Well, This Is Awkward

"All right, minor issue." In a hospital room so starkly white it contained nothing beyond essential medical equipment, an emaciated doctor leafed through the chart in his hands with impossibly long, spindly fingers. He glanced at Wen Wen and nodded. "Recovery is looking good. You're clear for discharge. "Once you leave, remember to keep the wounds dry, abstain from alcohol for a week, cut out spicy food, and avoid strenuous exercise. Just let everything heal naturally, and you'll be fine." "That simple?" Wen Wen frowned with suspicion. She had shelled out an outrageous sum of money to lie in the emergency outpatient ward, only to get a single injection, sleep it off, and wake up ready for discharge? Where was all the chaotic hassle from before? "What else did you expect?" The attending physician of the Spiritual Department cast a sidelong glance at her. "We've known each other for years. It's not like you ever listen to my medical orders anyway, right? "Why waste my breath?" As he spoke, he glanced at the liquor bottle on the bedside table that had still looked half-full the previous night. Yep, completely bone-dry now. At the very least, it proved her alcohol intake remained optimal. Rinsing her mouth out with half a jin of hard liquor, and her liver function was still as formidable as ever. A cause for celebration, indeed. Beyond that? Sorry, but modern medicine had no cure. "Don't I look perfectly fine?" Wen Wen rotated her neck and wrists, popping her knuckles. Her arms were brimming with strength. She felt refreshed and invigorated. "That's just a cosmetic touch-up. Since the patient has abandoned any hope of a cure and merely asks for normal readings, it's child's play. A patch job here, a little mending there—five milligrams of panacea and thirty milligrams of liquefied life mixed into a saline injection solves ninety-nine percent of the problems. A single tablet of graying agent fills the gap in your soul like putty, plastering right over the old wounds left by the Celestial-Humans. "Here, these are your painkillers. One pill a day, take it after meals. Won't interfere with your drinking. Pop one whenever you feel uncomfortable." The doctor picked up a small bottle, shook it, and set it on the desk. "Aside from that, you should be able to feel the difference from before, right?" Wen Wen tuned in to her physical state. Above her soul, a faint, wispy iridescent radiance was wrapped around her like layers of bandages, binding her tight. Yet at best, it was nothing more than a lead security seal. One sharp tug, and it would tear right off. "This is our absolute last-ditch emergency measure, Miss Wen," the doctor adjusted his glasses and said calmly. "Simply sealing it off is no permanent solution. The attraction between you and the Vortex is still growing by the day. "Setting aside the compatibility of your soul, a matrix like Minerva, which traces its origin to a fallen deity, is tethered beneath the Vortex as well. The two are inseparable. "No matter how much you suppress it, that attraction will continue to grow on its own, only getting stronger. "Though the situation has reached a critical stage, it isn't entirely without a remedy. "I still recommend you consider Treatment Plan No. 1. You don't need to worry about the cost." "Peddling the long-term hospitalization package again, are you? Forget it..." Wen Wen yawned, completely unmoved. "Rather than spending the rest of my life rotting in prison here, I'd rather die quick and clean." "So you've never once considered living a quiet, peaceful life, have you?" The doctor let out an amused chuckle. "If you promise never to raise a hand against anyone from today onward, your current constitution is enough for you to treat nicotine like food, chug booze like water, and race motorcycles all the way until you're a hundred and eighty. "However, if you break the seal again..." He paused, his expression turning graver than she had ever seen it. "Once you cross the critical threshold, everything will become utterly irreversible. "When that time comes, please don't let your stubborn pride keep you from the doctor. Be sure to call me immediately!" "And then what?" Wen Wen shot back. "Wait for you to work some miracle cure?" "No, since you'd be past saving anyway, I figured for the sake of our old friendship, you could gift me a few research papers." The doctor smiled with fervent enthusiasm. "After all, in all of recorded history, there are barely any real-world cases of a Celestial Chosen handpicked by the Vortex undergoing a sin fiend transformation. "You don't want to live anyway, right? "Why not leave behind a few specimens while you're at it and make a small contribution to medical science? When the day comes, I promise I'll bring every fresh batch of interns each year to pay pious homage to your altar. If you have any special requests for offerings of cigarettes or booze, we can discuss that, too." "Hahahahaha—!" Wen Wen roared with laughter, rocking back and forth. "Hearing you put it like that, I'm almost tempted to..." "Agree?" The doctor's eyes lit up with delight. "Agree your ass!" Wen Wen decisively thrust out her middle finger, showing zero courtesy. "Don't you worry, when the time comes, I'll make sure there isn't a single scrap of my corpse left intact. I'll leave you lot dropping little pearl tears in impotent rage!" "...Such spirited vigor." The doctor sighed and shrugged. Finally, he signed the discharge slip and waved it toward her. "Pay the bill, and you're discharged." *Chua~* Ten minutes later, following a bizarre rushing sound, Wen Wen found herself standing in a narrow alley. Beneath her feet, the green moss was slick and damp. She lifted her head, looking through the towering walls on either side toward that sliver of narrow sky. Yacheng. Those bastards at Hope Hospital charged an arm and a leg, but to their credit, their supplementary services were thorough. After all, you wouldn't find another hospital anywhere in the world that used the Star Core Association's emergency teleportation as an ambulance service, complete with round-trip drop-off. Efficiency was one thing, but whenever people received the final bill, it was hard not to feel that their cheap, miserable lives weren't worth that much money... All one could say was that emergency resuscitations were sometimes like getting a foot massage: once you pulled your pants back on and had to shell out the cash, a twinge of inner guilt was inevitable. Wen Wen looked down at her bank balance, which was pitiful enough to make a rat weep, and couldn't help letting out a long sigh. All the money she had scraped together over the years had been bled completely dry by those extortionate bastards. Still, it could be worse. There was still a little over two thousand left, enough to scrape by until next month. Nineteen hundred could buy a decent bottle of liquor, and a hundred-plus would cover peanuts and edamame. Mm, once that was gone, she'd crash at Tong Hua's place to freeload food and drinks... Just then, her phone buzzed with a bank deduction notification. Wen Wen's face twitched violently, and she slapped a hand over her eyes. Crap! The motorcycle repair bill! Great. Now she only had four hundred left. She let out a resigned sigh. Guess she'd have to settle for cheaper booze. But on the bright side, if she wasn't picky, she could buy two bottles! "Yeah, Lao Zhang, don't worry, I'm fine, just a minor issue. Ah, gotta go—just have Huahua call in sick for me. I'm going to lie down for a couple of days... Hanging up now." After hanging up on Lao Zhang, she pocketed her phone, looked around, and felt utterly lost. She had no idea where to go. If she went back to the branch right now, she'd be surrounded and interrogated endlessly. Looking at her bleak financial state, her even more disastrous health, and a grim reality that couldn't possibly sink any lower, she felt an overwhelming urge to drink herself into oblivion. What made it even more tragic was that when she pulled out her phone again, she realized she couldn't even find a decent drinking buddy. Lao Zhang was out first. When people got old, they loved to nag. She had just hung up on him and had no desire to walk straight into a storm of lectures. Then Xiao An was ruled out—underage, stay away from alcohol. Finally, Huahua wouldn't work either. Those Aether eyes of hers were far too sharp. If she wasn't careful, she'd end up turning into fresh gossip for Huahua to chew on. Spare me, please. After scanning through her contacts, it seemed her only option was to drink alone in sullen silence. Until her gaze landed on the missed calls, where she spotted the guy who owed her several meals... Her brow twitched upward. Look at that, a solution presented itself. At least having the motorcycle repaired first had its perks, right? Ten minutes later, the roaring engine rumbled into Ji Jue's small courtyard in Beishan District, running on a full tank of gas funded by her very last four hundred bucks. She had timed it right on the dot for lunch. Wen Wen swung off the bike, pulled off her helmet, and let out an invigorating sigh. She flashed a wide grin at the dumbfounded Ji Jue. "Got booze?" "Sister Wen, didn't you just get discharged?" Ji Jue eyed her breezy, nonchalant expression and asked tentatively, "Don't tell me I'm the only drinking buddy you have left in the world?" "..." Wen Wen said nothing. She simply smiled at him, her gaze dripping with thermonuclear affection. Ji Jue promptly threw his hands up in surrender. "As long as you don't wreck my house when you're hammered, you can drink your fill." "Now that's more like it!" Wen Wen clapped him cheerfully on the shoulder, strutted right in, and made herself at home in his living room. Finding the half-empty bottle of whiskey she had left behind last time in his cabinet, she tipped it back and chugged straight from the bottle, glug-glug-glug. Crap, this momentum... Ji Jue's eyelid twitched for a split second. He quickly instructed Isis to order some hot takeout, figuring that before he passed out or got wrecked, he should at least line his stomach with a couple of warm bites. "And here I was, worried sick about you for half the night, while you're hopping around like nothing happened, full of life, with a booze capacity longer than my lifespan..." Ji Jue rummaged through the kitchen and fridge, scraping together what he could. He whipped up a plate of smashed cucumbers and popped open a few cans of preserved food, managing to set them on the table before Wen Wen's drinking fervor drove her to start gnawing on the furniture. "What happened yesterday anyway? Stirring up such a massive racket." Wen Wen paused mid-drink, letting out a soft sigh as a complicated look washed over her face. "It's a long story." Ji Jue nodded. "Oh, then I won't ask." "..." Wen Wen sat in silence for a long time, staring at him with an even more tangled expression. "You brat... you really refuse to follow the script, don't you?" "Nope, I just figured if you don't want to talk, what's the point of me prying? You came all the way to my place to drink. Am I supposed to be an idiot and dig for gossip?" Ji Jue inhaled two cans of food to get some substance into his belly before picking up his glass. "If you want to talk, I'm all ears—I pride myself on keeping my mouth shut. If you don't want to talk, I'll just drink with you. Isn't chatting about other things just as good? By the way, your bike wasn't repaired properly. Whatever shop you used is trash; there's still heavy carbon buildup in the engine. Keep running it like this, and it'll be scrapped in a few months." "What the hell?!" Wen Wen was furious, snapping her chopsticks in half with a squeeze. "That cost me sixteen hundred!" "...For a repair job like that, back when you came to Dalu Auto Repair Shop, I would've only charged you eighty, and that included a full detailing." Ji Jue asked, "Want to switch to a new one? Our new designer developed a brand-new sportbike model over the past few months. We're planning to push into the city market." "Forget it. I'll go have a nice, reasonable chat with that shop owner later." Wen Wen sighed, propping her chin on her hand. After pondering for a long while, she asked, "How are things over in Xinquan? No major hitches, right...?" "Huh? You mean yesterday? It was fine. Just some factory buildings and ground that need repairs, nothing serious. Though the other factions were running around like headless chickens, quaking in their boots like I was going to steal their lunch." Ji Jue gave a scoff, his face turning detached. "What I didn't expect was two random clowns popping out of nowhere—one from Heart Pivot, one from Abyssal Void. They gave me a fair bit of trouble. Once I clear some free time in a few days, I'll drop by to see just how many precious talents their family has." "..." Wen Wen's expression grew even more convoluted. From what she knew of Ji Jue and artisans in general, that phrase was functionally identical to, 'I'm going to slaughter his entire family and beat his mother.' Wait, is going scorched-earth the new trend these days? Wen Wen's eye twitched. *You brat, do you not worry about collateral damage at all?!* "Generally speaking, ahem, you know... 'The one who acts bears the blame.' The family members are usually innocent, right?" "Ah, maybe, maybe not." Ji Jue tossed a peanut into his mouth and chewed nonchalantly. "A household capable of raising that kind of garbage—wiping them out might just count as ridding the world of evil. "Basically, every single one of them has holes in their head!" He looked up, suddenly struck by an idea. "What's up, Sister Wen? You interested? Want to team up?" For a noble endeavor like exterminating evil, the more teammates the merrier—especially a top-tier powerhouse like Sister Wen. It'd be a waste not to ride her coattails! When the time came, she could pin them down while they split the crafting materials seventy-thirty—or even sixty-forty, entirely open to negotiation! "Count me out." Wen Wen stared at him gloomily for a long time. "Because I've got holes in my head, too." Now it was Ji Jue's turn to fall silent. *Well, this is awkward...*