Chapter 129 - 109: The Second Stage (3)
There were still people at the school who needed to be evacuated, and he intended to help.
At Dongjiang First Middle School, the air-raid siren had long since fallen silent.
A large number of still-shaken students were streaming out from the underground shelter, their faces etched with confusion and lingering fear.
In the clamor of the aftermath, no one noticed Lin Ye.
He didn’t linger at the school. He cut through the crowd and went straight home.
He pushed open the door to find the house empty.
His mother was probably still at work, and his sister wasn’t back yet either.
Lin Ye took out his phone and called his mother.
"Hello, Xiaoye? Are you okay? The city-wide alarm went off just now, it scared me to death!" His mother’s concerned and anxious voice came from the other end of the line.
"I’m fine, Mom. I just got out of the school shelter. Are you all right?"
"We’re both fine. Your sister came to find me. We’re in an air-raid shelter right now. It sounds like the alarm has been lifted, so we’ll be home soon."
Confirming his family was safe, the last trace of worry in Lin Ye’s heart finally vanished.
He returned to his room and locked the door from the inside.
He drew the curtains, plunging the entire room into darkness.
He walked over to his computer, paused for a moment in silence, then reached out and unplugged the network cable from the tower.
After doing all this, he finally took the small, black USB drive from a pocket in his inner clothes.
He inserted the USB drive into the computer.
The screen lit up, revealing a single folder sitting there quietly.
Lin Ye clicked open the folder.
Dense rows of documents, arranged by date and number, instantly filled the entire screen.
He dragged the mouse, pulling the scrollbar all the way to the bottom.
The creation date of the first document came into view.
July 13, 2048.
A date from before the Cataclysm.
Lin Ye recalled the Doctor’s crazed confession—"I’ve relied on Source Crystals to live for over two hundred years!"
At the time, he had thought it was just the ravings of a madman.
Now, it seemed it might not have been entirely false.
He took a deep breath and clicked open the first document.
The document had no number; it was more like a private diary entry.
Date: 2048.7.13
I haven’t been able to eat much lately. I thought it was just from staying up late and working too much overtime.
Until today, when I got my own CT scan report.
I never would have imagined it. I, one of the country’s top oncologists, who has personally delivered death sentences to over a thousand patients, would end up in this situation myself.
Late-stage pancreatic cancer with multiple liver metastases.
I didn’t dare tell Yajing.
Yaya is still so young. She just learned how to draw.
I don’t want her to lose her father before she’s even grown up.
I don’t want to die.
The sun hasn’t risen for over a week. The news says that giant rift in the sky leads to another world.
Another world...
Is that where people go after they die?
...
Date: 2048.9.12
There’s no chance for surgery anymore.
Two whole months of chemo and radiation have made all my hair fall out, leaving me to struggle with vomiting and excruciating pain every day.
The tumor shows no signs of shrinking.
I know my life is coming to an end.
But I really don’t want to die. I don’t want to die!
[Image] [Image]
Two photos were inserted in the document.
One was a selfie of the Doctor.
The man in the photo was gaunt and emaciated. His bald head and deeply sunken eye sockets made him look like a living skeleton.
The other was of an eerie, blue crystal.
Lately, this stuff has been sprouting up all over the world.
Some rich people are even buying them at high prices, collecting them as the jewels of a new era.
A patient’s family member insisted I take this one, as thanks for extending their son’s life by several years.
I don’t know if it’s just my imagination.
But I can’t shake the feeling that as long as I carry it with me, the symptoms of my cancer are much milder?
...
Date: 2048.10.27
A medical miracle!
This is an absolute medical miracle!
The results of my follow-up exam are in—the tumor has actually stopped growing!
I stopped all chemotherapy drugs a long time ago and switched to palliative care.
All of this can only be because of that blue crystal!
This isn’t a curse, it’s a heaven-sent treasure!
I’ve heard that many other people have undergone strange changes after coming into contact with them.
Their strength increases, their speed improves, and some have even awakened incredible superpowers...
If...
If this thing were directly implanted into a human body, what would happen?
...
Date: 2048.12.06
I succeeded.
I opened the cold storage units in the hospital’s underground morgue.
I selected three corpses that had been dead for no more than six hours and implanted a polished crystal into each of their bodies.
They moved!
Those corpses, like puppets with their strings cut, stood up again!
Their skin had turned a strange ashen-gray, their pupils were dilated, and they made meaningless guttural sounds in their throats.
I tried to communicate with them, but they didn’t react at all.
One of them even showed intense aggression toward me.
They’ve become the living dead.
But this undoubtedly proves my hypothesis! This crystal contains some kind of life energy that surpasses our current scientific understanding!
Reading this, Lin Ye’s gaze sharpened.
He was reminded of the living corpses he had encountered in the morgue of the Third Central Hospital.
’So those were the Doctor’s earliest experiments.’
He suppressed the thoughts in his mind and proceeded to open the next document.
This time, a number finally appeared in the top-left corner of the document.
#001
Date: 2049.1.1
I was wrong.
I was so terribly wrong.
Yajing, my love, I’m so sorry.
Yaya, my daughter, Daddy is so sorry...
(Below this was a large block of deleted and re-typed gibberish, indicating the author’s extreme emotional breakdown.)