The male teacher walked between the two groups of students, a surgical mask covering most of his face. His eyes were sharp and penetrating.
"This is your first time studying in this room. Feeling curious, feeling disgusted — that's perfectly normal. But I don't want to see any of you deliberately fooling around."
"Every cadaver teacher deserves respect. In this room, every death exists so that the living can live better."
"What you should be focusing on right now is whether this nerve pathway is clear, whether the blood vessels have been separated cleanly. Remember the connections and exact positioning of the muscles."
Only the male teacher's voice filled the anatomy lab. He wasn't old, and he had a stern look about him.
Jiujiang Medical University possessed the largest underground morgue in Jiujiang. In fact, across the entire south-central region, only the medical students here could work in groups of four to dissect a single cadaver teacher.
Due to the scarcity of cadaver sources, most medical schools operated in groups of eight — even sixteen students per body.
Chen Ge watched everything silently from outside the door. He stared at the upright male teacher inside the room, feeling an inexplicable sense of familiarity: "Those eyes feel so familiar. I think I saw them outside Morgue Number Eight."
He thought for a long time before finally recalling it — inside the eighth storage room, there had been a glass container holding a cadaver teacher. What made that particular corpse unusual was that its eyes had been open.
"The corpse soaked in formaldehyde outside the door has been given new life on the other side? Did Doctor Gao imagine all of this, or did he imprison the souls of the dead inside the world behind the door?"
The blood membrane on the surface of Chen Ge's body was thickening again. Just as he was wavering over whether to enter the room, a heavy, labored breathing echoed from the far end of the fleshy corridor.
A wind carrying a foul stench blew in from the other end of the passage. Along with the breathing, the organs embedded in the walls began to contract and pulse rhythmically.
"What's coming?"
The monster approaching from the far end of the corridor radiated an aura entirely different from the white-clothed girl or the male teacher Chen Ge had encountered before. It was saturated with destruction, killing intent, rage — every shade of negative emotion imaginable.
The white cat dug its claws into Chen Ge's shoulder, ears pinned flat against its skull, issuing a low, guttural growl. It sensed the threat too.
Just as Chen Ge had focused all his attention on the distant corridor, the door to the anatomy lab beside him suddenly produced a soft sound.
He turned his head. The male teacher with the surgical mask was standing at the door, studying Chen Ge with a puzzled expression.
"I—"
Before Chen Ge could even fabricate an excuse, the teacher seized his arm: "Come inside first."
The male teacher pulled Chen Ge into the room and casually shut the door behind them: "Hide quickly. It can't see you."
The breathing in the corridor was growing closer. Pressed by the teacher's urgency, Chen Ge ducked under one of the two lab tables with his skull-cracking hammer. The table was height-adjustable — originally designed for holding cadavers.
Only upon drawing near did Chen Ge realize that the eight fully wrapped students inside the room were actually corpses as well. They hung their heads limply, their stiff fingers clutching scalpels at crooked angles.
"No wonder not a single one of them said a word. This teacher's probably a madman too."
Chen Ge hesitated for a moment, then crawled under the lab table.