“Teacher!”
This small action of hiding it behind his back, combined with his rarely bewildered expression, made the young man seem a bit cute, even childish. But no matter how fast he hid it, Algiers saw it clearly.
Algiers nervously called back: “Daike, teacher seems to be injured. Come quickly and take a look.”
“Ah?!” Jin Daike and the others all turned to look. Shou Bing soaking in the barrel was abandoned, and everyone ran over to surround Lan Xia.
“…”
For some reason his scalp tingled. Lan Xia backed up half a step with his hands behind his back, smiling as he tried to explain: “It’s not an injury, I…”
Jin Daike’s small face darkened. Taking on a doctor’s authority, she kicked aside her brother who didn’t dare take action, and taking advantage of her small size, grabbed the wrist Lan Xia had hidden and pulled it to the front.
She wasn’t an evolver. Lan Xia was afraid of accidentally hurting someone, so he could only let her act.
The hand exposed under everyone’s noses still had undried blood on its fingers. Due to the low body temperature, the fingertips showed an ice-cold bluish tint.
Like a piece of blood-tempered ice jade.
Dawn had just found a foothold, with many matters to handle. Lan Xia really didn’t want everyone’s attention focused on him. Besides, this truly wasn’t anything serious.
He joined Dawn with his own purpose. Everything he did was for Dawn’s development. From the perspective of maximizing efficiency, he only had minor injuries and old ailments. At most it would hurt a bit, and he could heal himself in a few days. This group of children really shouldn’t waste too much time on him.
Moreover, they hadn’t known each other long. The emotional connection between them should only be a relationship of dependence and being depended upon. Therefore, Lan Xia didn’t quite understand, nor was he quite accustomed to, the inexplicably silent atmosphere around him.
He barely lifted his fingers, trying not to let the blood on his hands stain the little girl’s newly bought dress. “Alright, alright, I’m really fine. Shou Bing is in the breaking mirror period of an S-level evolver. Suppressing the mental storm took some effort. It’s not a big problem.”
He paused, the young man looking around, seeming to understand something, adding gently: “Don’t worry, it won’t affect Dawn’s development.”
After he finished speaking, the surroundings fell even more silent. Jin Daike’s eyes even reddened. She lowered her head and took out a strip of gauze, wiping all the blood from Lan Xia’s fingertips clean: “It’s not because…”
“Daike!” Algiers suddenly spoke. He looked at Lan Xia and said: “It’s for Dawn’s development, but mental storms are very dangerous. Just to be safe, please let Daike examine and treat you.”
“It won’t take much time. Besides, Dawn just arrived here and needs to familiarize itself with the surroundings.”
Lan Xia looked down, meeting Jin Daike’s pitiful, expectant little expression, and finally compromised helplessly. After removing his windbreaker, he sat in the chair beside them. “Alright.”
Jin Daike quickly took out a body testing ring. When the testing ring was worn on the left elbow for three minutes, it could produce accurate body data. The one in her hand was modified and made by herself—several times more precise than those circulating on the market.
After his shirt was rolled up, the purple bruises left by nutritional injections on Lan Xia’s forearm were exposed to the air, particularly shocking to see.
Jin Daike was stunned.
Lan Xia made a sound of surprise, once again instinctively hiding it behind his back. Halfway through hiding it, he suddenly remembered he was being examined, so he paused, and could only extend his other hand to cover his arm.
His eyes curved beautifully as he said embarrassedly: “Sorry, teacher forgot. I didn’t scare you, did I?”
Seeing Jin Daike not speaking, Lan Xia thought he had really scared her and said: “Injecting nutritional agents into the arm to replace eating is very convenient. Daike, go check on Shou Bing. Whether teacher gets tested or not—”
Click.
The testing ring locked onto his elbow.
Lan Xia: …
Perhaps every doctor had no patience listening to patients babble about how they were fine. Jin Daike pressed her lips tightly together, not saying a word.
Though she wasn’t old, had a small build, and liked to cry, having experienced life and death, she was actually far more mature than most people.
While waiting for the test data, she suddenly remembered that night not long ago when they were having barbecue—when teacher discovered her, he had also hidden his hand behind his back, shirt half-rolled up—
So at that time, was teacher injecting himself with nutritional agents?
She didn’t believe the excuse about nutritional agents being more convenient than eating. The only possibility was that teacher couldn’t take in food.
Looking at the number of needle marks on his arm, it should have continued for quite some time. If it were just an injury, based on a mental power evolver’s physical constitution, it shouldn’t last this long without healing.
Asking now probably wouldn’t get her any answers.
So after collecting Lan Xia’s body data, Jin Daike also quietly took away the gauze that had wiped the blood from Lan Xia’s fingertips.
“The instruments and equipment are crude. The data has been collected, but I still need time to analyze it,” Jin Daike said. “Brother, teacher is in your hands now.”
After speaking, she pattered out.
Lan Xia straightened his clothes: “Alright, no need to wait here. Go do what you need to do.”
Algiers: “Then, teacher…”
His gaze wandered between Lan Xia’s forearm full of needle marks and Shou Bing.
“I won’t go out. I’ll rest here and watch over Shou Bing,” Lan Xia glanced at the small leader in the corner. “Don’t let today’s events spread. Take him away, then go check on Daike.”
Hearing him say “rest,” Algiers’ tightly furrowed brow finally relaxed a bit: “Alright.”
From start to finish, this future leader had shown great maturity. But as he was leaving, he couldn’t help casting a cold glance at Shou Bing soaking in the barrel.
He thought viciously: when this guy wakes up, he’ll definitely force this bastard to apologize to teacher!
It was already late at night by the time each task was assigned and arranged.
Passing by the front of the house, Algiers saw his sister’s back, crouched on the steps.
Small, curled into a ball, holding a thin stick in her hand, poking at a small crawling insect on the ground.
The starry night was bright, and the little girl looked somewhat downcast.
Algiers walked over and crouched beside her: “Daike, you’re unhappy.”
After a while, he heard a muffled: “Mm.”
Jin Daike hugged her knees, the stars twinkling in the sky reflected in her eyes, looking somewhat lost.
“Although we haven’t known Teacher Lan Xia for long, he saved our lives and is so capable. I already consider him someone very close and respected. But today I discovered that teacher doesn’t seem to think that way. He doesn’t care much about us, and even seems… not to care much about himself.”
Like today—clearly injured from suppressing Shou Bing’s mental storm, his first reaction was to hide it rather than share it with those around him.
After being discovered, he only explained that it wouldn’t affect Dawn’s development. Clearly such a gentle person, yet his concern for his own body could even be described as stingy and indifferent.
But life is precious and the most beautiful thing, isn’t it?
Algiers thought for a moment and said: “Daike, teacher is a bit different from us. He…”
[I’m just a wanderer, searching for a place where violets can bloom.]
Algiers remembered this line Lan Xia had said to him at the very beginning.
“He promised to accomplish something that must be done, so everything else became unimportant.” The thorns on the road, the injuries to be suffered—people with only one goal in their eyes don’t feel pain.
Algiers was precocious, a natural leader, seeing many things more clearly than others.
He sighed: “Teacher—is actually a very difficult person to get close to.”
Though he had no airs, didn’t easily get angry, was gentle in dealing with people, and had a good personality, wasn’t that kind of perfectly appropriate gentle consideration also a symbol of distance?
Algiers had checked—the rooms for him and Daike had already been cleaned out. The items inside were very complete, all things they had casually mentioned liking during conversations with teacher.
When he asked, sure enough, the things in the room were personally purchased for them by teacher when he went to the black market. Teacher had taken everything to heart.
Admittedly, he and Daike were teacher’s students. Teacher would care for and protect them, help Dawn go further, but to teacher, perhaps that was all it was.
All along, he had felt teacher was like moonlight in the sky—light and airy, unreal, not nearly as vivid and alive as that small gesture today of hiding his hands behind his back.
“But really, how infuriating,” Algiers lay back on the steps without any image to maintain, his mature demeanor completely swept away. The teenager waved his fist angrily at the sky. “Can’t even take care of himself, yet says he’ll take care of us.”
Jin Daike: “Why doesn’t brother say this to teacher’s face?”
Algiers: “Teacher is still teacher… I don’t have that kind of courage. By the way, what about the results of teacher’s physical examination?”
Speaking of serious matters, Jin Daike sat up a bit straighter. “Got them. Same as teacher said—meridians have frost damage traces, minor internal injuries. These don’t need medication, just a few days of rest and they’ll heal. But when I ran the tests, I discovered that teacher has a very serious old condition in his stomach.”
Of course, the collected data alone couldn’t analyze this much—these were conclusions she had tested from the blood-stained gauze.
She paused, seeming somewhat puzzled: “I tried testing stomach disease medications on the cells, selecting the most appropriate treatment plans, but strangely, the disease factors are almost immune to all medications. In other words, conventional drugs have no therapeutic effect on teacher whatsoever.”
But this situation only existed in the stomach area—everywhere else was completely normal. Very strange.
This also meant that once teacher’s abdominal cavity was injured, it might affect his stomach, and injuries would be very difficult to heal.
If it were an ordinary person, they could just replace it with an artificial stomach and wouldn’t worry no matter what happened. But as an S-level mental power evolver, to achieve mental power externalization required all organs to be natural, especially limbs, internal organs, etc.—otherwise mental power externalization couldn’t be realized.
Algiers: “Isn’t that very dangerous?”
“Usually with careful maintenance and attention to diet, there shouldn’t be problems,” Jin Daike said. “Brother, do you remember when teacher saved us, his abdomen was pierced by shrapnel? Teacher has been injecting nutritional agents this whole time. I suspect his stomach was injured. The data didn’t detect it, which means it’s mostly healed.”
She seemed a bit dejected: “But we only found out today.”
Algiers: “It’s okay, Daike. Before, teacher didn’t want to tell us. Now that we know, we can look after him instead.”
“I believe it won’t be long before teacher stops isolating us from his world, and Dawn won’t just be a developing organization to him, but a place carrying many beautiful memories.”
Jin Daike nodded rapidly, saying seriously: “Then, let’s start with the first meal tomorrow morning. I’ll personally cook porridge!”
Algiers: “…”
He was silent for a moment: “Maybe not, little sister.”
Jin Daike: “?”
“I’ll go find a cook tomorrow,” Algiers pleaded. “Please spare teacher.”
Jin Daike: “…”
**
