Autopsy (1): The Inspection
I instinctively drew my sword and scanned the surroundings.
“Paeng hyung, do you sense anything?”
In such sudden situations, the help of a seasoned record keeper, my sparring partner, was needed. I placed my hopes on Paeng Ju-hyeok.
Since Baek Sam-byeol-ui had always said that peak-level experts naturally sense the presence of anomalies, I had asked about my sparring partner’s realm.
Paeng Ju-hyeok answered that question with, “I can handle the form according to my skill level.”
It sounded like a modest reply, but the sincerity behind it was different. It meant he had reorganized the form of the technique he inherited from his master or secret manuals into a completely new one tailored to himself.
In other words, he had reached the peak realm.
“...Yeok-ah, I’ll say this first.”
“What is it?”
“In this situation, your nose would be more helpful than my senses.”
“Are you serious?”
I reflexively glared at Paeng Ju-hyeok, but his face showed sincerity. Despite the cold temperature, he was sweating, and he said in a serious voice.
“You mentioned smelling something delicious earlier, right? Your senses have combined with the arrangement of the ghost listener and evolved into a strange form. You have the sense to find anomalies like a hunting dog.”
I swallowed hard. Indeed, even in the Yin Poison Gorge that Baek had shown me, and even now with the frostbite on the ground in front of my eyes.
There was a delicious smell. If this was the sense to capture anomalies, it would be helpful, but...
“Why the hell is it smell...?”
This was why I couldn’t shake off the stigma that Baek’s inspiration had said my sense of taste was weird.
Having heard Paeng Ju-hyeok’s advice, I asked him to act as my bodyguard. Of course, I didn’t intend to circulate qi and meditate.
I just wanted to try concentrating on my sense of smell and detect the surroundings.
Internal energy itself comprehensively strengthens the body’s performance. That’s why experts who fight by surpassing sound don’t kill themselves due to their own movements.
But my realm hadn’t reached that level, and the physical strengthening needed now was different from the comprehensive strengthening of the body.
I needed a method to concentrate the internal energy only on the sense of smell.
Fortunately, there was a good reference manual.
“If I apply the mystery of the Eye Method, I can somewhat improve the sense of smell.”
Just as the Murim Alliance’s common Eye Method temporarily enhances eyesight by circulating internal energy into the blood vessels and meridians around the eyes, concentrating internal energy around the nasal blood vessels could achieve a similar effect.
I pushed internal energy into the Yingxiang acupoint on both sides of my nostrils, which are concave, and the Bi Yi acupoint located at the midpoint connecting the side of the nose, the bridge of the nose, and the inner corners of the eyes.
Inhale.
A multi-layered fragrance, incomparably more than the smell from before, rushed into my nose.
The scent of nameless flowers, the fragrance from the stems of trampled grass.
And the scent of a body that couldn’t decay and was trapped in ice.
Familiar blood scent flowed between the ice. The spinal fluid flowing from the head and the marrow seeping from broken bones. Because it had solidified, the smell didn’t spread easily, but to me now, it was clear.
I let out a sigh of relief.
It wasn’t because I saw the body that I was relieved. I wasn’t some demonic cultist who would rejoice at a corpse.
It was something else. I was relieved that the thing that created the body didn’t exist for now.
“...The perpetrator of this tragedy seems to be absent from the surroundings.”
“Eh, really?”
“At least it seems to have left this mountain.”
I said this to myself, feeling somewhat incredulous. A sense of smell that could distinguish the entire village’s smell at once. I felt like I had become a hunting dog.
Paeng Ju-hyeok sighed as well, but he didn’t loosen his grip on the great saber. Instead, his eyes were filled with even greater vigilance as he scanned the surroundings.
“So, what should we do then?”
“What do you mean ‘what should we do’?”
“I followed you as a supervisor, but right now, you’re the one in charge of the on-site investigation. Since the site itself where we need to investigate and record information has been completely destroyed, retreating is one option, and investigating this anomaly is also an option. It’s up to you.”
I swallowed. In this Changsu Village, there was no living animal left. The perpetrator had carefully killed one dog tied up at home and each chicken and left.
I wanted to turn around and run back to the Murim Alliance right now.
But leaving immediately from here wasn’t a wise choice.
The reason was simple. I was a record keeper.
Leaving this place was easy and fast, but if I did that, I wouldn’t be able to get any clues on how to deal with this perpetrator when I encountered him later.
Since the guy had just appeared, I needed to investigate immediately to record more information.
“The perpetrator seems to have left. Let’s check what kind of trick he used to create this tragedy.”
“Bold!”
Before starting the formal investigation, I asked Paeng Ju-hyeok a few questions, including how to check the wounds.
“Has there been any record of this kind of anomaly?”
A question about precedents. If there was an anomaly that handled such a vicious yin qi, there should be cases left in the rulebook.
“What if there isn’t?”
“I don’t know. I heard about a crazy zombie that was imprisoned alive in a huge ice crystal and then released.”
“What kind of crazy incident is that?”
“I heard it was an odd martial artist who kept the martial arts of ancient times. They called him Dongzhangjun by his characteristics. But that’s not it, the anomaly related to yin qi...”
Paeng Ju-hyeok, who was hesitating, eventually picked up the brush and bit his left hand to draw blood.
Then he dipped the brush in it.
“What are you doing suddenly?”
“Ah, originally this should be told after going to the site a few times... Well, the situation is what it is. Look closely.”
He took out a notebook from his bosom. It wasn’t the case file received together when instructed to dispatch to Changsu Village (which had been rampant in the government office), but the information recording notebook provided to record keepers.
The brush dipped in blood moved. Interestingly, the red traces left where the brush touched disappeared as if evaporating.
After a while, without writing anything, characters appeared on the notebook.
『What is this?』
“Look, Yeok-ah. This is why a daoist who can use the Zuo Dao Visiting technique in the Management Records Bureau building must always be stationed there.”
“...Are you communicating with Ok Rin record keeper right now?!”
“Exactly. It’s a method that can’t be used in places with strong influence of anomalies, but in times like this, it’s convenient. Shall I ask to find anomalies related to yin qi?”
It was truly a strange harmony. It was called a thousand-mile eye or a thousand-mile tong, but it had the ability to make communication possible over distances that would require days and nights of running.
I admired the power of this strange murim world while examining the bodies.
“...The state of the bodies is a bit different.”
“Different?”
“Yes. First, most of the victims had their heads hit. It was probably an instant death where the brain was shattered.”
I pointed to the frozen bodies lined up. One body had its head completely blown apart, with the area below the neck frozen.
The other zombie behind that body had no clear wounds. It seemed to have frozen from the sudden blast of cold air from the previous body.
“The perpetrator didn’t make additional attacks on the back body. It seems to mean that the purpose was the murder itself, not unnecessary killing.”
“Hmm.”
Paeng Ju-hyeok showed some hesitant reaction.
“Why is that?”
“No, seeing you acting so rationally, I thought it might be the work of a human butcher from the demonic path rather than an anomaly.”
...The standards for recognizing anomalies in the martial world seemed very strict.
“Maybe the villagers were fleeing and the perpetrator wanted to kill them all. These bodies alone had turned around and fled, after all.”
With that said, I moved my feet.
Towards the direction the zombies had fled. The bodies where the perpetrator had personally killed had a particularly thick scent. I moved my fingers to point to the place where the bodies had fallen.
Paeng Ju-hyeok, following my gaze along my fingertips, let out a soft “Ah.” He had understood the meaning of what I said, “the state of the bodies is different.”
“The internal energy’s output is becoming more subtle. The other side body had no head at all, but the further we go to the village outskirts, the more the head remains intact.”
I looked at the last body that had fled to the boundary of the frozen village. There were five clear holes drilled in her head.
However, no blood was flowing. Because the wounds had frozen simultaneously as my fingers crushed the skull.
“Was this person the last victim? It seems she just left the village.”
“Yes. So, by going in reverse, we can also find out where the tragedy started.”
I retraced my steps between the bodies again. Since we were retracing the path they had fled, our gaze had no choice but to meet the frozen expressions.
The pain and fear approaching the end of life was clear.
I breathed slowly. At the same time as calming my mind, to confirm the perpetrator’s approach.
Fortunately, there was no big change in the surrounding smell. The sunlight was approaching, melting the ice and gradually releasing the trapped blood scent.
The destination of the reverse was the graveyard on the outskirts of the village.
“...This is an anomaly.”
Paeng Ju-hyeok threw out one word. I agreed with something.
The graveyard had been dug up. Without a shovel, only with human hands.
Something was coming out from inside the graveyard to the outside. I looked at the name written on the wooden plaque. Mu Un (Dance Cloud).
The name of the hanged woman.
***
I turned my eyes from the common graveyard and focused again on the zombies. More precisely, on the bodies that had been hit by the “completed form” martial arts remaining on the outskirts of the village.
Five clear slashes left on the skull.
“When the perpetrator’s martial arts are properly operated, they leave such wounds...”
I knew a martial art that started from a very famous murim novel and became the synonym for demonic arts. It was a very cruel claw technique, famous for its vicious training method that pierced the victim’s skull.
Gu Yin Bai Gu Form.