As we entered the warehouse, a heavy scent of construction materials hit us; the space was packed with stacks of ceramic tiles. Ren Xing’s colleague led the way while Ren Xing escorted the doctor inside. Before long, a staircase leading downward appeared—it turned out the warehouse held a hidden basement.
At the bottom of the stairs was the clinic from the oil painting. A man was lying on the operating table, screaming at the top of his lungs. "Dammit! My stomach’s cut open and the doctor ran off! The anesthesia is wearing off!"
It was a pathetic scene, but I couldn't help but let out a laugh.
Ren Xing untied the old man and ordered him to stitch the man’s belly back up. The patient sobbed as the procedure began. "I couldn't pay back the debt, and they were going to chop off my hands. You police won't let me sell a kidney... how am I supposed to live?"
Ren Xing pulled up a chair and watched the old man sew with a calm expression. "You think you can live a good life after selling a kidney? You won't even be able to enjoy the 'pleasures' of life anymore."
The man cried even harder.
Ren Xing ignored him and beckoned to the colleague who had been staking out the place. "Xiao Xu, you’ve got a new task. Follow this guy and go bust the loan sharks."
"Chief, organ trafficking is a whole industry. We finally caught someone; are we just going to leave it at that?"
"Yeah, it might even involve smuggling, so you can't handle it alone. Let the higher-ups make other arrangements."
I realized Ren Xing was actually quite the figure; this junior officer was completely obedient to him.
Once the old man finished stitching the belly, Ren Xing had the patient sent away. Then, with a cold chuckle, he said, "Start smashing."
The old man huddled in a corner, trembling as he watched the officer pull out a sledgehammer. "What are you doing?! What are you doing?!"
"You’re the one who should be answering that. Why have you been standing in front of that wall?" Ren Xing finished speaking and signaled Lu Daoshi to pull him away. The old man tried to bolt, but he was no match for Lu Daoshi. Ren Xing and his men tore down the newly posted calendar pages, revealing fresh cement behind them. When they began swinging the hammer at the wall, the old man stopped struggling. His face turned ashen, his eyes bulging as he stared at the hollow space behind the bricks.
Inside was a solid black plastic bag. A stench of rot wafted out, and I immediately felt the urge to vomit. Lu Daoshi gave me a pat. "Be strong."
This wasn't a matter of being strong or not! I had smelled things more disgusting than this, but...
I just couldn't help it.
By the time I ran outside, finished throwing up, and returned, they had already dragged the plastic bag out. Ren Xing glanced at me; I signaled that I was done and okay, so he used a knife to cleanly slice open the front of the bag.
The stench of a corpse hit us full force, and I couldn't help but take a few steps back.
Ren Xing, wearing gloves, pulled the bag open. Inside, a corpse lay curled in a fetal position.
Ren Xing turned and glared at the old man.
The old man shook violently. "It wasn't me, it wasn't me... This girl was already half-dead when she got here... Does she look like someone who's only been dead for a few days?!" By the end, he was practically screaming in agitation.
"Wait for the forensic team," Ren Xing said, checking his watch. "They'll be here soon."
We all knew the old man might not be lying. Chun Xiao’s corpse was incredibly dry—or rather, shriveled. Her skin was wrinkled, a sickening shade of white.
All her blood had been drained.
"You say you didn't do it," Ren Xing said, looking at the old man again.
"I really didn't!" The old man seized the chance to swear to the heavens. "The moment that girl found me, she was already at death's door! I was too scared, so I hid her!"
"Then why does she have surgical sutures on her abdomen?" Ren Xing pushed the curled-up Chun Xiao over to lay her flat. I quickly looked at the ceiling so I wouldn't see anything. I heard Lu Daoshi let out a cold snort, his deep, thirty-something-year-old voice sounding menacing. "Tell the truth and you might get a few years off. Otherwise, we'll drag you out and put a bullet in you right now!"
Lu Daoshi was truly intimidating; with a face like his, he looked like he belonged in the triad. The old man nearly wet himself in terror. "I'll talk, I'll talk... When this girl came to me, she was hemorrhaging. I thought she was having a miscarriage, so I... I wanted to help her induce it, but nothing would come out. I was afraid she'd die if it went on, so I had to perform a hysterectomy... But when I opened her belly, there was no uterus at all. Just a pool of bloody water. It was strange; it didn't look like it had been surgically removed. The blood vessels were all mangled. Then I looked further up, and her internal organs were all... melting! There was no way to save her!"
"And no way to harvest them for sale—so you bricked her into the wall."
The old man puckered his lips. "...Sigh, if I'd known, I wouldn't have taken her business. What kind of person was I trying to save..."
At that moment, Chun Xiao’s corpse on the floor suddenly gave a violent jerk. I shrieked and jumped onto a chair, crouching there. Everyone else was startled, taking a step back. Under the gaze of seven or eight pairs of eyes, the corpse went still again. Then, they all looked at me like I was a lunatic.
"Aren't you guys scared? She just moved!"
"It was her belly that moved." Ren Xing knelt down and pressed on the sutures on Chun Xiao’s abdomen. It was clear he felt something hard. Ren Xing asked the old man, "You didn't leave your surgical tools inside her, did you?"
The words had barely left his mouth when his face froze, and he quickly yanked his hand back. I noticed Chun Xiao’s belly was writhing, as if responding to his touch.
"It's... it's alive..." The old man backed away several steps and scrambled onto the chair to huddle next to me.
Lu Daoshi gasped. "She was pregnant..."
The old man spat. "Her organs were all corroded away, she didn't even have a uterus—how could she be pregnant? Whose seed would it be? Yours?"
Ren Xing and I exchanged a look.
We both knew whose seed it was; we just didn't know what kind of thing it would turn out to be.
Ren Xing told us all to get back, then drew his pistol and fired several shots into Chun Xiao’s bulging abdomen. His aim was excellent, the bullets clustering in the center. Chun Xiao’s shriveled, skin-and-bone corpse jerked and thrashed under the gunfire until it was nearly torn in two.
After finishing, Ren Xing bowed his head in a three-second silent tribute to Chun Xiao, then calmly signaled to us. "Let's go." But I could hear a profound exhaustion in his voice.
From the very beginning, Ren Xing had wanted to save this girl. But now, he couldn't even leave her body intact. Because the thing in her belly couldn't be allowed to remain.
I patted his shoulder as I walked past him. He didn't acknowledge me, instead crouching down with Xiao Xu to try and stuff Chun Xiao’s remains back into the black plastic bag.
Humans are always both terrified of and curious about death, so in that moment, I couldn't control myself—I looked back.
And so, I saw it with my own eyes.
At Chun Xiao’s severed waist, amidst the bloodless, pale pink tissue, was a clump of white silk—a spherical object like a spider's nest. It was riddled with smoking bullet holes. Now, those holes were expanding like nauseating mouths, and countless tiny, transparent white spiders poured out of the corpse, scurrying toward the corners of the walls. Ren Xing, being closest to the body, flinched, then cursed loudly—the first time I’d ever heard him use such language. "Stomp them! Quick!"
The few of us grown men started franticly hunting spiders in that dim clinic. Lu Daoshi took off his jacket and swatted them in large patches, but the spiders were so small and light that his swinging coat just sent a cloud of them flying into the air. I realized they had wings; because they were newborns, they were wet and crumpled, but they quickly filled with fluid and unfurled. In that regard, they weren't very spider-like. It was just the way they scurried on three pairs of legs that looked exactly like spiders.
About ten minutes later, the little white spiders had all vanished into the cracks. Ren Xing sat down on the spot, dejected. I patted his shoulder. "No one expected them to be so small. I thought it would be one big monster, too."
"So many of them got out. Who knows what they'll do." Ren Xing irritably scratched his head with the muzzle of his gun. "If they cause the same organ-melting disease Chun Xiao had..."
"What happened to your hand?"
Ren Xing was clutching the tip of his right index finger. His glove had come off at some point.
"Nothing. I got nipped." He carelessly put it in his mouth to suck it, then spat out the blood. The wound was indeed tiny, no bigger than a pinprick, so I didn't worry about it further.
Later, Ren Xing called in a specialized pest control team. They searched the area for an hour, eliminated a few more small spiders, and discovered that the creatures preferred damp, dark places. Ren Xing looked worriedly at the network of small rivers nearby.
"If something really happens..."
"It won't be your fault. No one could have seen this coming."
Ren Xing rubbed his forehead. "I'm tired. Let's go home."
He said "we," which I found a bit odd. But he dragged me away directly, his face pale. "I have something to say to you. It's not convenient here."
Not convenient? There was no one here but the police and my senior; what wasn't convenient?! Officer Ren, don't scare me!
He didn't say a word in the car, glancing at the rearview mirror every now and then with a guarded expression. Later, at his apartment, as Ren Xing was using his key to open the door, I couldn't take it anymore. "What is going on? What did you find?"
Ren Xing glanced at me, closed the door, and suddenly pinned me against it.
Damn! He smelled like sour sweat!
Ren Xing let out a low chuckle. "Hey, the way the world is going, it looks like things are about to get messy. Maybe tomorrow you won't even see me again."
"What nonsense are you talking..."
"Be with me. I want to sleep with you."
Ren Xing leaned in to kiss me. In my panic, I shoved my fingers into his nostrils and pushed him away with all my might. "What the hell are you saying?! My roommate will 'delete' you in a heartbeat, you believe that?"
"I believe it. That's why I'm doing it tonight. You're so unlucky, and you're always coming here to cry to me. I've wanted to pin you down like this and... well, you know."
Ren Xing said these shameless things with his usual nonchalance, but combined with his heavy breathing in the dark, it sounded terrifyingly real. I realized something was definitely wrong with him. Usually, he just had a foul mouth and liked to tease people, but he always had a sense of propriety. Now, right after Chun Xiao died and while he was so depressed, he was actually thinking about sex! Wait... he said he got bitten earlier!
So, is this rapist actually one of Old Chu's newborn sons?!
That's a total mess of the family tree!
I was your dad's college classmate, you know?!
I'm your uncle! Your literal uncle!
This damn kid!
***
