Starting with dissecting ghost stories

The air in the garage was stuffy and dry, with a pungent smell of formaldehyde and a bit of stale engine oil irritating the nostrils.

Shen Xing locked the roller shutter door and turned on the exhaust fan in the corner.

This is his temporary warehouse, where he keeps some of his personal belongings. He hasn't found a better place yet to fully furnish his "operation room".

Instead of immediately placing the painting on the dissection table, he first pulled out a black nylon bag from the bottom of the tool cabinet.

Unzip it up, and inside is a Sony DCR series DV camcorder.

This was a secondhand treasure he bought from a wealthy woman. In 2004, when even MMS was not yet widespread, this device with night vision was enough to record most of the details that the naked eye might miss.

Shen Xing skillfully set up the tripod, adjusted the angle, aimed the lens at the stainless steel dissection table, turned on the flip screen, and the red recording indicator light lit up silently.

Record keeping is a necessary part of forensic identification, and it's a habit that Shen Xing has always cultivated.

An autopsy is a destructive process. You cut through the skin, saw through the bones, and remove organs for slicing. Once you do that, it's irreversible.

Once you make that cut, the original state of the corpse is no longer there.

The painting that produced the strange phenomenon is a unique piece. He is unlikely to find another vendor to sell it to him in the short term. This opportunity may only come once, so it is necessary to record it.

After doing all this, he put on latex gloves. The feeling of the rubber clinging to his skin instantly put him into work mode.

The disassembly process requires no ceremony.

Shen Xing didn't even use any precision tools; he simply grabbed a flathead screwdriver and violently but precisely pried open the rusty fixing nails on the back panel.

With a few teeth-grinding tearing sounds, the wooden frame, glass, and back panel were tossed into a stainless steel tray to the side, sorted out.

In less than two minutes, only that thin sheet of coated paper remained on the cold dissection table.

Shen Xing glanced at the DV screen.

On the screen, the corpse in the painting remained seated, expressionless, its empty eye sockets staring straight at the camera.

Shen Xing picked up the scalpel and held it firmly.

For such abnormal situations where the cause cannot be found, the simplest method without professional testing equipment is to directly disassemble it by force.

The sharp tip of the knife pierced the paper, and the blade made a rustling sound as it sliced ​​across the dry paper.

It feels dry and rough, no different from cutting paper in an elementary school art class.

With a swift and decisive motion, Shen Xing removed the blank space at the edge of the painting. Then, following the composition, he removed all the students who were watching the corpse, including Professor Dulp.

Soon, all that remained on the control panel was the irregularly shaped paper cutout, no bigger than a palm, located in the center of the image—the corpse with its left arm severed.

Shen Xing stopped cutting and placed the knife to observe.

The cut-off background and figure paper pieces lay quietly, showing no signs of alteration.

Does it have nothing to do with the painting itself?

Shen Xing's gaze fell on the corpse's left arm.

In the original artwork, the superficial flexor digitorum muscle that was lifted by the hemostat is bright red.

At this moment, in Shen Xing's eyes, that red color seemed even more vivid than before, even carrying a sense of swelling as if it were congested with blood.

Is this the place?

Shen Xing recalled the original appearance of the scene, lost in thought.

He put down the scalpel and replaced it with a curved hemostat from the tool tray.

Shen Xing gripped the handle of the pliers, his fingers skillfully hooking into the rings, mimicking Dr. Dulpe's movements in the painting, and slowly extended the tips of the pliers toward the paper.

The moment the metal tip touched that red muscle, a strange change occurred.

There was no sense of impact from a hard object as I had expected, nor the friction of paper.

The sensation Shen Xing felt through the hemostat was soft, with a disgustingly sticky and elastic feel.

It's like sticking pliers into a piece of raw meat that has just lost its vitality.

Shen Xing's eyes remained unchanged as he steadily applied force with his wrist, and the lock snapped shut with a "click".

提。

pull.

There was no sound of paper tearing; instead, there was a soft, wet "gurgling" sound.

That's the sound that comes from the separation of the mucous membrane from the tissue.

The surface of the drawing paper bulged and stretched like skin, and then, a bright red, wet object, like a red worm, was forcibly pulled out of the two-dimensional picture.

As the tissue was removed from the body, a few drops of viscous, dark red liquid dripped down due to gravity, hitting the dissection table and splashing out tiny blood flowers.

Shen Xing carefully examined the muscle on the hemostat, then slightly tilted his head to look at the DV screen next to him.

In reality, his pliers held a bloody strip of meat.

But on the flip screen of the DV camera, that spot was a mess.

There was no flesh and blood, but a wildly pulsating pink mosaic, with red, white and black noise flashing wildly around it, making the whole picture look like a broken television with poor contact.

It's visible to the naked eye, but electronic devices can't capture it?

This was the first time Shen Xing had encountered such a situation...

He waved the pliers in front of the camera, and the mosaic on the screen moved accordingly, distorting even the background image wherever it passed.

It has been confirmed to have strong interference with electronic devices... Is it radiation?

He took a piece of paper and covered the lens of the DV camera. The screen went dark instantly. At this moment, Shen Xing squeezed the muscle closer to the camera, but no snow or noise appeared on the pitch-black screen.

Based on a rough assessment, it is not radiation.

He took a transparent plastic petri dish from the side and loosened the hemostat.

The moment the meat strip was placed in the petri dish, it immediately exhibited amazing activity.

It didn't look like a piece of dead flesh detached from its body; rather, it resembled a gecko's tail that had been severed but was still full of vitality, frantically rolling and contracting on the smooth bottom of a plastic dish, with white fascia textures clearly visible on it.

If a nearsighted person saw this, they would probably think it contained a maggot.

Shen Xing put the lid on.

"Thump! Thump!"

The thing, no bigger than a thumb, arched its body and sprang up like a cricket gathering its strength, repeatedly striking the plastic lid with a crisp sound.

Shen Xing used hemostats to hold the cap in place, while simultaneously feeling its resistance.

Its strength was not much different from that of a cricket.

After a while, the thing inside stopped ramming and began to wriggle in a certain direction.

Shen Xing put down the hemostat, reached out, and spun the petri dish around.

Soon, Shen Xing discovered a pattern.

No matter how he turned it, the piece of meat would quickly adjust its posture, like a compass attracted by a magnetic pole, pointing firmly in a certain direction.

Shen Xing was very familiar with the roads in this area. After briefly sketching a map in his mind and adding his previous guesses, he deduced a direction.

That's Yucai Middle School.

Having left that environment, it showed a strong desire to return, but not to the painting itself.

The problem isn't with the painting, but with the wall in the school clinic or something else.

To prevent the thing from opening the lid, Shen Xing took out a roll of black electrical tape from the toolbox and skillfully wrapped a tight cross seal around the petri dish.

Through the transparent plastic cover, you can see that pink thing tirelessly moving in the same direction, bumping into the wall, and then continuing to move.

Shen Xing turned off the DV camera and stuffed it into his handbag.

He was also eager to perform the surgery and investigate, but there were more important things to verify at the moment.

He stuffed the sealed petri dish into his briefcase.

Then, he pulled open the garage door, locked it, and pushed the dilapidated bicycle into the night.

The evening breeze was a bit chilly.

Shen Xing did not go to the main gate of the school, but instead went around to an alley behind the school.

This place is usually piled with household garbage and only has a few dim streetlights, but it is the closest place to the school clinic in a straight line, less than fifty meters away.

He parked his car and opened his briefcase.

In the dim light of the streetlamp, he could clearly see that the piece of meat in the petri dish had completely "gone mad".

It was no longer a simple impact, but rather it flattened its entire body, pressed it tightly against the side of the dish pointing towards the school clinic, and rubbed it frantically.

Its originally pink surface turned dark purple due to extreme blood congestion, as if it would pierce through the plastic shell like a bullet and go straight through the wall if Shen Xing let go.

The closer the distance, the stronger the reaction.

Shen Xing closed the bag.

It can be extracted using physical means.

It has both biological activity and physical substance.

It interferes with the filming equipment.

It has a strong homing instinct, which originates in the school clinic.

Bringing it back to the school clinic now is not a wise move, as there are security guards patrolling the school at night and cameras in the corridors.

Having determined its characteristics, Shen Xing had an even bolder plan.

If one painting can grow a piece of flesh, what about ten paintings?

It would be such a waste if we dissected this tiny flexor digitorum superficialis muscle, smaller than a AAA battery, and then there was no further progress...

If that wall is an "incubator", how can it be used to its fullest potential to obtain more "raw materials" that can be used for experiments?

Wouldn't that allow me to obtain a continuous stream of research materials?

Shen Xing stuffed the plastic dish back into his backpack, hopped on his bicycle, turned it around, and had already drawn up a long shopping list in his mind.

He needs to go to the calligraphy and painting market on his way to work tomorrow.

He wants to cover that wall with paintings and try different ones as a control group to see what the key factors are influencing the formation of this muscle.

As for now, he has to go home first.

Since the house is farther from the school than the garage, the muscle would theoretically be safer to keep at home.

I also need to make sure my younger sister, Shen Yuan, has eaten properly.

After all, aside from figuring out the reason for his body's abnormality and studying this inexplicable muscle, his main task at present is to fulfill one of his adoptive father's last wishes.

Be a good older brother and raise your younger sister to adulthood.