When Xu Mo and Chen Ke both expressed their willingness to help solve the case, the local police officers were immediately delighted.
"It's wonderful that you're willing to help! Thank you!"
These two officers from the big city were naturally skilled, especially Xu Mo, who maintained a perfect 100% case-solving rate to date.
Moreover, Xu Mo had only handled homicide cases, not simple cases like finding lost pets or catching petty thieves, which was enough to demonstrate his capabilities.
The local officers believed that with these two helping, their upcoming tasks would be much easier!
...
Under Chen Ke's lead, the group first went to the surveillance room to review the security footage.
Chen Ke pointed to the corpse that appeared in the footage.
"This isn't someone pretending to be dead - it's a real corpse that escaped from the morgue. The young nurse who reviewed the footage with me earlier can confirm this. She clearly remembers that this body was sent to the morgue this morning."
The police officers watching the surveillance footage alongside Chen Ke felt their hair stand on end.
It wasn't that they lacked psychological fortitude, but the scene in the footage was too bizarre - a corpse chasing after people was simply outrageous!
"Sent to the morgue in the morning, but the corpse ran out of the morgue at night? How did this body start moving? This is too strange."
"Yeah, in all my years, I've never encountered anything this bizarre. Could this actually be a case of corpse reanimation?"
"That's impossible, reanimation my foot! When someone's dead, they're dead. There's no such thing as corpse reanimation!"
"How can you say that? I remember watching a documentary that said bodies can still move after death - they're not completely static. Reanimation isn't entirely impossible."
The officers began discussing the topic of corpse reanimation.
Chen Ke turned to look at Xu Mo, knowing his expertise in forensic medicine. He wanted to ask Xu Mo's opinion on the matter of corpse reanimation.
"You understand forensics - from a medical perspective, is there any truth to corpse reanimation?"
Hearing Chen Ke's question, the other officers also turned their attention to Xu Mo, surprised to learn that he was knowledgeable about forensic theory.
"Corpse reanimation definitely doesn't exist, but bodies can move - they're not completely motionless," Xu Mo stated his conclusion first.
He then elaborated: "Of course, these movements are minor. For example, male bodies can experience one final erectile response eight hours after death, or rigor mortis can cause hair to stand up, or around seven days after death, decomposition gases in the abdomen can push the tongue out, creating the illusion of the corpse sticking out its tongue... These are all normal phenomena, but what we see in the surveillance footage - a corpse chasing people - falls outside the realm of normal occurrences."
Chen Ke nodded slightly before summarizing.
"So you're saying it's impossible for a corpse to chase after people like this."
"Yes, so there must be something suspicious going on here. Have you checked the morgue? Are you certain that the corpse in the footage is the same one that was brought to the morgue this morning, and not a case of the nurse misidentifying it? If there was a mistake, it could be someone playing a prank," Xu Mo added.
He wanted to confirm one last time that it was actually the morgue's corpse that had escaped, rather than the nurse mistaking the face in her panic.
"We haven't checked yet, but we can go verify now."
Subsequently, they found the nurse who had reviewed the footage with Chen Ke earlier and had her lead them to the morgue to confirm whether the corpse from the surveillance footage was indeed missing from the morgue.
At the morgue, the young nurse tremblingly pointed to an empty bed.
"When the body was brought in, it was placed on this bed. Now the bed is empty. I'm certain I'm not mistaken - what we saw in the footage was definitely the same corpse that was brought here this morning! Now that it's gone, maybe... it really did come back to life!"
...
After sending away the nurse, who was nearly hysterical with fear, the group stared at the empty bed, deep in thought.
First of all, it was absolutely impossible for a corpse to move on its own, walk out of the morgue, and chase people - it completely defied science!
But the nurse had repeatedly confirmed that the corpse in the footage was indeed the one brought to the morgue that morning, so there was no possibility of someone impersonating a corpse.
"A corpse definitely can't run away by itself, but this body is definitely missing from the morgue, and we have footage of it chasing someone... These two facts contradict each other," one officer said, rubbing his head.
Besides this officer, everyone else was also feeling puzzled.
If they had only captured footage of a corpse chasing someone, they could explain it away as someone deliberately disguising themselves as a corpse for a prank.
But now they had confirmed that this was a real corpse, ruling out the possibility of impersonation, which made the situation even more confusing!
Xu Mo looked up at the morgue's ceiling before speaking.
"This morgue has surveillance cameras. Let's check the footage here. A corpse definitely can't move on its own - I suspect someone tampered with it."
At Xu Mo's suggestion, the other officers quickly nodded.
The case was so bizarre that their thinking had become rigid, and they had momentarily forgotten about checking such a basic investigative tool as the surveillance footage.
"Yes, yes, let's check the cameras. We only looked at the first-floor corridor footage before, but we haven't checked the morgue's cameras yet. They might provide some clues."
The group returned to the surveillance room.
This time, they reviewed the morgue's surveillance footage.
"I heard screaming from the first floor around eleven-thirty, so the body should still have been in the morgue before then," Chen Ke recalled when he had heard the screams from the first floor.
"Screams at eleven-thirty... Let's start checking from eleven o'clock!" an officer suggested, dragging the progress bar to 11 PM.
At eleven o'clock, the morgue's surveillance footage showed the corpse still lying on the bed, covered with a white sheet.
"The body was definitely still there at eleven!" the officer said as he started fast-forwarding the footage.
When the surveillance footage reached eleven-thirteen, a man walked into frame, heading straight for the corpse that would later 'reanimate'...