Chapter 110: The Deceased and the Appearance of Death

As she slipped into a deep sleep amidst the crisis, the entire world became, for her, a place filled with peril.

She did not know when she would wake, nor did she know what she would become. She did not even know if she would ever see another day. The crisis had struck, yet she remained ignorant of what had actually befallen her. And so, she drifted into slumber within the cold and darkness, lost in a world consumed by bewilderment.

*He will come. He will bring hope and light to lead me out of this world.*

She thought this over and over, repeating it in her heart with a stubborn resolve. She repeated it again and again, and the moment her eyes flickered open, she saw the face she had envisioned.

"You really are something, kid."

She smiled softly as the memories of the minutes leading up to her materialization flooded her mind. She had waited, and the person she trusted had come to save her. Looking at Chen Qing, she asked, "How did you save me?"

Before she could finish, the tightness of her clothing caught Jiang Wan's attention. She looked down, her brow furrowing in surprise as she realized the clothes she wore were clearly not her own. "You..."

"There was no one else! I couldn't just leave you naked!"

He looked away, a distinct sense of guilt on his face.

"That's not it. That's not the problem," Jiang Wan breathed in deeply, pointing at herself and continuing, word by word, "Could you at least have gotten me something larger? If there wasn't anything big, couldn't you have used a coat?"

He followed her gaze; the fit was indeed somewhat awkward. He remained silent for a moment, listening to Bu Zhaozhao giggling incessantly nearby, before hurling a stool in her direction.

"Hey! Trying to silence your sister, are you?!"

He sighed softly, pushing down the lingering awkwardness and the memory of the body he had just clothed before turning his back and walking over to Zhang Lan. "You should change yourself."

After a minute or so, both of them had calmed their flushed faces. They looked at Zhang Lan’s corpse, feeling a sense of helplessness and unease about where to begin.

"So, what do we do now?" He looked up at Bu Zhaozhao, who was floating above.

"What to do..." She heard the question, rested her chin in her hands, and drifted down, hovering just two or three centimeters from his face. She looked at the pallor of his skin and closed her eyes to search her memories.

"According to Foundation records... there have been quite a few investigators who returned from the dead. Professor Holt, for instance, woke up twenty-seven hours after his brain was declared dead." She looked at Zhang Lan's corpse, and suddenly, her eyes brightened. "Sew up her wounds first. I think I know what to do."

The two exchanged a look; though filled with curiosity, they asked no questions, acting in silent agreement. Jiang Wan rose to fetch a needle and thread, and Chen Qing began to stitch the wounds closed. By the time his hands were coated in the thick, translucent fluid of the corpse, Zhang Lan’s body had largely regained its form.

"Take her downstairs."

"Downstairs?" Chen Qing asked, surprised.

"Helping her materialize might be the method they mentioned in the letter."

As he listened to Bu Zhaozhao and his fingertips were about to touch the corpse, a faint sound of breathing broke the silence. They looked toward the source: Zhang Lan’s white, lifeless chest had begun to rise and fall.

She gasped for air, like someone drowning, fighting the world for every breath. She struggled, her fingers twitching against the floor, followed by her arms. The hand that had just been stitched flailed, slapping the ground with such force and volume that the onlookers couldn't help but fear the thread would snap.

She convulsed, her skin color shifting from ashen gray to a bruised, cyan-black. In mere seconds, her body turned entirely a deep, unnatural blue.

It was a color reminiscent of tarnished bronze veiled in gray mist—a hue so eerie and unsettling. This color, saturated with death—or rather, a color composed of death itself—constantly assaulted the instinct for self-preservation that humanity had spent forty million years evolving.

They watched as the corpse, radiating an ominous aura, raised its hands. With her fingers, she began to explore her own face, as if touching a stranger. As they moved, the ten fingertips seemed to possess a consciousness of their own, suddenly coming to a halt on the upper half of her face.

She lifted her hands, only the pads of her fingers making contact with her features. Then, her index fingers and thumbs sought out the organs on her face.

The fingers pried her eyelids open, forcing open lids that lacked the muscle control to move on their own. They watched as the cloudy lenses—where the whites could no longer be distinguished from the pupils—began to twitch. The two crystallized pupils seemed terribly dry, rotating in jerky, uneven motions.

*Perhaps those aren't her eyes.*

For some reason, this thought took root in Chen Qing's mind. Those eyes, those hands—they seemed to have wills of their own. Their movements were entirely uncoordinated; they behaved as if they did not belong to the same person. When the left eye tried to look to the right, the right eye attempted to look backward.

The dry, grinding sound of the eyeball shifting within the socket was like machinery rusted for decades. As it turned, it snapped the vessels behind it, beginning to rotate backward, bit by bit.