Fantasmas de la tumba antigua

Capítulo 7

After briefly explaining the structure and common formations of a football team, as well as the main rules of a football match, Jiang Boyu said, "For the first lesson, let's start with tiptoeing and simple one-on-one passing."

Seeing Jiang Boyu demonstrate by doing over fifty tiptoes in one go, the girls thought it wouldn't be difficult and were eager to try. But when they actually started, the ball wouldn't cooperate with their feet, and they ended up scrambling around, spending more time picking it up than actually tiptoeing.

Jiang Boyu just shook his head, so he had no choice but to start giving her one-on-one technical coaching. When he moved to He Jihong's side, he found that she had already mastered the ball's balance quite well. Jiang Boyu nodded and said, "Not bad, pay attention to the point of contact, don't rush!" He Jihong looked up, smiled at him, and said thank you. Jiang Boyu said, "I should be thanking you!"

He Jihong suddenly stopped the ball at her feet and said, "You must have fallen down the other day. My name is He Jihong. Don't be so polite. Coach Jiang, you did a really good job tiptoeing just now!" Jiang Boyu was a little embarrassed and lowered his head, saying, "Just call me by my name, I wouldn't dare call you coach!" He Jihong tilted her head and thought for a long time, but what came out was, "You... what's your name again?" Jiang Boyu's face was almost expressionless with embarrassment. "Jiang Boyu," he squeezed out the words softly.

He Jihong nodded to indicate that she remembered, and then asked him, "Is the injury on your hand alright?" Jiang Boyu was about to answer when Wang Danyang waved to him and called him over. He hurriedly said, "It's alright," and turned and ran away.

When she got to Wang Danyang's side, she blinked and gestured towards He Jihong, saying, "Junior brother, what are you two whispering about? Don't get distracted, or we'll skin you alive!" Jiang Boyu waved his hands repeatedly, his face turning red instantly.

Zheng Dazhi was called to the office by Professor Lan Tianming, the director of the teaching and research office, as soon as he arrived at work in the morning.

"Old Zheng, how's our situation with the body samples? Why are some students complaining to the academic affairs office that we don't have enough specimens?" Professor Lan asked bluntly.

Zheng Dazhi thought for a moment and said, "The number of students is increasing every year, so it's definitely not enough to have four or five people per specimen like before. Now the specimen lab has three and six dissection tables. We have to increase the number of students in each group to eight each time. If we add more dissection tables, the number of specimens will be a bit tight. The supply of corpses from the affiliated hospital is decreasing every year. We have been trying to contact the funeral home, but the number is still limited. Then there's the court. There aren't many death row inmates each year, and there are few who don't want to collect corpses." Zheng Dazhi has always been in charge of the lab's work, and he is also responsible for the supply of corpses.

What about voluntary donations?

Zheng Dazhi gave a wry smile and said, "Professor Lan, you know about this too. There's only been one case like this in recent years, right? Case number M9967. It's really just the old Chinese mentality that you have to leave a complete body after death. Many families don't even allow an autopsy, let alone let you take it as a specimen."

Professor Lan said, "Oh." "I know that one you're talking about. It hasn't been used yet, has it?"

Zheng Dazhi said, "No, they said they would use it last year, but I happened to have acute enteritis and took sick leave, so I didn't touch it. It's been in the No. 9 cadaver pool ever since. A few days ago, Xiao Meng and I just moved it to the processing room to make a muscle specimen."

Professor Lan said, "Okay. Let's get on with it. How many corpses do we need in a year?"

Zheng Dazhi mentally estimated and said, "To ensure the quality of the internship, plus the inventory and reserve, there should be no less than eighty specimens a year. The anatomy lab is running non-stop now, sometimes even at night. The students don't know how to cherish the specimens; some are used only three or four times before being scrapped."

Professor Lan nodded and said, "I'll use my old connections to try and find a few other hospitals. The supply of cadavers is getting tighter every year. In your classes, emphasize to your students that they should cherish the specimens and that they must pay for any damage! A plastinated biological specimen can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars abroad these days."

After leaving Professor Lan's office, Zheng Dazhi went straight to the specimen preparation room.

The male corpse that was taken out of the morgue a few days ago is still on the dissection table. Zheng Dazhi thought he should dispose of it today. In two weeks, the 2002 class of clinical medicine students will be doing their internships on muscle specimens, and the existing specimens have already been thoroughly examined. Some have torn tendons, and some are missing parts.

Upon entering the specimen preparation room, Zheng Dazhi lifted the white sheet on the dissection table. "Pretty good, well fixed, and the muscle tissue is very symmetrical. It will be excellent if done properly." Zheng Dazhi was confident in his skills, and now he was looking at the specimen as if appreciating a work of art.

But then he suddenly felt something was wrong. The body hadn't been moved. He remembered that when he and Meng Qiu carried it out, it was placed on the inner dissection table, so why was it on the outer table now? He picked up the plastic tag tied to the body's right wrist; the number clearly read M9967.

"This is the body. Who did this?" Zheng Dazhi muttered to himself.

In the anatomy lab, every cadaver that arrives is first assigned a number and recorded. The first letter of the number indicates the gender. A male cadaver is recorded as "M," which is actually an abbreviation for MAN; a female cadaver is recorded as "W," which is an abbreviation for WOMAN. The middle two digits represent the year of death. The last two digits represent the serial number of the cadaver received that year. For example, the number M9967 on the card in front of Zheng Dazhi means that it is a male cadaver who died in 1999, and it was the 67th cadaver received by the research lab that year.

The identification card also contained other information, such as the cause of death and the source of the body. This particular body's identification card marked "unknown" as the cause of death, and indicated "voluntary donation" as the source of the body. These two points made this body seem extraordinary. Now, even the autopsy technicians know which body M9967 they are referring to.

This is the first voluntarily donated body received by the Department of Anatomy in nearly ten years.

After the body was brought into the cold, dark autopsy lab, it was kept in pool number 9. The pools were located under the wooden floorboards against the inner wall of the three specimen labs. Each lab had three pools, making a total of nine. Each pool was 2.2 meters long and 1.2 meters deep, and could hold five or six bodies. Pool number 9 was located at the very back of the third specimen lab.

For a long time, only this one body had been kept in Corpse Pool No. 9. This was an order given by Professor Lan Tianming. When he received the body, he said, "It's not easy to donate one's body to the medical field! As long as we have the means, we should treat the body with care. Let's keep this one separately for now!" Fortunately, the number of cadaver specimens in the autopsy laboratory was never too many to store, so Corpse Pool No. 9 became M9967's solitary resting place.

Zheng Dazhi called Meng Qiu over and asked, "Did you move the specimen onto this table?"

Meng Qiu said, "No, when we carried it in, didn't we put it on the platform at the back?"

Zheng Dazhi stood there stunned for a long time before finally blurting out, "This is really weird."

This isn't the first time such an evil phenomenon has occurred.

Moreover, he had heard rumors among the students about the anatomy lab being haunted more than once.

Zheng Dazhi has been doing this job for over twenty years and has never been afraid in front of these corpses. He is a graduate of a regular medical school and believes in science. In his view, so-called ghosts are all created by people's own minds, purely things we scare ourselves with.

In the first two years after he was assigned to the anatomy department, Zheng Dazhi transported countless corpses from the hospital morgue to the anatomy lab late at night. When no one helped, he often carried them on his shoulders and back. He frequently worked overtime at night preparing specimens, often staying with them until midnight. That's why his wife always said he smelled of death, and even his own daughter didn't like shaking his hand.

He personally took over, processed, and placed the body of M9967 into the No. 9 morgue.

Looking back now, there were many things that Zheng Dazhi found strange at the time.

The body was brought over shortly after death. When it arrived, it wasn't as heavy as the other corpses. Moreover, even after Zheng Dazhi injected formalin into its vein, rigor mortis didn't occur, and its joints were still moving freely.

"Strange! It's been almost twelve hours, and it's still soft. If it were any other corpse, it would have been in rigor mortis by now." Zheng Dazhi immediately found it suspicious.

Furthermore, Zheng Dazhi found not a single trace of lividity on the corpse's chest and back. "No blood sediment, that shouldn't be possible!" Faced with this bizarre situation, Zheng Dazhi didn't give it much thought.

Rigor mortis and livor mortis are not necessarily phenomena that appear absolutely after death. It's also possible that the body appeared relatively late. Some bodies don't develop rigor mortis and livor mortis until more than ten days later.

But when Zheng Dazhi thought about these things in connection with the strange displacement of the corpse today, he still felt a chill run down his spine.

He then instructed Meng Qiu to inquire with the other two technicians in the research office. Of the entire research office, only the four anatomical technicians were directly involved in specimen preparation. Meng Qiu went out for a short while and quickly returned, saying, "They both said it hadn't been touched."

Zheng Dazhi waved his hand and said dejectedly, "Fine, let's begin."

After putting on a mask and latex gloves, attaching a new blade to the scalpel handle, and adjusting the height of the electric hydraulic dissection table, Zheng Dazhi prepared to prepare the muscle specimen.

The slender scalpel fell swiftly.

Immediately, blood seeped from between Zheng Dazhi's fingers.

His knife didn't cut into the muscle, but instead, as if by some strange twist of fate, landed on the middle finger of his right hand.

Meng Qiu said "Oh," and hurriedly asked, "Teacher Zheng, are you alright?"

Zheng Dazhi was extremely annoyed; making a mistake in front of a junior technician was quite embarrassing. He wondered if he had been careless while handling the scalpel or something else, but the scalpel had even cut his latex glove. For a moment, he only felt a burning pain in his middle finger.

Zheng Dazhi shook his head and slammed the scalpel into the curved tray. Removing his gloves, he saw the wound was quite deep and became momentarily flustered. Frowning, he looked at the unharmed corpse and said, "Xiao Meng, you should put it back in pool number 9. Replace it with the one in pool number 3, M2017."

Xiao Meng covered the body with the white sheet again and walked out of the workshop with Zheng Dazhi. By this time, his hands were covered in blood.

It can be considered a hero's downfall! In over twenty years, Zheng Dazhi had never made such a basic mistake—he actually cut his own hand with a scalpel!

It was another weekend, and Yan Hao invited Xiao Hui'er to his school. It had been over two months since the start of the semester, and the two hadn't seen each other yet.

Yan Hao and Xiao Hui'er were high school classmates. They'd known each other since they were toddlers. Yan Hao's mother and Xiao Hui'er's mother were also close friends and classmates during their nursing school years, and both worked at the same hospital. One was the head nurse of the obstetrics and gynecology department, and the other was the head nurse of the pediatrics department—their relationship was closer than that of sisters. As a result, the two families visited each other quite frequently.

When dating Xiao Hui'er, Yan Hao felt that he lacked the novelty and excitement that other young people could experience.

They were so familiar with each other, they practically knew each other inside and out. Having grown up together, whenever they met, they were either bickering or fighting. This constant interaction actually sparked a romance. They officially became a couple in their first year of high school, and Yan Hao, being older, tolerated her and stopped fighting. But even when they were together, they were still less affectionate and more prone to bickering and sulking.

To be honest, Xiao Hui'er is actually two months older than Yan Hao. Yan Hao and his group of high school buddies all said, "You two don't look like lovers at all; you're more like siblings."

Yan Hao said, "Luckily, she's not my sister. Look how she pinched my arm. She thinks she's Mei Chaofeng all the time."

Xiao Hui'er also said, "Want to be my brother? Let's talk about it eight lifetimes from now. Look at him, all brawn and no brains."

So the two of them had no choice but to become lovers.

Xiao Hui'er's real name is Huang Xiao Hui. A typical Sichuan girl. She has fair skin, a sturdy build, and a round face with big eyes, making her quite cute. So, her nickname and pet name became Xiao Hui'er. However, she's quick-tempered and has a bad temper. She speaks like a bouncing bean, methodical and articulate. Yan Hao, everyone says he looks like Geng Le, the male lead in the movie "Spring Subway." His eyebrows and eyes aren't particularly striking individually, but together they make him handsome. Yan Hao isn't talkative; in Xiao Hui'er's words, he's "quietly wicked." He usually listens to whatever Xiao Hui'er says without complaint, but he says one thing and does another—stubborn and inflexible.

Xiao Hui'er wasn't tall and was a bit chubby, but she still insisted on becoming a model. Yan Hao would tease her every day: "Look at you, you're so unique! You grow faster than a turkey in the places where you shouldn't, and the places where you should are all covered in fat." Xiao Hui'er realized that it wasn't realistic, so after graduating from high school, she enrolled in a fashion college. "If I can't be a model, it'll be good to direct models. Besides, I won't have to buy my own clothes in the future."

Xiao Hui'er's mother had the opposite opinion from Yan Hao's mother. She said to Xiao Hui'er, "Hey, as long as you don't study medicine, you can study anything!"

The guys in dorm 406 only found out last night during their late-night chat that Yan Hao already had a girlfriend. Yan Hao was telling them this hoping those three would get up early to help with his reception duties. Otherwise, they usually sleep until 11:30 on Sunday mornings.

As a result, he got a good scolding from Shen Zihan. Shen Zihan said, "Haozi getting married, what's that called? A mother mouse leaving her hole!" Li Yuanbin chimed in, "Whether she's a lab rat, Mickey Mouse, or a guinea pig, we should at least have to test her out!" Yan Hao thought to himself, "If she really is a lab rat, I'll be much more relaxed!"

Finally, under Liao Guangzhi's organization, a gentleman's agreement was reached. Yan Hao would pick up Xiao Hui'er in the morning, and after they sat in the dormitory for a while, Yan Hao would treat everyone to a meal to apologize for "keeping a beauty in the rat's nest." In return, they would cooperate with Yan Hao's hospitality and do their best to maintain a clean appearance.

Yan Hao never revealed the face he saw in the sink, nor his visit to Teacher Xia. Actually, he brought Xiao Hui'er to school to clear his mind and dispel bad luck. Of course, this was only his deepest thought and secret.

At nine o'clock in the morning, this pair of bickering lovers met at the east gate of Yan Hao's school.

As soon as they met, Xiao Hui'er shouted, "Comrade Yan Hao, look at you! Do you even look like a human being? In just a few days, you've turned your head into something like a skull. The round parts aren't round, and the convex parts look like someone gnawed a piece off."

Yan Hao said sullenly, "It's not that exaggerated." Xiao Hui'er, never one to let things slide, pinched Yan Hao's cheek hard and said, "You say it's exaggerated? You're so thin you look like a starving ghost!"

Yan Hao felt extremely uncomfortable hearing her use such strong language, especially the words "skull" and "ghost." He retorted rather loudly, "Can't you say something auspicious this early in the morning? Please!"

Xiao Hui looked at him with a rather strange expression. "Are you into superstition? You keep texting me asking if I believe..." Before she could finish her sentence, Yan Hao covered her mouth with his hand and said, "Don't mention those things! I'm begging you!"

"You're crazy!" Xiao Hui glared at him. She walked ahead of him, annoyed.

Upon entering the dormitory, Yan Hao discovered that besides Shen Zihan and his two companions, Ren Xuefei was also sitting on the bed. She was right next to Li Yuanbin.

Xiao Hui'er received a round of overly enthusiastic applause from the four men. Shen Zihan kept calling her "sister-in-law," and the alien kept calling her "sister-in-law," making Yan Hao so embarrassed he wanted to disappear into the toilet. Despite her brash and fierce demeanor towards Yan Hao, Xiao Hui'er was a lady in public, responding to these mushy terms with a flight attendant-like smile. She even politely pulled out a dozen packets of spicy beef tendon from Dazhou, Sichuan, from her backpack, saying it was for everyone to enjoy with drinks. These little tricks immediately won the favor of everyone in room 406. Liao Guangzhi ran around pouring tea and water for his "sister-in-law," his face beaming with joy—as if his girlfriend had come to visit.

Li Yuanbin got up to offer Xiao Hui'er his seat, then leaned close to Yan Hao's ear and said, "I brought Xuecai Baozi here just to join in the fun." As soon as Xiao Hui'er sat down next to Ren Xuefei, she ignored Yan Hao and started chatting with Ren Xuefei.

In less than twenty minutes, the dormitory room was completely occupied by Xiao Hui'er, who complained about how dilapidated the fashion design school was, how male and female students lived together, how the boys lived on the lower three floors and the girls on the upper two floors, and how she had found three hairs and a green caterpillar in the rice in the cafeteria.

Hearing this, Shen Zihan slapped his thigh and said, "Sister-in-law, what you've described are just material oppression and pain. Do you know? What we and your Haozi have suffered is mental abuse!" Yan Hao's heart tightened upon hearing this, thinking to himself that this big idiot from Northeast China really knows how to bring up the most sensitive topics, and on a weekend he still wants more excitement.

As expected, Shen Zihan started repeating the three ironclad rules Wang Yanyan had mentioned during their last drinking session, even going so far as to fabricate a story that there was definitely a female ghost in the anatomy lab, specializing in hooking souls and preying on young men to replenish their yang energy. Ren Xuefei blushed deeply and cursed Shen Zihan for being shameless.

Xiao Hui'er listened intently. She glanced at Shen Zihan and then at Yan Hao. Finally, she said to Yan Hao, "Look! No wonder you've lost weight. Have you been possessed by a female ghost?"

Just as Yan Hao was about to retort, Shen Zihan got even more excited. He took over the conversation and vividly recounted their last trip to the anatomy classroom to touch the corpses. He even went so far as to describe how the door opened automatically and how he felt someone bump into him, making Li Yuanbin and Liao Guangzhi's mouths agape and their mouths water.

Shen Zihan said mysteriously, "Do you know why there's a high threshold outside the anatomy classroom? It's to prevent ghosts from running out!" Liao Guangzhi's thick lips moved in agreement, "Heh, that makes sense!"

Yan Hao sat to the side thinking—if he told them about the strange sighs he heard and that face—probably no one would dare to go to that bathroom anymore! Only Xiao Hui'er listened with great interest, exclaiming, "It's so scary! It's so scary!" but her face was full of excitement.

Finally, she insisted on going to the anatomy lab. Yan Hao flatly refused, saying it was closed on Sundays. But she wouldn't give up, saying she'd rather just wander around outside, she just wanted to experience it for herself.

Shen Zihan said, "Sister-in-law, with you there, the female ghost definitely won't dare to come out." Xiao Hui'er said, "This morning I saw him looking distracted. Did he get sick from touching that corpse, or has that female ghost really taken a liking to him?! Anyway, I'm full of energy, I'm not afraid of ghosts!"

As Yan Hao listened to their back-and-forth banter, the face that had emerged from the blood and water kept flashing through his mind, along with Teacher Xia… “Why was it always me who saw it, and not Shen Zihan? Could it be that I’ve really been targeted by it?” he wondered to himself, but he couldn’t understand how that face could be exactly the same as Teacher Xia’s.

Could Teacher Xia be a so-called female ghost? Yan Hao was startled by this thought that popped into his head.

He felt he had fallen into Shen Zihan's logical trap. He dared not and did not want to think about it anymore. Suddenly, a burning pain shot through his arm. It turned out that Xiao Hui'er had pinched him when she saw him lost in thought. "Thinking about that female ghost?" It was supposed to be a joke from Xiao Hui'er, but Yan Hao felt a lump in his throat, extremely uncomfortable.

Since it was still early before lunchtime, Ren Xuefei suggested that Yan Hao accompany Xiao Hui'er for a walk around the campus. Then, everyone would meet at "Tingyuxuan" outside the west gate of the school to drink draft beer and eat Du Po Chicken.

As they were leaving, Shen Zihan patted Yan Hao on the shoulder with a grin and whispered, "I thought it was only natural for a mouse to find a rat, but it turns out you found a tigress. You've got guts!"

Yan Hao and his friends lived in an apartment building just outside the east gate. A few hundred meters straight ahead from the east gate was the back of the Basic Medical Sciences building. But Yan Hao deliberately avoided that road. He led Xiao Hui'er through the east gate and then turned north, which led to the school's playground and gymnasium.

The medical university campus was indeed nothing to see. Besides, it was late autumn, and there was a bleak atmosphere. Xiao Hui'er looked around and muttered, "I said our school is rubbish, but your school doesn't even deserve the word 'rubbish.' It has no cultural heritage whatsoever." Yan Hao snorted twice in agreement. Xiao Hui'er continued, "No wonder there's a saying: Don't date a medical student, don't date a civil engineering student, Chinese literature majors are most prone to extramarital affairs, and those who marry rich are mostly from music academies. Do you know why?" Before Yan Hao could answer, Xiao Hui'er continued, "Because, medical students and civil engineering students aren't romantic, while the latter two are overly romantic."

Yan Hao replied irritably, "Then we should add that all the single women are from fashion design schools." Xiao Hui'er said, "That's nonsense, isn't it? Why? At least I'm not." Yan Hao said seriously, "The good-looking ones all become models. Only the ugly ones who no one wants become tailors."

After saying that, Yan Hao took off running. Xiao Hui'er realized what was happening and chased after him relentlessly, all the way to the school's covered playground. Yan Hao was secretly pleased that his plan to lure the tiger away from the mountain had succeeded.

The two walked hand-in-hand around the track for two and a half laps before Xiao Hui'er said she was getting bored. Yan Hao said, "Then let's go to Tingyuxuan!" Xiao Hui'er took out her phone and looked at it, saying, "It's not even eleven o'clock yet. Are we just going to sit there and pretend to be stupid? Hurry up and take me to that haunted place!"

Yan Hao said, "They're just teasing you! There's no ghost, it's just a run-down building. Don't look." Xiao Hui'er's stubbornness kicked in, and she pouted, saying, "No way! I have to go!"

Since things had come to this, Yan Hao could only say helplessly, "Then let's go. But the door isn't open yet, so just stand outside and look."

The two of them walked out of the playground and headed south, then turned east a few steps later, and arrived at the front of the drab-gray Basic Medical Sciences Department building.

It was Sunday morning, and the surrounding school area was deserted. Xiao Hui stood downstairs and looked around, saying, "We can't see anything from here. Oh, right, there's a window over there, let's go take a look!"

Xiao Hui'er was referring to the row of windows on the south side of the anatomy lab, which led to the four large anatomy classrooms.

Yan Hao frowned, at a loss for what to do. To get to the window, they would have to climb over a garden and cross a ditch. Yan Hao was about to object when he suddenly froze, unable to speak.