MM Racing Page 14
Page 14
It's really cool.
In the living room, suffocating coughs and wheezing like broken bellows were the only background noises.
The hustle and bustle of the alley outside the window seemed to be blocked by an invisible membrane; the smell of death, mixed with mold, rotten paper and a faint stench of corpses, became increasingly strong and viscous in the enclosed space.
Zhang Su swallowed, his throat feeling dry and tight.
The urge to save lives clashed fiercely with the fear of the unknown... Ultimately, he decided that 'saving a life is more meritorious than building a seven-story pagoda.'
"Damn it, let's risk it! We can't just stand by and watch someone die!"
He gritted his teeth, a resolute glint in his eyes. Without further hesitation, he took a sudden step forward, his movement so fast it almost stirred up a gust of wind. His right hand, which had just instinctively recoiled, now trembled slightly, and firmly pressed down on the old man's violently heaving, bony right shoulder!
It felt cold and stiff to the touch, like pressing on a piece of old tree bark that had lost its elasticity. You could hardly feel the fullness of flesh and blood under the skin, only the jagged bones.
An indescribable, even stronger stench of decay crept up from his fingertips.
[Physical contact established. Deep exploration protocol initiated... Scanning the deep state of the parasite and host...]
As soon as Yuan Shu's notification sound ended, Zhang Su felt a very faint, strange tingling sensation, like an electric current or countless tiny insects crawling, coming from the palm of the hand that was pressing on the old man's shoulder.
This is a deeper manifestation of the power of the Source Pivot.
Time seemed to stretch out at this moment.
A second later... the old man coughed violently again, his withered body trembling violently under Zhang Su's hands.
Two seconds... Zhang Su could clearly feel the protrusion of the old man's shoulder blades and the coldness of his skin. He held his breath and stared intently at the disheveled, graying head.
Three seconds... Yuan Shu gave no response, only the tingling sensation continued to deepen.
Cold sweat trickled down Zhang Su's temples.
Four seconds... The living room was eerily silent, save for the old man's labored "ho...ho..." sounds.
Five seconds... Zhang Su's heart pounded heavily in his chest, and he began to doubt whether his decision had been too rash.
Six seconds... the tingling sensation in my fingertips seemed to reach its peak, as if something was being "seen" through my skin.
Seven seconds!
Every second of the exploration was under immense pressure for Zhang Su.
Finally, the next second—
[Exploration complete.]
[Confirmed parasite: codename 'Black Tai Sui'. Morphological characteristics: Contains a semi-solidified hyphal aggregate with extraordinary properties, exhibiting strong parasitic behavior and the ability to absorb life energy.]
[Parasite depth: Complete fusion. Parasite duration: Preliminary estimate ≥50 years. The host's life essence has been completely eroded.]
[Host Status: Vital signs at the critical point of collapse. Organs are failing, and physiological functions are only maintained at a minimum by the 'Black Tai Sui' to prolong the parasitic state.]
[Conclusion: The host (the elderly man surnamed Qiu) is beyond saving and is nearing physiological death (survival time < 28 days). Forcibly removing the parasite will only cause his immediate death. You currently have no supernatural means to resolve this issue, therefore you are powerless and can only witness the old man's death.]
[Additional Information: The host is no ordinary person; they are a superhuman.]
[Transcendent Rank: Path Unknown (Information Obscured) - Sequence 8 - Runebearer.]
“Black Tai Sui… fifty years… hopeless…” After listening to the analysis, Zhang Su quickly summarized the key points.
It turns out that this old man had been parasitized by this thing called "Black Tai Sui" half a century ago, and now he is just a body that is about to die.
At this point, Zhang Su couldn't help but sigh: "Alas, poor old man. I never expected that a spur-of-the-moment visit would lead to your diagnosis, a critical condition notice, and that there's no way to save you... I'm so sorry."
"Since things have come to this, I can only wait until you pass away before containing the Black Tai Sui within you. This will cause some damage to your body, but afterwards, I will ask a mortician to stitch your body back together. I hope you can understand."
There was nothing he could do but gently help the old man to a chair and sit down so he could catch his breath.
But just then, the old man, who had been coughing violently and was completely unaware of his surroundings, suddenly stopped coughing without warning.
The living room fell silent instantly.
Before Zhang Su could react, the old man suddenly grabbed his right hand with great force, causing him pain!
Then, an extremely hoarse, dry sound, like two rough pieces of sandpaper rubbing together, was laboriously uttered from the old man's throat:
"You...you can see it? You can see the 'Tai Sui' inside me!"
Volume 1: Chapter 14: The Truth About Tai Sui!
Faced with the old man's sudden grab, Zhang Suqiang suppressed the exclamation that almost escaped his lips and the instinct to pull his hand away. Instead of showing panic, his expression was "unexpectedly" calm, and even a little "understanding".
He stared directly into the old man's terrifying eyes and said, "It seems you are not as completely lost as you appear. You still have consciousness and can force yourself to stay awake for a moment? That saves me a lot of trouble."
"Since you can still speak, don't waste this precious time. Tell me, what's wrong with you looking like this?"
At this moment, he was bluffing, betting that the old man was forcibly waking up with his remaining willpower, rather than being completely possessed and controlled by the "Black Tai Sui".
If you bet wrong, the consequences could be dire.
Time seemed to freeze for a moment.
The old man's violently heaving chest suddenly stopped, and the grip on Zhang Su's wrist loosened slightly, his expression one of relief.
He made a wheezing sound like a broken bellows again, and then, very slowly, nodded.
"Cough...cough cough...!" Another suppressed cough came. He released his grip on Zhang Su's hand, his thin body seemingly exhausted. He leaned back heavily in his chair, his voice even more hoarse and dry, like sandpaper rubbing against rotten wood: "Zhang...Zhang Su...I am so...sorry...for making you...laugh...I didn't frighten you just now, did I?"
He was breathing heavily, each breath feeling like he was swallowing razor blades.
"I am... Dongyuan Qiu... the head of the 'Yuan' generation branch here..." He gave his name, then struggled to get up from the heavy armchair again and give Zhang Su a more solemn bow.
Zhang Su's mind raced, quickly translating the name with this pronunciation into "Dongyuan Qiu" in his mind.
He immediately reached out and pressed down lightly, indicating that the other party did not need to be so polite: "Patriarch Dongyuan, there is no need to stand on ceremony. Your current condition is special, so it is important to conserve your strength."
He withdrew his hand without making a sound, and moved his wrist, which had gone numb from being gripped. He thought to himself that this old man was really scary, suddenly becoming lucid before death without warning. Luckily, he had a strong heart, otherwise he would have definitely fainted from fright.
As Dongyuan Qiu calmed down, a bit of clarity returned to his turbid eyes.
He nodded slightly, a bitter look on his sallow face: "Your Excellency... sees clearly... In the past, I was only lucid for about twenty minutes a day, the rest of the time... like a walking corpse... This little bit of lucidity is just a spark I've kept alive in critical moments."
Zhang Su sat back in his chair, leaning back slightly, his hands casually resting on the armrests. He calmly gazed at the other man, adopting an attitude of "I already know everything, I'll just watch your performance quietly." He said in a nonchalant tone, "So, this is what you call the 'critical juncture.' I suppose you have something to ask of me."
Upon hearing this, Dongyuan Qiu's body trembled violently. A light, almost desperate, gleaming light burst forth in his cloudy eyes, so intense that it temporarily overwhelmed the deathly aura.
Without the slightest hesitation, his emaciated body unleashed its last strength, and with a "thud," he slid straight off the chair, his knees landing heavily on the cold bluestone floor!
"Thump!" A dull thud echoed in the quiet living room.
"Lord Zhang Su!" Dong Yuan Qiu's voice trembled violently with excitement and weakness. His forehead pressed tightly against the cold ground, his posture humble to the point of being in the dust. "This old man... dares not presume to ask for anything! But... but just because you can see through the 'Tai Sui' that has been entangled in my body for fifty years, sucking away my marrow and devouring my soul... this old man knows... you... you must be the noble person who has been guided by the Dragon God... descending here! The person my Qiu family has been searching for for a hundred years!"
Zhang Su's pupils contracted slightly. A hundred years? Guidance from the Dragon God? That's an exaggeration!
But his face remained calm, and he merely raised his chin slightly: "I would like to hear the details."
Dongyuan Qiu raised his head, his sallow face flushed with a sickly red from excitement. He didn't speak immediately, but took a deep breath. His withered, claw-like hands suddenly rose up and bit the tip of his right middle finger hard!
A drop of thick, dark red blood, almost unlike human blood, slowly seeped out.
"This matter is of great importance, and I fear... the walls may be overheard..." Dongyuan Qiu said solemnly, "Allow this old man to... isolate the inside and outside first!"
Before he finished speaking, his bleeding finger suddenly slashed through the air!
Om-!
A sharp, buzzing sound instantly filled the living room. The air suddenly became piercing.
The dark red drop of blood did not fall; instead, it hovered eerily in mid-air, trembling slightly as if it were alive, emitting a faint yet chilling red light.
Dong Yuan Qiu's fingers, like brushstrokes dipped in thick ink, rapidly moved across the floor in front of him, starting from the suspended blood droplet. Where his fingertips passed, they did not leave real bloodstains, but rather trailed out complex and twisted runes composed of pure dark red light!
These runes were not any kind of script that Zhang Su knew. They twisted and coiled like living vines, entangled snakes, or the embodiment of some profound ritual.
With each stroke of the pen, the invisible buzzing in the air intensified, and the light in the living room dimmed accordingly, as if an unseen force was devouring the light.
As his fingertips danced wildly, more and more crimson runes appeared out of thin air on the floor and even in the surrounding air, connecting and intertwining!
They are not static, but flicker like breathing, forming the prototype of a constantly expanding and rotating three-dimensional light array.
Zhang Su felt an invisible pressure squeezing in from all directions, and his skin felt a slight stinging sensation.
At this moment, "Source Pivot" issued another prompt:
[Psionic fluctuations detected. Energy type: Spell/Magic. The target is consuming psionic energy to construct an 'isolation field'. Principle: Using the caster's life essence as a conduit, combined with a specific rune sequence, the rules of local space are forcibly distorted to sever the transmission channels of information (including sound waves, light, and psionic fluctuations). Field strength assessment: Sequence 8.]
Just as Yuan Shu finished his analysis, Dong Yuan Qiu suddenly pressed his finger down one last time!
"seal up!"
A hoarse yet thunderous shout exploded from his throat!
Buzz - boom! ! !
The entire living room seemed to tremble violently!
All the floating, shimmering crimson runes instantly burst forth with dazzling red light, and then, like rivers flowing into the sea, rapidly contracted and solidified towards the ground!
A dark red light curtain, visible to the naked eye and like flowing mercury, rose instantly from the ground using the runes as its base, forming a perfect hemispherical dome that completely enveloped the entire living room!
On the surface of the light screen, countless tiny blood-red runes swam and flowed like live fish.
The scene in the living room instantly became blurry and distorted. The hustle and bustle of the alley outside the window, the ship horns of the distant port, even the footsteps in the next room... all sounds from the outside world completely disappeared.
The light became extremely dim, and the entire living room was situated at the bottom of the deep sea, with only the flowing dark red light curtain emitting an eerie halo.
Zhang Su could tell that the magic array had already taken shape.
The next second, he saw Dongyuan Qiu's body shake violently. He coughed up a mouthful of foul blood mixed with black flocculent matter, which splattered onto the cold floor and was quickly absorbed by the dark red light screen and disappeared without a trace.
Setting up this magic array seemed to have drained him of his already dwindling life force.
But his cloudy eyes were fixed on Zhang Su, burning with the last and most intense flame—a mad obsession clinging to the only rope in the abyss of despair.
He struck the ground again, with all his might, his forehead touching the ground:
"Your Excellency Zhang Su! The head of the Qiu family's Dongyuan branch... Dongyuan Qiu... I implore you... to save my Qiu family's descendants from this calamity."
The sound of a forehead striking the bluestone echoed like a deep bell in this deathly silent, isolated space.
Zhang Su sat on the Grand Tutor's chair, his body motionless, his face maintaining an unfathomable calm.
He lowered his eyes slightly, looking down at the old man kneeling on the ground, barely breathing, and continued to ask calmly, "Did you ask me to save your Qiu family because of the pollutant 'Black Tai Sui' in your body? It not only pollutes you, but also your family?"
Dongyuan Qiu raised his head and said solemnly, "Your Excellency, in truth, Tai Sui... is not entirely a pollution. It is both a blessing and a constraint!"
"It is the inescapable destiny of the Qiu family's main lineage, imprinted on the bloodlines of all its branches! From the moment it is implanted, it is born with the bloodline and passed down through generations!"
"A gift? A constraint? Passed down through generations?" Zhang Su's eyebrows twitched almost imperceptibly.
The combination of these words creates a tension of contradiction and tragedy.
He leaned forward slightly, his tone still calm, but his curiosity was piqued: "Tell me more."
Dongyuan Qiu took a deep breath, the sound like the last struggle of a broken bellows, accompanied by a viscous churning sound from deep within his chest. He knelt there, and began his statement in a tone tinged with endless sorrow and deep-seated hatred:
"The original name of Tai Sui is 'Black Tai Sui Source Seed,' which is an ancestral 'active anomaly' of the Qiu family's main lineage and also a magic potion of my Qiu family's 'alchemist' path!"
"When any branch of my Qiu family bloodline leaves home to develop, regardless of gender, once they reach the age of twenty, the main lineage messenger will implant this 'source seed' deep into their heart and soul, so that their flesh and blood will be intertwined and their souls will be connected."
Dongyuan Qiu's withered fingers trembled as he pointed to his heart, where something seemed to be pulsating slightly beneath his skin.
"The 'Tai Sui' within my body is the mature state of the Origin Seed."
"Once the source seed enters the body, the path to transcendence is half opened. As long as the implanted person is alive, it will grow with the bloodline and accumulate realm with the years! It grows once every twenty years."
"When the recipient turns twenty, and it deems the time ripe, it will awaken the recipient's extraordinary abilities, officially leading them onto the 'Fangshi' path and making them an extraordinary being. Starting from Sequence 10."
"I awakened at the age of 2+(2)IX weeping}Lu Ying3 Dam Lu at the age of 10 and became a 'Seeker' of the 'Method and Path' sequence 10. At the age of 40, I was promoted to the sequence 9 'Listener'."
"At the age of sixty, he possessed the ability to wield talismans, using blood as ink and spirit as a guide, and could set up a magic array like the one before him... This is the ability of a current Sequence 8 'Talisman Master'."
He was panting, and a sickly flush appeared on his sallow face—a kind of excitement, like a final burst of energy before death.
"It is through the extraordinary power of the 'Fangshi' path that my Qiu family's Yuan generation has been able to establish itself, spread its branches and leaves, and build this place of refuge in Muyun Port, a place where all kinds of forces are intertwined and mixed together."
"That's why I call it a 'gift'."
Zhang Su listened quietly, very interested in the matter, but kept his expression unchanged, maintaining his persona.
He nodded slightly, signaling the other party to continue, while posing the crucial question: "Such a 'generous' gift must come at an equally 'generous' price. Tell me, what do you need to give up? If it's merely the loss of your personal life, why would you ask me for help to save your family?"
"The price it will inevitably involve your bloodline and descendants, right? Like your two grandchildren."
“Yes, nothing can be hidden from you, Your Excellency.” Dongyuan Qiu’s head slammed heavily onto the cold ground again, his forehead pressed firmly against the floor where dark red runes flowed.