Chapter 2: 2

 

Chapter 2: The World Seemed to Have Begun Only at This Moment, Only Then Uncovering its Deep and Fascinating Veil.


“Because I want to know… what death is.”

Shen Lu tried analysing himself, but he also wasn’t entirely sure if he would be able to express himself properly, so he stumbled as he spoke, “Why do they die, what happens after death? I want to know what happened to them……”

Yan Chenli looked at him, and only looked away after he finished listening, the smile on his face fading and turning into a serious expression.

Shen Lu immediately regretted it and tried to take it back, “Sorry, I’m talking nonsense. Please forget it.”

“No.” Yan Chenli rested his chin on his hand and seriously pondered, “Because I also think about this matter constantly, so now I’m thinking about how I should answer you.”

“……” Shen Lu asked hesitatingly, “You don’t think that, me asking this kind of question… is really weird?”

Across from the park, there was a neat row of streetlamps casting a long strip of light over the roadside benches, making them look like small boats drifting on the black sea. Yan Chenli’s gaze fell on those shining boats and, with a steadiness entirely inconsistent with his age, he said, “My teacher always says that death is one of life’s most important topics, and it should be properly thought about and regarded at each stage.”

Shen Lu lifted his eyes slightly.

After thinking for a little while, Yan Chenli continued asking, “Since you often observe dead bodies, then what you want to know is about the field of biology, right?”

Would there be many aspects to that? Shen Lu was a little puzzled, but he still replied with what he knew so far, “When the heartbeat stops, a person dies. Everyone says so.”

“The heartbeat is a part of blood circulation, the heart pumps like an engine to extract and transport the blood, and delivers it to the other organs… then it decays.” Having reached this point, Yan Chenli rubbed his cheeks with his hands, “But why does it decay? …I don’t know, sigh. I haven’t thought about it.”

“…Isn’t it just like when food goes bad from being left out for a long time?” Shen Lu tried very hard to reflect.

“Let’s go!” Yan Chenli suddenly slapped his hands down and jumped up, dragging Shen Lu by the arm, “Come, we’ll go find out why!”

“Wh—what?” Shen Lu was suddenly pulled up, not understanding why.

“The library is still open, I can borrow books with my card. Let’s go let’s go!” Yan Chenli beamed as he pulled him along, his eyes shining with a light that made people unable to refuse him.


A few minutes later, an adult in a suit rushed over to the two of them and gave them a lift to the town library, leaving them with a library card and a few sweets. Shen Lu was baffled as he was pushed over among the tiered bookshelves which were much taller than himself.

“What… what are we looking for?” Shen Lu stood a bit stupidly in front of the bookshelf, there didn’t seem to be any books titled ‘Why do people die?’.

“I think we should start researching from the source. The first thing is how the human body works, what circumstances lead to death, why a corpse decays, and then how it breaks down.” Yan Chenli pulled out a book from the shelf and handed it to him, “We’ll just start from here, okay?”

There were no people inside the small town library, but there were actually many children in the media room next door playing simple games that came preinstalled in the systems. The inside of the glass doors that separated them were empty and cold, and the chairs and tables intended for adults were very tall, so Yan Chenli had to kneel on a chair to be able to reach the table.

Shen Lu flipped through a few pages of that cryptic and difficult to understand book in his hands, then raised his head a bit awkwardly and spoke in embarrassment, “I don’t really understand.”

“You can write down the ones you don’t really understand and skip them for now. We’ll check them again one by one once we’ve finished reading.” Yan Chenli tore off a few pages from a small notebook he carried with him, and handed them over to him along with a pencil.

Shen Lu looked down and read in confusion, becoming distracted a few times in between and unconsciously beginning to space out. He unconsciously turned to look at the schoolboy next to him, Yan Chenli’s reading speed was scarily fast, he himself hadn’t even read a few pages and Yan Chenli had already flipped through almost half of the book.

Midsummer was always irritatingly sweltering, but the slight chill inside the library was just right, and Shen Lu suddenly felt that this kind of situation was not bad. He relaxed and tried to continue reading for now.

The library closed a few hours later, and Yan Chenli picked out a few books to take out, one of which was specially chosen by Shen Lu. The two people descended the ancient-looking, winding staircase, and Yan Chenli asked him if he’d gained anything. Shen Lu looked at the small scrap of paper in his hand and said: “I had one question going in, and now I have twenty-seven questions coming out.”

Yan Chenli couldn’t help but laugh: “Congratulations. If you think of life as a gathering adventure game, your map would now be marked with 27 treasure chests, just waiting for you to go open them for yourself.”

“And you?” Shen Lu asked.

Yan Chenli was all smiles as he tossed the small notebook towards him, on it was written a densely-packed pile of nouns and a bibliography of reference books, then he lifted his chin rather proudly: “216.”

Shen Lu: “……”

This was probably the direct embodiment of the boundless sea of learning.


When the two people exited the library, a black private car was waiting for them. Yan Chenli stuffed Shen Lu into the back seat without an explanation and sent him back home.

When Shen Lu got down from the car, Yan Chenli waved at him from the car window and spoke very naturally: “I’m leaving the library card with you, see you tomorrow!”

“Tomorrow? At the library? …At what time?” Shen Lu asked, stunned.

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“At the time when you long for answers.” Yan Chenli leaned against the car window and smiled brilliantly at him, exposing the tips of his small canine teeth.

The car set off, and that glittering smile disappeared into the night.


Yan Chenli took Shen Lu to hang out at the library for three days, and arrived earlier than him every day. But sometimes, Yan Chenli would disappear for a few hours saying he had something to do, but he would keep returning at dusk.

Shen Lu felt that the world seemed to have only just uncovered its veil at this moment, becoming clear, deep, and fascinating. And that his questions turned out to not be childish or stupid, that life and death were more complicated than he ever imagined, and that even the scientific world had constantly been changing the definition of death for hundreds of years.

And he finally got a glimpse into the tip of the iceberg that was the truth about death.


The first clear change brought about by death was the skin beginning to pale.

The heart stopped beating, the blood vessels stopped circulating, and the blood faded from the surface of the skin due to the effects of gravity, pooling at the lowest part of the body.

Soon after, the corpse cooled. The temperature of a dead body was impacted by its environment, and its temperature decreased gradually over time from the inside out. In many cases, this was the most simple and straightforward basis to determine time of death.

Afterwards comes rigour mortis. After death, the organisms for pumping calcium ions out of the muscle cells fail, and calcium seeps into the cell membranes, causing the actin and myosin in the muscles to contract, which makes the muscles tense and shrink. The muscles cover the joints, so the joints may pull back and become fixed within a few hours after death, resulting in the body becoming stiff. After a period of examination, the stiff muscles begin to relax due to natural decomposition and chemical changes, and the joints of the corpse become mobile once again.

At the same time, livor mortis also takes place. After the blood sediments, the larger red blood cells pass through the blood serum in the lower areas, and a dark red or blue-purple colour gradually appears on the skin due to the accumulation of red blood cells. Livor mortis does not change after it is set, so it can be used as an effective sign when investigating suspicious deaths.

After this, decay arrives. The overall structure of bacterium begins to break up, and the cell membrane is dissolved by slightly acidic enzymes1, this process is known as “autolysis”. The process of cell autolysis releases all kinds of chemicals, for example propionic acid, lactic acid, methane, ammonia, etc. The release of gasses causes the corpse to well, and a few odorous substances such as cadaverine, skatole, and putrescine accumulate more and more, exuding an irresistible aroma for insects.


At this point, Shen Lu became distracted again. He was holding a book with traditional characters, and the word “insect” on the cover was written in traditional characters which were so broken up by the typography that it looked like a Q cutely stacked on top of itself2.

Shen Lu subconsciously wanted to share this with Yan Chenli. The small library had a finite number of books, and Yan Chenli had already flipped through all the native language books he could find, so now he was absorbed in reading an dense foreign language one.

Shen Lu felt an indescribable shame for no reason, swallowing his words just as he was about to talk.

But Yan Chenli noticed his gaze, and looked at him inquiringly. Shen Lu shook his head and didn’t speak, continuing to read with his head down.

“Look.” Yan Chenli suddenly touched his elbow, poking the cover of the book and reading out, “‘Bugology——Bugs never miss a murder case’. Bugology3, hahahaha!”

Shen Lu remained silent as he stared at the laughing Yan Chenli.

I overestimated you, it turns out you like this type of childish joke.


As the time passed, the description of decay on the paper continued to intensify.

Insects emerge soon after, blue blowflies could even detect decay minutes after death. The insects lay eggs on orifices such as the nose, mouth, the canthus of the eyes, and open wounds. As decay intensifies, the pressure within the body’s tissues causes fluids to flow out from the orifices, and the byproducts of haemoglobin denaturalisation decay into deep purple, dark green, or grey colours, discolouring the whole body.

After that came the most exciting part. Large groups of maggots and larvae hatch, engulfing the carcass and nibbling away at the tissue. Insect, plant, and animal activity occurs one after another, and all soft tissue is broken down. Tissue on the human body becomes nutrients for life, or liquifies into the surrounding environment.

There are roughly 25,000 maggots in a single maggot nest, and the movement of the larvae generates so much heat that the temperature rises to the point where the threshold for larvae survival is almost exceeded. When the maggot nest nears 50℃, the swarm of maggots spreads wildly outwards, breaking off into smaller clusters to cool down.

The last stage the corpse goes through is skeletonisation. All the soft tissues have long since decomposed, and so has the inert keratin that makes up the bones, hair, or fingernails. Under certain conditions, the bones are also decomposed, and returned to the chemical pools of nature’s repeating cycles.


This was the complete picture of death, according to scientific definition.

This was the most disgusting sight for others, and for the first time Shen Lu understood the whole process in a rational, objective, and comprehensive manner, and reading about it felt like a momentous, great joy. Humans feared and hated decay and maggots, but everyone would inevitably return to nature by their hands eventually.


This was the beginning of Shen Lu’s interest in forensics, but many new questions emerged at the same time. He crossed out a word in the notebook and added five or six more, and was in the middle of editing when he heard Yan Chenli suddenly speak, “I have to go.”

Shen Lu lifted his head to look at him.

“I have a performance in a while.” Yan Chenli withdrew his gaze from the wristwatch and closed the book, he pulled himself up to the edge of the chair and leapt to the ground, then turned his head back and tilted it with a smile, “I have an extra ticket, do you want to come see?”

 

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1 Original text is censored at ‘slightly acidic □□’. I’m assuming it’s enzymes because everything I found on autolysis talked about enzymes breaking down the cells, but I have no idea why that word would be censored in the first place. Top.

2 The word for insect in trad chinese is ‘昆蟲’ with that last character indeed being the same character stacked on top of itself. Shen Lu is reading “A fly for the Prosecution” by M. Lee Goff (Chinese title “法醫昆蟲學” ‘Forensic Entomology’) and you can see that the font is ridiculously spaced for that particular character on the CN cover. 

The book cover.

 Top.

3 Imma be honest there’s supposed to be a joke here but I don’t really get it? My best guess is that it’s supposed to read “昆蟲學”, entomology, but the weirdly-spaced font makes it look like “虫虫學” which I guess reads a bit more like bugology or wormology. Top.

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