Free Web NovelWang Han sat in front of the experimental operating table, staring blankly at the lunchbox-sized metal box made of unknown material. It had been over an hour.
He was a lecturer at Mountain City Medical University, specializing in oncology. After earning his doctorate, he stayed at the university, but had made no progress for seven years.
He couldn't get a higher professional title, not because he didn't want to, nor because he was suppressed, but simply because he had no outstanding research achievements to show for it.
Whenever he thought about why he was still an unknown lecturer after so long, Wang Han found it somewhat laughable.
From elementary school to university, to graduating with a doctorate, and then staying at the university after graduation, the first twenty-eight years of his life had been smooth sailing. In the eyes of others, even if he wasn't considered a dragon among men, he was at least outstanding. During holidays and festivals, he was always held up by relatives and friends as an example to educate their own children.
Wang Han once believed that too.
He believed he was smarter than most people, and it wouldn't be an exaggeration to say he was naturally gifted, albeit a bit conceited.
However, reality told him that he had talent, but not enough!
Some say that if talent isn't enough, effort can make up for it. But Wang Han wanted to tell the person who said that from his personal experience that if you think effort works, it's because it's not yet time to compete on talent.
The most despairing thing in this world is not lacking talent, but having a certain amount of talent, enough to glimpse the light cast by the world of true geniuses, but no matter how hard one tries, one can never reach that'sacred place'.
Wang Han once heard a story about a very skilled swordsman in ancient times who one day met a Sword Master. After seeing the Sword Master's swordsmanship, he was so disheartened that he never used a sword again.
He felt that although his confidence hadn't been completely eroded, his situation was almost identical to that swordsman's.
What he couldn't understand was why those people would approach someone like him, who lacked sufficient talent, to entrust him with researching the contents of the box, and offered very tempting conditions—
An independent laboratory and ample experimental funding, perhaps that could bridge the gap between him and true geniuses?
Wang Han had no doubt about the client's promise. The client's holding company, he knew of at least three.
The condition for receiving the client's funding was so simple it was almost unbelievable: he only needed to open the metal box and study its contents, regardless of the outcome.
After sitting for a long time, Wang Han stood up, left the laboratory, and went to the end of the corridor to light a cigarette. His reflection appeared in the glass.
Fat, haggard, slightly hunched, with messy, somewhat yellow hair.
Just by his appearance, he always recalled the patients he had treated, those who were tormented by malignant tumors and were on the verge of death.
But he knew his body should be very healthy.
The reason for his slight uncertainty was that ever since the influential client delivered the research sample yesterday, he had felt unwell, as if something had drained his spirit, leaving him utterly exhausted.
However, after a careful check by a friend specializing in medical imaging, no abnormalities were found, so he didn't take it to heart.
As a medical student, he had great faith in modern medical test results. He wouldn't be suspicious just because of physical discomfort.
“Cough, cough, cough—!”
As soon as he took a puff of the cigarette, Wang Han felt an unbearable itch in his throat, followed by a choking sensation, and then he started coughing.
He coughed so hard that his whole body trembled, his face turned red, and his cough sounded like it carried thick phlegm, yet he felt nothing in his respiratory tract.
It was simply a dry, intense friction and pulling sensation accompanying the cough.
In a daze, his gaze swept over the glass window beside him, and his pupils instantly dilated.
He saw that his reflection in the glass window was covered with a huge, deformed, pathological mass of flesh. On that flesh, there seemed to be some pores, and with every cough, black smoke would erupt from those pores.
And as the dense smoke erupted, his body visibly thinned at a speed discernible to the naked eye.
As if electrocuted, Wang Han's body trembled and froze in place.
In that instant, he inexplicably thought of the strange occurrences his colleague mentioned during lunch, recently appearing in major hospitals in Mountain City.
Recently, major hospitals had admitted several patients suspected of having respiratory diseases. However, after examination, no cause could be found, and only some anti-inflammatory and cough-suppressing drugs could be prescribed. But soon, those patients died from various bizarre and severe respiratory cancers.
The entire process took no more than a week, and many patient families insisted that there were oversights in the hospital's work, causing a huge commotion at the hospital, leaving the hospital overwhelmed.
Indeed, such severe respiratory diseases, if not for oversights in work, would be impossible to miss. However, the Doctors responsible for the examinations unanimously guaranteed that they found no abnormalities during the process.
Moreover, it was too much of a coincidence that different hospitals, different Doctors, and patients with different symptoms all had misdiagnoses.
The only reasonable, yet somewhat absurd, explanation was that those patients encountered urban legend events.
Perhaps, only urban legend events could cause a healthy person to die of cancer in less than a week.
Could there really be urban legend?
In silence, Wang Han stared blankly at his reflection in the glass window, and only after confirming there were no abnormalities did he slightly relax.
Perhaps I just saw it wrong in a flash?
Maybe I really should quit smoking earlier?
Wang Han thought, shaking his head. He didn't finish the cigarette in his hand, but instead snuffed it out and hurried back to the laboratory.
He had made up his mind to see what was inside that metal box.
“Damn it, what is this smell?”
As soon as Wang Han opened the metal box, before he could even see what was inside, he was immediately assailed by a foul stench that made him blurt out a curse.
The stench was very strange, somewhat like festering flesh, yet mixed with the smell of car exhaust and the acrid smell of burning garbage, giving the illusion of highly decomposed corpses being burned with gasoline and plastic as fuel.
Before Wang Han could recover from the discomfort of the foul odor, he received a second shock when he saw what was inside the box.
“Is this... an adenocarcinoma? But... how could this be?”
The object was dark red, translucent like jelly, covered with ulcers, and in some places, there were protruding lumps of flesh, vaguely revealing grayish-white tissue beneath the flesh. It looked like an adenocarcinoma, which is a common tumor causing cancers like lung cancer and gastrointestinal cancer.
But if it were merely an adenocarcinoma, Wang Han wouldn't have been shocked. He had seen too many tumors and was long past being uncomfortable with their appearance.
The real reasons for his shock were twofold.
First, the tumor was attached to striated muscle tissue, where adenocarcinoma almost never grows, just as peach blossoms don't bloom on banana trees.
But considering the existence of the special “cancer” known as black night disease, such a situation wasn't impossible. He had heard of a case long ago, a male patient who contracted cervical cancer due to black night disease.
As for how a male could contract cervical cancer, he wasn't sure.
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And what truly shocked him, even terrified him, was the second point: the tumor tissue was “alive”!
That ugly, pathological, twisted tissue was slowly wriggling under his gaze, as if breathing, with a rhythmic pulse.
At least ten hours had passed since the metal box was delivered, and if calculated from when it left the patient's body, it would be even longer. Even if the metal box had been stored at low temperature until an hour ago, it couldn't maintain this level of activity.
This completely overturned his understanding of tumor tissue, and even common sense.
Wang Han glanced at the hideous flesh again, and inexplicably thought of the rumors he heard from his colleague during lunch, and a chill ran down his spine.
Could this thing have been removed from those strange patients?
“This is troublesome!” He sighed, resting his head in his hands, and muttered to himself with a worried expression, “I don't want to touch this strange thing! But that client...” freewebnøvel.coɱ
The client told him that once he opened the metal box, it meant he had accepted the commission.
Given the client's identity and methods, if he were to back out after accepting the commission, the price he would have to pay would be absolutely unbearable.
What should I do?
Could it be that I can only grit my teeth and go for it?
While contemplating, Wang Han stood up, put on his gloves, sterilized his hands, and with trepidation yet skilled movements, he sliced the flesh.
Fortunately, throughout the process, the flesh was very cooperative and didn't make any frightening moves.
After observing the sliced tissue under the microscope for a while, Wang Han, who was already strongly impacted, # Nоvеlight # suddenly felt a moment of dizziness, as if he was about to faint, and his body swayed.
How is that possible? What exactly is this thing?
Years of tumor research had exposed him to almost all types of cells, but what he saw under the microscope now was a type he had never encountered before. He even suspected that it wasn't the cell of any known organism at all.
The cells were unusually large, slightly larger than an egg cell, with a single cell almost filling the entire field of view. Inside the cells, there was no nucleus, but rather a constantly swirling mass of dense smoke, with faint glimpses of extremely tiny crystalline particles mixed within the smoke.
Wang Han sat there blankly, as if his soul had left his body.
Just then, he heard some furtive and secretive sounds in his ears.
The sound came from the corridor, sounding like wind blowing tiny debris, rubbing against the smooth floor, vaguely mixed with some footsteps, as if something ominous was approaching.
Hearing the sound, Wang Han's body jolted, and he turned to look at the window connecting the laboratory to the corridor.
The window was half-open, and it was very dark outside, with only the faint green glow of the emergency exit sign visible.
However, even though there was nothing there, Wang Han felt that a pair of eyes were watching him, and the owner of those eyes seemed to have noticed that he had discovered its presence.
“Gulp—!”
He looked at the slice under the microscope, then at the ugly, wriggling flesh in the metal box, and swallowed hard.
This research can't be done!
At least, not today.
It's better to continue tomorrow when there are more people at the university.
Wang Han thought, quickly packed up all the instruments and the metal box, and then, as if escaping, left the laboratory.
As soon as he left the laboratory building, he noticed a heavy fog outside. He vaguely felt that something was wrong, but didn't pay much attention, as heavy fog was common in Mountain City.
So, without much thought, he jogged towards the parking lot, and soon his figure disappeared into the thick fog.
Early morning, Xi Yang Yang Hotpot Restaurant.
Jiang Li sat at the dining table, looking at the simmering red soup, her eyelids twitching slightly.
Although she had long heard that Mountain City people loved hotpot, she didn't expect that someone would eat hotpot for breakfast.
“Lin Kele, besides hotpot, can we eat something else? Like small noodles, pea and minced meat noodles, or lamb offal soup?”
Lin Kele smiled awkwardly at Jiang Li and explained, “Actually, I don't want to eat hotpot so early in the morning either, but Number Three said that we don't get many guests here all year, so we have to try to use up the hotpot bases we bought for show, otherwise it would be a waste.”
Jiang Li, “The Hua City Si Ye Hui's mode of disguising itself as the Folk Culture Research Bureau should be properly promoted. Not only will it not waste funds, but sometimes it can also unexpectedly gain Spiritual Energy items.”
Just as Jiang Hao was silent, a hurried footsteps came from outside the hotpot restaurant.
Immediately after, a round-faced girl, about thirteen or fourteen years old, with a black mole between her eyebrows, rushed in and went straight to Lin Kele. “Sister Kele, you're amazing, something really big has happened!”
As she spoke, the girl was about to pull something out of her backpack, but noticing the stranger beside Lin Kele, she stopped her movements.
Seeing this, Lin Kele raised an eyebrow and explained with a smile, “This is Jiang Li, a temporary agent from Hua City. You can tell her whatever it is, it's fine.”
After speaking, she paused, then looked at Jiang Li and explained softly, “Mai Mai is our probationary agent here.”
Jiang Hao nodded, indicating understanding, and then saw the girl called Mai Mai take out a few photos from her satchel and hand them to Lin Kele.
“Sister Kele, these are photos taken by the Special Operations Team this morning at Mountain City Medical University. A laboratory there caught fire last night, and everything in the lab was burned down. The Special Operations Team detected severely excessive black night disease erosion in that laboratory.”
“Have you asked the laboratory staff?” Jiang Li instinctively asked.
“Yes.” Mai Mai paused, then looked at Jiang Hao and said, “Yes, they said that the only person in the lab last night was a man named Wang Han, thirty-five years old, a lecturer at the medical university.”
“From the surveillance footage, he left the lab at 1:43 AM yesterday, and soon after, the lab caught fire, which is very suspicious. The Special Operations Team tried to contact Wang Han but couldn't reach him. I've already asked them to retrieve Wang Han's personal information and recent communication records.”
After listening, Jiang Hao nodded slightly, unable to help but praise.
Look at how professional their probationary agent is!
The two probationary agents in Hua City either slacked off, or if they couldn't slack off, they just lay flat.
As Jiang Ge was thinking, her phone suddenly vibrated.
The call was from a certain slacking probationary agent in Hua City.
