CH 139

In the early morning, Fu Tianyi woke up from his sickbed.

Influenced by the emotions in the Corpse Cage, coupled with the mental impact, he slept for a full day and night. When he woke up, everything around him felt unreal—he subconsciously took out his phone to see if Auntie Tao had conveyed any work-related messages, and then he remembered that his partner had already passed away.

Auntie Tao left in great pain; a bullet hit her shoulder, injuring her lungs. If she hadn’t realized the danger and immediately protected Fu Tianyi by her side, the bullet would have hit his heart directly.

Fu Tianyi stared blankly at the snow-white ceiling.

He had no partner anymore.

Fu Tianyi opened Auntie Tao’s WeChat, and her profile picture was a photo of her daughter when she was young. Her WeChat signature was just a simple line: “Life is like floating duckweed*”.

*(生如浮萍) Idiom referring to life is short, uncertain, and transient, like duckweed, which floats on the water’s surface and is easily swayed by the wind and currents. It’s often used to express the idea that one should cherish and make the most of their time in life.

Auntie Tao wasn’t young anymore. Her parents were dead, and her husband had long been a stranger. After losing her daughter to the gap, she put all her energy into getting rid of evil, as if it were the best anesthesia in the world.

Her last post was “My 45th” with a photo of an empty and overly tidy living room.

The date was less than two weeks ago.

…And as of today, Fu Tianyi had never looked carefully at her posts.

Auntie Tao wasn’t a master or doctoral graduate from a prestigious university; she was just an uninteresting, silent, and endlessly sad ordinary person. When dealing with various supernatural events before, she would only provide various cognitive assistance behind him.

Now she was dead.

…And he behaved like a piece of crap.

During the Corpse Cage competition, he was always beaten down by those white monsters. The prepared props took time to set up and had little effect. Later, when he saw his colleagues being attacked, Fu Xingchuan and Auntie Tao were the first to rush out to protect their companions, but he was too preoccupied with despair and didn’t react at all.

His previous tasks all went smoothly.

The police and investigation teams provided detailed information, and the rear command clearly defined all plans. Then all he had to do was execute them with all his strength—he had been here for so long and had never tasted defeat, winning every battle cleanly and beautifully.

Once, he was dissatisfied that he couldn’t be directly enrolled in an A-level investigation team like Fu Xingchuan, only feeling that this elder was lucky to have been born at a good time.

Now, Fu Tianyi couldn’t even muster the strength to recall the competition. The dull air enveloped him, making it almost impossible for Fu Tianyi to breathe smoothly.

The thought that “he was actually very bad” came to the fore, and it couldn’t be extinguished like wildfire.

Fu Tianyi tied his hair casually, not touching the wooden mask and red long gown on the bedside. The young man simply wore a hospital gown and slippers, stumbling out of the ward.

He urgently needed to find something to distract himself.

Next door to Fu Tianyi were two people from Linnan. The nurse had just changed their dressings, and Fu Tianyi glanced at them. The two girls had their eyes closed, unknown whether they were in a coma or simply asleep.

They were wrapped in bandages, and their eyebrows furrowed as if they weren’t sleeping very well.

Fu Tianyi lowered his eyes and continued walking forward.

The next ward should be the ward of the Haigu branch.

The door was closed, and this time he hesitated for a while and decided not to knock on the door—Yin Ren had lost his partner, and his mood wasn’t good, plus he had acted arrogantly towards Unit 9 before. No matter how he thought about it, he would not be welcomed.

As a result, before he could figure it out, the door creaked open, and five pairs of eyes looked straight at him.

“It’s okay. It’s not someone here to assign work.” The teenager who opened the door turned around and greeted him.

Fu Tianyi looked up and saw that he was indeed in the Haigu branch ward, but the personnel weren’t quite right.

The famous Hao Wenzhe was holding a laptop and shrinking in the farthest bed, surrounded by a nest-like wall of devices. There were playing cards scattered on the table in the middle of the ward, and two men and one woman sat at the table. With the addition of the teenager at the door, they just formed a table.

At this moment, all their eyes were locked on Fu Tianyi.

Fu Tianyi: “…Sorry to bother you.”

“You’re Fu Tianyi from Yandu’s C-level division. I remember you,” the teenager at the door said. “We are Shian Unit 7. Do you have something you need?”

“No.” Fu Tianyi pursed his lips. “Sorry, I just came to take a look.”

The teenager —Xiao Zhao from Unit 7—looked at him for a while. “My condolences… but you don’t have to be afraid. They specially assigned us to guard here. Look, even Hao Wenzhe is staying here. Nothing will happen again.”

“Yeah, yeah, we’ll definitely turn things around this time.” A person dressed as a delivery man waved the playing cards and spoke in a serious tone. “Look at this time. None of us in Haigu Unit 7 broke our legs, which means there’s still hope!”

The remaining man and woman rolled their eyes at the delivery man.

Xiao Zhao coughed dryly. “If you’re looking for your cat, it just went south in the corridor.”

“Thank you.” Fu Tianyi forced a smile.

He continued to move forward along the corridor and indeed found Dr. Cat sunbathing on a windowsill.

The morning sun sprinkled down, giving the black cat a golden border. It squinted its eyes and made a satisfied purring sound in its throat, as if all this chaos had nothing to do with it.

Fu Tianyi stopped next to it for a while. “Auntie Tao has passed away.”

“Oh.”

“Don’t you have any thoughts about it?”

The black cat shook its fluffy tail. “Let me tell you. There was a clam that was supposed to live for a thousand years, but it died after only five hundred years. What would you think if that happened?”

Fu Tianyi: “……”

Fu Tianyi: “…Forget I ask.”

The cat tilted its head and looked at him for a while, licking its paw. “If you really can’t stand it, just wander around. Auntie Tao was a nurse at this hospital, right? Perhaps by looking around, you can commemorate your partner.”

……

A few minutes later, Fu Tianyi stopped in front of the abandoned building on the west side of the Municipal Hospital, as suggested by the cat. He didn’t want to listen to the cat’s suggestion, but he had nowhere else to go.

The flower beds outside were being taken care of, and the nearby road was also very clean. Although the building was old, its quality was quite sturdy, and its appearance didn’t reveal that it was an abandoned building.

This was the place where the “Municipal Hospital Major Gap Incident” occurred.

The building had only four floors, and the hospital had added fences to every window and locked all entrances and exits with iron chains. Now, the gap had been properly handled, and people only needed to wait for it to naturally decay and disappear.

This was where Auntie Tao’s daughter had died, and it was her motivation to become a science post… Wait a minute?

Fu Tianyi blinked.

The door of the abandoned building was open, and the iron chain was cut and piled up haphazardly next to the door.

Was it a thief?

Fu Tianyi quickly sent a message to the work group and then entered the building. Even though there was only the decaying gap inside, it was still dangerous for outsiders to come in contact with it!

He hurried to the first floor waiting room.

…Then he almost lost his mind.

The huge gap was like a wound, diagonally cutting through the spacious waiting room. It was already in the final stages of decay, with black cracks that had shrunk to the thickness of a pinky, rough and intermittent, but emitting an oppressive feeling that was hard to ignore.

Yin Ren from Haigu was standing in front of the gap.

The man had disheveled hair, was bare feet, and had changed into a slightly loose white shirt. He looked at Fu Tianyi expressionlessly, without even a disguised smile.

Judging from his posture, it seemed like he was going to throw himself into the gap in the next second.

Fu Tianyi didn’t feel any hostility or murderous intent, but for some reason, he instinctively felt a chill behind him.

“Wait, I… I can understand your pain!” he said loudly. “My relationship with my partner is average, but I was also sad when she died. We can talk about it. Calm down, don’t do anything stupid—!”

Yin Ren looked at him for a while, his tone somewhat flat. “You’re also sad?”

“Of course!” Fu Tianyi gritted his teeth. “We’ve been partners for several years, and I consider her my friend—”

[Life is like floating duckweed.]

Tao Lan’s signature once again hit his mind, and Fu Tianyi couldn’t continue speaking.

After finally diverting his attention back to this matter, he felt his eyes stinging and his throat bitter.

“I’m sorry to her. I’m not a good partner.” He changed his wording. “Yes, I’m very sad.”

“Very well,” Yin Ren said.

“I was still thinking about when to talk to you… Fu Tianyi, I can give you a chance for revenge, do you want it?”

“Revenge?”

Fu Tianyi was a little confused. The attacker was incredibly strong, and the leadership of Shian had too few clues. The focus was on strengthening defense. They were only at the C-level. How could they talk about revenge?

Yin Ren glanced lightly, smoothly changing his wording. “To be precise, I want to give you a chance to prove yourself and incidentally take revenge.”

Fu Tianyi looked at the person in front of the huge gap and was silent for more than ten seconds this time.

“What chance?”

“A chance that some members of the Fu family may not like.” Yin Ren slowly smiled. “I heard Fu Xingchuan say that you juniors can’t control the Corpse Cage, and it takes years of training… Unfortunately, I have urgent matters to attend to and can teach you on their behalf.”

“What are you talking about?”

In the dark and dilapidated waiting room, with the eerie huge gap and the non-human face of the person in front of him, Fu Tianyi was really getting goosebumps—the Corpse Cage was the Fu family’s treasure. How could they just give it away to someone like that?

Yin Ren didn’t answer him, but only stretched out his hand and pinched a spell.

In an instant, countless blood threads shot out from Yin Ren’s palm, enveloping the entire waiting room. Sensing something, the gap behind him twisted and emitted a buzzing sound like the friction of flesh and blood.

The fish-tank-like protective shield rose from the ground, and the surging evil qi swallowed Fu Tianyi in an instant. He retreated several steps and directly hit the wall behind him.

…How could there be such a monster in the C-level investigation group in the Haigu branch?

Fu Tianyi’s brain was blank for two seconds. Then he noticed the scars and fresh blood in Yin Ren’s hands.

Two blood threads brushed Fu Tianyi’s hair and pierced into the wall, emitting an awe-inspiring aura. Yin Ren moved his fingers, and the scars on his hand became even more hideous.

“Choose for yourself. Forget about all this or temporarily obey me.”

The blood threads twisted, and a memory spell slowly formed in front of Fu Tianyi.

“Your foundation is not bad, and what I can teach you is definitely more than what the Fu family can provide.”

Outside the protective shield, Lu Xiaohe pulled out a folding table while Ge Tingting and Huang Jin distributed buns among themselves on the second floor of the waiting room. The steaming beef and onion buns emitted a tempting fragrance. At this angle, they could see everything happening in the first floor waiting room.

Lu Xiaohe held the bun and took a big bite. The hot meat juice instantly filled her mouth, and she couldn’t help but gasp.

“Xiao Yin has changed a lot. I haven’t seen him eat much.”

She sighed with concern.

“And this plan to lure the culprit using the gap is too risky. If space distortion is so easy to replicate, someone would have published a paper… He seems very confident… Has he regained his memory? Is he actually a very powerful cultivator?”

Ge Tingting seriously nibbled on her bun. “He didn’t tell us, but he should be very powerful. Let’s save two buns for him.”

Huang Jin stared at the fat white buns and then at the frightened Fu Tianyi downstairs. He felt that Ge Tingting’s judgment had been biased. However, after the argument in Corpse Cage, she didn’t pay much attention to him anymore.

That evil named “Yin Ren” was about to go crazy, so it wasn’t really time to care about steamed buns.

Mr. Huang Jin, who knew only half the truth, felt helpless.

……

At the same time, in the darkness beneath their feet.

Comrade Xiao Zhong was also feeling helpless.

His guide’s movements were smooth, but unfortunately, they got lost. Zhong Chengshuo watched the person run around like a hot potato, passing the same place countless times, and getting more and more breathless.

He hadn’t touched the person again and just followed from a distance, not knowing what the person was so anxious about.

‘This couldn’t go on,’ Zhong Chengshuo thought.

He had to go and help him.

Author’s note:

Minister Zou: Thanks alot.jpg

Kinky Thoughts:

I hold Shian’s Unit 7 dear to my heart.