Chapter 606 Funeral Home

The taxi did not drive into the funeral home campus, but stopped at the door. N gave Tu Lanxun a look, and she consciously took out her mobile phone and prepared to scan the code to pay.

"No need." The driver's lips moved, and a fifty-yuan bill appeared out of thin air. The glove box opened automatically, and the money floated in.

Tu Lanxun's last method of leaving her personal information also failed, so she could only get out of the car and look at the street view, actually looking for cameras around the funeral home.

The sky was clear and the trees were white green, but this was the kind of place where even the blazing sun seemed eerie and far too quiet.

The taxi drove away slowly. Tu Lanxun looked over and saw the driver's back was stiff. He should not have woken up yet, but the eerie feeling of being watched attached to her again. N was there.

"Come in." A gentle voice sounded in her ears. Tu Lanxun shuddered and mechanically walked towards the main entrance of the funeral home. There were many cars parked here, but not many people walking outside, so no one noticed her.

The person who greeted guests at the door came over and asked, "Madam, which branch office are you going to?"

Tu Lanxun hesitated to speak as an invisible force gripped her vocal cords. The receptionist thought she was a grief-stricken family member, so he gave her a familiar but sympathetic look, stepped aside slightly, and asked her to go to the main aisle on the right.

After all, no matter which branch hall you go to to pay your respects, you have to go through the right aisle, and the door of the left aisle is closed, so you don’t know what is behind it.

"Go forward and don't look around." N's voice sounded, but only she could hear it, which made the already solemn atmosphere even colder.

Tu Lanxun passed through one mourning hall after another. The faint scent of wreaths and burning incense lingered in the air, and the staff's chanting and the family members' sobs were heard in the ears.

There were more people in this area, and she actually wanted to randomly grab the arm of a relative of the deceased and ask for help. This thought followed her all the way, but N would not allow it.

If she didn't listen to him, he would just have sex with her like he controlled the taxi driver.

In fact, Tu Lanxun was actually a little curious. Why didn't N just manipulate her directly? Was it to test her mental strength?

As if seeing through Tu Lanxun's previous thought, N's cold laugh reached his ears. "If you make a sound that shouldn't be made, I can show you what a truly disturbed deceased person looks like. They're harder to talk to than me."

Behind the partition wall of each mourning hall, a corner of a white platform was exposed. Tu Lanxun realized that the body in the glass coffin was placed on it.

This was a funeral home, and she passed not only many relatives and friends of the deceased, but also many corpses.

Tu Lanxun shuddered and looked around. Was there a ghost in the air that she couldn't see? Something that looked like a corpse in a glass coffin, standing by the windowsill, or perhaps she would pass through it. Would they look at her coldly?

"The group of people to your right." N's voice was somewhat seductive. Tu Lanxun looked over and saw a gathering of people in plain clothes, their backs to her. "There's one among them, a ghost, but the people next to him can't see it."

The urge to vomit surged in his throat, and Tu Lanxun turned his head away, but his sight was involuntarily drawn there. His subconscious mind couldn't help but want to find out who was the ghost hiding in the crowd.

"I forgot to mention that you can't see it either." N said indifferently. Tu Lanxun felt a surge of anger in his heart, but it was extinguished in an instant by his next words, "If you want, I can help you see it."

Tu Lanxun obediently followed N's instructions and continued forward, bypassing the mourning hall area. After turning a corner, he saw several trucks carrying corpses. There was a fork in the road next to it, where family members supporting each other walked reluctantly towards a lounge or something like that.

She immediately realized that the funeral home was arranged in a circular pattern, connected according to the customer's traffic flow, and had a one-stop service from cremation waiting to boxing. So if she didn't take the fork in the road, she would be heading towards the crematorium.

The right side of the welcome area where you first enter is the starting point of the circle, and the left side with the closed door...

The answer is obvious: it is the freezer where the bodies are stored, which is also the destination of her trip.

Only staff members and their family members can enter there, but this should not be a problem for N.

"Can I not go in?" Tu Lanxun stood behind the stainless steel door on the straight road. The door had no threshold, and she felt a static electricity in her heart. She asked in her mind, the horror of the countless frozen corpses inside overwhelmed her fear of N. "We're already here. If you want to deliver something, just go in by yourself."

So far, the cameras have shown that Tu Lanxun only took a taxi to the funeral home and took a quick look inside, without violating any laws or regulations. However, it is not certain that he entered the corpse storage area alone.

The sudden appearance of the skull would surely attract attention, and she didn't want to be accused of stealing a corpse.

N didn't answer. The locked stainless steel door opened a crack, revealing darkness inside. A gust of cold air blew out, carrying with it the smell of Tu Lanxun, which was physically repugnant to her. She felt like vomiting again.

The meaning is very clear, go in.

Tu Lanxun tested the door with the back of her hand and flinched at the cold, goose bumps covering her skin. A translucent figure suddenly appeared and stood behind her. N's expression was extremely cold. He moved like a gentleman, holding the door open for her, his gaze slicing at her neck like a knife.

Behind the door was a long and narrow corridor, just wide enough for a cart. At the end of the corridor was a cold electric light, a few degrees dimmer than outside.

Tu Lanxun's footsteps echoed in the space. The translucent N walked behind her without making any sound. Like a predator in nature, he stalked behind his prey. His presence was so low that it was disturbing.

After turning the corner in the corridor, the first thing you pass is a metal sign with the letter "D" engraved on it. Behind the same metal door is a transparent plastic curtain, which is old and yellowed.

Area C is a long way off, and Area B is at the end of the straight line, with two doors identical to the previous ones. The route ends at the corner partition, so where is Area A?

Tu Lanxun took a deep breath and found that there was a corner connected to a narrow corridor. There was no light there. There was a dark door hidden in the recessed shadows, and there was a metal plate nailed next to it, which should be A.

The cell phone flashlight seemed unable to dispel the darkness here, and could only illuminate a small area in front. The gate of Area A overlooked Tu Lanxun. She felt that many gazes of the dead were shot out from that black hole, and they stared at her, the uninvited guest, without emotion.

And door A is also different from door BCD. It is wider and may be beige, but the paint is peeling off, revealing the rust-brown skin underneath, especially the part close to the height of a human elbow, as if it has been opened many times over the years.

Why is a place that has been opened many times hidden in such a tortuous and inconvenient corner?

There was a line of small words under the house number of A. Tu Lanxun pointed the flashlight there and moved closer. It said: Used for special cases of the agency and storage of unidentified corpses.

She shrank back as if she had been electrocuted. This line of words meant that Area A had the most bodies and had been stored there the longest. Inside were people who had died inexplicably or were left homeless.

"Push the door through your sleeves so as not to leave fingerprints." N suddenly spoke, and she remembered that he was still standing next to her.

Tu Lanxun pulled her sleeve over her palm, and the moment she pressed it, the door opened under her force. Only the emergency light was on inside, and the dark green light reflected on the gray metal grid on the four walls made it look even more eerie.

N's virtual body was standing in front of the light switch. She didn't have the courage to go over and turn on the light, so she had to bite the bullet and shine the flashlight over one by one.

What is frustrating is that, perhaps for ease of management, many metal lattice doors have identity cards affixed to them, with names or numbers, storage dates, and names of individual cases and events written on them.

The most common cases are disappearances, but there are also unsolved cases such as homicides. The crime rate has increased significantly after the mysterious invasion, Tu Lanxun thought, so they stored some hopeless bodies here.

The cabinet No. 12 she was looking for was in the corner, at waist height. She had read the identity card. The case of cabinet No. 12 was of course a homicide. The date of entry was in a distant year when Tu Lanxun was still a minor, and this person died in another corner of the city.

The body in the cabinet had no name, which was vaguely guessed, because in the next step, N forced Tu Lanxun to open freezer No. 12, "There are still many empty cabinets here." He threatened.

She even used her sleeves to cushion her hands, and the moment she touched the handle, she shuddered. The metal was icy cold, like touching the skin of a dead person.

When the door was opened, the first thing I saw was a pair of bare soles of feet. They had lost water due to years of storage, and their color had become darker and wrinkled. Inside was the vertical curve of the thighs and chest and abdomen. The body was not wearing any clothes.

An odor wafted out from inside, it was hard to tell whether it was a stench or a freezer smell. Tu Lanxun's stomach felt like it had been punched. She could no longer bear it, so she bent down and stepped aside, retching with tears all over her face.

She wanted to cover her nose, but her hands and sleeves had just been pulled across the morgue, so she couldn't even wipe her tears.

N was both patient and cruel. His patience lay in his silence, not urging Tu Lanxun to hurry her along, silently waiting for her to process her emotions.

The cruel part was that as soon as she straightened her waist, he said, "Go on, pull out the whole body."

Tu Lanxun walked over numbly. The last thought that supported her was that if she fainted, she would fall on the morgue. She pulled out the sliding board under the body and lowered the bracket. The feet, calves, thighs and hips appeared in front of her with the sound of rollers.

N stood beside her, lowering his peach blossom eyes. His face, especially the corners of his mouth, were tense, and he bit his cheeks lightly. She couldn't tell what emotion he was feeling, but a cold and brutal feeling filled the air, as if the corpse had a grudge against him.

He had the black backpack in his hand, and as if he didn't want to hold it for another half a second, he stuffed it into Tu Lanxun's hand and asked her to continue pulling the drawer.

The corpse was a male, thin in build, perhaps shriveled due to years of storage. His skin was like wrinkled melon rind, with a texture similar to light-colored kraft paper. Tu Lanxun, whose eyes had adapted to the darkness, could see clearly, and the full appearance of the male corpse gradually emerged.

The next second, she couldn't help but let out a low cry, but the sound got stuck in her throat before it came out.

The neck of the male corpse was empty, with only a circular cross-section. The skin and flesh were slightly curled up, revealing a layer of dried brown fat, a broken neck bone, and a few drooping blood vessels.

She remembered why the information card didn't have her name on it.

Because the police didn't find his head.

His head was held in Tu Lanxun's hands.