The Last Gentleman-Chapter 217: The Instinct of Death

Levinhome, riverside within the city.

A group of gentlemen, mainly clad in light-colored coats, were here searching for the assumed ‘Death Factor.’ They all wore Sun Badges, which matched the signage of the grand Sun Hospital, just reduced in size.

The man leading them was none other than the current dean of Sun Hospital, the founder of the Sun Secret Medicine, Dis Campbell.

His influence as a doctor could rank him among the top ten throughout all of Zion’s medical community.

His skin was black and his head bald,

His attire bore an aberrant design (Skin Content 71%), a white, conical robe covered in gold sun patterns with wave lines, and even an exaggerated sun disc protruding from the back (a distinct mutation of Gentleman’s Skin), almost resembling a set of wings.

...

If one were to remove his coat, they would find that parts of his skin had become speckled, the gold-speckled patterns drawing a sun on his back.

Wherever he went, the fog in the nearby streets would be dispelled.

Every bottle of Sun Secret Medicine was fermented in his ‘sunshine.’

Now, the events in Levinhome had completely paralyzed the hospital and the secret medicine system, and even this illustrious Sun Dean had been unable to find the root cause.

Just yesterday, he even received a personal letter from the higher-ups in Zion,

The Zion leadership had made a decision—if the death toll in Levinhome continued to rise and exceeded the set value, they would have to abandon the entire city, including the hospital he had painstakingly operated up to now.

Therefore, he immediately took with him six prospective doctors from the hospital whom he had meticulously trained and set out to search every corner of the city for the pathogen under the name of the Sun Church, determined to find the pathogen before the organization issued the order for complete evacuation.

However,

The urgency in his heart became magnified as time elapsed, when Dis ordered them to split up and search using their own Sensing, Thoughts, and abilities, the [Urgency] mutated into a [Breach].

Two hours later, when the squad regrouped,

One of the prospective doctors whom Dis had high hopes for did not return; even when he immediately radiated out the sunlight, he received no response of any kind.

Disappeared!

Even Dis feel a notion to retreat inside, a fear of the unknown, and the sun disk on his back dimmed significantly.

[Sun Hospital – Ordinary Ward]

The morale within the four-person squad that Yi Chen belonged to was somewhat low.

Using the most conventional autopsy methods, Mr. Helvoye had found nothing—three fresh bodies were all decapitated, and every piece of brain tissue potentially invaded by pathogens had been sliced, dissolved in reagents, yet no discovery had been made.

Even the usually optimistic, squinty-eyed White Robe Lotson slightly furrowed his brows. He manipulated the blood to flow through every corner of the brain in the corpses but found nothing as well.

Everything was normal; there was no disease at all, which was the only conclusion they could currently reach.

This content is taken from freёnovelkiss.com.

Then what could be causing such a large scale and rising death toll?

Yi Chen, of course, wasn’t just sitting idle,

He kept his gaze on the still relatively fresh brains between the skulls, his Vision wandering through the brain folds, trying to find the problem.

In the process,

Unconsciously a droplet of saliva slid down the corner of his mouth.

This was because his Trait Skill as a [Student] — — was passively activated by these unpolluted, non-Pathological deceased brains.

Yi Chen hurriedly wiped it off with his palm.

Just then, the little grape’s voice came,

“Right! You, lad, can directly absorb Memory Fragments by consuming Brain Marrow Fluid, can’t you? Why not feast on all these bodies and get a complete Death Memory to figure things out?”

“Little Grape, have you ever considered I might contract this Death and die from it?”

“No worries, mate~ If you do kick the bucket, I’ll pack you up and send you straight back to Seven-Day Cemetery. With your current physical state, you’d just ferment in the cemetery for at most a hundred days before you could crawl back out.”

“Stop joking. Unless absolutely necessary, I’m not considering the approach of consuming Marrow Fluid just yet. Mr. Helvoye, as an old-school autopsy practitioner, certainly has methods of his own, let’s watch and learn for now.”

“Chicken!”

No matter what little Grape said, Yi Chen was sure not to take this risk.

Just then,

Mr. Helvoye’s aura changed, his entire body emitting an odor of rotten wood mixed with corpses. He decided to employ some unconventional autopsy methods.

His ‘method’ had even been subject to reports within the organization, which was one of the reasons he had always been an autopsy practitioner and never promoted to a higher position.

The overcoat was removed,

along with the rubber-like gloves and rain boots,

revealing hands and feet peppered with tiny holes that made one’s scalp tingle just by looking at them,

Upon closer inspection, these holes were found to be enlarged pores, seemingly concealing something within.

“The next thing I’m going to do will to some extent go against gentlemanly dignity and personal ethics, but my original intention is to find the root of death. If this method still doesn’t work, I will voluntarily give up this mission.

Please step back a bit.”

Under Helvoye’s direction, Yi Chen and the others, as well as the clinic apprentices, all retreated to the door of the ward

Bending down with his palms against the ground, droplets of thick fluid seeped out from the honeycomb-like pores, forming a bizarre array on the ground by themselves.

Sssss~ The light bulb in the patient room began to flicker.

As he lifted his hands, a hand-crafted brown coffin rose from the ground.

Creak~

The upright coffin deconstructed on its own, and a ‘corpse’ marked with human body proportion lines stood in its place.

Yi Chen could detect that the corpse summoned by the old man was alive, with all its organs functioning normally, yet the brain was empty.

The eyes were tightly closed, exuding an eerie aura, just like a living dead.

Helvoye immediately performed a craniotomy on the living dead,

then through perfect ‘human brain transplant,’ he transferred the brain of a corpse that had died no more than half an hour ago into the skull of the living dead.

After Mr. Helvoye had sewn the skull cap back on, considering the possibility of death spreading, he immediately exited the ward to regroup with the team.

Click! The door was closed, leaving only a small hole to peek into the ward.

The living dead summoned by Helvoye actively accepted the foreign organ, the nerves and blood vessels quickly connected, and fresh blood began pumping to the brain.

Ha… a deep breath

The bewildered eyes gradually became spirited,

and he swiftly examined his new body with open arms, then twisted his head to look around at the surrounding scene,

All of a sudden, he dashed toward the window,

despite not yet fully adapted to his new body, he still burst out with a speed that transcended instinct, some strong will stimulating the adrenaline to secrete furiously.

Bang!

The glass window of the ward was shattered, and he plummeted vertically down from the seventh floor, landing perfectly headfirst.

Splat!

The crowd also rushed downstairs to the outside of the hall at the first opportunity.

Brain matter and blood were spreading outward,

the corpse, with a broken neck and caved-in head, still had a distinguishable appearance, overflowing with an immensely happy smile, as if his dream had been realized, and realized twice over.

Seeing this, Helvoye came to a preliminary conjecture.

“Instinct, just like humans are born knowing how to breathe, we instinctively take in the oxygen from the air, when hungry we seek food.

As living creatures, we instinctively avoid death, our daily life involving all possible avoidance of risks of dying, and when faced with life-threatening events, the body even secretes hormones that allow us to burst forth with physical abilities beyond our usual levels for a period of time, in order to dodge danger, to get away from death.

However,

this person’s instinct to avoid death had been completely reversed,

he didn’t avoid death, but actively sought it out… and this pursuit of ‘death’ was ranking first in his instincts, he might even fall into an excited state along the way, making utmost effort to accomplish it all.

A concept of ‘death’ had somehow been implanted into their consciousness, something that conventional autopsy methods couldn’t detect.

This is just my speculation, I need more fresh corpse samples! Restricting the living dead attempting suicide, performing a live dissection of the brain during the suicide impulse period, might just reveal the problem.”

At that moment,

White-haired Lotson from the team, looking at the living dead who had committed suicide by jumping out the window, and at Mr. Helvoye, excited about the investigative breakthrough, had a bizarre smile spreading across his lips.