Chapter 31: 30: And Chen Miao, he wanted to become a big shot.
The content of the will was very simple.
It was essentially about how Doctor Gou's former archenemy had come knocking, planning to kill him and Hungry Monkey. To protect them, Doctor Gou sent them into the Experience Secret Realm, where the enemy couldn't interfere, and then went out alone to face his adversary.
The disturbance was likely not small.
He probably knew he wasn't going to survive, so he told Chen Miao to take good care of himself, to hide the clinic's sign for now, and to reopen the clinic when things calmed down and to carry it on.
The content was quite simple, but there were some logic parts he couldn't understand.
"..."
Chen Miao, leaning on his cane, walked out of the Secret Realm Building with Hungry Monkey and hailed a taxi, heading towards the outskirts of the city. The relationship with Doctor Gou probably wasn't at the point of sacrificing his life for him.
To put it plainly, they had only met a few times.
He had given Doctor Gou some advice, and Doctor Gou took his clinic very seriously, happily giving him some items in his excitement. That was the extent of their interactions. There was some affection—after all, they had shared a drink and enjoyed pleasant conversations together.
But to give up his life for him was too much.
At least if Doctor Gou faced a life-threatening crisis, Chen Miao felt he definitely wouldn't risk his own life to save him; their relationship wasn't that deep yet.
He didn't think much further on it.
The taxi had already entered the city, where neon signs had lit up and naturally merged into the bustling traffic.
...
When they arrived, it was mid-afternoon, but by the time they emerged from the Experience Secret Realm, it was gradually getting dark.
The sun had set.
It was as if the sunset had lifted the city's seals, and as the entire city's neon lights came on, some people who only moved about at night began their work.
For instance—
The young man with headphones nearby, who was holding a stack of yellow advertisements and sticking them on the windows of a row of illegally parked cars.
In the alley flashing with red lights, more girls gathered, chatting in pairs or groups, occasionally meeting the gaze of passersby and smiling at each other, saying everything without words.
Or like the street vendor who waited for city management to go off duty, then pushed his fried noodle stall to the alley not far from the city management bureau to sell to the officers who had finished their shift and taken off their uniforms.
In Fengtian City,
everyone has their own way of living; not everyone knows that some are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of credit points just for a colorful nickname displayed for one week, not everyone aspires to be a Supernatural Occupation practitioner, and not all want to fight for their lives in the Secret Realm in order to rise above others and sit at the top of the leaderboard.
Fengtian City has its big shots sitting at the top of the leaderboard and also those inconspicuous little figures.
And Chen Miao, he wanted to be a big shot.
For that, he was willing to make many sacrifices.
...
An hour later.
Chen Miao appeared outside the city, which was also the place Doctor Gou referred to as the site of the decisive battle. The letter mentioned staying away from the area to avoid being discovered and even marked the exact coordinates. So he came to have a look, to see what was really going on.
He now had some strength to speak of.
If the two sides were locked in a fierce battle, his arrival could become an important factor in deciding the balance of the war.
On his way out of the city, he stopped by the Little Sunflower Andrology Clinic to take down the sign and put it into his Nothingness Space. If Doctor Gou were to die, those people might follow the vine to find the Little Sunflower Andrology Clinic.
If something really happened, at least he'd have left this sign for Doctor Gou.
It wouldn't be letting Doctor Gou's dying persistence down.
When it came time to collect Doctor Gou's body, this sign could be framed and attached to his tombstone, serving as a 3D epitaph.
The taxi stopped more than a thousand meters from the battlefield, and they walked the rest of the way, being extremely cautious. The so-called battlefield in front of them didn't seem to have anything special about it.
It was just a vast wasteland.
Clumps of earth were everywhere.
There wasn't a trace of greenery, and the ground was even starting to crack, giving the impression of many years of severe drought, which didn't match the weather in Fengtian City at all. Fengtian City was a place where it rained frequently throughout the year and the weather was fairly humid. Normally, this kind of scene wouldn't appear.
By now, night had fallen, and the area was enveloped in dark clouds, deathly quiet.
They didn't even see a single pedestrian.
But just then—
"Shh!"
As they rounded a bend, Chen Miao quickly hid behind a slightly elevated hill, looking towards Doctor Gou, who was now surrounded by a crowd, standing still, his clothes drenched in blood, holding a long knife.
He was looking down at his toes, his thoughts unknown, as drops of thick blood dripped down from his hair onto the ground.
Lying beside Doctor Gou was a man bisected at the waist, obviously dead beyond any doubt. Even at a distance, Chen Miao could faintly sense the emotions emanating from the corpse: resentment, shock, rage.
A group of men armed with various weapons surrounded Doctor Gou in the middle, approaching slowly with guarded and icy expressions.
Heh.
He recognized these people.
Weren't they the same ones who had escorted their juniors to challenge the Experience Secret Realm on the 68th floor? No wonder they were nowhere to be found after coming out; they had all been rallying here.
"They seem a bit afraid of Doctor Gou," whispered Hungry Monkey, peeking from behind the hill towards the scene not far away. Although those men had encircled Doctor Gou, none dared to make the first move, instead they were closing in tentatively. Their faces might be frosty, but a hint of fear was barely discernible.
Clearly, Doctor Gou's killing of the man beside him had just exhibited a strength that might have frightened this group.
"Let me take a look,"
Chen Miao looked towards the imminent battle, took the Thompson Submachine Gun into his arms, and thought for a moment without speaking. He was considering the possibility of rescuing Doctor Gou.
Having the audacity to ambush a lv.18 Doctor Gou meant these people were at least lv.15, maybe even higher. With just a submachine gun, and without any protection, he had no confidence in taking on a group all by himself.
But rescuing someone didn't necessarily mean having to kill all the enemies.
As he contemplated the feasibility of the plan to "Lure the Tiger Away from the Mountain," he suddenly heard a crisp sound from not too far off.
"Clang!"
Chen Miao was momentarily stunned and looked up instinctively, to see that Doctor Gou, who had been looking down all this time, had slowly raised his head and was now sweeping his gaze across the face of everyone present, holding his blood-thirsty, quivering blade aloft. The cold steel of the knife emitted a series of crisp tremors under the night sky.
Then, before he could react,
Doctor Gou's right arm trembled slightly, and in the moonlight, a dazzling white light flashed by fiercely. Right after, Chen Miao saw that the crowd previously enclosing Doctor Gou had moved back rapidly, all except one man who stood rigidly in place, not retreating.
Three breaths later, that man, his eyes full of unwillingness and shock, reached out to touch his somewhat wet neck. Subsequently, the thin line of blood at his throat quickly widened, his pupils dilated and his body fell back limply, collapsing into the pool of blood.