Xifulin in the Treatment Room

"You know you won't get away." In the Treatment Room, Xifulin was dripping with sweat, her hands stained with fluid. Yaxiu let out a comfortable grunt, casually admiring the healer at work. "Don't be so absolute. Who knows? There might be a miracle." "Miracles are made by oneself, not granted by the mercy of reality," Xifulin said calmly. "In the Blood Moon Country, using any transportation, making any purchase, or even wandering the streets requires verifying your miracle chip. Being able to completely purge the miracle chip from your body while inside the prison is impressive, certainly, but it also means you forfeit the right to live in modern society. You won't be able to access any public amenities or services—from now on, you can only sleep in cardboard boxes under overpasses." "I could live out in the wild." "What about salt? Shelter? Can you catch prey? What's more, though drifters living in the wilderness do exist, that's only because the Sin Hunting Hall doesn't care to bother with them. You people have caused such a huge commotion that the Sin Hunting Hall will do everything in its power to hunt you down." "Still, that's better than staying here and waiting to die." "The Blood Moon Trial only means you might die, but choosing a prison break means you definitely will." Xifulin glanced at him, applying more pressure with her hands. "This time, not even the Human Rights Association will have any grounds to defend you. The Sin Hunting Hall will issue a 'Special-Grade Arrest Warrant,' authorizing Bloodmad Hunters to execute you fugitives on the spot." "At least I get to choose how I die," Yaxiu hummed. "I never would have pegged you as someone so unyielding." Shaking her head, Xifulin pulled out a tissue and wiped her hands. "Alright, the bleeding has basically stopped. By the way, what were all those groans and hums about over there?" On the bed before Xifulin lay an ogre with a severely traumatized abdomen. The wound had been nearly festering; only after Xifulin forcibly scraped away the rotting flesh and bound it with bandages did his breathing gradually steady, and he now lay unconscious in a deep sleep. "Thanks. None of us over there know how to treat a living person." Yaxiu waved the ear pick in his hand. "I was cleaning my ears just now and it felt so good that I couldn't help making some noise. My bad." "Does cleaning your ears feel that good?" "Probably because I can do it sitting down. As you know, the toilet doesn't even have a chair, and there's nowhere else to sit except on a man's lap." Yaxiu walked over to check Financier's condition. "Is he going to be fine?" "Ogres have remarkable recuperative powers. He'll wake up in a few hours." Xifulin asked, "How did he get hurt?" At this, Yaxiu wore an utterly helpless expression. "If I told you it was just because he took a glance at someone, would you believe me?" Half an hour earlier, Yaxiu had brought Financier to the hall to register in the Sinner Directory, planning to lock the mayor up in a cell afterward. Yet during registration, Financier had glanced at Harvey, who was overseeing the Sinner Directory. Harvey had suddenly erupted, his fingernails abruptly transforming into sharp gray talons that plunged like a spear into the ogre's abdomen. Although Yaxiu had barely managed to hold back the enraged necromancer, he doubted the ogre mayor would feel any gratitude upon waking. In Shattered Lake Prison, dying in blissful ignorance might well have been the most comfortable way to go. The escape crew had long known about the grudge between Harvey and Financier, and they had no objection to letting Harvey have his revenge—provided it was after their escape. In theory, Financier's vital signs were only monitored by Shattered Lake Prison's processor, but what if something went wrong? For the exact same reason, after Yaxiu purified the chips of the five-person escape team with the Severing Self miracle and Harvey used the Book of the Dead to commandeer the processor and place restrictions on all the guards, they hadn't killed a single person. They hadn't even harmed anyone, merely confining everyone's range of movement. It wasn't out of moral nobility, but because they couldn't afford the gamble. If the vitals of deceased guards were transmitted to Kaimeng City's processor and alerted the Sin Hunting Hall, let alone escaping, whether they could even leave Shattered Lake would be in question. None of them possessed a healing sorcery spirit, though Harvey did know how to stitch wounds—for a necromancer, sewing corpses was, after all, a professional skill. However, Yaxiu hadn't dared let Harvey try to stop Financier's bleeding, so he had brought him here to seek the healer's help. Naturally, Yaxiu hadn't lifted the restrictions on the healer's sorcery power during the process either, requiring her to staunch the bleeding using only gauze and bandages. Even though healers typically relied on sorcery spirits to work their magic, she was still capable of such basic medical treatment. "Seems your companions aren't very reliable." "Of course. I'm the only normal person in the whole group." "Hearing that doesn't inspire much confidence in your escape attempt." "Tell me about it. I have to carry the entire team. But it's still better than waiting here for death—" "Do you truly believe that?" Yaxiu looked at the crow mask in surprise. Xifulin did not look away, staring straight at him. "Do you truly think staying in Shattered Lake Prison means certain death? You managed to devise a viable escape plan, and in less than a month you established your status in this prison... Even if, as you claim, someone outside framed you, is this really the only path open to you?" "Compared to breaking out of Shattered Lake Prison and turning yourself into an enemy of the entire Blood Moon Country, wouldn't finding loopholes and figuring out how to survive in Shattered Lake Prison be simpler and far safer?" "If you were merely trying to cling to life, you would never have chosen the most perilous road of breaking out. You're doing this to satisfy some desire—willing even to wager your life as a chip on the table." Yaxiu froze slightly. Carefully reflecting on his actions over the past half month, he realized that he truly seemed never to have considered submitting to legal judgment... No, more accurately, he had never considered taking the blame for Heath and spending the rest of his life in prison. From the very beginning, he had been scheming how to break out. Aurora's Sorcerer Handbook, Sword Princess, Igola... these were all catalysts for his escape, but the intent to break free seemed deeply rooted in his mind, never wavering for an instant. Did he not know that the odds of escaping were minuscule, or that it carried the risk of death? Did he not know that even if he succeeded, endless pursuit awaited him? He could almost foresee his future: starved, freezing, unable to sleep in peace, seeing enemies in every face, with no place left for him in the entire Blood Moon Country. An individual could not contend against the collective; an individual could only assimilate into it. In fact, if he had only wanted to scrape by and survive, other alternatives should have existed. For instance, he could have tapped into his reservoir of knowledge from his previous life, acted as a copycat writer to drastically increase his contribution points, and demonstrated his value. Or he could have meticulously prepared a crosstalk or stand-up comedy routine, turning the Blood Moon Trial into his personal show. There were countless options, every one of them safer than breaking out of prison, with an even higher chance of success. Yet why... had notions like 'surrender' or 'compromise' never crossed his mind from the start?