Chapter 21: One’s True Colors (Part 2/2)
Luo Nan pushed through the dizzy spell, standing fixed as the sky spun and the earth whirled. When he slowly recovered, he tested the movements of his hands and he also bent his fingers and toes. Sure enough, he discovered that the joints of some of his fingers and toes were aching and numb. Overall he felt as if he had drank too much alcohol. The speed and responsiveness of his reactions had inexplicably dropped by a level.
In addition the state he had just been in, with its flickering spiritual glow and its burst of thoughtful insights, was no more. Now it was like there was a veil blinding his mind. His mind felt murky and he only wished to sleep.
Luo Nan did not panic, he just sighed: It still happened!
He was detained on the warship yesterday and only got out of there in this early morning. It was impossible for him to prepare his drugs so…… Fine. Even if he did manage to go home, the current state of his drug reserves would have made things pointless anyway. And so, nearly five years of painstakingly maintaining the daily drug preparation task had finally come to a sudden end.
The uncomfortable feeling was largely due to an operational anomaly of his nervous system. It could be considered a sort of drug withdrawal response.
Luo Nan was mentally prepared for this ever since he had the problem with locating a drug distribution channel. He was vigilant yesterday when he sped up his metabolism; he just never expected that this issue would wait until now to break out after his times of crisis were over.
Luo Nan hobbled a few steps forward. He didn’t feel too bad. He forced himself to stay up, but he knew that his complexion was certainly grave and bad without even looking at a mirror.
Alright. Now he had a valid reason to go to the Medical Department.
Twenty minutes later. Luo Nan strolled slowly into the Medical Department. This was Acumen College’s School of Medicine and also a rather famous comprehensive hospital of Xia City. It was open and was free of charge to the college students. Students just had to first reserve an appointment online before entering and have their identity verified.
Luo Nan had booked the appointment with the hospital in a standard and simple fashion; he just chose the queue with the longest waiting time. Upon making his reservation, he paid no attention to the information provided on the reservation slip; he just strolled around in the hospital.
He looked to be wandering aimlessly, but actually his senses regarding the target had already grown clear when he had first entered the main medical building.
The target should be approximately 70 meters in the east wing……. That should be the Inpatient Department.
As Luo Nan drew closer and closer, he could even feel the target’s heart and state of mind contain overflowing fear and discontent. He could even feel a certain warped, knotted, and broiling stream of random thoughts flow inside of him. The thoughts were like the unending sprinkling of seasoning upon a roasting steak.
Huh? What made him think things in such a way?
While his miraculous line of thought was skipping all over the place, the ground below his feet was slightly shaking. Soon the shaking became far more violent. Even the windows of the hospital were creaking now.
“Another one!?” Within the disturbance, patients, students, professors, and so on were like bustling ants. They rushed out from various buildings and crammed themselves in the central courtyard within a few minutes of time.
The emergency exit routes of the hospital opened one by one to prepare for the evacuation of acute patients at any moment.
And so it was an earthquake. The earthquake lasted for approximately thirty seconds, and was accompanied by two aftershocks as well. Then came silence once again.
Cursing sprang up all around the courtyard. The monthly seismic activity made special public locations, such as the hospitals, to panic at the slightest disturbance. Every time there was an earthquake, people had to follow fixed procedures and evacuate. Medical treatments that were underway had to be terminated. This happened over and over, tormenting the citizens. It was considered unexpectedly lucky for no accidents to occur.
Luo Nan walked a few steps within the stream of people, but suddenly he stopped. He felt something. The target that had originally been in the Inpatient Department was moving at high speeds and was moving in his direction.
An electric transport cart came out from the Inpatient Department in the east wing several seconds later. The vehicle pushed through on the pedestrian paths. Upon the vehicle was a casually dressed youth and several buff male bodyguards.
Luo Nan’s line of sight locked fixed onto the youth’s face. He recognized this person and was not the least bit surprised. Yes. It was the person he had hypnotized yesterday to suffocate into passing out! It was Li Xuecheng!
At first glance there was nothing much to Li Xuecheng’s appearance. His face had a few additional bruises and his spirits looked depressed. Yet he was extremely fretful. He jabbered nonstop to the bodyguards at his side. He spoke intensely and even smacked a bodyguard on the shoulder in anger, paying zero attention to the public context they were in. It made one feel that he was extremely neurotic.
Obviously Li Xuecheng under this kind of state wouldn’t notice his “Great Enemy” within the flow of people to the side. Luo Nan even heard his own name leak out from Li Xuecheng’s babble.
Sure enough…… This person was his target.
Luo Nan casted his line of sight over, but a strange change suddenly occurred before he could think of his next action.
A glowing red mist suddenly soared up from Li Xuecheng’s body and entwined with the interweaving shadows of the pedestrian walkways and buildings. It coiled and transformed before Luo Nan, ultimately forming a human-shaped demonic wraith.
No one aside from Luo Nan was able to see this scene. Luo Nan’s pupils shrank slightly and he stood there motionless on the spot.
There was no one who was more familiar with this thing than Luo Nan.
A burning wraith! Yet another burning wraith!
So it turned out there was more than one burning wraith…...
But the most incomprehensible thing was that Luo Nan didn’t feel in shocked, alert, nervous, and so on in this instant. Instead he felt faminous. He could not suppress this feeling of hunger.
It was a type of food that was quite ripe.
A completed and cooked dish.
It looked so delicious. It was time… to eat one’s fill…...
“Crackle! Crackle!”
The heavily chained crow vibrated with its cry, its sound was like a sharp needle that fiercely pricked Luo Nan in between the eyebrows. He was struck with a cold shiver. The scent. The hunger. It was all smashed to pieces in an instant.
This completely new burning wraith in front of him radiated with a scorching strength on the mental plane that pressured against Luo Nan. Within it was clearly overflowing hunger and greed!
The wraith flew as a gale towards Luo Nan, attacking.
Luo Nan still remained motionless as he thought deeply. The intense instinct of greed from this burning wraith was declared clearly at him.
At the same time as Luo Nan faced this imminent approaching threat, the crackling of the heavily chained crow superimposed upon itself above his mind. A strength came from the format of his body and mind through the means of a certain unending accumulation until the strength reached its utmost bound.
The boundary between the real and the imaginary was torn apart in the next moment. The heavily chained crow surged forth and leapt out from the space between Luo Nan’s eyebrows, throwing itself in a direct head-on collision with the burning wraith. And it entered the body of the burning wraith in an instant!
“Hummm!”
The wretched cry only existed on the mental plane, but it did sound out in reality for a brief instant. The hundreds of doctors, nurses, students, and patients present were all dazzled for a split second. But soon this dim feeling vanished without a trace. This was due to the abstract symbol at the end of the crow’s chain; it had flashed with a lustrous glow.
The dark red glow illuminated the originally-pitch-black interior of the burning wraith, and the glow released a certain force as well. A rapidly revolving vortex mass was formed in an instant.
The strength of the vortex was extremely large. This was also an instantaneous technique. This newly-acquainted burning wraith was no longer able to reform. Most of its body had been sucked into the vortex and into the abstract symbol, increasing the brightness of the symbol. The small portion that remained floating in the void collapsed and dissipated to nothing.
And at nearly the same time, bodyguards on the just-encountered electric transport cart cried with alarm. Li Xuecheng, who had just been exploding with criticism, suddenly fainted in the vehicle; he was no longer conscious.
A small disturbance was now occurring in the courtyard. A bodyguard carried Li Xuecheng off the cart and put him lying down on the grass lawn. Li Xuecheng’s pupils were jumping all over and his mouth was frothing. His face was ashen like that of a dead person.
Luo Nan turned around and saw what used to be Li Xuecheng’s life force. It was as if the floodgates were opened. Large quantities of life force leaked out on the plane unseen by ordinary people, transforming into fine wisps of smoke that crumbled along with the burning wraith. They curled up into the vortex in the void.
Luo Nan’s eyebrows were locked tight. He stirred telepathically, withdrawing the chained crow. The dark red abstract symbol also entered the space between his eyebrows and the vortex in the void faded away.
The leaking process of Li Xuecheng’s life force was suddenly put to an end. However, Li Xuecheng had already sunk into a heavy coma.
Luo Nan stared at the unconscious Li Xuecheng lying on the ground. Luo Nan’s expression was very grave. A victory that came as easy as crushing dry leaves and smashing rotten wood did not give him the least bit of delight.
Luo Nan diverted his gaze from Li Xuecheng’s body a short time later, turning towards the crowd in the vicinity. Some people were watching with curiosity. Some people just casted a single glance and completely ignored what happened. There were also doctors and nurses rushing over.
This was a hospital. What can’t happen? Everyone could understand what had happened.
But who knew that on a plane they could not touch, that there were formless wraiths running wild, corrupting the minds of people, breathing in their essence and energy?
Luo Nan was a victim. Li Xuecheng was a victim.
Perhaps the human tragedy with the U-Soul couple was a part of this.
How many remained? Just how many demons were released with that one howl in the R&D district? And, how many have formed schemes to seize away human life just like now?
This was not only it. The burning wraiths clearly had a competitive existence between each other. A relationship to consume each other. They formed a faintly discernible food chain network.
Luo Nan stared absentmindedly in the noisy and clamorous courtyard:
Is this still the world I know?