Novels online

Chapter 81: "The Death of Marat"

"What's going on?" Luo Si, the bewildered hotel maid, walked towards the bathroom, which was still billowing steam.

Pushing open the ajar bathroom door, she witnessed a horrifying sight—a man reclined in boiling, bubbling blood, like some evil experiment a wizard might conduct in a novel.

Luo Si boldly stepped forward, and cautiously pushed Bai Mo's shoulder with her hand, carefully avoiding the boiling blood from splashing onto herself.

The eerie scene of boiling blood and the man calmly lying within it piqued her curiosity, and for a moment she forgot that this could very well be a crime scene.

Once, twice... After gently pushing four or five times, the man in the bathtub still showed no reaction. At this point, she began to panic slightly.

"Bang!" The maid turned her head to look, and realized that perhaps due to the air conditioning or some other reason, the bathroom door had suddenly closed.

Feeling increasingly uneasy, her fear rapidly intensified. She decided to leave immediately, and have security and the manager handle the situation together.

However, just as she took two steps, and was about to reach the bathroom door, she suddenly found herself unable to move. Using all her strength, her head slowly turned forty-five degrees, and then couldn't budge any further.

From the corner of her eye, she saw, several meters away, the man soaking in the boiling blood shaking his head, and seemingly struggling to climb out of the bathtub.

Discovering she was completely paralyzed, and that the man behind her was stirring again, the terrified maid felt an intense urge to scream for help. However, she quickly realized she couldn't even make a sound. Her mouth was sealed as if by tape, utterly unable to open. No matter how hard she tried, she could only emit faint "wuwuwu" sounds from the gap between her lips. Her desperate struggles were like those of a fly stuck in honey.

Bai Mo, lying in the bathtub, finally awoke after being patted several times by the maid Luo Si. However, upon waking, he found his entire body's muscles unprecedentedly numb and weak. He could only lie in the water as if paralyzed. He wanted to call out to the person in front of him, but realized he couldn't even open his mouth to speak for a moment. So, he could only first use his psychic power to restrain her, leading to the scene that just unfolded.

Luo Si had never realized that half a minute could be so excruciatingly long. During these thirty seconds, she couldn't move, couldn't speak. Her face remained fixed at a forty-five-degree angle to her right, her right eye, relying on a sliver of peripheral vision, strained to observe the situation behind her. She could only blink to relieve her mounting pressure.

"His shoulders were so slender, yet why did he exert such immense pressure on me?" Luo Si recalled the shoulders she'd seen half a minute ago, exposed above the blood, and continuously pondered this question in her mind. "Could he... be a vampire? But I've never heard of Asian vampires!"

After some useless substances were expelled from his muscles, Bai Mo, who was already naturally lean, became even less muscular in appearance. Muscle spiritualization, for him, was entirely a qualitative enhancement of his muscles, with almost no quantitative effect.

After several attempts, Bai Mo finally regained control of his muscles. He tremblingly stood up from the blood, and the blood on his body, under a gentle sweep of his psychic power, instantly fell back into the bathtub.

After casually wrapping a bath towel around himself with his psychic power, he slowly began to walk towards Luo Si.

Meanwhile, Luo Si, seeing the man behind her still having the presence of mind to wear a towel from the corner of her eye, felt much calmer.

"He still knows to wear a towel; he should at least be human, not some monster." Luo Si thought to herself.

"A-are... you?" Because the numbness in his mouth muscles hadn't completely subsided, Bai Mo's speech was still a bit awkward. Then he noticed the other person was still making "wuwuwu" sounds. Only then did he realize his spontaneous psychic power had sealed her mouth too.

After the psychic power restraining Luo Si was withdrawn, she rubbed her stiff muscles all over. Then she looked back, and saw before her only a handsome young Eastern man, not some monster. His skin looked extraordinarily good, making even her, a woman, somewhat envious. His skin was as smooth as glazed porcelain, his bare upper body showed no obvious musculature, yet radiated an inexplicable, powerful oppressive aura.

Although her sixth sense was warning her that the young man before her was extremely dangerous, due to her professional etiquette as a maid and some strange thoughts deep within her, she still didn't choose to turn and run immediately after regaining her mobility. Instead, she forced herself to calm down, and explained to the guest before her.

"I am a member of the hotel staff. Your room's smoke detector went off, so I came in to investigate the cause. And... this is what happened." The nervous Luo Si blurted out everything in a rush, then watched for the other party's reaction.

"Hmm." Bai Mo gave an noncommittal grunt, then walked out of the bathroom. He took a five-hundred-euro note from his wallet and slipped it into Luo Si's hand.

"Help clean the bathroom, and also, you didn't see anything."

"Yes, sir." Luo Si quickly stuffed the banknote, equivalent to more than a week of her wages, into her pocket. After reporting "all clear" to security via her walkie-talkie, she expertly walked into the bathroom and began the cleaning work.

Without him as a heat source, the boiling blood in the bathtub slowly began to cool. However, for Luo Si, an ordinary person, it was still a scalding temperature that could cause burns, so she could only wait on the side for it to cool down.

Bai Mo paid no attention to what was happening in the bathroom. He sat on the room's sofa, silently pondering.

"The muscles throughout my body have integrated into my Life Field, and I seem to have gained a rather bizarre ability. I can ignore the effects of space, and draw upon the strength of every single muscle in my body with almost no loss, as if... all the muscles in my body have been connected into one by the Life Field. Whether it's a punch, a hand chop, or a flick of a finger, I can unleash immense power generated by the simultaneous contraction of most of my body's muscles."

"What exactly happened while I was asleep just now? It's a shame my mostly useless eyes can only see events from twenty seconds ago; otherwise, I wouldn't have to guess so troublesome. Also, I was clearly soaking in a bathtub of clear water, so how did it turn into a tub of blood when I woke up? And boiling blood, at that. Furthermore, my entire body's muscles are numb, as if I'd engaged in strenuous exercise for a long time. Logically, I was just soaking in the water; how could I have exerted myself intensely?"

Bai Mo was completely baffled. He simply decided to set the question aside for now, and instead began to ponder how to make his muscle soreness recover faster. The pervasive numbness throughout his body was truly uncomfortable.

"Do you have any methods here that are effective for muscle soreness?" Bai Mo asked Luo Si, who was still in the bathroom.