Free Web NovelIn the Central Hall, Bai Liu’s small TV occupied the core screen.
Wang Shun looked at Bai Liu’s broadcast sitting squarely in the core promotion slot and couldn’t help sighing with emotion.
People really were different.
This guy could actually climb this quickly even while facing league players like Miao Gaojiang and his son. It was only the first day of the game, yet Bai Liu had already made it onto the core promotion screen.
The likes and charge points driving Bai Liu’s rise had mainly come from his mid-game confrontation with the Miao father and son. At the time, the audience watching Miao Feichi and Miao Gaojiang had been cheering wildly, convinced that Bai Liu was dead.
The Carrion Guild had even purchased a promotional ad for that segment.
With every factor lining up—and many major players not yet having started their streams—Miao Feichi’s viewers had gone mad with charges, likes, and favorites, nearly pushing Miao Feichi all the way up to the King’s promotion slot.
But very soon, Miao Feichi fell back down from the very edge of that position.
Because Bai Liu wasn’t dead.
Not only was he alive, he had even used the opportunity to slip into Miao Feichi’s team.
Miao Feichi’s fans were dumbfounded.
So was the Carrion Guild, which had paid for the advertisement.
The momentum they had worked so hard to build had all turned into Bai Liu’s wedding gown.
The audience surged toward Bai Liu’s small TV in droves. Even viewers who were hostile toward Bai Liu or dissatisfied with him flooded over, impossible to stop. Most of them came because they wanted to understand what exactly had happened.
And once they reached Bai Liu’s small TV, they stayed.
The rapidly increasing viewership and soaring data quickly pushed Bai Liu into the core promotion slot.
And it wasn’t only Bai Liu.
Even Mu Ke’s small TV benefited from this wave of “Miao Feichi dividends,” successfully rising from the multiplayer zone onto the central screen.
The audience was filled with doubt, confusion, and heated discussion.
After Bai Liu had slipped away from Miao Feichi once—and after he had successfully killed Zhang Kui, the King’s Guild reserve player, in the previous instance—no one considered this newcomer simple anymore.
Even so, the general consensus remained the same:
He was impressive.
But too arrogant.
And this time, he had finally kicked an iron plate.
“It’s useless even if he managed to sneak in. Bai Liu’s control skill might be able to control someone above his level like Zhang Kui, but with that F-grade panel of his, there’s no way he can pass the skill judgment against S-rank players like Miao Gaojiang and Miao Feichi.”
“And Miao Gaojiang is extremely cautious. I heard from people in the Carrion Guild that Miao Gaojiang watched Bai Liu’s videos hundreds of times and summarized a lot of conclusions about how Bai Liu controls people. One of them is that Bai Liu’s control skill has limitations. It probably requires some kind of medium and mutual consent. As long as they don’t accept anything from Bai Liu, they should be fine...”
“...Still, Bai Liu’s trick of ‘stealing the sky and replacing the sun’ was beautifully played. Layer after layer of misdirection, and he really fooled Miao Gaojiang. Tsk. This newcomer must be made of honeycomb coal—so many holes, so many schemes. What the hell did he do in reality?”
“After all, Miao Gaojiang and his son have gone up against the King’s team before, and the King’s team loves control-based strategies. They even managed a counter-kill in a doubles match. I don’t think Bai Liu can control them.”
“Judging by the situation, Bai Liu is planning to use a fast-clear strategy this time. He’s throwing everything into obtaining the main quest clues first and rushing the clearance.”
“But if he’s playing a fast-clear strategy, wouldn’t bringing Mu Shicheng be better?! Those two are acting like they took the wrong medicine and had a falling out, each dragging along their own newcomers. I haven’t seen God Mu bring a newcomer in eight hundred years, and now he brings a couple in one go...”
“Don’t underestimate that couple. The two newcomers Mu Shicheng brought are both high-quality. One tanks monsters, the other kills them. They have good chemistry as a couple too. They look like promising material for doubles matches. If they’re trained well, I don’t think their future growth will be any worse than someone like Miao Gaojiang.”
“The newcomer Bai Liu brought is good quality too. He just doesn’t have a personal skill. He could be trained in infiltration and intelligence-gathering. Isn’t there a guy from the King’s Guild called Wang something who went in that direction? Once someone like that is built up, they basically become a living database. They’re incredibly useful.”
“Hey, these newcomers really do look good! Why can’t I ever find high-potential newcomers like this? Damn it, this year I only had my eye on Mu Shicheng, and I chased him through three dungeons without even managing to say a word to him. He runs too damn fast. I nearly died trying to keep up. Now, looking at this whole batch of newcomers, I want to fleece every single one into my guild!”
“Get lost, keep dreaming. I want them too, but would they even agree?”
“They’re playing well, sure, but what a pity. I still think they’re going to die. Miao Feichi’s ‘Grass Pig’—ptui, ‘Up Pig’—wait, that’s not right either, damn it, Bai Liu’s completely led me astray. Anyway, that Wraith Twin Blades has terrifying attack power. If I remember right, its flat attack is 3147. It nearly knocked me out of the competition before. Bai Liu brought a pure newcomer with him. There’s no way he can hold out...”
“Hey, but if Bai Liu enters the league and manages to raise that garbage panel of his a bit, he really could go on a killing spree if he uses it properly.”
“I’m actually a little interested in recruiting this kid. His skill is fascinating too. Can he copy the skills of players he’s controlled? His stamina is just too short. I don’t know if that’s because of Bai Liu’s own physical strength or a limitation of the skill, but when he used Mu Shicheng’s skill against Miao Feichi, he couldn’t last more than a few minutes...”
Wang Shun looked in surprise at the players and audience crowding in front of Bai Liu’s small TV, all of them commenting freely.
The ordinary viewers stared at these players in amazement, not daring to speak too loudly. They could only whisper among themselves from the back rows.
Because many of the players standing in front of Bai Liu’s small TV were familiar faces from last year’s league. Some were even high-level players from the top ten guilds.
With players like that present, ordinary viewers naturally didn’t dare speak carelessly.
It was just like when Mu Shicheng had stood in front of Bai Liu’s small TV to hold the fort for him before.
Miao Feichi’s provocative promotional ad had not only attracted ordinary viewers. It had specifically drawn in league players on the same level as him.
They needed to know what Miao Feichi was doing.
And after Miao Feichi suffered his first setback at Bai Liu’s hands, that attention naturally shifted toward Bai Liu.
In other words, Bai Liu had already attracted the notice of a large number of league players.
Wang Shun looked up at Bai Liu on the small TV and let out a long breath.
Had Bai Liu, this outstanding solo player, already begun drawing the attention of the major guild teams during this white-hot support season?
To be honest, if the King’s Guild hadn’t become enemies with Bai Liu from the start, Wang Shun would have had his eye on him too.
Unfortunately, now—
He sighed again.
But after hearing that Mu Shicheng had also started bringing two newcomers, Wang Shun felt something strangely unsettling.
Bai Liu had brought a newcomer.
Mu Shicheng had brought newcomers too.
Including Bai Liu and Mu Shicheng, that made exactly five people.
The precise number required for a league team.
For a moment, it almost felt as though Bai Liu was aiming for the league and currently training new teammates.
But very soon, Wang Shun shook his head with a smile, dismissing the absurd thought.
There were less than two months left before the league.
How could a group of pure newcomers who had only just entered the game possibly compete?
Bai Liu would have to be insane to bring several complete newcomers into the tournament.
Still, judging from their quality, these newcomers would likely be recruited and trained by major guilds. Wang Shun thought with some trepidation about which teams he might see these new faces on next year.
(T/N: Bai Liu is, indeed, batshit crazy.)
—
Inside the game.
Mu Ke pushed the hospital bed back into its original position.
As he moved it, he brushed against the corpse of the monster patient slumped in the corner.
A strange plant-like odor emanated from the body.
In just the few minutes since Bai Liu and the others had left, the patient had begun emitting a thick, rotten fungal stench—damp, warm, and dense. It was so overpowering that Mu Ke had to cover his nose.
The Plant Patient hacked to death by Miao Feichi sat collapsed in the corner, head drooping low.
Under the dim light, the shadows it cast were deeply unsettling.
It even seemed slightly longer than when Miao Feichi had first killed it. Its limbs were impossibly thin, like slender metal rods. Mu Ke roughly estimated that if this Plant Patient stood upright, it would probably have to tilt its head just to move normally inside the ward.
This Plant Patient had only been rated A-rank, and it had taken several full-power strikes from Miao Feichi’s S-rank panel.
There was no way it could still be alive.
Mu Ke quickly withdrew his gaze.
Looking at it for too long was uncomfortable.
Staring at something so human yet so inhuman triggered an intense uncanny valley response in him. His mental value had only just recovered; he had no intention of doing anything that would pollute it again.
Books were scattered everywhere across the ward.
Fortunately, they hadn’t been damaged. They had only stuck to the floor because the room was so damp.
Luckily, that didn’t prevent Mu Ke from reading them.
He carefully picked up the books one by one, sorted them, righted the fallen bookshelf, and returned each volume to the order he remembered seeing before.
Then, under the light, using a pen to guide his gaze, he began reading rapidly.
The books here were exactly as Bai Liu had speculated.
They contained all kinds of notes.
Most likely, because this was the ICU, more than one patient had stayed here, and the notes written inside came from different hands.
Mu Ke read extremely quickly, focusing only on the marked sections of each page.
His fingers flipped through the pages at high speed, his eyes pausing on each one for barely a second or two.
It looked almost like the “quantum speed reading” videos circulating online.
After an unknown length of time, Mu Ke’s eyes were bloodshot.
He exhaled slowly, sat down on the bed, and muttered dizzily to himself, “First pass complete.”
After reading through so many notes, Mu Ke could essentially confirm that the so-called [Life-Saving Remedy] was exactly what its name implied.
It was a traditional Chinese medicine prescription described in the notes as capable of curing all illnesses. However, because it had never undergone formal trials, it was classified as a folk remedy.
These terminally ill patients had suffered the torment of disease for years. They had visited countless hospitals and doctors and tried treatment after treatment. But once every method failed, and doctors finally told them there was nothing more to be done—that they might as well go home, eat whatever they wanted, and wait for death—they fell into despair.
But they were unwilling to give up.
Some of the wealthier, more powerful patients had built this strange hybrid private hospital themselves because they refused to believe the doctors’ diagnoses. They even resented the doctors who had declared them incurable.
That was why this hospital had nurses, but no doctors.
Instead, the patients trying to save themselves had become the doctors.
Many of them had indeed studied large amounts of medical literature over the course of their long treatments, acquiring a certain degree of medical knowledge. One could say that prolonged illness had turned them into half-doctors.
Or perhaps, after their diseases reached the late stage and professional doctors declared them beyond saving, these patients had simply started reading books in order to save themselves.
In short, they trusted themselves more than doctors.
Or rather, they trusted people suffering from the same diseases as themselves.
“Heaven does not disappoint the diligent.” ƒreewebηoveℓ.com
Mu Ke saw the phrase written excitedly in the margin of one page.
Finally, after days and nights of desperate prayer, a mysterious patient here had somehow discovered a traditional medicine folk prescription. After the remedy was tested on several patients, it proved highly effective in alleviating their symptoms.
The despairing patients were ecstatic.
They called this prescription the [Life-Saving Remedy].
However, for various reasons, the prescription was a secret that could not be spread. It could not be passed down directly, nor could it be revealed to outsiders. Anyone who disclosed it openly would invite ❖ Nоvеl𝚒ght ❖ (Exclusive on Nоvеl𝚒ght) disaster.
Because of this, they could not simply tell new patients what the prescription was.
But that did not mean they were completely unwilling to pass on the [Life-Saving Remedy].
The method by which old patients passed the prescription to new patients was subtle and extremely cautious.
First, the new patient had to be truly terminally ill and on the verge of death.
Second, they had to possess enough money to sponsor the children and perform “good deeds.”
Only then would the old patients allow them to stay in this hospital.
After that, the new patient still had to pass a test of patience.
Every ward contained a large bookshelf. If the incoming patient could finish reading the books, they would find the [Life-Saving Remedy] hidden between the lines.
To Mu Ke, the whole thing felt like a secret code transmission.
It was as though they were terrified the folk remedy would leak out and bring disaster down on them, so they had to strictly screen anyone who learned it to ensure that every recipient remained in the same camp.
It reminded Mu Ke of the strict vetting processes and rigid membership systems used by certain underground clubs for the wealthy that operated in gray areas.
Based on the descriptions in the notes and his rapid reading, Mu Ke managed to piece together the general structure of the [Life-Saving Remedy].
He had found most of the medicinal ingredients.
But the prescription was still missing its most important component:
the medicinal primer.
Mu Ke searched through all the notes in the books, but the records only vaguely mentioned that the primer was one-to-one.
In other words, every patient’s primer was different, highly specific, and extremely difficult to obtain.
But none of the notes ever explained what the primer actually was.
Mu Ke’s expression turned grave.
The night was already very deep.
He didn’t know when dawn would begin to break, and anxiety gradually rose in his chest.
The medicinal primer was clearly the most critical part of the [Life-Saving Remedy]. So why was there no description of it anywhere?
And how could these patients have read about something so important without leaving even a single mark behind?
In this dim lighting, if they didn’t mark the page, finding the same passage again later would be extremely inconvenient.
Mu Ke had even gone through the books page by page checking for folded corners.
He found nothing.
“That shouldn’t be...” Mu Ke murmured.
Then he froze.
Wait.
If there were absolutely no notes or folded corners, then there was another possibility.
If the content on a certain page was too important to a patient, then instead of marking it, the most likely way to reread it repeatedly would be— freeωebnovēl.c૦m
secretly tearing it out and hiding it.
Although destroying books was forbidden here, that rule applied to them, the players—the new patients.
For the monster patients, the old patients, the rule might not apply.
After all, these books were merely props used to transmit the [Life-Saving Remedy]. Once the information had already been received, the books no longer mattered.
But Mu Ke had already searched the beds and cabinets.
He had checked every place where paper or torn pages could possibly be hidden, not even sparing the toilet.
So if those pages had truly been torn out, the only possible hiding place left—
the one place Mu Ke had not searched—
was...
His gaze slowly shifted toward the hospital gown pocket of the already rotting monster corpse.
His eyes moved from the Plant Patient’s slumped head to its skin, which had shriveled like a withered eggplant in just a few hours.
Mu Ke swallowed.
Then he took a deep breath and tiptoed toward the patient collapsed in the corner.
Beneath the withered skin, something long and thin seemed to be writhing like worms. Raised, flowing lines bulged across the patient’s purplish face, trailing upward until they vanished into its pupils.
Those long-empty pupils slowly contracted.
The lips, already marked with livor mortis, twitched slightly.
The saliva in its mouth glistened wetly.
Viscous fluid dripped from the monster’s fangs onto the index finger hanging limply at its side.
Then the finger twitched.
The movements were extremely subtle, hidden in the dark corner of the wall.
The ward’s visibility was poor, and Mu Ke, drawing closer step by step, failed to notice anything wrong with the corpse that had supposedly been dead for so long.
Because it had shown no abnormalities until now, he only felt that the rotten plant odor in the room was growing stronger and stronger, as though something were growing wildly nearby.
“What a strong mushroom smell...”
Mu Ke wrinkled his nose and waved his hand in disgust.
For some reason, the odor reminded him of the mushroom scent he had smelled on the disabled children at Love Welfare Home.
He knelt down.
Suppressing his fear and discomfort at being so close to a corpse, he reached into the patient’s hospital gown pocket.
His fingers did indeed touch a stack of papers.
But what made Mu Ke’s hair stand on end was not the papers.
It was what lay beneath his hand inside the pocket—
a rhythmic pulse.
And the moment Mu Ke’s hand entered the pocket, that pulse sped up.
The patient still had a heartbeat.
This Plant Patient was not dead.
Mu Ke felt as though his head had been plunged into a bucket of ice water, the cold seeping all the way down into his bones.
This monster had been pierced through the brain by a high-level player like Miao Feichi using full strength, yet it was still alive.
Mu Ke did not want to think about what that meant.
In the span of only a few seconds, he took several sharp breaths and forced himself to calm down.
This patient clearly had no breathing.
Mu Ke had confirmed that immediately after Bai Liu and the others left.
If a creature had a heartbeat but no breath, then what exactly was beating inside its chest...?
There was no time to dwell on it.
Mu Ke grabbed the papers and yanked his hand back.
Information.
As long as he obtained enough information to pass on to Bai Liu, even if he died at the hands of this strange patient monster, there was still Xiao Mu Ke with the remaining fifty percent HP.
He had to believe Bai Liu could complete the task and bring Xiao Mu Ke through the clearance.
After repeating this to himself two or three times, Mu Ke took a deep breath, lowered his head, shook open the papers, and began reading at a glance.
“Blood Lingzhi: a type of lingzhi nourished by the blood of pure-blooded boys and girls. A mutated variant of the legendary ‘Meat Ganoderma,’ or Tai Sui, said to revive the dead and grow flesh over bare bone... also known as Blood Tai Sui or Evil Tai Sui...”
“According to the Compendium of Materia Medica, long-term consumption of this medicine can lighten the body, prevent aging, and grant longevity like an immortal... Shennong’s Classic of Materia Medica records that this medicine replenishes essence and qi and treats obstruction in the chest...”
“Investors may personally select children of pure bloodline, irrigate the fungal bed with their fresh blood, and lie day and night upon the child’s blood-fungal bed. The fungal bed should be kept damp and sheltered from light. With a sincere heart seeking recovery, one may obtain a specialized Blood Lingzhi to serve as the medicinal primer. Once the mycelium enters the body, as long as the lingzhi does not die, the body will not die, thereby granting longevity. The purer the child’s blood, the stronger the lingzhi entering the body. If the child’s blood is impure, the fungal body will also be impure...”
[System Prompt: Congratulations to player Mu Ke for completing the main quest—Search for the (Life-Saving Remedy).]
[System Prompt: Congratulations to player Mu Ke for triggering a new main quest—Use the fungal beds in the hospital to cultivate your own exclusive Blood Lingzhi for life extension.]
“Fuck!” Mu Ke couldn’t help cursing. “What kind of dog-shit thing is this?!”
As Mu Ke read, the red lines writhing beneath the patient’s withered face abruptly quickened.
Those bright red marks, like squirming mycelial threads, spread from the patient’s heart toward its limbs and bones.
Soon, even the backs of its hands were covered in blood-red traces.
Before long, the capillary-like, throbbing lines had spread across the Plant Patient’s entire body, bulging beneath its pale purplish skin.
In the blink of an eye, the patient had transformed into a slender corpse covered in writhing “blood vessels.”
From head to toe, only the monster’s eyes remained black and white.
Every other inch of skin had turned red, packed with dense, pulsing, vessel-like tubes that writhed without pause, resembling muscle turned inside out.
The blood-red lines also stretched across the floor between the bed and the patient, spreading like vines throughout the ward until they finally led to the hospital bed.
Those red “vessels” grew thicker and thicker, pulsing violently as though pumping blood into the bed.
The entire ward was shrouded in strange, dark red light and shadow.
Beneath the straw on the bed, something seemed to be sprouting.
Rustle, rustle.
It pushed up through the rotten straw.
Clusters of bright red mushrooms emerged one after another.
They kept growing.
And growing.
Until they finally fused into an object the size of a millstone, with something like a head and tail, resembling an underdeveloped embryo.
The mass of fungi pulsed rhythmically like a heart, emitting an eerie pale-red fluorescence from atop the bed.
There was not the slightest hint of a disgusting bloody stench.
Instead, it gave off an unexpectedly pleasant scent of blood—
the aroma of food.
—
