268 The Cemetery and the Hospital (1/2)

When the steam metro arrived at the southern bank of the Tussock River, Klein rented a carriage and headed to the Aston Cemetery on the outskirts of the South Borough, which was managed by the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery.

Under the darkness of dusk, the trees around the cemetery seemed to bare their fangs and brandish their claws, blocking out the light like monsters lurking in the darkness.

After the carriage driver took the 4 soli Klein paid, he looked at the cemetery and muttered, ”Do you need me to wait here for you?”

”No, there's no need. I'm here to visit a friend.” Klein came up with an excuse, and he immediately noticed the change in the driver's face.

This is a cemetery… to visit a friend with the sky already dark… The driver could hear his own heart thumping.

Klein jolted to his senses, smiled, and added, ”He's the tomb keeper here.”

The carriage driver was immediately relieved, but he didn't dare stay. He quickly drove the horses and left.

Klein circled the graveyard until the night truly set in.

After dark, the smoke and dust emissions decreased by a lot. In addition to the biting cold wind, the fog in the air thinned a lot. Although few stars could be seen, the crimson moon made a furtive appearance, covering the ground with a veil-like glow.

Klein tapped his chest four times clockwise, drawing out the crimson moon. Then, he put on his gloves, pushed himself over the iron fence, and entered the cemetery.

He looked around with a high degree of caution, randomly found a secluded corner, took out Azik's copper whistle, and held it in his hand.

Not far in front of him was a tombstone. The photograph on it was dirty, and the epitaph appeared extremely blurry in the moonlight. Klein carefully read it for a few seconds before figuring out what they were.

”Friend, if you are passing by, help me up. Thanks!”

A very humorous gentleman… I choose you! Klein stopped, leaned back against the trees that sheltered the grave from the sun and rain, and waited patiently in the cold, chilly night.

He threw Azik's copper whistle up before catching it firmly, repeating it several times to pass the time until twenty minutes later.

No signs of the dead coming back to life… Klein clicked his pocket watch shut, surveyed his surroundings, and confirmed the results.

I'll come back here in two days to see if there are any additional changes. If there are none, it means that Mr. Azik's copper whistle won't be able to affect corpses that have been laid to rest through a priest's ritual. Klein silently muttered to himself, and he put the ancient and exquisite copper whistle back into his pocket.

There were three kinds of burials in the Loen Kingdom. The first type had coffins and corpses, suitable for the middle and upper classes living in abundance. The second type was the ones without corpses, so a cremation was held. The remaining ashes were placed in urns. This was the choice of the lower middle class and technical workers who could pay for the cremation but found coffins to be too wasteful. But there were also times when religious and governmental factors had an impact, such as the believers of the Eternal Blazing Sun. The majority of them underwent cremation, and the poor people only needed to pay a small fee for the cremation due to the help they received from the government.

The third only belonged to the poor. They couldn't afford coffins, and they didn't wish for cremation, so they just wrapped the corpses up and buried them.

But Klein had already determined from the tombstones and tombs that the target of his experiment was the kind which involved a coffin and a corpse.

If Azik's copper whistle really can cause the dead to rise, even if the target had rotted into a pile of bones, there shouldn't be a complete lack of reaction. Even if the lid of the coffin cannot be opened, it should've at least created a dull thud.

As he walked towards the fence, Klein suddenly thought of a non-rigorous part of the experiment.

Yes, I need to categorize them. The corpses here have been buried for quite a while. I should find a target that was recently buried.

Only by doing so will I be able to arrive at the most accurate conclusion.

After that, Klein basically played a game of cat-and-mouse with the cemetery guardians before finding a grave that had completed a burial ceremony during the day.

This time, he waited for half an hour, but he still didn't find anything abnormal.

Phew, I can basically determine that Mr. Azik's copper whistle can't affect a corpse that has undergone a ritual that puts the soul to rest. That's quite weak, no—that's not right. This copper whistle isn't meant to cause the dead to come alive. It's used to summon messengers, so affecting a corpse is a negative effect! Klein tightened his double-breasted coat and walked toward the iron fence.

He planned on heading home to have a change of clothes before trying out his second experiment.

The target of the second experiment group were the recently deceased corpses that haven't been laid to rest via a ritual.

Such targets often existed in a hospital's morgue!

Climbing over the fence, Klein made his way back to the South Borough on foot in the dreary, dark night. The surroundings were deathly still and quiet. Only the evergreen, dust covered trees lightly swayed.

It reminded him of the night he had been resurrected from the dead. Back then, he too had to walk from the cemetery to the city.

Sigh… Klein sighed and suddenly began to run, as if trying to get rid of the melancholy that filled him.

More than half an hour later, he rented a carriage in South Borough and headed for the nearest steam metro station.

There was still about an hour before the metro stopped running, and this could save him quite a bit of money.

…

In the wee hours of the morning, Klein changed into a grayish-blue worker's uniform and wore a cap as he made his way to St. Estin's Hospital in the Backlund Bridge area.

This was a charity hospital belonging to the Church of the God of Steam and Machinery.

Many of the poor died here due to illness, and since there was nowhere for them to place their bodies, they had to be kept in the hospital morgue. There, the corpses awaited cremation from the government or be donated to the medical schools. This phenomenon was very common in summer, but there weren't many in the autumn or winter after it cooled down.

However, in an era without air-conditioning or equipment to keep the temperature cool, the hospital's morgue couldn't keep the corpses for too long. Donated bodies would be quickly embalmed and bodies to be buried the next day would be cleaned up. Of course, these were the rules enforced in summer. In autumn and winter, the rules were relatively relaxed; therefore, there were still many corpses left overnight in the morgue during this period.

The morgue at St. Estin was underground. It was relatively cool, even during the summer, and was biting cold during autumn and winter.