Chapter 46: Research

Ling Mo wasn’t familiar with medicine or biology. The method he used to examine the body was simple and rough: dissection!

Ling Mo didn’t want to make his shelter dirty and decided to make Ye Lian drag the zombie into a private room inside the teahouse. Xia Na then made the move and slitted a deep, large opening.

Although Xia Na wasn’t under Ling Mo’s control, she was still one of Ling Mo’s “zombie puppets” and she could listen to simple instructions. Not to mention that she was still sane to some degree, she could understand his words more or less and thus, she could easily cut open the zombie’s body for Ling Mo.

Xia Na demonstrated her zombie-like personality in a situation like this. Her expressions were cold and calm without any fluctuations of emotions as if she wasn’t cutting open a human body.

When the heavy smell of blood spread in the air, her eyes even flashed red.

Luckily, her eating habits were the same as mutated zombies. She wasn’t interested in blood and internal organs but merely because her instincts were aroused.

After Xia Na finished cutting the body, she looked at Ling Mo blankly, obviously confused about what he wanted to do. Even if she had questions, she was unable to form proper sentences with her confused thoughts, let alone speak. She stood on the side quietly and studied Ling Mo’s actions closely.

Ling Mo didn’t want Ye Lian to do the dirty work as he took out his dagger and made the wound even larger. He even took out a torch in order to see clearly. Usually, he would avoid using lighting equipment that could attract zombies, but all the zombies around here were dead and thick curtains covered the windows. There were likely not going to be any problems if he used it for a short while.

Under the torch’s light, Ling Mo could see under the wound clearly. Although he was disgusted, Ling Mo was more surprised.

Ling Mo didn’t study medicine and had never dissected a living body, but he had seen too many bodies in the apocalypse. Most of them had their chest and stomach slit open with organs scattered everywhere.

Other than blood gushing out of the cut, he could faintly see one or two organs. Red arteries and veins covered the surface of the organs just like how the gel parts solidified fresh blood. In addition, the “web” could be seen on some of the thicker veins as well. Although it didn’t cover them all, Ling Mo could see the web forming as he studied.

No wonder… Perhaps the overbearing power of mutated zombies came from these… This virus was changing the physical body of the zombies. Perhaps normal zombies also had these inside their bodies, but they were not obvious due to insufficient amounts of virus. This zombie just swallowed so many gel parts and the absorbed virus was spreading rapidly in his body.

Although zombies wouldn’t feel pain, his instincts remained and woke up. Ye Lian and Xia Na lifted up their legs at the same time and stepped on one hand each, pinning him down. Now that he was wriggling his body and blood was gushing out of the cut, Ling Mo couldn’t see anything anymore.

“Hehe, don’t worry. You’ll be freed soon.”

Ling Mo smiled at the crazy zombie and slit his throat with the dagger lightly…

His trachea was cut and his calm and long breathing turned into hoarse sounds of a windpipe. He breathed for the last time as his face ashened.

As the zombie died, Ling Mo flipped his body over. He knew that he was unable to cut open the zombie’s skull and he had to ask Xia Na to do it.

Ling Mo didn’t want to look at a fresh human brain. Still, he couldn’t help but look at it when the brain was taken out and he was surprised by it.

No gel part was found inside the brain of this newborn mutated zombie, but the surface of his brain was covered with the red web-like structure seen on his internal organs and veins.

Perhaps if they gave him more time, these webs would have coagulated and formed a nidus inside his brain, which is the gel part.

Ling Mo stared at the brain for a while and abruptly slapped his thighs. “I get it now!”

These networks actually existed in the brains of normal zombies as well, but he wasn’t able to see it with his bare eyes because the virus was not pure enough and insufficient. The mutated zombie just absorbed a large amount of the virus and hence, the network became more obvious. He was at the peak of the influence under the virus. The desire for the virus would be added on top of the desire for flesh. To absorb more viruses, the zombie needed to kill more other zombies. To take a step further, he would need to kill mutated zombies.

Going from there, he would become an actual mutated zombie after a gel part formed inside their brain. In this stage, the virus’s invasion would focus on one point instead and the rest of the confined areas would slowly be released.

The gels would try to eat each other and the purer the virus, the smaller the volume. Perhaps when it was a certain degree of purity, it would become an extremely small gel part and the zombie with it would regain its sanity!

Xia Na was special because there was not a lot of the virus inside her body. She swallowed two gel parts and a purer one before the virus could spread to her brain.

Thus, a nidus formed in her brain before her brain was invaded by the virus and her thoughts were least affected.

Ling Mo didn’t know if his hypothesis was correct, but it was the closest answer he could get judging from the zombie’s body alone.

As expected, he was going in the right direction!

There was nothing more exciting than this result to him. He wasn’t a medical scientist… Perhaps he was wrong in many parts of his conclusion, but it may be possible from the result.

It proved that his hope was indeed possible and the next thing he needed to do was to turn this hypothesis into the reality!

He was excited for about ten minutes before he thought something was wrong. No matter what, it was strange for a normal person to stand in front of a disgusting dead body and smile while getting lost in thoughts…

“Throw it in the river… Damn, I need to go find some new clothes. The zombies’ noses must be rotting if they can’t smell the blood!”

“You… Why are you smiling?” Xia Na was helping him carrying the body and asked in confusion.

She finally formed a full sentence after a while. Ling Mo blinked eerily at her. “Because I remembered something else. You… feels nice, but it’s a bit small.”