Chapter 178 The Wooden Wedge

I only tilted my head for a moment, and I heard a sharp sound of a weapon piercing a human body erupt from the dissection table, going straight into the air beside me.

When I turned my head, I saw a streak of black light brushing past my ear and flying behind me.

Before I could make a move, I caught a glimpse of a cold star in the corner of my eye.

Ye Yang had struck!

Ye Yang's sword, swung flat, passed swiftly by my ear, the tip almost grazing my earlobe as it struck the object flying into the air. Under Ye Yang's heavy blow, the object shot towards the forensic doctor opposite me.

The person flipped a pair of tweezers from their left hand, and when they tried to intercept the black shadow in mid-air, it made a sound like metal colliding with wood.

In the next instant, Xia Mengying, who was standing at a distance ready to support the four of us, also extended two fingers to clamp at the object.

Xia Mengying's two fingers, filled with righteous energy, clamped firmly onto a constantly shaking wooden wedge beneath the tweezers.

"Qi-powered suppression!" My first reaction was to have Xia Mengying suppress the evil object.

"No!" Ye Yang stopped her in a deep voice, extending one hand flat beneath the wooden wedge, his five fingers slowly closing upwards, his palm's true energy enveloping the wedge-like object in a cage. Only then did the forensic doctor and Xia Mengying release their hold.

It was only at this point that I could see clearly what it was.

It was clearly a carpenter's wooden wedge, except that there were patches like pockmarks on both sides of the wedge. I couldn't figure out what they were after staring at them for a long time.

Ye Yang said in a deep voice, "Look at it with a magnifying glass."

I borrowed a magnifying glass from the forensic doctor and looked at the piece of wood again. "There are words on it, it seems to be a story. Is Du Fei's lost manuscript here?"

I couldn't help but be dumbfounded. Ye Yang explained, "The Bei Yi Ye's (a fictional sect) records mentioned an incident. A master of Bei Yi Ye once encountered a strange tomb."

"Guarding the tomb was a group of half-dead people. They were called half-dead because, judging from their physical condition, they hadn't lost their vitality and could even live normally like living people. However, each of them had a wooden wedge carved with micro-engraved runes hammered into their foreheads."

"Each half-dead person acted according to the micro-engravings. If you didn't observe carefully, you'd only think of them as a group of living people with extremely regular habits."

"It was only when someone tried to rob the tomb that those villagers would reveal their terrifying nature as tomb guardians. However, the runes on the wedges hammered into the heads of the half-dead people that time weren't this complex."

"The descendants of Bei Yi Ye speculated that the rune wedge should be a variation of some kind of corpse control technique."

"The caster pried open the deceased's forehead and hammered the wedge from the bone crevices into the dead person's brain. With such a long wooden nail inserted into the brain, no one could survive, but the wedge could seal the dead person's ghost in the corpse and continue to control the corpse's movements. The human body's functions would also continue to operate."

"The person being controlled would become a dead person who wasn't dead."

I could roughly understand what Ye Yang meant: he was saying that the person with the wedge nailed into their head was essentially brain dead. However, the wooden wedge could suppress the dead person's ghost, allowing it to continue issuing commands to the body's organs. In that case, the body's organs could still function, so they could be considered not dead.

However, the premise was that no one removed the wedge or dispersed the opponent's soul.

I gently took the wooden wedge from Ye Yang's hand and examined it for a long time before saying, "What do you think would happen if I hammered this wedge back in?"

Everyone present was stunned, but I said, "I want to see what Du Fei's corpse can actually do."

Although this approach wasn't very reliable, it was the only option at the time.

Du Fei's story clearly hadn't ended. According to my previous deduction, continuing to investigate Du Fei should trigger subsequent events, allowing us to continue following the story.

Now that we'd taken the wedge out of the corpse, it was equivalent to cutting off the rest of the story. If we wanted the story to continue, we had to hammer the wedge back in.

Ye Yang and the others retreated a few steps, holding their breath at the same time. I stabbed the wedge back into the gap in the corpse's forehead.

But after waiting for a long time, I didn't see any reaction from the corpse. I sighed and said, "This method didn't work, let's…"

Before I could finish speaking, the corpse sat up from the bed, slowly opened its eyes as if waking up from a sleep, scanned the room with its needle-like pupils, and then looked at Xia Mengying in the distance, "Xiaxia, you're finally here."

I looked back and forth between the corpse and Xia Mengying several times before giving Xia Mengying a look.

As the latter slowly walked to the bedside, the corpse smiled again, "I knew you would come, your story said that you would definitely find me. I'll take you into the group, the cursed group that can't reach two hundred people."

Du Fei said with a sinister smile, "Turn around and face away from me. That way I can teach you how to enter the group."

"Take your phone, turn it on, and I'll tell you what to do?"