Chapter 1887 - The Abandoned Corpse
Everything in East Branch Alley Seven remained as before—as if Zhao Gui had just patrolled here yesterday. The only change was that the roads were more level than before, and the garbage had vanished.
"A-Gui, look over there!" Shop Owner Xie patted Zhao Gui on the shoulder and pointed at something ahead covered with reed mats. Huo Junming instantly felt a sense of foreboding.
"Looks like a corpse!" Zhao Gui's expression was also grim. "Let's take a look."
Shop Owner Xie stayed far away. Huo Junming and Zhao Gui, bound by duty, could only approach and use a stick to lift one corner of the covering reed mat. Sure enough—a corpse.
"Damn it, how many is this now?" Huo Junming cursed as he used the stick to push aside the reed mats and garbage covering the body, then shouted at Zhao Gui: "Hey! Where did this come from? Do you recognize this person?"
"Looks unfamiliar—honestly, it would be strange if they looked familiar. This is clearly someone who died of illness, and the symptoms match. Who would dump a disease corpse in their own district this time of year? They all run off and dump them somewhere else on the sly." Zhao Gui wore an expression of disgust. He waved Shop Owner Xie over.
"Is this person from your street?"
Shop Owner Xie shook his head—he didn't recognize them. Judging from the corpse's clothing, this appeared to be a poor commoner.
"I'll set up the cordon. You hurry and call for people," Huo Junming said as he took the warning tape. "Since this is a disease death, it's my responsibility now."
Although the Elders' Council had recently collected all the vagrants and beggars in the city, roadside bodies had noticeably decreased compared to previous years, and the deceased were mostly acute illness patients. After police issued body-identification notices, family members usually claimed bodies within three to five days. However, after plague appeared, unclaimed roadside corpses had begun increasing due to fear of infection.
Then a new situation arose that Lin Motian hadn't anticipated. After regulations for quarantine and isolation of plague patients and contacts were announced, unidentified roadside corpses increased even further. He later understood from grassroots quarantine inspector reports that because regulations required everyone in close contact with a patient or deceased person to be forcibly isolated, once a plague patient or death was discovered, often an entire household—old and young alike—couldn't escape and would be collectively transferred to Changzhou Island for quarantine.
Truth be told, this isolation was little different from imprisonment. The Changzhou Island isolation camp was no sanatorium. An entire family living in thatched huts regardless of wealth or status, surviving on porridge, exposed to sun, river winds, and heavy rain—never mind wealthy families, even ordinary common households couldn't bear it. The elderly, children, and the frail who couldn't endure would fall ill within three or four days, and some died just like that.
As the first batches of people who had completed isolation returned, the terrible conditions on Changzhou Island spread throughout the city. This made common people, who already feared isolation, even more unwilling to go. Late Ming commoners couldn't possibly have a sophisticated understanding of "isolation"—they simply believed they had been placed on some blacklist, treated as infection sources, subjected to "house arrest," facing discrimination even after release, not to mention the death threat they faced. They simply didn't believe that anyone sent to isolation would receive food or medicine—they assumed isolation meant being penned up to quietly await death.
Under this mentality, large numbers of family members had begun privately abandoning patients and corpses of the deceased. Thus they occasionally "found" corpses in sitting positions—clearly still alive when family members had put them out. And to prevent bodies from being recognized, these people often chose locations far from home for secret dumping.
In the past, this would have been very difficult. During daylight, one couldn't go around carrying living people or corpses. At night, once street gates closed, no one could pass through. But after the Guandi Temple forces had been disbanded, the "street watchers" who had guarded the gates had all gone to Changzhou Island for "training." The police couldn't spare enough people to manage the street gates, and the city's baojia organizations weren't tight enough. Many street gates stood unattended, doors wide open. This gave corpse-dumpers their opportunity. Night patrol officers had already caught people dumping bodies multiple times during nighttime hours.
This couldn't be allowed! Lin Motian was furious. He issued strict punishment regulations and also stipulated that whenever a household member went missing, the household would automatically be treated as having experienced an illness death and subjected to isolation procedures. This somewhat curbed the chaos. At the same time, he ordered various baojias to take turns guarding street gates. However, personnel were simply insufficient, and hastily deployed quarantine inspectors couldn't all be strict gatekeepers. Though private body-dumping had greatly decreased, it hadn't stopped entirely—unidentified corpses still appeared every few days. And Guangzhou's household registration management could barely track permanent residents, let alone unregistered population. Trying to trace these bodies' origins was like searching for a needle in a haystack.
"Comrade Huo, what do you think we should do?" Zhao Gui returned with some people and asked.
"As usual, we'll finish the patrol and see if any household is missing someone. I estimate we won't find the source..." Huo Junming said helplessly. "According to regulations, after twenty-four hours, regardless of whether anyone claims it, the body must be cremated. Heh, if someone actually came to claim it, that would really be seeing a ghost... They can handle things here. Let's continue patrolling. Send this to the processing station first. When today's patrol is done, we'll handle everything together."
The so-called processing station was the "Corpse Processing Station"—actually the Liuhua Bridge crematorium that had always handled unidentified corpses. In the past, unidentified corpses from both Guangzhou Prefecture counties were burned here. A group of undertakers had originally operated under Guandi Temple forces' jurisdiction. The pauper's cemetery for Guangzhou's one prefecture and two counties was also located here, specifically managing the "death" portion of "birth, aging, sickness, and death." Those who died without money or land for burial could find a spot in this mass grave—layered with who knew how many bodies—for burial. If lucky enough to encounter a wealthy household doing charity by donating coffins, one might even get a thin coffin for burial.
For unclaimed roadside bodies or solitary deceased with no family or friends, only cremation remained—collecting the ashes in a clay pot and being done with it.
Due to epidemic prevention work requirements, Lin Motian had taken over this place. Corpses of disease deaths discovered during quarantine patrols—whether roadside bodies or from identified households—were all concentrated here for cremation.
The corpse collection team arrived quickly. Like Huo Junming, they belonged to the Epidemic Prevention Battalion, taking turns doing corpse collection work. Although someone had suggested Lin Motian use the undertakers from the former Guandi Temple forces who had completed quarantine, Lin Motian had rejected this. The reason was that these beggar-undertakers had long had the habit of stripping clothing and belongings from corpses—merely a moral issue in normal times, but deadly during an epidemic. Until they completed "training and reform," he decided to temporarily use only the Epidemic Prevention Battalion—at least they had all gone through several months of training.
The corpse collection team all wore full-body isolation suits, thick masks, and oilcloth gloves. Carrying hooks, ropes, and stretchers, they uniformly placed corpses in oilcloth body bags before moving them, reducing secondary infection during transport.
The reed mats and garbage covering the corpse were also placed in rattan baskets, sealed, and sent to a designated location for burning. After the corpse was cleared, the epidemic prevention team would spray disinfectant.
Watching the corpse collection team working busily, Huo Junming recorded in his notebook: "Discovered one abandoned corpse with suspected Disease No. 1," followed by time, location, discoverer, and handling results. "These troublesome people..." He closed the notebook, muttered a couple of things, and followed Zhao Gui to the next alley.
"Officers...! Officers! Help!" After just a few steps, they heard a crying voice shouting. A young man came stumbling toward them.
"Isn't that Laifu?" Zhao Gui was startled. "Wasn't your family already in isolation? How did you get out?"
Laifu's family's neighbor had died of Disease No. 1 the day before yesterday. Not only was the neighbor's family isolated—because it was discovered that people from Laifu's household had gone in and out of the deceased's home while they were ill, his family had also been isolated together. They were scheduled for transfer to Changzhou Island's isolation camp this afternoon.
To prevent isolated personnel from escaping, as soon as someone was declared "personnel awaiting quarantine isolation," police or National Army soldiers would be posted at their doorway for house arrest, forbidding entry or exit until they were shipped off.
"The sergeant guarding the door let me out. Something happened at home!" Laifu said through tears. "My grandfather hanged himself..."
"What?!" Both Huo Junming and Zhao Gui were shocked. "What happened?"
"Grandfather had seen many neighbors die these past days—their bodies and graves all gone, all burned. He was already unhappy about it and hadn't spoken for several days. After our family was isolated the day before yesterday, he kept muttering to himself, saying things like 'rest in peace in the earth.' Just now he... he..."
"Hurry and take us there!" Huo Junming and Lao Zhao followed Laifu, rushing toward the alley.
There was nothing special about the scene—at least Zhao Gui couldn't see anything unusual. The deceased had a certain level of education and had left a suicide note. The meaning was very clear: the old man believed that being isolated meant plague had already descended upon his family. As an old man with one foot already in the grave, he couldn't possibly escape such calamity. Even if he fortunately survived the plague, he didn't have much time left anyway. Rather than dying of illness and being burned to ashes, better to end himself quickly. While he wasn't yet sick, he could end his own life and at least leave behind a whole body for proper burial...
"This..." Zhao Gui found it incredible. "He committed suicide because he was afraid of getting sick, afraid of cremation? Could it be staged?"
For the pure proletarian Zhao Gui, if the Australians hadn't arrived, his future would have been nothing but selling his labor, doing odd jobs. He probably couldn't have married or had children, and in the end, whether from old age and failing strength or catching some "seasonal sickness," he would have died. The baojia would have sent him to Liuhua Bridge for cremation.
"A-Gui, you think this family's being isolated, with no one coming in or out, and they're not short of food or medicine—who would bother killing an old man for no reason?" Though he couldn't see Huo Junming's face behind the thick mask, Zhao Gui could sense he seemed to be smiling bitterly. "I actually think this case can basically be confirmed as suicide. These people... You, having lived the good life under the Elders' Council for so long, don't really know anymore—how these people think."
Author's Note: Tomorrow's update will be Section 6 of Volume 7—Liangguang Campaign.
(End of Chapter)