Chapter 23

Once the fluids started flowing in, Lin Tantan felt a little more spirited, but her condition was still precarious.
The zombie energy inside Mei Baisheng was brutal and pervasive; his body had once been fertile ground in which that energy could roam and strengthen. Lin Tantan’s wood-type energy, by contrast, descended like a foreign, grim-faced army, suppressing and expelling it.
Organs and tissues that had been chewed up were rebuilt by the wood energy; where damage was complete, the energy stimulated new cells to grow rapidly. For a time Mei Baisheng’s body brimmed with vitality. As life surged back, the zombie energy lost its edge. The two forces locked into a kind of contest.
So she had to keep pouring energy in, without a moment’s slack.
This was literally hanging someone on to life.
By the time the night was nearly over, Lin Tantan had finally stabilized Mei Baisheng. The zombie energy had been driven out of his brain and torso and pushed down into his limbs.
Where his face had once been sallow and mottled with rot, the dead, decaying skin was now peeling away, revealing healthy new skin underneath.
Those resting on the cafeteria’s second floor watched in amazement. Bai Cheng even carefully plucked a piece of the shed dead skin from Mei Baisheng’s face with tweezers to examine it.
The night was more dangerous than the day, and their ammunition was nearly gone, so Ye Xiao had them stay in the cafeteria to rest, sending only two people out at a time to help him.
As dawn approached, Ye Xiao returned with his late-night haul, several hundred wood-type crystal cores.
Bai Cheng murmured, “Nice haul.”
“Not bad, there were a lot of zombies tonight.” Ye Xiao was dripping wet. He’d been at it all night and was inevitably smeared with zombie slime. He’d gone downstairs, hooked a hose up to a tap and washed himself clean, changed into some clothes he’d found nearby, and then come upstairs.
He glanced at Lin Tantan, still with her eyes closed, then at Mei Baisheng, still asleep. “How is he?”
“Come see.” Mei Baisheng’s face was covered in dead skin that looked alarming, but when you peeled it back the underlying skin was new and even pink, patches of pink and white, some deeper, some paler, but overall a very healthy color. His neck and torso were recovering the same way; by contrast, his limbs had become more zombified than they’d been at first.
Those fingers and nails were almost indistinguishable from a zombie’s.
In the middle of the night, following Lin Tantan’s instructions, Bai Cheng had wrapped Mei Baisheng’s palms to keep him from flailing and hurting himself or others.
“We have to take it one step at a time.” Ye Xiao looked at those hands with an air of calm. Since they’d entrusted the man to Lin Tantan, they had to trust her judgment.
Bai Cheng nodded. “I agree.”
Ye Xiao said, “There’s no need for so many people to stay here. You should head back, we don’t even know what last night turned into.”
“It didn’t descend into chaos, but there were too many people and a lot of disputes.” Bai Cheng had contacted the office building group when he’d had a spare moment last night; all eight of their usual people were absent, so Old Master Xu had been left in charge. Xu had been capable in his youth and still carried authority, but he was old now and not everyone respected him.
And with so many people gathered in one place, safety was an issue. The west side of the city had fewer zombies, but they weren’t gone; plenty had shown up last night. The traps and devices Ye Xiao had set around the office complex had mostly been wrecked by roaming zombies. Without new measures, tonight could be dangerous.
Besides, Cai Chengliang needed to be dealt with.
When Ye Xiao said that, Bai Cheng agreed some people should go back, but he offered, “Why don’t you go back? I’ll stay here.”
Ye Xiao refused without a second thought. Lin Tantan and Mei Baisheng had been the people he’d brought here yesterday; with both of them left in this condition, how could he walk away?
Bai Cheng hesitated briefly and said nothing further. After briefing Lin Tantan on the next fluids and the schedule, he left. Not only did he go back himself, but he took the others with him. After last night Ye Xiao had nearly cleared the university district of zombies; it made more sense for them to return west, kill more zombies there, collect crystal cores and bring them over.
Only Ye Xiao was left on duty in the canteen. He gathered all the wood-type crystal cores together and filled a basket with them. He'd collected seven or eight hundred by himself last night; with everyone else's contributions and what Lin Tantan had used so far, there were still this many left, enough for her to use for more than half a day.
He didn't plan to go out again that morning; he took a wind-type crystal core and absorbed it.
After another core was absorbed and shattered, Ye Xiao suddenly noticed that the fragments in his hand were completely transparent, while the pile of shards beside Lin Tantan looked as if they contained impurities, appearing dingy and gray.
His watch buzzed, it was the alarm. He switched it off, hung up a bag of lipid emulsion, set Lin Tantan's IV, adjusted the drip rate, and then suddenly froze, her hand...
Small purplish-red specks had appeared on the back of Lin Tantan's hand and were spreading into her sleeve. Ye Xiao glanced at Lin Tantan, who seemed unaware, then gently took her wrist and eased the sleeve up a little.
On the pale, tender skin the purplish spots had become denser, horrifying to look at. Ye Xiao held his breath. The spots didn't rise above the skin and didn't blanch under pressure, purpura!
Ye Xiao looked up; there were some on Lin Tantan's neck, too.
Lin Tantan suddenly opened her eyes and met Ye Xiao's gaze. She blinked, a little surprised to see his hand holding hers.
What's going on?
"You..." Ye Xiao faltered, "what's happening?"
Lin Tantan followed his gesture and paid it no mind. "Oh, just some bleeding spots," she said in a slightly hoarse voice. "Absorbing energy too quickly looks like this. It's nothing."
"Just some", really? Seeing her treat it so lightly, Ye Xiao didn't know what to say. If she wasn’t trying to save Mei Baisheng, she wouldn't have to work so hard. Her eyes were bloodshot yet her expression remained indifferent, only a little tired, as if it were no big deal, and that made his chest feel blocked by something.
Lin Tantan really did feel fine. She had decided to save Mei Baisheng and knew it would be difficult. Given how much energy she was continuously drawing, she had expected something drastic, bleeding from every orifice, but for now only a few spots had appeared.
It was a relief she didn't have to end up like that.
Of course, Ye Xiao's obvious concern and worry still pleased her.
She said, "Things are going more smoothly than I expected. Meimei's body was already strong, so I thought it would take several days. Now it looks like two days will be enough."
Ye Xiao felt a small joy, and then she continued, "Meimei's torso and vital organs have returned to normal; I've driven the zombie energy into the limbs. The first course of treatment is complete, next comes the second."
Ye Xiao asked, "What's the second course?"
The first course was to keep him alive; the second, naturally, was to extract that destructive energy.
Lin Tantan asked, "Have they all left?"
"There aren't many zombies left here. They've gone elsewhere. Someone will come this afternoon to relieve me and watch over you. I'll go find another zombie group."
Ye Xiao said it so casually it sounded effortless; if someone else had heard, they might have thought they misheard. Nowadays everyone avoided zombie packs, and only he would speak so lightly of going out to look for one.
Lin Tantan thought it only natural, her idol should be that bold and confident.
She said, "It's good they're gone. Even if they were here, I'd send them away." She smiled. "What's coming next is a private technique, no peeking. So you should go too; I don't need anyone watching me."
Ye Xiao was taken aback and hesitated, "Are you sure you can do it alone?"
Not to mention, what about the IV?
Lin Tantan insisted she would be perfectly fine. They could pause the IV for a while; the remaining cores could just be tossed up through the window. In short, for the next day she didn't want anyone by her side.
With things put that plainly, any attempt by Ye Xiao to stay would have felt like spying on a master, so he obediently followed her wishes. Still, he couldn't be at ease leaving Lin Tantan and Mei Baisheng alone in the canteen, so he moved from the second floor down to the first to keep watch.
When he left, Lin Tantan lifted her hand and tightened the straps around Mei Baisheng's limbs. The two lines at his neck and heart continued to channel energy, but the four from his limbs began to turn gray, as if some grayish substance were slowly crawling out of Mei Baisheng's body.
The stuff crawled and sank into Lin Tantan's hands; the skin of her fingers and palms slowly changed, as if being corroded by zombie energy.
But she remained impassive, calm, stern, the same focused look she always wore when treating a critically ill patient.
In her previous life, when she had saved that patient by drawing out his metal-type energy, there had been special devices to siphon it into blank crystal cores.
But here there were no instruments, no crystal cores, and zombie energy was not metal-type energy.
After thinking it over, she realized that only her own body could serve as a proper vessel.
She simply didn't want Ye Xiao watching.
He was a very responsible person; Mei Baisheng's death had left him heavy with guilt, and likewise her sacrifice to save Mei Baisheng would unsettle him.
She wasn't going to let herself die, so there was no reason to make him worry, she even wanted to act as casually as possible.
The green straps had fully turned gray, like four connecting conduits drawing the destructive energy from Mei Baisheng's body, and the absorbed energy was confined within Lin Tantan's palms.
They arrived in a new, more agreeable territory and began to spread, but Lin Tantan's wood-type power was clearly stronger, forcibly sealing them in place.
She sped up her consumption of crystal cores.
The sun slanted westward and the guard on the first floor changed. True to form, Ye Xiao had gone out and found an unlucky zombie pack; after a few hours he returned with a pile of crystal cores and stood below, tossing them up through the second-floor window.
Bai Cheng and his people out in the west were also busy hunting zombies to harvest crystal cores.
The sky darkened, and then slowly brightened again.
The second floor stayed quiet the whole time.
Finally, when sunlight fell across Lin Tantan's face, she opened her eyes, cut all the straps, and went to look at Mei Baisheng's hands. The rotting flesh had shriveled and flaked off at the slightest touch; the new skin beneath was pink and soft, his blackened nails had come away, and the new nails hadn't yet grown in, which looked odd.
Also, influenced by zombie energy, his joint tissues had mutated somewhat, fingers had grown long and slightly twisted. They couldn't be fixed at once, but with time they would recover.
There was no zombie energy left in his body now.
Lin Tantan exhaled and collapsed to the side.
"I did it." She looked at the ceiling fan and murmured, "Ye Xiao, I did it."
In that moment she had utterly changed Mei Baisheng's fate, and that made her believe she could change Ye Xiao's fate as well.
Her eyes were wet. Countless times before she'd fantasized that she could do something like this, now her wish had come true.
She lifted her entire discolored, deformed left hand, up to five or six centimeters above the wrist it was like that. It looked awful, but Lin Tantan felt strangely pleased and even admired it for a while.
Then she got up. From the tip of her right hand she formed a thin, knife-like golden shard, placed it just above the mutated area, and decisively sliced down.
Blood gushed out. Lin Tantan couldn't help a muffled groan; sweat broke out on her brow. For a moment the pain nearly floored her, and it took two sluggish seconds before she summoned her wood-based power to staunch the bleeding.
Now would be a good time for an ice power, she thought, shivering, if she could freeze her hand, it wouldn't hurt so much.
Sweat slid into her eyes, stinging, and she couldn't help tearing up. She blinked hard and looked at the severed hand on the floor. There had originally been about a centimeter of normal tissue, but with her powers withdrawn the zombie energy had instantly consumed it, it had become a full zombie hand; there was no sign it had ever belonged to her.
It was hideous, a total affront to her image, now she couldn't bring herself to admire it.
She panted, waiting for the pain to go numb, and then planned to dispose of the gruesome hand. She'd thought it through: throw it onto the kitchen stove over there, burn it to ash, then wipe up the blood, play it off like it was nothing.
If someone asked, "Hey, where's your hand?" she'd put on a 'what's the fuss' look and say, "Oh, nothing, I was a bit hungry so I ate it," or, "It was ugly, I cut it off. It'll grow back prettier."
Lin Tantan laughed at her own thoughts. Two days and nights of treatment and the current pain had left her a little out of sorts.
She rubbed her splitting head with her right hand and thought she'd been too impulsive, she should have gone to the kitchen to chop it off so it wouldn't be such a bloody mess to clean up.
Just as she was about to get up and carry out her plan to destroy the evidence, a sudden cry rang out: "Tantan, what's wrong?! Where's your hand?!"
Mei Baisheng had woken up.
Lin Tantan stared at him speechless. Did he have to wake up so early and yell like that? The treatment must have worked, his tongue was back to moving quickly.
Then she heard footsteps and realized Ye Xiao was downstairs, it couldn't be hidden now. She glanced at the ugly hand and kicked it under a dining table.
Then she turned and looked toward the stairwell with an innocent, pure smile.