Drip, drip.
Drops of dark red blood merged into an extremely large water vat.
Inside the tent, only five people.
Cen Le barely recovered some spirit. The other two physicians also finally breathed sighs of relief. The supervisor stood beside them, together watching the youth in the center.
Shi Deng cut a deep gash across his palm, now clenching it tight, letting blood flow into the water and disappear.
After a long time, he removed his hand, wrapping a circle of gauze around himself. “Done. Take it out and feed it to them. Severe cases first. Others can wait a bit.”
The supervisor was uncertain. “Your blood…?”
Shi Deng: “Won’t kill anyone.”
The supervisor laughed awkwardly. “That’s not what I meant. Alright, I’ll take it out and try.”
He knew that among ability users were quite a few strange people and events, but blood that could treat contamination—this was the first he’d heard. If word got out, wouldn’t this be more precious than Tang Monk’s flesh?
“…Wait,” Cen Le forcibly propped herself up to be supported over. She looked at the supervisor, saying firmly, “Useful or not, my brother’s blood—keep it secret.”
She was just providing group-range healing and had been squeezed into this state. If this blood was truly useful, then Shi Deng…
The supervisor also knew priorities. “Don’t worry.”
With his great strength, he directly carried the water vat out using his ability.
Once he left, Cen Le sat beside Shi Deng, pressing her lips together, condensing a trace of ability. “I’ll heal you.”
The youth hid his hands behind his back, concealing them from her view. He smiled. “Sister Le, are you angry? Upset I hid this from you?”
Cen Le spoke plainly. “No. Selfishly speaking, I’d rather you didn’t tell. This is too reckless.”
If he could directly absorb it, Shi Deng wouldn’t want to bleed like this either.
It’s just that drawing out contamination qi that had invaded into human bodies required a medium from his body. And what he had most of in his body was blood.
The higher the dilution degree, the relatively less contamination qi he absorbed, which could also achieve an equivalent therapeutic effect.
This was the relatively appropriate method he’d thought of so far.
Once over a hundred days passed and the Yuan Marrow failed, when his plan was implemented, this contamination could recede on its own. Those contaminated people would naturally get better too.
These thoughts circled once in his mind. Shi Deng said, “Sister Le, go rest first. I…”
Pupils constricting slightly, the youth let out an extremely soft muffled groan. The chains coiled around his heart silently tightened. He barely steadied himself, catching his breath.
Cen Le’s expression turned cold. “Shi Deng, tell me—besides blood loss, does this method have any other side effects?”
Invisible black currents roared, raging from beneath his feet into Shi Deng’s body, drilling relentlessly into his heart, then locked by time chains.
It hurts so much.
Contamination stained with human desires…
Shi Deng was dazed for a moment before hearing Cen Le’s question. “…It’s fine. No side effects.”
***
Outside the tent.
A sudden uproar erupted.
“It really works! This water really works! Life-saving water—give me more, give me more!”
The supervisor looked in shock at a lightly contaminated person who, after drinking water mixed with that external support member’s blood, seemed to have the disease root instantly pulled out. His eyes immediately cleared.
So many gazes filled with greed suddenly looked over, staring fixedly at the water vat behind the supervisor. A chill rose in the supervisor’s heart.
“Give it to me!”
“I want some too!”
“You had this stuff but didn’t bring it out sooner? One vat isn’t nearly enough—grab what you can!”
Severely contaminated people were trampled over by lightly contaminated ones. As if knowing these ability users wouldn’t harm them, they acted with impunity.
They ignored the direction for maintaining order established by ability users, sticking their heads into the vat, drinking in big gulps. Some pulled out cups, both drinking and taking, madly hoarding.
“Get lost! Don’t block me. Dare block me? Believe it or not, I’ll report you ability users to your headquarters for bullying ordinary people?! Make you go to jail, you know?!”
The ability user who tried to stop them hesitated for that one second and got a brick viciously thrown at his head.
The scene became increasingly uncontrollable.
The supervisor’s face turned iron-blue. He roared, “Enough!”
Magnificent wood-type ability surged forth. Tough grass roots drilled from the ground, binding this group of nearly crazed people, preventing them from rushing forward.
Supervisor: “Everyone line up properly!”
The contaminated crowd fell silent for two seconds, then suddenly erupted with even more violent protests.
“He used his ability! He wants to harm us!”
“Why can other people grab but we can’t?!”
“He doesn’t dare hurt us. Keep going. Smash that vat! If I can’t drink, no one else should either!”
Finally—
Bang!
The vat was smashed with a huge hole. Water inside gushed out violently. In the blink of an eye, it seeped into the parched ground. Some lay on the ground eating mud-mixed water. Some began crying in breakdown, cursing venomously.
“It’s all their fault for blocking us.”
“Right, all their fault…”
The water-type ability user, physically and mentally exhausted, used all their strength to barely salvage six cups’ worth of water.
***
“Shi Deng!”
Lying face-up on the ground, clutching his chest in pain and gasping, the youth’s entire body was ice-cold. He opened his eyes wide, feeling the malice transmitted from his heart—sticky, unwashable malice.
Making him unable to help dry heaving.
So nauseating…
Contamination pulled from human bodies, following the blood medium like maggots clinging to bone.
Shi Deng’s eyeballs turned slightly, landing on Sister Le’s extremely anxious face. He smiled faintly, stopping Cen Le from wanting to forcibly absorb beast cores again to apply healing to him.
He was helped up by the other two physicians, sitting in a chair. After recovering a while, he said, “…It’s okay. Besides feeling a bit dizzy, nothing else.”
Cen Le didn’t believe him.
Shi Deng: “Really.”
Cen Le: “I can recover tomorrow. Don’t do this anymore.”
Before Shi Deng could say anything, the supervisor entered the tent. He looked at Shi Deng’s slightly pale complexion, opened his mouth. “…Can you bleed a bit more?”
***
Yuan Guang.
Uncle Fu was furious. He threw away the cane in his hand, tremblingly pointing at the mirror in Shi-ge’s hand. His voice aged, he cursed elegantly and fluently, “Dog-birthed little bastards, being masochists right to this old man’s face. The child I cared for so long, being ruined like this by them.”
“Calling them dogs insults dogs. These people aren’t worth the leader saving at all!”
“Stones in a latrine pit, unbearably stinky, scum among garbage…”
Xiao Deng standing on Uncle Fu’s shoulder was also quite angry. The little kitten meowed and meowed, ferociously baring teeth and claws.
Shi-ge didn’t immediately rush over to stop it. Instead, he was somewhat lost in thought.
Under his clothes, on his skin’s surface layer, demonic red chain marks surfaced, vanishing in the blink of an eye.
All this time, every one or two months, he’d go to Tiangu once to perform “energy transmission” to the Yuan Marrow. Counting up, before the Yuan Marrow disappeared, he only needed to go one final time.
This was also his last chance to regret whether to change the future or not.
“Uncle Fu, Xiao Deng, do you know—if there had been no reset, what would the future have been like?” The young man said in a low voice.
The two quietly listened to him speak.
Shi-ge: “Before Shi Deng’s first reset, I in the future was also facing a choice. The choice I didn’t make might get an answer this time.”
Uncle Fu’s eyes gradually became complex. “What do you want to do?”
Usually, every time Shi Deng had an incident, Shi-ge would immediately rush over. But not this time, indicating he definitely had other plans.
Shi-ge closed the mirror. “Three days at the latest, everyone will know Shi Deng is Yuan Guang’s leader.”
Even after resetting so many times, Shi Deng had never directly and meticulously faced humanity’s malice in a desperate situation.
Uncle Fu said decisively, “No!”
He pulled out his phone, planning to call Shi Deng, huffing angrily. “That’s the child I raised. If you don’t feel heartache, I do!”
Time chains wrapped around him in the blink of an eye. Uncle Fu’s movements instantly froze.
Xiao Deng was transformed back into human form.
Shi-ge stood up, patting Xiao Deng’s head. “These three days, watch Uncle Fu. If he’s hungry, feed him. If you feed him, he’ll definitely eat.”
Xiao Deng turned his head aside, looking somewhat angry. After a long while, he still said sulkily, “I know.”
***
When Chi Yu arrived at Feng City with his people, it was already two days later.
He’d prepared for chaos outside, but when he truly stepped into the contaminated persons’ containment area, he discovered the situation here was much better than he’d thought.
More were lightly and moderately contaminated. Severely contaminated people were only a small portion.
The supervisor came out to receive him. “Mr. Chi, you’re here!”
Chi Yu nodded. “Brought equipment that can detect contamination. Patrol teams can carry them when going into the city to avoid contaminated people hiding where they can’t be found.”
The supervisor was overjoyed. “That’s wonderful!”
He hurriedly gave orders for people to wear detection instruments while patrolling the city.
The contamination instrument was a watch. He wore one on his wrist, set to the threshold for detecting highly dangerous contaminated people. Yet within detection range, he couldn’t find such strong contamination sources.
Chi Yu took a drag on his cigarette. “Control here is pretty good.”
The supervisor hesitated whether to reveal Shi Deng bleeding himself. Not far away came a commotion.
“Divine water is here!”
“Quick, quick, quick!”
“Why is there so little this time…”
Half a vat of clear water mixed with a faint bloody smell was carried out. Obviously, this kind of thing had happened many times already. Light and moderate contamination victims could still control their emotions, forming a crooked line under ability users’ restraint.
Some contaminated people touched the water. Fearing someone would snatch it, they drank it all on the spot. Others quickly ran toward severely contaminated people, feeding them water.
Visibly, anyone who drank this water looked much better.
Chi Yu’s brows furrowed tightly. “Divine water? What’s that?”
The supervisor remembered the person in the tent, stammering. “This…”
Old Chi smelled something off. “Speak.”
The supervisor, in difficulty, still leaned over and whispered in Old Chi’s ear. “That external support member from the elite team called Shi Deng—his blood can…”
…
Shi Deng was assigned a separate tent.
These two days, only he alone was in the tent. Blood loss made his thoughts somewhat fuzzy. He also couldn’t sense the passage of time clearly.
At most, only when distributing “divine water” would someone enter.
But this time was too fast. The tent flap had just been lifted not long ago. Half a vat of divine water mixed with his blood was carried out. Not even five minutes had passed. Why come again?
So he said in a low voice, “…More needed?”
The moment Chi Yu entered Shi Deng’s tent, he smelled a bloody scent mixed with an indescribable fragrance. Immediately after, he heard those three words, nearly a low murmur: “More needed?”
He looked in the direction of the voice.
The next second, his pupils suddenly contracted sharply. The tobacco pipe in his hand was abruptly pinched with finger indentations.
The youth sat at the bedside, elbows resting on his legs, head lowered. Cold sweat covered his forehead.
The long coat he’d originally worn was now removed and draped over a chair, revealing the clean white shirt underneath.
Right now, both sleeves were rolled up, exposing two slender, even youthful arms. One forearm had bandages wrapped to the palm. Pale fingertips hung powerlessly. Between the fingers, blood color could vaguely be glimpsed.
The other forearm only had one circle of wrapping at the wrist. But the palm—the wound carved who knows when—was still bleeding extremely slowly.
Blood dripped into a glass jar below, shallowly pooling in a layer.
The faint sound of dripping, falling into Chi Yu’s ears, was infinitely slowed and magnified, crashing into his mind and creating a brief blank.
A medicine bottle sat by the bed. Pills inside had scattered out messily.
Over the past two years, that bright youth who occasionally helped them—right now, his complexion was nearly transparent. His chest rose and fell weakly.
Chi Yu’s reason hadn’t yet returned to thinking capacity, but his body had already instinctively reacted. His heart felt twisted by someone, aching.
Not hearing a sound for a long time, Shi Deng seemed somewhat helpless, muttering, “Alright, last time for today…”
The other hand wrapped in bandages reached toward the side, gripping a dagger. The sharp blade aimed at the intact skin beside his palm.
Shi Deng unhesitatingly slashed upward—
The dagger vanished into thin air.
Not feeling pain, he was sluggish for two or three seconds, slightly puzzled. Slowly, he looked up toward the tent entrance.
Stabbed by the light outside, the youth squinted. At the bottom of his deep blue eyes, physiological moisture surfaced. He blinked once.
“…Coach Chi?”
Chi Yu held back anger from who knows where in his heart. With a cold face, he threw the dagger toward the supervisor and walked forward several steps.
But when approaching Shi Deng, the contamination detector on his wrist suddenly lit up with a dangerous warning red light.
The red light carried capture and tracking capabilities. In the blink of an eye, it shrouded Shi Deng.
Chi Yu stopped in his tracks, stunned in shock. “Contamination?”
Ability users couldn’t be contaminated. How could it be… like this?
**”
Sam Williams On TYMIMA Chapter 152