Chapter 153: The Waking Corpse (1/2)

Dali noticed that we were both looking in the same direction at the same time, so he turned around immediately before I could stop him. When he saw the sitting corpse, he screamed and screamed in fright.

“Dude! Dude! That corpse is alive!”

“Calm down, Dali!” I told him. “It’s just a normal post-mortem spasm.”

Having said that, seeing a corpse slowly sitting up in a dark funeral home was an experience that would petrify anyone. I noticed that even Xiaotao looked really pale.

I explained to them that about six hours after death, the muscles would stiffen and that would bend the spine. At least that was the basic theory behind this phenomenon anyway. In truth, post-mortem spasms like that were relatively rare, and would only occur when the deceased was young and had relatively strong muscle fibers. In this case, the ‘waking corpse’ we saw just now met the criteria perfectly.

In his panic, Dali accidentally pulled off the white sheet that covered one of the corpses. I looked at the man’s face and realized that it was identical to the one I saw in the picture of Cao Da, the boss of the Black Panther’s gang!

Now that I’d found the body, I went ahead and started the autopsy. The first thing I did was confirm the time of death. Judging from the pupil dilation, the rigor mortis, and the livor mortis, the time of death was about four days ago. I then was about to perform Organ Echolocation when Dali interrupted me.

“Dude,” he said, “can’t you make that guy lie back down before you go to work? It’s really creeping me out knowing that a dead body is sitting straight up and staring at us with his dead eyes…”

“You’re so annoying!” I snapped.

I slammed my fist against the dead body’s back, then there was a loud crack and the body slumped back down on the bed.

“D-Did you just break his spine?” stuttered Dali.

“The muscles are completely stiff by now,” I explained, “and there are no hot towels here, so this is all I can do to make it lie back down. Morticians would’ve used the same method as well. In fact, they’d be even rougher than me!”

I then came back to Cao Da’s body and continued with the autopsy. After Organ Echolocation, I found that his heart, lungs, and liver were extensively damaged. I took off his clothes and found no less than a dozen stab wounds on the chest, although the blood had already been wiped off. I put on latex gloves and began to examine the stab wounds more closely.

“These are open wounds,” I said. “The murder weapon was probably a serrated knife. Judging from the shape of the wounds, the murderer stabbed the victim in close range, and was probably right-handed. It seemed that the murderer wasn’t very skilled in wielding knives.”

“But the murderer stabbed him so many times!” Dali commented. “I call that pretty skillful!”

“The surface of the wounds aren’t clean and flat,” I explained, pointing at the wounds near the victim’s heart. “This means that the knife was tilted as it plunged into the victim’s body and when it was pulled out. A professional would’ve stabbed the victim straight on, creating a clean wound that should resemble the mouth of a fish. I’m pretty sure the murderer is an amateur.”

“In that case,” said Xiaotao, “the murderer probably had a deep hatred for the victim!”

I nodded.

“The victim was the boss of an underworld gang,” I said. “He must’ve made more than a handful of enemies in his life. It’s not surprising that someone would hold a grudge against him.”

I then took off the victim’s pants, and immediately the victim’s penis bounced up like a small wooden stick. Xiaotao grimaced and turned away immediately. I flicked it with a finger and exclaimed, “What a surprise!”

“You idiot!” snapped Xiaotao. “You know, it’s like you transform into a totally different person whenever there are dead bodies around.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I just thought that the atmosphere was too depressing. I wanted to liven up the mood, that’s all.”

“Liven up the mood?” Xiaotao and Dali shouted simultaneously.

“Anyway,” Xiaotao continued shyly. “Why is that thing in that state?”

“Blood stops flowing immediately after death,” I explained, “so if there was an erection at the moment of death, it will remain so after death.”

“You mean he was having sex when he died?” asked Dali.

“Not necessarily,” I shook my head. “When a man is suffocated, it is not uncommon that he would have an erection.”

“But he was clearly stabbed to death!” argued Dali.

“The stabbing is only the direct cause of death,” I explained. “The real cause of death still depends on the position of the fatal stab and which organs stopped functioning first. If the fatal stab was in the lungs, the blood could block the trachea and cause the victim to choke to death.”

I then asked Dali to help me bend the knees and arms of the victim while I constantly listened to the movements of the joints to determine the posture of the victim when he died. As we did so, the victim’s penis kept swaying to and fro in front of us. It was a pretty distracting sight.

“Will it ejaculate, dude?” Dali asked with concern.

I listened intently to the victim’s joints and bones and answered, “Yes, be careful!”