Novels online

Chapter 120: Power

The burly man casually tossed the youth onto the courtyard ground, then entered the inner room.

Seeing that he had indeed walked away, the slender youth struggled to pick himself up from the ground. Limping, he made his way to the back kitchen, grabbed the still-warm food, and returned to his own room.

"Brother!" A little girl, her face smeared with soot and tear tracks, ran out from inside and tightly hugged the youth's leg. "They're so mean! They hit you again, does it still hurt?"

"It's okay, let's eat first, or it'll get cold." The youth stroked his sister's head and slowly walked to the dilapidated dining table.

"Mhm!"

"You were good today, you didn't rub off the soot."

"I held it in today, didn't rub it off, but it still feels a little itchy."

"Bear with it. It'll be trouble if those people in the inner room find out what you look like."

"I'll listen to big brother."

"Come here." Although the youth had just been severely beaten, his innate alertness allowed him, despite his poor state, to react immediately and shield his sister behind him.

"Who are you?" Even though he was terrified of this unidentified, shadowy being that remained a dark silhouette even in the light, he thought of his sister behind him and forced himself to ask calmly, though his trembling voice betrayed his fear.

The figure remained silent.

"As you can see, we don't have anything valuable here!"

Just as the youth finished speaking, he found himself lying flat in mid-air. No matter how much he struggled, his limbs were as unmoving as if they had fused with the surrounding air.

"Sound waves are vibrations in the end; they should also be a form of energy. My energy-absorbing skin should be able to absorb most of the sound wave energy around me." Bai Mo ignored the youth's struggles and mused to himself.

He tried to shout loudly. Although the people in the inner room weren't good people, they still felt safer than the shadowy, unidentified being before him. Unfortunately, as soon as he opened his mouth to yell, he discovered something even more despairing.

No matter how hard he tried, his voice merely echoed in his throat, as if he had severe laryngitis. Only hoarse, faint sounds could escape, barely audible to the two figures before him.

"Bad guy! Let go of big brother!" The little girl picked up the self-defense wooden club, embedded with nails, that she usually kept ready and struck at the dark figure with all her might. But after hitting the black humanoid's foot, she was the one who toppled from the recoil, still holding the club.

Feeling as if he'd been bitten by a mosquito, Bai Mo snapped out of his thoughts about his energy-absorbing skin. He used his twenty-second playback ability for the first time and saw that the "perpetrator" was the girl before him.

He saw that after the little girl fell, a lot of the soot on her face had come off, revealing her fair complexion. So, he casually wiped away the remaining soot.

"Oh, a little beauty, aren't you?" Bai Mo said, his first words of introduction, spoken in a joking tone.

"You! What do you want?" The youth started to panic upon hearing Bai Mo's words. The other party's words clearly held ill intentions towards his sister; he didn't believe it was a joke.

He didn't explain further, instead immobilizing the little girl as well. Then, he took out anesthetic and a syringe from a box. After skillfully administering full anesthesia to the youth, Bai Mo began his practice with multiple spirit energy organ tissue transplantation experiments.

After several months of high-intensity training, he had become exceptionally proficient in all aspects of surgery and dissection. After all, for over a month prior, he had processed more than ten comatose ability users daily.

According to his previous tests, when heterogeneous spirit energy tissues come into contact with the corresponding organs of the host body, there's a certain chance they will successfully manifest unique properties. There's also a chance the host might succumb to rejection effects, and a significant possibility that nothing will happen at all. Furthermore, even if unique properties are successfully manifested, the abilities might be greatly diminished. At this stage, it was entirely reliant on luck, much like a gacha game.

Carefully incising the youth's body, Bai Mo worked systematically according to his predetermined experimental plan...

Of course, for a ten-year-old girl, this was a complete horror movie. She watched as her brother was cut open by a humanoid shadow, his insides poked and prodded with various tools, and occasionally, bloody things were stuffed into him. And she couldn't move at all, forced to simply watch.

The surgery lasted nearly two hours before Bai Mo completed the final suturing of the wound. He maintained rigor and precision at every step.

After finishing the surgery, he put down the scalpel, leaving the sleeping youth floating in mid-air, then released the girl from her restraints.

Although the little girl didn't know what the shadowy figure had done to her brother, upon being released, she immediately hugged one of the youth's arms and began to sob in distress.

The youth's brows were sometimes tightly furrowed, as if he were enduring intense pain, and sometimes relaxed, his face serene, as if immersed in a realm of pure bliss. Bai Mo, having experienced this himself, knew it was a fierce struggle with the residual will and rejection reactions of the transplanted organs.

The girl remained tightly embracing her brother, anxiously watching the changes in his expression.

A full twenty minutes passed before the youth slowly opened his eyes. This period felt incredibly long, both for the little girl anxiously waiting for her brother to wake up, for Bai Mo waiting for the experimental results, and for the youth struggling with all his might.

"Why... is it salty?" Even before opening his eyes, he felt a salty liquid flowing into his mouth. He opened his eyes to see that it was his sister's tears.

After with great difficulty comforting the girl with reddened eyes, the youth turned his head to look at Bai Mo.

"What did you do to me?"

"Merely bestowing upon you a modicum of power."

Upon hearing Bai Mo's words, the youth closed his eyes and carefully sensed his current body. However, he found that aside from feeling somewhat weak, there seemed to be no change in his strength. He looked at the shadowy figure in confusion, because he didn't believe the "person" before him would lie.

"Brain tissue that generates a fear aura, a new organ capable of manipulating faint electrical currents, a spirit qi accelerated conversion sac, and slightly plasmafied skin. Based on my estimates of your will and physical limits, I've transplanted a total of four types of spirit energy organs. You can try now to see which ones are effective, but you were originally a non-ability user, so you might not be able to sustain such enormous consumption for a while. Be careful."

The youth slowly descended from mid-air and began testing his potential abilities in the small room.

"You're very lucky; three out of four were successful, although the abilities are all diminished."

"The fear aura tissue is functioning normally, the current manipulation is functioning normally, the spirit qi accelerated conversion sac is functioning normally, the plasmafied skin failed." Bai Mo obtained these conclusions from his divine sense, observing the spirit energy reactions within the youth's body.

"There's no such thing as a free lunch in this world. What do you require of me, for giving me such power?" The youth looked at the shadowy figure before him.