and reached down, grabbing a handful of the writhing parasites. Song Bin's jaw dropped as she started pulling them out with a steady, firm pressure.
"W-what are you doing?!" he stammered, his voice climbing an octave.
The parasites clung stubbornly to the corpse, refusing to leave their source of nutrition. They squealed sharply, a sound like a taut wire being plucked, as she pulled. Jing Shu frowned and applied more force. With a sharp snap, the parasite in her hand broke in two.
The remaining part of the creature retreated instantly back into the corpse, including the snapped-off section. The pieces in her hands shriveled rapidly, curling into tight, dry balls of greyish wool. Like red nematodes preserved in salt, they were completely dead the moment they were fully separated from the host's environment.
The corpse returned to a temporary state of stillness, though the skin remained swollen and distorted from the parasites fighting for space beneath the surface. It all looked as if nothing had happened for a fleeting second.
"See? They don't leave their host on their own. They are more mutated now, but they have less space to survive. They can only live on a living or fresh host. That's good news for us," Jing Shu said.
She tossed the shriveled parasite corpses aside. Song Bin collapsed to the ground, muttering to himself in shock. Even the old man let out a sharp gasp; he had never seen someone so stubborn and reckless during an examination.
No matter how she pressed on the flesh, the parasites stayed curled up inside, the pressure making the skin nearly burst. The corpse seemed to swell in a very short time, the bugs crowding together under the firelight as if the body were about to explode.
Lao Wang's hands trembling, pointed at the corpse with his cigarette. "Quick, quick, throw it in the fire! Every time it gets to this stage, it's about to burst. This... this is the final stage of the cycle!"
Jing Shu shook her head, drawing a sharp knife from her belt. In the old man's wide-eyed horror, she made a long, deep slash across the corpse's torso. Without the body exploding into a mess, the parasites trapped under the skin finally burst out like a black, viscous flood.
In the open air, they panicked like vampires seeing the first rays of daylight, scattering in all directions while ending their own lives through the sudden change in pressure. Amazingly, the largest and longest parasites died first, transferring all their remaining nutrition and hope to the larvae they carried.
Then, countless tiny larvae sprang from the corpse's open wound.
"Quick, quick, throw it in the fire! These bugs will fly everywhere!" Lao Wang screamed.
The larvae scattered like a dark rain, hopping and searching for new hosts.