Chapter 55：Third

"If you want to...to dissect... Should that not be enough?" Sham pointed to corpse of an old man who was lying on the living room. He seemed to be head of a family who lived in the house.

Dudian shook his head, "I want to dissect the undead to confirm my speculation on their behaviour. The ones who had been killed by the Hunters would be useless. The ones who are downstairs are in much more better condition and by analyzing their anatomy I can see what kind of changes have occurred in them."

"I'll go with you," Zach said.

Dudian nodded. He took his dagger and along with Zach went to the corridor.

Soon, both of them descended to the ground floor. They peeked out from the door to see that Mason and Sham had lured the undeads away. They quietly opened the door and ran to the side where corpses of undead were located. Dudian saw that undead's head cracked but there wasn't any blood flowing out from it. He grabbed the undead which was on top of the others. He whispered to Zach to lift the undead from the other side.

Zach's face paled as no one would be willing to be so close to the bloodthirsty undead. He fought back the fear in his heart. He came forward and grabbed from the other arm of the corpse and they lifted it up.

Dudian was not worried about infection from the dead body because of the isolative functions of their uniform. They carried it back to the building.

This corpse was heavier than what Dudian had imagined it to be. It looked like a skinny young man but it felt as if the two of them were carrying a person of three hundred pounds. Fortunately, they had consumed 'God's Blessing' and were several times stronger than a normal person or it would be very difficult to move this body.

Soon they reach the 9th floor. The stairs had collapsed in here. Even though they could jump past it but they wouldn't be able to carry the corpse. Dudian put down the corpse and went into the closest unit. He checked the house and found that there were no rats or other dangerous creatures inside. So they took the corpse in to the unit.

The original owners of the unit had long been dead. There were blood stains on the ground which had turned into dust. There was corpse of a young teenager and of a woman. Their flesh had rotted and their remains were colored dark because of the extreme radiation over time.

Dudian picked few rotten quilts from the bedroom and covered the corpses of the owner. Dudian and Zach swept away the scattered things in the living room and cleared an open space.

It was at this moment, Mason and Sham who were upstairs had come down as they saw Zach and Dudian had not returned to their original floor. They were relieved to find them but soon they saw Dudian who was beside the undead's corpse. "Do you really want to dissect it?"

Dudian nodded firmly.

Until today he would have stayed far away from a corpse. He would be afraid even to look at it. Today scales had fallen from his eyes (TL notes: it is an idiom). He bore witness to Scott and others' despair. He had seen how the undead bite and eat the living humans. Gradually, he had realized that if he wanted to survive, no one will protect him. The only help he had was the dagger in his hand.

Dudian used the dagger to slowly stamp the corpse's claw. He saw that the surface of the claw was extremely hard. It felt as if it was made of steel.

"What kind of a biological evolution this is..." Dudian was apprehensive. There was claw-like growth at the feet of the undead too. In addition, both of its' hand and feet were covered in a layer of dark cuticles which gave off a hideous look.

Dudian looked at its chest. There was a trace of heart. He took a deep breath and stabbed the dagger down. He pierced from belly all the way up to chest. No blood oozed out. Dudian sighed, to tell the truth he would vomit at a sight like that if blood would sputter out.

Under the gray toned skin there was brown colored flesh and blood. Moreover, everything was frozen inside.

Frozen?

Dudian felt that the undead's body was particularly cold. It was ice cold. No wonder that there were no signs of decay.

However, Dudian had seen the corpses of undead who were killed by the hunters. All of them had serious signs of rotting. Especially, the first undead he had seen in the bathroom. Her face and body were completely rotten.

Thinking of this, Dudian looked at the body of the teenager who was still lying in the room. He stepped forward to check it.

Just like the other undeads its head was completely destroyed. It was split from the middle and divided into two. Most probably a very sharp and tough sword was used to cut it open. The boy's neck, arms, chest and other parts had different degrees of decay. His skin was swollen like a blister. Dudian gently poked with the dagger. It penetrated through the skin as if it was cutting tofu. Dark red blood was revealed.

The smell that it emitted made him feel nauseous. "Why would these undeads after the death would decay and emit the same smell as humans?", Dudian thought.

"Are these corpses really "alive"?"

If it was alive, then why it had no consciousness? It lacked even the basic instincts!

Dudian silently contemplated, then got up and returned to the previous corpse of undead. He opened its eyelids. It had features of a westener. The pupils were green. There were numerous fibers inside the kernel of the pupil. Is it relying on it eyes to track the prey?

Dudian gently cut its nose, inch by inch. The protruding nose was cut flat, revealing two deep black nostrils. He rolled over its head and cut its ears. He dug a whirlpool around its ears.

Zach and Sham who were close by and watching the process turned pale. Their legs trembled because of the fear. They were not afraid of the undead's corpse but the expression that was on Dudian's face. They will not forget this scene and remember it for many years.

Then, Dudian hollowed out the undead's ear. It was filled with the thick dust. The ear had long been filled with layer after layer of accumulated dust. Its hearing should be very weak so why was it so sensitive towards sound? Does it mean that another organ have evolved and replaced the functions of sound detection??Dudian pondered for a moment, pried open the undead's jaw and looked at it's tongue. It was torn. It was bitten by itself as if it was eating up a prey. It didn't know how to protect itself and felt no pain at chewing its own tongue.

Dudian hesitated as he thought about the way Scott killed the undead woman in the beginning. He had stabbed it in the head and nailed it onto ground. But its body also kept twitching and issued mournful screams. If there was no pain why would it react that way??His eyes flashed for a moment. He waved the dagger along the corpse's mouth cutting it from both sides while pushing the jaw down with pressure. Soon, the entire jaw was cut down but there was no trace of blood.

The upper cavity was made of chilled flesh and blood.

There were two more spare bodies downstairs so without further consideration Dudian pierced the head from beneath the jaw with the dagger. Everything inside the head, from broken brain to other organs stirred out as he rotated the dagger.

Thud! A hard object fell out from the skull onto the ground. It rolled and stopped a meter or so away from Dudian.

It was only as big as a size of a thumb. This is a thumb-sized, spherical dark blue ball.