Chapter 40: A Gamble with Life 12 |
Chapter 40 Bet for Life 12
Wu Zhong muttered in despair, lying against the wall.
Ya Bai came forward, breathing hard and grimacing, every step feeling like it was crushing his heart.
“You killed me, both you and Feipeng’s wounds are beyond saving…”
Despite the hopelessness, Wu Zhong still didn’t want to give up.
But Ya Bai said coldly, “Hmph, you still want to struggle?”
“You’ve nearly died and counterattacked over and over, dragging me and Feipeng down to this state. I won’t give you another chance.”
“When you said ‘incurable,’ that’s definitely the effect of the ghostly mark. If I get it, I can heal myself.”
“I never intended to inherit your ghostly mark myself, I was going to give it to a comrade.”
After saying that, he raised his right foot, intending to stomp Wu Zhong’s head.
Seeing that he didn’t care about Feipeng at all, Wu Zhong felt utterly desperate.
Wu Zhong knew saying the ghostly mark was fake wouldn’t convince him.
People like this would just kill him to verify.
“Go on then, I’ve long since not wanted to live. This disgusting ability has sickened me, take it!”
“Hahaha, you’ll accompany me in burial too.”
He looked disgusted and resigned, which made Ya Bai slightly suspicious.
As before, Ya Bai wasn’t originally planning to inherit the ghostly mark.
He intended to give it to the weakest member of their team, the codename Gourd, the brooding one.
Why? Because disaster artifacts are dangerous.
Very rarely is any of them purely beneficial… otherwise why call them disaster artifacts?
So sending this so-called “good thing” to a teammate was also making the weakest person the first test subject.
“Oh? You know how powerful it is to possess a disaster artifact? The Awakened all want one, and you still despise it?”
“Disgusting to you? In what way disgusting?”
Ya Bai hovered his big foot, intentionally probing and asking.
This guy cared more about himself than Feipeng.
Wu Zhong said, “If it were that powerful, would I have fallen to this?”
“These ghosts and gods keep draining my life force, and they grow stronger and demand more. Today’s summoning nearly sucked me dry…”
“That’s why Infinite Summer went through such trouble to get someone to transform me into the Mad Blood Clan — to supplement my life force.”
Wu Zhong was babbling, but he linked his conversion into the Mad Blood Clan with the price of the ghostly mark.
“I see, so the Mad Blood Clan just happens to offset the ghostly mark’s cost…” Ya Bai suddenly understood, and he also recalled that the Mad Blood Clan could heal injuries.
Wu Zhong was secretly pleased, though his face remained ashen and despairing: “It doesn’t make up much. Mental illnesses are limited, while the ghosts’ growth is limitless…”
“If I don’t die by your hands, I’ll sooner or later die by the ghosts’.”
“They grow too fast. Tomorrow they might suck away even more of my life.”
Ya Bai snorted, “Mount Lu’s ghosts grow stronger by the day. That’s a good thing. The potential of your disaster artifact is huge.”
“Pity a fool like you can’t handle it. This kind of treasure should be handed over to me!”
“Kid, what mental illness do you have?”
Wu Zhong blurted out, “Insomnia… huh? Why are you asking?”
When Ya Bai heard it was only insomnia, he immediately put his foot down and grabbed him up.
“Heh, you said what? Transmit it to me! Make me Mad Blood too!”
Wu Zhong thought to himself that he had bitten.
He deliberately lured Ya Bai, asking to pass the Mad Blood before dying.
After all, without the Mad Blood effect to refill life force, inheriting the ghostly mark would be too dangerous — the ever-strengthening ghosts would keep draining life until death.
In his mouth now, the two traits seemed bound together, complementing each other.
If Ya Bai wanted to inherit, he would surely force a conversion first, then kill him.
Of course, Wu Zhong had made this up, but Ya Bai believed him.
Ya Bai hadn’t trusted most of Wu Zhong’s words before, yet oddly believed this one; as they say, a dying man speaks sincerely. Wu Zhong’s ashen despair on his face wasn’t feigned, it was true hopelessness.
Ya Bai likely felt proud — Wu Zhong’s repeated near-death resistance must have finally shattered his mental barrier.
He never expected this guy, at death’s door, would still concoct stories to trick him.
Did he still have some fantasy of a comeback?
Wu Zhong did, of course. He said out loud, “Don’t think so! If I pass it to you, you’ll kill me anyway. Why should you profit?”
“Ugh ah ah ah…”
Ya Bai snapped off his other arm and released an electric shock in his palm; Wu Zhong convulsed all over, agonized.
“Kid, if you make me Mad Blood, I’ll give you a quick death, otherwise…”
“You know how many things in the disaster world make life worse than death, right?”
He threatened and tortured with electric shocks.
Wu Zhong inwardly scorned, thinking: I don’t buy your ghost story. If there were something as terrible as the Ever-Thirst Plum, you’d have used it already, not babble about it.
He knew Ya Bai didn’t have such a thing, yet his face showed panic and terror as if he couldn’t endure the agony.
He reenacted the genuine dread he felt when he’d earlier learned of the Ever-Thirst Plum.
“Don’t… don’t, I get it… I’ll pass it to you… give me a quick one…”
Seeing his panic, Ya Bai smiled with satisfaction, put him down, and stuck out his arm for him to bite into the wound. “Hurry up, don’t dawdle.”
Wu Zhong let his arms hang and blinked. “Just bite my hand? Not the neck?”
Ya Bai snorted in disdain. “Bite anywhere is fine…”
“You really are still green. As a Mad Blood, you don’t even know this.”
He was clearly familiar with Mad Blood effects; this seemed to be a well-known group in the disaster world.
Wu Zhong, face pale, slowly leaned his mouth toward Ya Bai’s arm, which had already been wounded; his teeth tips stained with blood. Well, he didn’t even get any essence.
This guy didn’t have a sickness.
Wu Zhong thought he had no choice and risked it all.
For now, there was only one possible comeback: he had to bet his life.
“Pass to you!”
Wu Zhong expelled a breath and transmitted insomnia to Ya Bai as he spoke.
This instantly made Ya Bai a member of the Mad Blood Clan, multiplying his physical qualities across the board by onefold relative to normal people.
"Ah... exhilarating!" (Note: translated to capture exhilaration)
After the initial embrace, his cells renewed, and his wounds partially recovered; after all, cellular activity had doubled compared to normal.
But despite the relief, the hole in his chest, the door in his rear, and the bullet wounds on his body remained unhealed.
Only the large loss of blood had been replenished.
“Is that all the healing?” Ya Bai was somewhat dissatisfied.
Wasn’t this supposed to solve the incurable?
But he also realized only absorbing repeated mental illnesses provided healing; the initial embrace’s self-healing wasn’t enough to cure such catastrophic wounds.
Still, it was decent — he had been at the end of his tether and suddenly regained some vigor.
However, before he could enjoy it, Wu Zhong suddenly sucked again.
With a gush, Ya Bai felt as if heaven had fallen into hell; waves of exhaustion swept through his body, and his physical quality plummeted again.
“What did you do!”
Ya Bai stared in anger and shock — he had just lost the Mad Blood ability, then immediately struck out.
“Nothing… I bet I’m the first generation!”
Wu Zhong’s wounds had somewhat recovered, at least the severed right arm’s interface had healed noticeably and was movable.
He suddenly raised his hand, iron fist whooshing up from below, the air cracking.
An ascending dragon fist slammed into Ya Bai’s chin.
“Fei Gate! Hu Gate! Close!”
With one punch, Wu Zhong blasted Ya Bai away.
Ya Bai fell into a pool of blood, stunned: first generation?
He tried to get up to ask, but found he couldn’t open his mouth.
His lips were sealed tight! His jaw clenched!
“Huh?”
Ya Bai was dumbfounded; he still felt his mouth and had control to an extent — the muscles around his lips twitched and strained.
But his lips and teeth felt welded in cement, anchored in space, unable to open.
He pointed at Wu Zhong, as if to demand an explanation.
Wu Zhong took a deep breath, spread the five fingers of his right hand, the purple-melt ordnance charging and ready.
“It seems my life shouldn’t end here.”
“Turns out I really am a super conversion — the first-generation Mad Blood…”
At this moment, his small wounds visibly began to slowly heal.
Now his body quality was three times that of a normal person, and his cell activity was six times normal!
All because he absorbed another heavy dose of insomnia from Ya Bai, even though it was the very insomnia he had just transmitted.
The first-generation Mad Blood has a mechanism: not only can it absorb common people’s illnesses, it can also absorb illnesses from ordinary Mad Bloods, effectively plundering their mental illnesses along with the corresponding strength.
And the initial embrace has a mechanism: when a sickness is transmitted outward, the giver does not lose it but randomly gets replaced by another disease.
Thus this formed a bug — or rather the first generation’s advantageous mechanism.
After embracing Ya Bai, Wu Zhong’s sickness was no longer “insomnia,” but randomly replaced by a different disease.
What the new disease was, he didn’t know; the gate of the mind prevented him from contracting symptoms.
Unless by coincidence the random replacement was insomnia again, it would almost certainly be a different disease…
So by absorbing Ya Bai’s insomnia now, it wasn’t a duplicate.
Theoretically, Wu Zhong could, by cooperating with one person after another, keep randomizing until he obtained all mental illnesses in existence.
Of course, most people would never try this — it’s pure randomness and suicide without a strong mental barrier. The Mad Blood have selectable options and controlled ways to “assign points”; why randomly gamble?
Only Wu Zhong, who didn’t fear the risk, would try.
At the edge of life and death, he thought of this lifeline and wagered he was first-generation Mad Blood.
He didn’t know the odds — perhaps negligible — but he had to try, or he would die.
If he died, everything would end, but luckily he gambled correctly; his life wasn’t meant to end yet.
“Die!”
Wu Zhong’s purple arm guard finally unleashed a purple-melt ordnance.
Ya Bai leapt, but was still hit — a hole ripped open in his abdomen, his visceral flesh shredded.
“Ahhhh!”
He went berserk; terrifying blood qi erupted, enveloping him in a three-foot radius.
Sizzling electric arcs whipped like whips, lashing at Wu Zhong.
Wu Zhong convulsed from the electricity, interrupting the second purple-melt ordnance.
But his foot shifted; he launched himself, a thunderous flying kick!
“Crack!”
The whip kick whooshed, the air exploding.
A midair strike tore through the blood-qi barrier and hammered Ya Bai’s abdominal wound.
Attacking where the enemy is weak is basic sense.
“Boom!”
The heavy kick hit Ya Bai; the hole in his abdomen tore wider.
Although that wound was deemed incurable to others, for Wu Zhong it was a normal injury.
“Ugh…” Ya Bai slid across and crashed, collapsing a narrow alley wall.
His waist and abdomen were nearly broken; his body hung at a sharp angle on a half-collapsed wall.
He’d bled too much; without the earlier embrace’s replenishment he might already be dead.
Even so, he was at the brink, unable to rise.
Wu Zhong raised his palm, and suddenly a piercing roar came.
“Ya Bai——”
The caller was Feipeng. He had a wooden staff thrust into his rear, laughing madly and wildly, kicking his butt, barreling in with ferocious force.
“Ohohoho… pull it out! Pull it out ahahaha…”