EM CH15

Chapter 15: Hauling Away the Boss

“?” Yu An stood dumbfounded. Could the combat capability of a mere severed hand actually be this formidable?

There was no time left to ponder. Yu An threw himself before the X-ray machine, dropping flat onto the ground to search for buttons on the apparatus.

A metal nameplate was screwed into the bottom right corner of the machine. With the passage of time and the exceedingly damp environment, the surface of the plate was encrusted in patina, making the engraved lettering practically illegible.

“Found it.” Yu An swiftly pressed the red button, but the rust-caked switch gave not the slightest reaction. The key switch had rusted directly into the keyhole, impossible to extract or turn. Long fallen into disrepair, this machine could not be powered down by normal means.

Right now, severing the high-voltage cable was the sole option. Yu An circled the X-ray machine twice and confirmed it indeed lacked any exposed electrical wiring ports. It was likely wired directly into subterranean conduits; in such a scenario, tripping the breaker was the only way to shut it down.

Logically, the wiring from the transformer to the distribution panel of the X-ray room wouldn’t be too distant. There was still a chance.

“Xiongdi, hold the fort.” Taking advantage of the right hand tangling with the two doctors who had lapsed into frenzy, Yu An swiftly squeezed through the hole smashed into the wall by the female doctor, darting out in a flash.

The right hand hovered in midair, forming a gesture pleading for him to stay: “…”

Having temporarily escaped, Yu An mentally retraced the rooms he had passed. Only a few chambers near the salon room housing Mr. Zhou remained uninspected.

His spine suddenly chilled. Something was pressed flush against his back.

“Good evening,” the person murmured softly right beside Yu An’s ear.

The smiling janitor had caught up. Still, with a weapon in hand this time, there was no need to panic.

Just as Yu An was about to spin around and deliver a blow with his bat, a chorus of greetings echoed in waves from behind:

“Good evening.”

Without looking back, Yu An bolted. Dozens of janitors hoisting iron buckets and mops pursued in mad pursuit right behind him, their footsteps hurried and chaotic, swarming shoulder-to-shoulder in a scene resembling a fire drill evacuation.

“Distribution room…” Yu An’s peripheral vision swept across every passing white door until he reached the end of the corridor ahead, where a solid wall blocked his path.

Upon closing in, the janitors appeared considerably wary of one particular white door, steering clear of it one after another.

Yu An glanced at the white door they had avoided. The nameplate on it read: “Director’s Office.”

With nowhere left to run, he raised the Arrogant Bat to smash open the lock, pulled the door open, ducked inside, and wedged the bat diagonally into the door handle so the white door could not be forced open from outside.

Close call. Wiping the sweat from his brow, Yu An turned toward the computer desk in the director’s office, his eyes widening abruptly.

Beside the computer chair stood a slender, alluring woman, her posture curved into a seductive S-shape, resting a hand upon a promotional standee for Xiliu Beauty Salon.

Yu An breathed a sigh of relief. It was merely a vividly colored, life-sized standee; an identical one had stood by the entrance when he stepped out of the elevator.

In such an atmosphere, a person’s emotions were easily infected by negativity, stretching the nerves taut. Yu An closed his eyes briefly, striving to steady himself, before scanning the surroundings for alternative exits.

The decor of the director’s office was unremarkable. The walls were likewise painted in warm flesh-pink, flanked on both sides by promotional salon artwork.

The posters were mounted in wooden frames. Like many typical beauty salons, the advertisements displayed before-and-after comparisons of clients’ cosmetic surgery and weight loss.

One set of body sculpting comparison photos delivered an intense visual impact.

Before slimming down, the woman met the clinical criteria for obesity. Thick facial fat bunched her features together. Wearing an oversized khaki T-shirt, she stood before the lens looking thoroughly haggard.

The second photograph beside it bore the caption: “After One Body Sculpting Session.” The woman had undergone an earth-shattering transformation, dropping nearly a hundred pounds. While still on the curvier side, her figure was delightfully contoured, possessing a vibrant and healthy frame.

The results appeared genuinely remarkable.

By “After Two Body Sculpting Sessions,” the woman’s image was completely reborn. Long, wavy tresses rested upon a slender neck and delicate shoulders, her torso curving into a voluptuous S-line, the spitting image of a television star.

Honestly speaking, plastic surgery here seemed well worth the price. According to the yellow-jacketed streamer he met in the washroom stall, if stealing limbs from a crematorium could buy qualification for surgery, plenty of clients would gladly take that gamble.

Perhaps an entire illicit supply chain had already formed outside, organizing specialized organ-harvesting rings to supply clients needing the salon’s treatments. Customers could treat it like an arcade, exchanging money for the salon’s currency: human organs.

What Yu An couldn’t understand, however, was why the woman in the photos had proceeded with a third body sculpting session despite having already achieved star-tier looks and proportions.

Yet after the third session, the woman showed zero visible change.

Perhaps micro-adjustments had been made, but Yu An couldn’t spot the difference. That was normal; much like his inability to distinguish between lipstick shades, such details carried immense significance for perfectionists.

Speaking of weight loss and body sculpting, Yu An instantly recalled the classified case file he had reviewed at Officer Ye’s office.

It traced back to why the most bustling pedestrian street in Jiu’an City had fallen into ruins.

The incident originated from a cosmetic surgery dispute. The victim was named Bo Ruzhi, a prestigious fashion designer and model.

Miss Bo was exceptionally demanding regarding models’ figures, believing only proportions fitting the golden ratio were worthy of wearing the gowns she created. The entire industry knew of Miss Bo’s exacting standards yet indulged her regardless, as her designs inevitably dazzled on runways and red carpets.

Miss Bo was obsessed with fashion design. Her residence was littered with breathtaking sketches, vivid dresses draping across graceful silhouettes traced in ink. Tall and striking herself, trying on dresses she crafted with her own hands brought her peerless joy.

“Beauty is the meaning of my life” had once been Miss Bo’s personal motto, frequently gracing the covers of major fashion magazines alongside her captivating figure and brilliant creations.

Yet good fortune did not last. Six years ago, Miss Bo fell gravely ill; although cured, the medication caused severe side effects, triggering rapid obesity.

Miss Bo struggled in torment for six months, surviving several suicide attempts. Through an acquaintance, she found a salon in Jiu’an City renowned for exceptional results and supreme privacy: Xiliu Beauty Salon.

However, upon learning of her condition, the salon rejected her body sculpting request, citing complex health complications.

Miss Bo did not give up. After multiple inquiries, she privately approached the pillars of Xiliu Beauty Salon, a married pair of doctors, offering vast sums to perform full-body liposuction and a gastrectomy.

The two doctors initially declined, but her payment was simply too generous to refuse.

Facts proved the salon’s reservations justified. Surgical complications resulted in Miss Bo’s death, while the doctor couple faced prosecution for conducting illegal surgery. The police stepped in to investigate, but Miss Bo’s body was never located, and the doctor couple vanished without a trace at the exact same time.

Xiliu Beauty Salon was ordered to shut down. Back then, public opinion presumed the doctor couple had destroyed the corpse before fleeing from prosecution.

Yet that wasn’t the sole reason the entire pedestrian street was shuttered.

Shortly after the incident, a security guard on the pedestrian street claimed to have seen Miss Bo standing along the roadside past midnight.

Initially, police dismissed the guard’s claims, attributing them to hallucinations induced by late-night shifts and psychological suggestion.

Yet just three days later, the guard was discovered dead at his night post. The scene was gruesome: his facial skin was reportedly peeled off in one intact piece, his frame collapsed flat against the ground, skin wrinkled and deflated like a punctured balloon or a kite stripped of its frame.

Forensic examination concluded that the victim’s entire skeletal system had been removed via some unknown technique, despite displaying no external physical trauma.

Speculation ran rampant. Rumors spread that Miss Bo’s vengeful spirit was trapped wandering the pedestrian street, and more people claimed to have spotted Miss Bo standing by the road past midnight.

The most bustling commercial promenade in Jiu’an City became entirely deserted, labeled a phantom zone by the public. To prevent further incidents, the entire street was cordoned off and abandoned to this day.

Setting other matters aside, that security guard’s manner of death was bizarrely specific: devoid of trauma yet stripped of bones, a method eerily similar to that employed by the two doctor Aberrants.

When the female doctor went berserk earlier, she had spat out several muffled syllables, among which the words “Miss Bo” were distinct. Had her ghost truly remained behind, lingering in the salon all along?

Yu An shook his head. Approaching the computer desk, he leaned over and slid open the drawer beneath, rummaging through the clutter for anything useful. The drawer held only dust and antique odds and ends, except for a glittering set of keys attached to a blue elevator tag.

Whatever, pocket them first.

“A gemstone brooch, pretty nice.” While Yu An was focused on scavenging, his eyes suddenly caught a bizarre anomaly.

The advertising standee that had originally faced the white door had quietly rotated ninety degrees, facing directly toward him.

“…” Yu An sheepishly set the brooch back onto the desk and stepped slowly backward.

He couldn’t resist comparing the promotional photos on the wall: the woman who had achieved final weight-loss success and the curvy S-shaped beauty on the standee shared the exact same striking face.

Cold sweat leaked from Yu An’s palms. His throat ran dry as he forced out the words: “…Miss Bo?”

When he shifted his gaze from the wall back to the standee beauty, he found it had slid a full meter closer, nearly pressing flat against Yu An’s chest. What’s more, it threw him a flirtatious wink with its left eye.

Yu An seemed to realize why the beauty showed no change after three body sculpting sessions. After that third procedure, Miss Bo had removed her entire skeleton: viewed from the front, she looked identical, yet viewed from the side, she was as thin as a sheet of cardboard.

She had become the flawless model from her own fashion sketches and the new mistress of Xiliu Beauty Salon, offering beautification services to clients whenever the midnight bell tolled.

Those pedestrians claiming to have seen Miss Bo appear on the midnight promenade had likely encountered this mobile standee.

It turned out Miss Bo had been waiting to welcome him by the entrance the moment he stepped out of the elevator. He had completely ignored her beauty; such dense conduct must have irritated her immensely.

Since the doctor pair could pull their own skeletal sections from X-ray projections to use as weapons, they could naturally strip a living human of their entire skeletal framework through the projection as well.

The married doctors recorded in the police dossier matched the pair of doctor Aberrants in the X-ray room down to the last detail.

Transforming from human to Aberrant required a catalyst. Those two doctors appeared to have mutated under external influence, just like the goat-headed men in Guxian Hospital. If any object in this space carried radiation, it had to be the X-ray machine itself.

“I understand now.” Yu An had thoroughly unraveled the operating core of the beauty salon. Keeping his eyes locked on the standee’s gaze, he backed away inch by inch, his hand reaching for the Arrogant Bat wedged in the handle, wrenching it free.

The split second he looked away, the standee glided toward Yu An at visible speed, the hands holding the promotional slogan fluttering like limp noodles as they reached to wrap around his neck.

Yu An had mapped out his subsequent sequence long before taking action.

Paying no heed to how many smiling janitors crowded behind him, he charged directly toward Miss Bo. Clamping one hand over her weightless head, he shoved downward with force, throwing his entire body on top to pin the standee flat against the ground. Leveling the heavy bat horizontally like a rolling pin, he rolled it forward, folding Miss Bo up like cardboard.

The entire maneuver was smooth and practiced; even an old junk recycler would have praised him as a master.

Holding the quadruple-folded beauty standee in his grip, Yu An raised it high above his head, shouting to the smiling janitors around him: “Your boss is in my hands! Clear the path!”

The janitors stood flabbergasted. The situation surpassed their cognitive capacity, nearly frying their internal CPUs, and they reverently parted to clear a way forward.

Yu An sprinted back toward the X-ray room holding Miss Bo aloft.

Miss Bo’s face contorted into a hideous visage, hissing at Yu An. Yet Yu An unhurriedly fished matches from his backpack, struck one lit, and brought the flame close to Miss Bo’s features: “Move again and I’ll ignite you.”

Miss Bo promptly shut her mouth, squirming in terror to escape the flame.

The phone in his pocket vibrated with an incoming call. Yu An shook the match out and answered with his free hand.

The caller ID showed “Interviewer.”

Once connected, Zhao Ran lowered his voice to ask: “What’s the status? Find a place to take cover and wait for me.”

Reception inside the building was terrible, rendering the interviewer’s voice fragmented and static-filled. Yu An roughly caught his drift and calmly laid out his situation:

“Xiliu Beauty Salon is on the seventh floor of an old office building. Countless mannequin employees will actively attack me. They’re troublesome, but I have already located the operational core of the entire salon: an X-ray machine. I believe this machine does not run on electricity, but is Aberrant-powered equipment just like the mechanical eagles. I am heading to dismantle it now. No backup needed; I can handle it.”

In the dead center of the ruined pedestrian street in Jiu’an City sat a sleek black motorcycle.

Zhao Ran straddled the motorcycle, long legs propped to the side, pressing the phone to his ear with furrowed brows as he tilted his head to listen to the intermittent audio within.

“…Buzz…Hub…buzz..by…buzzz…save..vvv…me.”

Zhao Ran covered his mouth, his cheeks burning hot.

At the entrance of the office building, the decrepit revolving door was kicked to splinters with a single boot.

Hands tucked in his trench coat pockets, Zhao Ran walked inside. Dim light cast from a desk lamp in the shadowy corner, where a security guard stood behind the registration counter sporting a standard eight-tooth grin, saying sinisterly, “Hey there, sir, come over and register.”

Without looking his way, Zhao Ran picked up a ballpoint pen from the desk and flicked it like a dart.

The hollow barrel tore through the air with a whistling screech, the pen tip piercing through the skull and pinning the smiling guard’s head firmly to the wall.