Xia Bai blinked, and his face finally showed emotion.
Lin Xiang and Hua Haoming could both see it from his overly handsome face, this emotion is called "How could you do this". Yes, they both saw it, and saw it very accurately, but their understanding was completely different.
Lin Xiang, who was originally afraid, saw that Xia Bai was still unwilling to let himself take risks at this time, and courage surged in his heart. "Xia Bai, they all have their families to protect them, and so do you. They have fathers, mothers, and sisters, and you have brothers. Don't worry, I will definitely rush ahead of you."
Hua Haoming: "..."
Xia Bai opened his mouth, "No need."
Lin Xiang said firmly: "Definitely."
Hua Haoming looked up at the sky, and after a while, "Puff!"
Xia Bai: "..."
Xia Bai immediately stood up. It was almost time to enter the laboratory now, and he left without any regrets.
"Hey? Xia Bai, wait for me!" Lin Xiang strode after him.
Hua Haoming also stood up and sighed, "You idiot! I'm the one afraid of these things."
This medical school was small and old. If it were in the real estate market, it would be considered one of those old, dilapidated buildings everyone despises these days. Yet, even this old, dilapidated building had its own unique beauty, with lush trees and a verdant lawn.
Decades-old banyan trees grew taller than the four-story laboratory building. Perhaps shielded from sunlight by the trees for years, the building was damp. As soon as they entered, they could feel a cool, decaying dampness clinging to them.
Besides the pungent aroma of marmarin, there was also a faint fishy odor.
Xia Bai sniffed, and it was the same fishy odor he'd smelled near the artificial lake.
The building was poorly lit; even at 2 p.m., the lights were on. It was unknown what the designer had in mind when he chose red for the interior, just like the exterior. The red walls, eroded by time, looked like dried blood seeping through them in the dim light.
The entrance faced the staircase, and the players ascended without a pause.
The first floor was the morgue, where corpses and various human organ specimens sent from partner hospitals were stored. Glancing over, in the long, dark corridor, they saw a room whose door wasn't completely closed. The crack was dark, as if something was spying on them. The dampness that made their skin itch and their stomachs churn seemed to be coming from there.
Xia Bai paused, and just as he glanced at the adjacent morgue, Hua Haoming dragged him up the stairs.
After reaching the second floor, Lin Xiang breathed a sigh of relief. "Did you feel it? The first floor is gloomy and cold."
Wen Dong nodded. "I'm getting goosebumps. Do we really have to go in tonight?"
Lin Xiang: "Let's pick noon."
The other players were also breathing much heavier. It's hard to describe the feeling of being infected by the cold, fishy smell; it felt almost suffocating.
Only Xia Bai felt regretful.
There were ten anatomy labs on the second floor, and they were in class in room 203.
The lab was slightly smaller than the classroom they were attending. On the lab bench in the center lay a corpse, its color very dark, and it looked like it had been dead for some time.
Medical schools typically have partner hospitals. For those who have signed a body donation agreement, agreeing to have their bodies used for research, their bodies are sent to the school for teaching purposes after they die at the hospital. They are respectfully called "cadaver teachers" by medical students.
These individuals are highly respected and great, and therefore many medical students are not afraid of cadaver teachers.
However, this was in the world of a horror game.
Aside from fresh cadavers used for teaching, most human specimens were drained of blood and soaked in formalin, darkening in color over time. The one on the lab bench had already taken on a dark brown hue. Yet, strangely, without blood, it looked very alive. Even its face, which had been immersed in formalin for who knows how long, seemed to still have expression.
The body was intact, except for its mouth, which had been sewn shut, the dense stitches suggesting it had been stitched more than once.
Xia Bai stared at the corpse intently, his eyes slightly wide, a beautiful expression on his face. It wasn't
until Lin Xiang pulled him that he noticed the anatomy teacher had arrived.
Gathering around the corpse, the teacher briefly lectured on theoretical knowledge. Then, amidst the students' intense nervousness, he said, "Don't be nervous. Let's start with a simple one. I'll show you a few muscles, and have a classmate feel them and see if you can figure them out."
How could this be simple? It was practically hellish difficulty.
When the teacher looked over, everyone lowered their heads, wishing they could disappear.
There was one exception.
Xia Bai held his right hand high.
After glancing over the heads of the darkened students, and seeing Xia Bai's eyes staring at him, filled with curiosity, anticipation, and a thirst for knowledge, the teacher felt a long-lost sense of joy and emotion as a teacher.
He immediately said, "Okay, this student."
The others looked up. Lin Xiang then realized the teacher had called on Xia Bai. Just as he was about to move forward, Hua Haoming held him tightly.
Meng Tianyou, realizing it was Xia Bai, looked at him with a gloating look. Xia Bai happened to pass by him, and for those two seconds, he saw a glint in his eyes.
Everyone knew Xia Bai had a pair of exceptionally beautiful eyes—even he had to admit they were beautiful. But usually, those eyes seemed empty and dull, as if they lacked a soul. Now, the light in his eyes completely illuminated them, giving the impression that even the dark, shabby laboratory itself had been illuminated.
Xia Bai was already standing next to the corpse when Meng Tianyou finally came to his senses, having been lost in thought.
Xia Bai was looking at Professor Liu with those same eyes, and Professor Liu was moved, so much so that he felt a little ashamed of his perfunctory teaching for so long.
Who said they were inexorably opposed to anatomy class?
Students like these must be angels who came to heal their teachers.
Professor Liu: "Student, what's your name?"
Xia Bai: "Teacher, my name is Xia Bai."
Professor Liu: "Okay, Xia Bai, shall we begin now?"
Xia Bai: "Yes!"
Professor Liu: "Sternocleidomastoid, transverse abdominis, sartorius..."
Xia Bai had cold, pale hands, unlike the impression he gave off, their bones strongly defined. Following Professor Liu's words, the hands slowly moved over the corpse. The cold white hands with purple veins formed a sharp contrast with the dark brown, dry corpse, stimulating people's eyes.
Those hands could always accurately find each muscle, making people imagine that if they held a scalpel in their hands, they would be able to accurately and neatly cut open the human body and separate the muscles and bones. But in fact, when those hands moved over the corpse, they were like the caress of a lover, gentle and powerful.
Lin Xiang was dumbfounded.
Hua Haoming thought to himself, he should realize something now.
As a result, he immediately heard Lin Xiang's murmur: "He actually remembered everything, Xia Bai is amazing!"
Hua Haoming: "..."
Professor Liu became more and more satisfied as he watched. After finally stopping the exam, he said to Xia Bai: "Student Xia Bai is awesome."
Xia Bai's happy face shone, "Thank you, teacher, I can continue."
"No need. I can see you've mastered it all." Professor Liu then asked, "How does it feel?"
Because of that campus legend, both classes had been extremely reluctant to attend to anatomy labs. Even when they encountered human specimens in class, their minds probably didn't engage.
It was a rare opportunity to meet Xia Bai, someone so devoted to medicine that he wasn't afraid of legends. Professor Liu wanted him to share his feelings, to allay their fears.
Xia Bai complied, his eyes, previously full of smiles, now tinged with sadness and dejection. "He's very lonely." "
...?"
Even the professor was stunned. "What? Who's lonely?"
"The cadaver teacher is very lonely. When he died, the Grim Reaper came, but only briefly, taking his soul. Later, other people and other things came, but his spirit was gone too, leaving only his body, sinking in the darkness of formaldehyde."
"..."
Xia Bai's face was filled with sorrow. "He's very lonely. He needs a family." "
..."
Hua Haoming felt the second half of his words sounded familiar, and he couldn't bear to hear it.
Lin Xiang was stunned, muttering, "Xia Bai is truly kindhearted. He even empathizes with a corpse."
Hua Haoming: "..."
You're not a normal person, are you?
Professor Liu was unsure how to respond to Xia Bai's words when, upon hearing Lin Xiang's sentimental words, he quickly said, "Yes, Xia Bai is very kindhearted. He has a compassionate heart and will definitely become a great doctor."
Hua Haoming: "..."
What great doctor? What hospital would dare to hire him? They'd have to shut down their morgue.
For reasons everyone knew, this long anatomy class wasn't as terrifying as they'd imagined.
After class, everyone looked at Xia Bai with strange, suspicious, and scrutinizing eyes.
Wen Dong had a slight toothache and felt the terrifying pressure from his roommates. "Xia Bai, you're so motivated. Are you studying hard in the game too?"
Xia Bai nodded.
Wen Qiu stared at him for a few seconds and said, "Since you're so eager to learn, you should be more active in anatomy class."
Several people responded, "Yes, yes, yes!"
Xia Bai nodded enthusiastically.
Meng Tianyou couldn't bear it any longer, so he said, "Should we discuss the clues we can get from the anatomy class?"
As he said this, when he thought about it, his mind was full of the image of Xia Bai's hands caressing the human specimen. After trying for a while, he finally found a suspicious point, "The cadaver teacher's mouth was sewn up. I haven't heard that the mouth of a human specimen had to be sewn up like this." "
I know, I know." Song Qiang said, "I used to go to the countryside and heard people say that people who were murdered had to put something in their mouths and have their mouths sewn up to prevent them from complaining to the King of Hell after they go to hell."
Meng Tianyou: "Uncle, our medical school is a place that teaches science. Let's forget about those weird words from the village women."
"You're still talking about science when you're involved in a horror game? Can you use science to explain our current situation?" Lin Xiang retorted.
Meng Tianyou: "...You're deliberately trying to make things difficult for me, aren't you?"
Wen Dong said, "I think we should think outside the box and not directly deny the possibilities Uncle Song mentioned."
"This medical school is so small, yet anatomy classes are so frequent. Where do all those cadaver teachers come from? Do you think there's a problem with the source of the cadaver teachers? Is that why they sew their mouths shut?"
Lin Xiang was very cooperative with Wen Dong's words. He immediately began to think outside the box. "If they sewed their mouths shut to prevent them from speaking, then the evildoer is the school? Did the school kill people to make the cadaver teachers? Or were they students or teachers at the school killed?"
Hua Haoming proposed another possibility. "Theft of corpses, illegal trade?"
He glanced at Xia Bai.
Xia Bai was bewildered. He was smelling his hands. After class, he took off his gloves but didn't wash them, as if he couldn't bear to wash away the smell.
"..."
They discussed it all the way back to the dormitory, but nothing came up.
Lin Xiang: "So, are we still going to the morgue tonight to search for clues?"
Honestly, several people didn't want to go. When they entered this afternoon, they instinctively sensed danger, a fear so intense that goosebumps rose in their veins. Furthermore, they hadn't slept the previous night, and were exhausted and sleepy, feeling dizzy even when walking.
Wen Dong said, "We have classes tonight, and the lights in the dorms will be out. How about we go to bed early tonight and go tomorrow night when we don't have classes?"
This suggestion garnered support from many, as they were all beginning to feel the strain. So, after class, they returned to the dorms.
Xia Bai was still eager to sleep, and he'd already fallen asleep before the three sleepiest people were still trying.
The medical school was still damp at night, a faint fishy odor lingering in the air. In his dream, Xia Bai realized that this dampness was the same as the one in the lab building and the artificial lake: some kind of green algae at the bottom of the lake, or some kind of animal in the water.
The dampness grew increasingly sticky and cool, clinging to his legs like a cold ghost's hand.
Xia Bai opened his eyes.
A dark shadow was lying on his bed, very close to him.
The curtains were drawn by Wen Dong again, and the dormitory was dark. One could only see the outline of the dark shadow, the light coming out of the eyes, and a row of white teeth showing when the mouth was open.
In fact, Xia Bai had never looked closely at Song Mingliang's eyes. Most of the time, he kept his head slightly lowered, and his head was covered by thick bangs.
At this moment, at such a close distance, his bangs were rubbed to the side, and he could see clearly that Song Mingliang had a pair of narrow and dark eyes, which were surging with excitement and madness. The light made the row of white teeth look as sharp as snow in the darkness.
The author has something to say:
Xia Bai: I just want to give every corpse a home.