"Beep, beep."
The scanner's yellow warning light lit up, casting a red beam that reflected off Zhang Yuanqing's forehead.
The machine emitted an electronic voice:
[Beep, beep. Beginning diagnosis. The condition is...]
Zhang Yuanqing held his breath, eagerly awaiting the omnipotent Divine Physician machine's answer.
However, the electronic voice suddenly jammed. A few seconds later, it started up again:
[Beep, beep. Beginning diagnosis. The condition is...]
[Beep, beep. Beginning diagnosis. The condition is...]
[Beep, beep. Beginning diagnosis. The condition is...]
The synthesized voice looped endlessly, restarting every time it was on the verge of naming the affliction, over and over again.
"Huh?" The female doctor kept the scanner raised, glancing at the console, then down at the T-shaped scanner head in her hand, looking thoroughly bewildered.
Zhang Yuanqing was even more bewildered, mixed with a dash of disappointment and anxiety. It was just like taking a girlfriend to a hotel for a deep conversation about life, only for her to announce that her period had arrived the moment everything was ready.
Even though he had no girlfriend, the sentiment was exactly the same.
"Is the machine broken?" Jiang Jingwei walked over to the cylindrical machine. Without a second thought, she gave it two swift kicks. *Clang! Clang!*
"Jingwei, don't kick it!"
Li Dongze was taken aback. This was a high-grade item that the Songhai Branch had spent a fortune to purchase from a Musician clan.
Support-type items weren't like combat-type ones; they weren't as durable and rugged. Getting damaged was a frequent occurrence.
"Whenever appliances act up at home, a few kicks usually fix them."
Jingwei kicked it twice more with a *clang, clang*. The female doctor couldn't bear to watch any longer and sharply snapped, "You—!"
[Beep, beep. System rebooting...]
An electronic chime sounded from the detector. The screen instantly went black before lighting up again, initiating a restart.
Jiang Jingwei beamed. "See? A good beating fixes anything."
Teng Yuan pushed up the glasses on the bridge of his nose and said calmly, "It's fine. If you break it, the organization is obligated to foot the bill for you."
Li Dongze looked completely helpless.
Guan Ya glanced at Yuanshi Tianzun and teased with a smile, "I'm even more curious about what's wrong with your body."
Zhang Yuanqing forced an awkward smile and squeezed out, "Probably Scorpio syndrome, or maybe an obsession with black nylon shaping the hind limbs of female humans."
Was this a coincidence? The machine just happened to malfunction?
He glanced at his teammates. Their expressions were calm and indifferent; they likely assumed it was nothing more than a trivial glitch.
Only Wang Tai had his brows tightly knitted.
"Something's off." He scratched his head, stepped up to the detector, tapped and knocked on it, then opened the control interface on the screen to examine it carefully.
Scholars were the future blacksmiths, and Wang Tai had a deep foundation in the study of items.
After tinkering for a good while, he said, "It hasn't malfunctioned. Besides, given the grade of this item, it shouldn't malfunction at all. You might not know, but items of the Musician class are the most durable, and this one even has self-repair capabilities."
*Huh?*
As Scouts, Guan Ya and Li Dongze both frowned at the same time and looked toward Yuanshi, only to find him looking equally baffled.
Just then, the detector finished rebooting. The female doctor said:
"I don't know why that happened, but it seems fine now."
With that, she raised the scanner and aimed it at Zhang Yuanqing's forehead once more.
Seeing this, the others held their tongues and watched in silence.
The yellow light lit up, and the electronic voice chimed again:
[Beep, beep. Beginning diagnosis. The condition is... Beep, beep. Please do not simultaneously...]
The sound abruptly choked off.
"There still seems to be an issue... Let me try again."
The female doctor frowned, lowered the scanner, waited a few seconds, and then aimed it at Zhang Yuanqing's forehead once more.
The yellow light flashed, and the voice announced:
[Beep, beep. No conditions detected. Your body is well-maintained; please keep it up. Diagnosis complete!]
*Phew...* The female doctor exhaled and smiled. "No problems. Your body is very healthy. Keep it up."
"Oh, right!" Zhang Yuanqing stood up, looked around at his teammates, and laughed. "Looks like my body is in tip-top shape after all."
Guan Ya and Li Dongze exchanged a look and smiled tacitly.
Wang Tai's brow remained furrowed. "That's not right. I feel like this item is acting weird today. Doctor, can I stay here and study it for a bit?"
The female doctor adopted a stern expression. "No. This item is extremely valuable. It's not something that can be disassembled and researched at whim."
"All right then..." Wang Tai gave up reluctantly.
The group exited the examination room. Li Dongze led the team toward the stairwell, saying:
"The Deacons are waiting for us on the second floor, and Centurion Fu is there as well. The next stage is an evaluation of our mental state. In previous years, there was only the psychological evaluation, but this year they've added lie detection."
He directed these words at Yuanshi, who was the only newcomer in the squad.
Yet Zhang Yuanqing wasn't listening at all. The detector's automated voice kept echoing repeatedly in his head:
*The result from the first scan was enough to prove it found something wrong with me. And there really is something wrong with me, so there's no way it was a malfunction.*
*Then why didn't it state the condition?*
*Could it not identify it, or was there another reason? As for the second time, the key lies in the words 'Please do not simultaneously.' That means after restarting, the detector had already detected my issue and was about to give a prompt.*
*But it suddenly froze.*
*Please do not simultaneously... what? What was it trying to say?*
The more Zhang Yuanqing thought about it, the heavier his heart grew, and the more wrong it felt.
All kinds of doubts flashed through his mind, eventually tracing back to the root of the issue—where had his headaches come from in the first place?
The headaches had started suddenly one day back when he was still in high school. One evening, he had experienced excruciating agony, his nose bleeding profusely. His aunt and cousin had rushed him to the hospital.
Yet after testing from morning till night with every piece of equipment available, the doctors had declared him perfectly healthy with no issues whatsoever.
At the time, his family hadn't made a big deal of it, merely telling him to get plenty of rest. That was until the second attack, which had been far more severe, landing Zhang Yuanqing in the hospital.
Upon hearing the news, his mother had finally been willing to set aside her work, sparing a tiny bit of energy to check on her son. She had taken him around to various major hospitals, but none had discovered the cause. That continued until one day, his mother brought back a specialized medication from abroad.
*Not being able to find the cause was weird enough in itself. When Mom went abroad, she didn't take me for a checkup, yet she was able to bring back a specialized drug. Thinking back on it now, that's even stranger...*
*And what's even weirder is that not even a Spirit Realm item could identify the cause!*
*Could this be an ordinary illness?*
While lost in thought, the group reached the second floor. Compared to the first-floor lobby, this space was much smaller. With over twenty medical examinees and an equal number of guards, the room was packed with people, looking exceptionally crowded.
Wang Tai's expression instantly darkened, looking constrained and averse to the crowd.
Seeing this, Zhang Yuanqing had an idea and smiled.
"Brother Wang Tai, I remember there's a restroom on the first floor. Want to go drain the tank together?"
Wang Tai nodded repeatedly. "Sure, sure."
The two immediately headed down the stairs, returned to the first floor, and entered the restroom.
Zhang Yuanqing pushed open the toilet cubicles one by one to confirm no one was inside. Only then did he walk up to a urinal. As he whipped out his magic staff, he feigned a casual tone and asked:
"That detector is quite miraculous. Is it at the Saint stage?"
"Yeah!" Wang Tai replied, focusing on taking a leak.
Zhang Yuanqing asked again, "An item of that level should possess self-awareness, right? My rule-based item has thoughts of its own."
"Oh, yeah," Wang Tai said. "It does have self-awareness, existing in the form of artificial intelligence."
*Fuck, it really does have self-awareness! Which means it deliberately changed its tune just now because it didn't want to expose my illness...* Zhang Yuanqing's emotions were a tangled mess.
After finishing in the restroom, the two returned to the second floor. During the long wait, official walkers completed their mental evaluations one by one. Most passed, while a small minority were flagged as needing psychological counseling.
For instance, some Fire Masters were excessively short-tempered and diagnosed with severe mania.
Some Wood Demons suffered from excessive sexual addiction and required psychological counseling combined with medication to suppress hormone secretion.
Some Scouts had developed voyeuristic tendencies...
Finally, it was Team Two's turn. The mental states of Team Two's members were truly worrisome: Li Dongze had severe obsessive-compulsive disorder; Guan Ya had mysophobia and cynicism; Jiang Jingwei had mania and irritability; Teng Yuan had pessimistic negativity accompanied by moderate depression.
Lastly, Wang Tai, diagnosed with moderate autism, stepped out of the consultation room, looked at Zhang Yuanqing on the bench, and said:
"Your turn."
Zhang Yuanqing immediately walked into the consultation room and saw a middle-aged doctor in a white coat sitting behind a desk.
"Please, take a seat!" The middle-aged doctor gestured for him to sit and smiled.
"You must be Yuanshi Tianzun. A talented and handsome young hero indeed. My surname is Sun. I'm a Deacon of Chaomen District, a Scout by profession, a Level 5 Saint, and I also hold a doctorate in psychology.
"I am going to conduct a psychological evaluation on you now. Just a few simple questions."
His smile was gentle, and his gaze was profound, as if able to see right through a person's soul.
*A Deacon-level psychologist? Holy shit, he must be far sharper than Guan Ya or the Decurion...* Zhang Yuanqing sat down and said, "All right."
Doctor Sun smiled. "No need to be nervous. I might ask some personal questions next, but there are no surveillance cameras or listening devices here. No one will know except me, and I adhere to my professional ethics—I will not expose your privacy."
"Yuanshi Tianzun, twenty-one years old, Songhai local. My family has money and cars. Father deceased, never had a girlfriend, and my specialty is twenty centimeters," Zhang Yuanqing said earnestly. "Please, by all means, expose that to the public."
Doctor Sun paused for a moment and stared deeply at him. "You're a bit nervous, so you instinctively made some weird jokes to lighten the mood. As I said, no need to be tense. We're friends."
Zhang Yuanqing took a deep breath. Knowing that cracking jokes was pointless in front of a Saint-stage Scout, he adopted a serious expression.
"I was joking just now. Let's begin."
Doctor Sun nodded and asked:
"Do you usually like watching action movies? I mean adult romance action films. If so, what genres do you focus on—domestic or foreign? What age group of actresses do you prefer? Do you fast-forward while watching? And after watching, do you look for a girlfriend, or do you reach for the tissues?"
Zhang Yuanqing was left dumbfounded by the barrage of questions. *Did you put a fucking surveillance camera in my house?*
*How can your questions be this accurate? Every single strike hitting right where it hurts?*
Chapter 144