Chapter 31: The Parasitized Alchemical Prosthetic
“Dear Miss Vivienne, how long do you plan to wait?”
With his eyes tightly closed, Luxianbei heard a slightly sharp voice in the darkness. The girl’s voice was one he had heard before; if nothing unexpected happened, it was likely the voice of that urban legend resembling a juvenile leopard.
“That guy looks like he won’t wake up anytime soon, but we still have to live our lives, right? If we don’t hurry to the canal, those worm-like guys will probably leave us without even a dog’s corpse.”
“Got it!” Under the relentless urging of the peculiar cat, Vivienne voiced her impatience, “Hurry, hurry, hurry! I’ve told you so many times, retrieving corpses relies 30% on eyesight and 70% on luck. Just because we go doesn’t mean we’ll find anything, you know?”
“What if I go now, squat by the riverside, and run into those guys from the mafia throwing some fat pig in a sack into the canal?”
Luxianbei, “……” Can corpse retrieval actually be considered a job? A distinctive industry of M Country?
“Then you better go!” said the peculiar cat.
“Fine, it’s annoying! Can’t I just snatch it from them if it doesn’t work out?”
“……”
The exchange between the boy and the cat continued. After a series of faint sounds, accompanied by a “bang” of a door closing, the old apartment was left with only the distorted sound of an old television echoing.
They seemed to have left… but Luxianbei didn’t open his eyes immediately.
Using the sound of the door to pretend to leave was something he had just done on the Killer Whale; he couldn’t guarantee that the girl named Vivienne wouldn’t do the same.
After probing the surroundings with his spiritual perception and confirming that Vivienne and the peculiar cat had indeed left, Luxianbei finally opened his eyes.
Then, the North Spirit Seal unfolded, and his special eye ability activated.
Out of the corner of his eye, as soon as he spotted Nanling Yaohua lying beside him, Luxianbei’s eyelid twitched.
His tattered clothes had somehow been completely removed, leaving only a pair of shorts made from his coat, exposing his upper body. A fragile little hand, with long fingers, resembled a shy little snake, flicking its tongue as it shyly glided along the muscular lines.
It gently traced over his abdomen, climbed upward, looped around his collarbone, and then returned to his chest, playfully drawing little circles.
On Nanling Yaohua’s exquisite profile hung a foolish smile, her eyes sparkling, her breath quickening, and dense white mist streaming from her mouth and nose.
Luxianbei, “……”
He clearly shouldn’t be able to hear Nanling Yaohua’s voice, but watching the scene, it felt as if he was hallucinating, with “hehehe” laughter ringing in his ears.
After a brief silence, driven by a strange sense of malicious interest rising in his heart, Luxianbei spoke expressionless, “Xiao Hua, what are you doing?”
Hearing Luxianbei’s voice, as if caught in the act of doing something bad, Nanling Yaohua trembled, her cheeks visibly flushing from white to pink, then to red.
For a moment, she wanted to find a crack in the ground to hide in, but there was no crack to burrow into, so she simply buried her head into Luxianbei’s arms… her entire head disappeared inside. At first glance, it seemed as though a girl’s body sprouted from the center of his chest, and then a pair of hands began to move.
The scene was extraordinarily bizarre.
Luxianbei, “……” Was she doing this on purpose or by accident? If he had known it would turn out this way, he would have pretended not to see anything.
“Sasa!”
After a soft sound of a pen scratching on paper, a crumpled piece of coarse paper, covered with writing, was handed to Luxianbei.
【I hate you! I’m angry! Next time before looking at me, you must notify me in advance, and no more sudden attacks!】
Luxianbei, “……”
But……
Clearly, she was the one lewdly flirting with him; why did it feel like he was the one who did something wrong?
————
After waiting for a while, Luxianbei eventually managed to get Nanling Yaohua out of her state of overwhelming shame. He then inquired about what had happened while he was unconscious, and soon discovered a serious problem—Nanling Yaohua seemed not to have learned English.
Although she relied on noting down some fragments of dialogues, after Luxianbei pieced together the information, he could only get some fragmented details.
From the words “South Street,” “clinic,” and “no d*ath,” it was not only impossible to see any malice from Vivienne; it might even suggest she was trying to send Luxianbei to a clinic for treatment. As for why she didn’t send him in the end…
Perhaps it was due to financial constraints?
Given her living conditions, she seemed quite poor, and it was said that the cost of out-of-network medical expenses in M Country was high. It was reasonable for her not to be able to pay.
However, Luxianbei would not let his guard down because of this possible act of kindness.
Before taking advantage, first, feed a bit of good “fodder” to calm the little sheep’s emotions, making the little lamb willingly expose its belly—this kind of underhanded trick, he often played.
“Sasa…”
As Luxianbei pondered, Nanling Yaohua bowed her head and began to write in the new notebook she had taken from the God Realm Prototype.
【I’m sorry, Grandpa used to say, that regardless of where one comes from, those who reach Yumen Pass and speak those bird languages are mostly not up to good, so without any hesitation, just capture them, thus there was no need to learn their language…】
Nanling Yaohua lowered her head and held up the newly obtained notebook in front of Luxianbei.
After reading what Nanling Yaohua had written, Luxianbei shook his head, “It’s fine, the old man makes a good point! In Z Country, one should speak Chinese; Chinese is also a universally spoken language. It’s their problem if they can’t understand; why should we pamper them? But…”
“You just said she observed the tattoo on my back for a long time?”
Nanling Yaohua nodded and then seemed to think of something, quickly writing a paragraph in the little notebook.
【Do you have a special connection with the Solar Eclipse Society? Why do you have that tattoo?】
Just a couple tattoo shared with Miaomiao Sauce! A trashy thought flashed through Luxianbei’s mind, and he shrugged as he explained, “That’s fake. I was attacked by a big shot from the Solar Eclipse Society before and made it up to blend in. It looks like a big deal but has no actual effect.”
Upon hearing this, Nanling Yaohua let out a long breath, her tense expression relaxing.
【However, she observed that tattoo for so long; it stands to reason that it’s likely connected to the Solar Eclipse Society in some underhanded way.】
“I think so too,” Luxianbei nodded.
But… what exactly was the connection to the Solar Eclipse Society?
Was there hatred, or was she a member of the Solar Eclipse Society herself?
If she was a member, was she from the elder faction, the president’s faction, or the so-called new elder faction? It couldn’t possibly be the Lan Yi Party, could it? Luxianbei thought.
Shaking his head, he temporarily withdrew his thoughts and turned to Nanling Yaohua to continue asking, “By the way, Xiao Hua, what about the things that fell out of the Killer Whale earlier? Like that unusual polyhedron… has Vivienne taken it?”
This was the most direct reason he mistrusted Vivienne.
Although she seemed to be mindful of him pretending to be unconscious to eavesdrop, he still caught terms like “broken ship” and “that thing” from the peculiar cat’s mouth.
With a little thought, it was easy to connect to the Killer Whale and the mysterious polyhedron that had fallen out after its disintegration.
Luxianbei even felt that the almost completely disintegrated Killer Whale miraculously reaching the Free City might very well be related to Vivienne.
Upon hearing Luxianbei’s question, Nanling Yaohua subtly shook her head, indicating that Vivienne hadn’t taken the polyhedron.
“She didn’t take it?” Luxianbei furrowed his brow slightly, “Did it fall into the sea along the way? It shouldn’t have! I had already grabbed that thing with the alchemical prosthetic and locked the joints.”
Hearing this, Nanling Yaohua shook her head again, then her gaze subtly drifted toward Luxianbei’s alchemical prosthetic.
Noticing her gaze, Luxianbei was taken aback, while shouting in his heart, “No way?” He raised his alchemical prosthetic.
After a brief inspection, upon noticing a change in the palm of the alchemical prosthetic, he instinctively cursed, “What the hell?!”
A ruby-like crystal had, unbeknownst to him, embedded itself in the palm of the alchemical prosthetic. Tendrils resembling small bl**d vessels extended from the crystal, weaving and intertwining, spreading along the energy circuits of the alchemical prosthetic, dyeing the originally light gold patterns a bright crimson.
No unusual spirit energy fluctuations spread; it appeared seamless, and had Luxianbei not known what the alchemical prosthetic looked like originally, he might have thought it had always been this way.
“Could it be… the strange polyhedron was absorbed by the alchemical prosthetic?”
Nanling Yaohua nodded, then hurriedly wrote a long string of text in her notebook.
【After you passed out, the surface of that polyhedron suddenly disintegrated and emitted an unsettling eerie glow, like a liquid, drifting only below the sea’s surface, dyeing the nearby sea red… Then, when the glow dissipated, that thing was gone.
By the way, that urban legend calling itself ‘Charybdis’ also stopped pursuing after that eerie glow appeared.】
Upon receiving a confirming response from Nanling Yaohua, Luxianbei’s heart sank, and he quickly activated his spirit energy to trigger the alchemical prosthetic’s deactivation mechanism.
If even Charybdis was driven back, it was evident how dangerous the eerie glow emanating from that polyhedron was…
As the deactivation mechanism was triggered, the energy circuits of the alchemical prosthetic suddenly glowed faintly, the small spells attached to the energy circuits seemingly endowed with a strange vitality, beginning to pulse.
In the next moment, the red crystal in the palm suddenly burst forth with bright light, greedily consuming Luxianbei’s spirit energy.
In just a few seconds, Luxianbei felt that nearly one-fifth of his spirit energy was consumed.
At the same time, a pain comparable to the Hundred-Armed Giant’s power disintegrated surged from the connection point between his severed limb and the alchemical prosthetic, stretching up to his brain, with beads of sweat suddenly forming on Luxianbei’s forehead.
The “fur” embedded in his body within the alchemical prosthetic seemed to have fully fused with his body under the influence of the polyhedron’s power, becoming inseparable from his bones, muscles, nerves, and even cells.
The agony enveloping most of his body felt as though it was reminding him that unless he was to split his body in two, there was no way to remove the alchemical prosthetic now.
“Whoo—whoo—!”
Interrupted from the deactivation process of the alchemical prosthetic, Luxianbei collapsed onto Vivienne’s pink single bed, staring blankly at the yellowed ceiling, gasping heavily, feeling serious.
No, what is going on here?
He thought he had lucked out, so why did it suddenly turn into being “parasitized”?
Had he known this would happen, he should have hidden in the God Realm Prototype from the start. Luxianbei thought, feeling aggrieved.
He believed he had been quite careful when coming into contact with the mysterious polyhedron; he didn’t use his intact left hand to touch it but opted to use the alchemical prosthetic, thinking that in case anything unexpected happened, he could quickly remove it and get away.
But.
What in the world is going on? It’s like Doctor Octopus’s mechanical arms from the old Spider-Man.
Wouldn’t it take control of me in the end? Luxianbei thought.
While he pondered this, Nanling Yaohua finished writing new text and presented it to him.
【Sorry, I wanted to stop it, but…】
Seeing this, Luxianbei shook his head expressionlessly and comforted her, “Don’t be like that; I’m not blaming you. Strictly speaking, I should be the one apologizing to you for taking you out for so long without helping you find a way back and always making you worry about me.”
Upon hearing this, Nanling Yaohua shyly turned her face away, her little hand playfully hitting Luxianbei, each tap phasing right through his body.
Luxianbei, “……”
————
At 1:30 PM.
The rain had poured intermittently throughout the night and had stopped, but the dark clouds in the sky had not dispersed, and they may never disperse.
It should have been the sunniest time of the day, yet the Free City was shrouded in a gloomy, oppressive light, with rainwater still dripping from the eaves, statues, and neon signboards along the streets.
With the arrival of daylight, the drifters who had wandered the streets during the night dissipated like the ghosts that only appeared at night, leaving behind a scene of chaos as proof of their existence.
The daytime Free City was much livelier than at night; the once empty roads were now filled with traffic, and there was more hustle and bustle with people coming and going along the streets.
A wandering singer strummed and sang his own composition.
A young girl dressed scantily stood at the street corner smoking, still half-asleep.
A group of gang members with tattooed arms brushed past a few well-dressed professionals carrying briefcases, both sides glaring at each other.
A ragged-looking preacher, resembling a vagrant, held a sign reading “The World Is About to End,” stopping passing pedestrians to mutter incantations.
Vivienne walked past the preacher, took out a few coins, tossed them into the paper box in front of him, and skillfully walked around him, avoiding his ramblings.
“Horace, I feel like something’s not right. Even though I haven’t found my things, I still faintly sensed a lingering aura from that guy… Why is that?”
The peculiar cat perched on her shoulder glanced at her profile, “Could it be that it was absorbed by that guy?”
“Impossible!” Vivienne rolled her eyes, “Do you think that kind of power can be withstood by just anyone? If the compatibility is bad, even a touch would be fatal, okay?!”
“That makes sense,” the peculiar cat replied, “Then when we go back later, let’s bring that guy some good food and drink, see if we can pry some words out of him!”
“That’s all we can do,” Vivienne nodded.
