Chapter 348: An Old Friend
After going deep into the jungle for about half an hour, Milo found a body in a mountain stream where the sheepdog was barking.
To be precise, they were corpse fragments lying on the ground.
The ground was covered with a large area of dried blood, and many indescribable tissue fragments were scattered around.
The body was in pieces.
But the shepherd dog recognized the smell of the corpse. It stopped four or five meters away from the broken pieces and kept growling.
Milo rolled up his sleeves and squatted down in front of the mud-like thing:
"It's the body of that vicious dog."
"It seems like ...It exploded.”
The blood stains showed a pattern blooming like flowers on the surface, and the surrounding vegetation and trees were covered with ferocious tissue fragments and broken bones.
Rick quickly put on his gloves, opened the small box he carried with him, and used tweezers to collect the body fragments on the ground and save them one by one.
He adjusted his glasses and analyzed attentively:
“Judging from the dryness of the blood and the degree of decay of the body parts, at least a week has passed since the death, or about three to five days. , after all, you also said that the vicious dog’s limbs were already in a state of decay when it was alive.”
He used tweezers to pick up a smelly intestine with many ants hanging on it. He said calmly:
"And this rot should have penetrated deep into the internal organs long ago, otherwise it would have been eaten by coyotes in the nearby mountains on the night of death, and these ants would not have their turn to share, so the actual time It should have been shorter, maybe just yesterday.”
"I have never seen such a way of death."
Milo handed over the task of examining the body parts to Rick, and he walked around the surroundings covered with body parts.
“There are no traces of fighting here, and there are no traces of other people or creatures. Broken vegetation is gathered around the corpse, seemingly torn apart by the broken bones it spattered.”
"How could this happen..." Rick stared at the countless filthy things on the ground and said to himself.
“This mutated creature exploded on its own, but it doesn’t make sense. If something in its own body caused this situation, it should have at least suffered for a period of time before dying. Struggle, but judging from the marks on the ground, it doesn't seem like it." Milo shook his head.
However, Rick said: "No, that's not what I'm talking about."
He stood up and took out a blood-stained gray-white fragment held on the tweezers, probably to feel this small structure Made of the same material, he simply pinched the thing with his hands, broke it gently twice, then shook his head and said with a puzzled expression:
"If this is a canine according to what you said, If it's a living thing, then there shouldn't be such a thing in the pile of corpses."
"What?" Milo frowned.
"A human fingernail." After Rick wiped some of the blood off the small fragment, he held it and came to Milo: "This is a human thumbnail."
"How can you be sure it's human?" Milo asked.
"There are traces of pruning on it." Rick's tone was very determined.
"Could it be that of the deceased old man? We all know that his body was not complete when it was delivered to the law enforcement station. It is not surprising that some body tissues were swallowed by vicious dogs." Mai Luo narrowed his eyes.
"But I was the one who produced the old man's autopsy report. I remember very clearly that all his fingers and toes were intact." Rick placed the fragment of human nail on the palm of his hand and said to Milo cast an inquiring look:
"Could there be other victims that we don't know about? After all, it has been wandering around here for nearly a month, and it doesn't matter if it swallowed some unlucky guy. Impossible.”
"Continue to search inside the corpse to see if there are any other clues. If necessary, we may have to conduct a census in the town of Glenn."
Milo nodded.
Rick continued to work hard.
But Milo's attention began to be attracted by the surrounding jungle.
He stretched out two fingers and pressed on the artery in his neck to check his pulse. It turned out that the power of crisis did not give any signal, but Milo had already noticed the spots around him. There was something tracking him and Rick under the shadow of the trees.
...
About fifteen minutes later.
"I found it." Rick made another discovery.
He came to Milo carrying a broken claw and repeated the question he had asked before: "Are you really sure this thing was a canine creature in life?"
"Although he looks very ugly, he is." Milo nodded.
"Then it's hard to explain this thing clearly."
Rick hung a black thing stained with blood in front of Milo.
This is a broken claw.
The skin and hair on it have fallen off, and the claws are much thicker than those of ordinary dogs. The newly grown claws connected to the bones are still sharp, measuring a full five or six centimeters. long.
In order to let Milo see the problem more intuitively, Rick carefully opened the claws on the beast's claws with his hands.
Under the terrifying connective tissue claw, connected to the muscle tissue, was actually a bloody human fingernail.
And from this angle, the bone structure of this palm can be seen more clearly.
This is not a broken vicious dog paw...
This is a mutated human hand!
It has the human bone structure of five separate fingers, but some strange muscles have grown between the fingers to connect the five fingers to everything, forming a posture similar to making a fist, plus the body is covered with Countless pieces of rotting flesh resulted in what at first glance looked like the claws of a canine. ……
Rick took out the scalpel and cut away the proliferated tissue so that the claw could be fully stretched.
Just like that, a bloody human palm appeared in front of Milo.
Only each finger bone has a new claw five to six centimeters long.
……
Rick blinked and looked at Milo: "This seems to be a person."
"Well-"
Milo scratched his head, feeling a little brain-burning.
It was only then that he realized with some horror that the information conveyed by the Church's Thinking Eye was so accurate - the picture he glimpsed was not complete.
This is indeed the case. The vicious dog Milo saw from the perspective of the undead was actually a human being?
But what he clearly saw was a canine creature spitting out from its mouth, without the slightest trace of a human outline.
But if you think about it carefully...
When that thing appeared, it didn’t have any animal hair on its body. What was exposed was all ferocious flesh and blood. Is it possible that it was not hair and flesh? The skin fell off, but there was no such thing as hair at all.
"This is indeed a person."
As more and more bones and tissue fragments were found, Rick discovered a lot of human tissue.
From a rational point of view, the pair of broken corpses should be regarded as a mixture of the corpses of a beast and a human. However, this is not the case. Many of these tissues that do not belong to the same species are connected and grown together. of.
"In your knowledge, is there such a species in which beasts transform into humans or humans transform into beasts?" Rick made a rather bold speculation.
Milo nodded: "Congratulations on getting rid of the inherent concepts of ordinary humans."
He was very satisfied with Rick's reaction.
If this guy starts talking nonsense after discovering this series of chilling truths, or has any reaction that his sanity is weakened, Milo can only send him back to the basement of the law enforcement station. Went to work.
But it is obvious that Rick has a very strong ability to accept, or that his sanity has not been affected at all. He is even working hard to analyze the problems he is facing and boldly make assumptions.
This made Milo feel for the first time that he had made the right decision in keeping this half-living corpse gourmet.
“There are indeed similar creatures, but they are not canines.”
Milo remembered the terrible story of David Derby’s family, who was sent to a mental hospital by Milo as bait. And David, who was intercepted by hunters on the way, or should be called Ephraim, is a creature that can completely transform from a human form into a form that is similar to a beast.
However, the information provided by Investigator C later confirmed that the thing was a descendant of the deep divers belonging to the Dagon sect near the coast.
It was different from the broken corpses in front of me.
......
"Regardless of whether it was a beast transformed from a human or a human transformed from a beast, it only killed an old man, right? At least as far as we know, that's all A victim."
The familiar feeling from before came back to Milo's heart.
The feeling of familiarity that occurred as early as when Investigator C first mentioned this inference.
The clue given by Investigator C is that in the 23 incidents of animal injuries, the deceased were all killed by their own pets or livestock.
“They kill the people they know best.”
What if the beast in all the cases is actually a human being...
……< br>
Milo rubbed his eyebrows. He was quickly recalling all the cases he had handled in the past, looking for the source of that familiar feeling.
But at this moment, Milo's thoughts were interrupted by some sporadic movement in the grass nearby.
Rick immediately held the scalpel vigilantly and stared at the patch of grass.
But Milo patted him on the shoulder and said:
"It's okay, we are old friends."
......
After a while, a little black cat with a broken bell hanging around its neck came out of the woods with light steps. It sat on the spot and winked at Milo and Rick. tooth.
It's Marshall, Rebecca's cat.
Neither Milo nor Rick noticed the little black cat following them all the way. Even Milo only noticed its existence not long ago.
Marshall licked his little paws comfortably, tilted his head to look at Milo and the two, and then turned to look at the broken corpses on the ground behind them, showing a very humane and interested look. Queque's expression.
(End of this chapter)