Chapter Fifty-Four: Brewing Soup with a Shoe

"Save him," Lin Yilin said.

"Is it necessary?" Zheng Fan asked, clearly reluctant.

"What is necessary?" Lin Yilin retorted.

"Fine."

Without further objection, Zheng Fan stepped forward. "Can this wound even be saved? People usually don't survive having a Xenomorph burst through their chest."

"What on earth is a Xenomorph?"

"Uh, I suppose I haven't told you about that movie yet. I'll explain it slowly on the way back."

"Alright. But the injury here only looks severe. Unless hallucinations invade reality, aside from possession and absorption, it's very difficult to harm people on the real side purely in the form of hallucinations." As she spoke, Lin Yilin began instructing Zheng Fan to take out the materials she usually prepared for rituals.

Following her instructions, Zheng Fan busied himself while continuing the conversation, "You say it's difficult, but that bug went straight from his chest through to his back..."

"That's why I said it's just an illusion, a mere optical illusion. Is that really so hard to understand, Mr. Hallucination?"

"Even if you explain what an optical illusion is to an actual hallucination... I'm getting a bit dizzy." Zheng Fan felt dizzy.

"Anyway, you can go take a look at the wound," Lin Yilin said with a helpless sigh.

Zheng Fan leaned over to check, and the result came as a surprise. To be sure, he even reached out and nudged the wound on Lu Chongming's chest—in truth, there was only a rather deep cut.

Although deep and bleeding, it was nowhere near the kind of severe injury where a bug had pierced right through him.

"It really is..." Zheng Fan was astonished.

"Hallucinations are quite marvelous, aren't they?" Lin Yilin remarked.

A human describing hallucinations in such a manner to an actual hallucination.

After helping Lu Chongming treat his wound according to Lin Yilin's instructions, Lu Chongming quickly regained consciousness, breaking out in a cold sweat from sheer fright. "What just happened to me?!"

Clutching the wound that had left a scar behind and instinctively patting his rear, he remained shaken to the core.

"Congratulations, the surgery was a complete success. You are a girl now," "Lin Yilin" said coldly.

Lu Chongming immediately clutched his groin with a terrified expression.

"You're lying to me!"

"You actually believed that, you idiot." "Lin Yilin" sneered as she stood up. "Consider yourself lucky that thing didn't finish you off."

Lu Chongming looked toward the remnants of the bug. He saw "Lin Yilin" reach out with a wave, absorbing all the bug's remains along with some scattered, unidentified liquids in the vicinity. They morphed into a black bead in her palm, which she then put away.

Just as she was about to leave, she suddenly heard a dull "thud" from beside her.

Turning her head, she saw Lu Chongming dropping to his knees in a dramatic fashion.

"I'm sorry! Just now, I must have lost my mind, I was completely out of line!"

Lu Chongming's head was much clearer now, and he couldn't fathom where that murderous hostility from earlier had come from, or how he had actually contemplated raising a hand against the young woman before him.

Regardless, following his conscience, the right thing to do now was to apologize.

As for what would happen to him next... that was a problem for his own future to handle; he could blame no one else.

After all, driven by his own selfish desires, he had dragged many people into that illusion.

"Heh. Not bad, you look much easier on the eyes now. Clear your head when it gets muddled, young man." "Lin Yilin" couldn't help but chuckle, pointing a finger at her own temple.

When Lu Chongming raised his head again, he found that "Lin Yilin" had already vanished.

In a daze, he ran outside, only to find no trace of her whatsoever.

"Hey, Xiao Lu, what's wrong? That girl from the agency didn't give you a hard time, did she? I thought I heard some noises coming from inside..." Brother Wang hurried over to ask.

Lu Chongming stood in a daze for a moment before looking at Brother Wang. "Umm, Brother Wang, I've been in a bad mood lately and my attitude hasn't been great. I'm sorry."

"Bah, what's a little thing like that? How old are you anyway? You're about my kid's age, and you're much more sensible than he is." Brother Wang chuckled and waved his hand dismissively.

"Brother Wang, I'm leaving."

"Huh?" Brother Wang was stunned at first, but then realization dawned on him. "Ah, yeah, it's time to go. Even if those agency people aren't coming after you, it wouldn't be easy if the supervisor dragged you in to take the fall. Better to run along now while you can. Your constitution might be a bit weak, but you've got a sharp mind. Worst case scenario, you can always go hook up with some street gang."

"Yeah, thanks for taking care of me all this time, Brother Wang... Oh, by the way, who was that young lady from the agency just now?"

"I'm not too sure. Oh right, she actually gave me her business card earlier, here." Brother Wang said as he fished out the business card and handed it to Lu Chongming.

Lu Chongming accepted the card, bowed deeply once more in gratitude, and then prepared to leave.

"Hey, Xiao Lu, don't forget your boxed lunch! Even if you're quitting and running away, free food is free food," Brother Wang called out after him.

Lu Chongming was momentarily stunned. Looking at Brother Wang's honest, good-natured smile, he couldn't help but let out a laugh.

The smile was a bit awkward, but at least it wasn't a bitter one.

...

At Tengjun's Counterfeit Shoe Store, Tengjun watched as Lin Yilin suddenly arrived carrying a large cardboard box, kicked open his security door, and asked to borrow a large stewing pot.

As it turned out, Tengjun actually happened to own an aged, oversized stew pot at home.

And then he watched as Lin Yilin washed the pot, added water and ingredients, and began stewing something.

She measured Tengjun's height and weight, checked his blood pressure, drew a tube of his blood, and asked for his birth date and time, seemingly using these as a baseline for the concoction.

Zheng Fan watched from the side. As for what he was looking at—well, naturally, he couldn't understand a single thing.

This kind of ritual, performed entirely by intuition, seemed to be a skill originating from the White World, and the number of people who could master it was exceptionally rare.

The White World was so peaceful that no impurities were allowed to mix in. According to Lin Yilin, such ritualistic skills had long been strictly prohibited, and systematic supernatural or occult rituals had similarly been swallowed up by the White World long ago.

However, some individuals were able to make these things return to reality through "abstract" operations.

Much like how the equation 1+1=2 might be prohibited, she could instead calculate 1+3-8÷e^(ix)×ζ(s). Whether the result equaled 2 didn't matter, because the final calculation would simply turn out to be 2.

Lin Yilin knew how to do this, and her adoptive father Edman possessed this ability as well.

It was just that this too could not be taught systematically; after all, what kind of abstract methods one might use to comprehend something entirely depended on the individual—if you didn't get it, you didn't get it.

Fortunately, abstract rituals weren't like math problems; no matter how messy your process looked, as long as the answer was correct, you got full marks.

According to Zheng Fan's abstract understanding after listening to Lin Yilin's description, it was roughly equivalent to saying that the "Lord" could actually be manipulated until it equaled 6.

However...

Doing math problems, no matter how heaven-defying they were, wouldn't involve tossing shoes into a stew pot to boil.

"Ms... Ms. Lin, what are you doing?" Tengjun had originally thought Lin Yilin was brewing some kind of miraculous medicinal soup that could help him take off his shoes.

However, when he saw Lin Yilin scoop up a spoonful of the water from the pot, take a sip, smack her lips, and then casually grab a shoe and toss it right into the pot, he was dumbfounded.

Forget about Tengjun; Zheng Fan was dumbfounded too.

"What on earth are you doing?" Zheng Fan and Tengjun asked in unison.

"Brewing soup."

"For external application?" Zheng Fan asked.

"For internal consumption," Lin Yilin said, looking at Tengjun.

Tengjun's jaw dropped, and for a moment, he didn't know what to say.

What the hell did she just add into that pot, and she expected him to consume the resulting concoction internally?!

"Let me see... based on Mr. Tengjun's weight and blood type, a single shoe probably won't be quite enough." With that, Lin Yilin put down the documents and began rummaging through the cardboard box.

There were also peculiar requirements for the length and weight of the shoes, and in the end, she tossed three or four pairs into the mix.

Turning the fire up high, supplementing with other seasonings, she then switched it to a low simmer.

After a long while, a pitch-black liquid materialized.

Looking at the entity in the pot, Zheng Fan felt as though he were looking at a reflection of himself through someone else's eyes, and he couldn't help reaching up to wipe away a non-existent cold sweat from his forehead.

So it really was just shoe stew; for a second, he thought he was hallucinating again.

"U-Umm, can I..."

"No," Lin Yilin said expressionlessly. "A client cannot interfere with the agency in resolving a commission. That's written in black and white on the service contract. If something goes wrong from drinking it, I'll take responsibility, but until the results are out, sir, you have no right to refuse."

The Scar Witch...

Zheng Fan felt this scenario was exceptionally fitting for that title.

Tengjun cried out that he would rather pay extra money than drink this pot of stuff, but Lin Yilin was deeply annoyed. She didn't want to drag out a job that could be resolved cleanly just because of such squeamish reasons.

Binding him with earthworms and forcing his jaw open, our binary little sister hoisted the giant pot and poured it straight down his throat.

The neighbors, hearing this, could only cover their ears, lamenting in their hearts which poor soul nearby had offended the mob again and was being subjected to capital punishment.

...

"It's off." Lin Yilin casually tossed the shoe to the floor and clapped her hands together, leaving Tengjun collapsed on the ground looking practically dead.

Zheng Fan squatted beside Tengjun and feigned a poke at him.

He felt that from a psychological and spiritual standpoint, this probably wasn't all that different from being dead.

If Ms. Lin Yilin happened to be a hallucination, she could probably start possessing him right about now.