44: Hidden needles in the rainy night, who is feeding the stove?

When that drop of water landed on his brow, Su Chen felt as if a branding iron, heated red-hot, had been doused with ice water.

That extreme alternation of heat and cold exploded from the bridge of his nose all the way to the crown of his head.

He squeezed his eyes shut tightly, his teeth grinding together with a clicking sound.

His fingernails had dug deep into the calluses of his palms, bringing a piercing pain, yet it still couldn't suppress the wild fire rampaging through his body.

The Sacred Yang True Qi within him was like a swarm of fire ants colliding frantically inside a narrow test tube, gnawing at his meridians every second.

He forced his eyes open just a crack, his Vision somewhat blurred.

The dashboard on the driver's console flickered with an eerie red light in the gloom.

The fuel gauge needle, which had been about to drop below the red line, now jumped up three small notches slowly, like a drunkard who had eaten and drunk his fill.

Shit, that's not fuel; that's the damn lives of those two women.

Su Chen cursed inwardly.

The rumors about "absorbing life to provide energy" received the most fucked-up validation at this moment.

He could feel that with every extra notch of fuel, the two streams of Yang Energy in his body became a degree more violent.

It was as if they wanted to burst this shell of his, known as the "Primary Position," wide open.

"Su Chen, have some soup... I added some of the wild onions you usually like."

A slight clinking of a porcelain bowl sounded, accompanied by Qin Ya's unique, slightly humble and gentle tone.

Su Chen turned his head and saw Qin Ya holding a chipped porcelain bowl, carefully stepping over the partition of the driver's area.

Her professional attire, which she usually wore meticulously, was now slightly open at the collar.

The stray hairs on her forehead were wet with sweat and rain, sticking to her pale face, making her look exceptionally pitiable.

"Stay back."

Su Chen's voice was hoarse.

"I'm a powder keg right now. Do you want to be set on fire by coming over?"

"The furnace temperature has exceeded the limit."

Zhao Wanting's illusory shadow suddenly manifested above the partition, her hollow eyes now rolling with an eerie white.

"According to the bus's underlying logic, the overflowing Yang Energy needs to be vented. It is suggested to sacrifice the left eye of the Sub-position holder to exchange 'Vision' for 'Cooling'."

"Get lost!"

Su Chen snapped his head up, his eyes filled with bloodshot veins.

Zhao Wanting remained expressionless, her body shaking violently like a bad television signal: "The process is irreversible. If the Furnace Core collapses, everyone on the bus will be buried with it."

Qin Ya's hand trembled, and the soup in the porcelain bowl splashed onto the back of her hand, turning a patch of it red.

She stared blankly at Su Chen's pained state, then looked at Zhao Wanting's phantom that didn't seem to be joking. The struggle in her eyes lasted only half a second before turning into a nearly pathological determination.

She didn't reach for her own eye; instead, she suddenly rolled up the sleeve of her left arm, revealing an old scar on her forearm.

It was a burn mark left from when she was a child.

It was originally the hidden defect she was most self-conscious about, but now it emitted a faint fluorescence under the dim overhead light.

"My blood... a fortune teller once said I have a tough fate, that I carry the Metal element."

Qin Ya's voice was trembling.

But she unhesitatingly grabbed a paper cutter used for self-defense near the dashboard.

"If something must be sacrificed, take these few pounds of flesh and blood as you wish, as long as it makes Su Chen feel better."

*Squelch—*

The sound of the blade slicing through flesh was exceptionally piercing in the deathly silent carriage.

Su Chen's pupils contracted sharply.

He saw the old scar on Qin Ya's arm burst with an extremely pure golden light the moment it was stained with blood.

That golden light rapidly diffused within the cramped carriage, actually forming a translucent miniature shield that forcibly pressed the frantically overflowing, feverish True Qi back into his body.

That agonizing pain of fire ants gnawing at his bones miraculously eased a few degrees at this moment.

"You're crazy..."

Su Chen let out a low growl.

He looked at Qin Ya's face, which was rapidly losing color due to blood loss, and the defensive line of egoism in his heart was violently smashed open.

He grabbed Qin Ya's still-bleeding wrist and, using that surging golden light, pressed her hand firmly onto the bronze pedestal.

"Qin Ya, listen to me. That crappy hairpin your mother left you can't suppress this forever, and this blood can only last for a moment."

Su Chen's voice carried a trapped-beast-like frenzy as he suddenly threw open his own clothes.

Under Qin Ya's terrified and dazed gaze, at Su Chen's heart, two currents of energy—one white and one red—were intertwining and rotating, forming a constantly spinning Yin-Yang fish pattern.

That was the sign of the Sacred Yang Divine Body awakening to the second stage, 'Twin Dragons Playing with Water,' and also the true path to survival.

"This isn't some beauty pageant; this is a matter of life and death."

Su Chen stared fixedly into Qin Ya's eyes, his voice hoarse.

"If you want me to live, stop treating yourselves like sacrifices. Letting your Yang Energy melt into a new Furnace Core within me is the only way to not die."

At the same time, a dull thud of a heavy object hitting the ground came from outside the window.

Su Chen instinctively looked at the rearview mirror.

Lin Mengyao had retreated from the curtain of rain at some point and was now slumped in the mud by the bus door.

She was tightly clutching the silver needle she had picked back up. Under the flash of lightning, a line of characters even finer than the needle's tip appeared on its tail.

"The one who feeds the furnace shall ultimately become the fuel."

She looked at the shirtless man in the carriage with the eerie pattern glowing on his chest, then looked down at the family motto that had led generations of Lin Family women to their destruction.

Rainwater continuously slid down her eyelashes, obscuring the deepest madness in her eyes.

She stood up trembling, her fingertips turning blue from excessive force as she pressed the silver needle tightly against her palm.

If she didn't stab it in, everyone would die.

If she did... The bus engine let out a dull and greedy roar, as if urging for the final ritual.

Lin Mengyao took a deep breath and stepped onto the stairs through the puddles.

Her palm, turned white from the rain, slammed heavily onto the dashboard with a dull thud.

Su Chen's eyelids twitched violently.

The silver needle pressed under Lin Mengyao's palm didn't stab anyone; instead, like the switch of some projector, it exploded into a cluster of eerie green light the moment it touched the metal surface of the console.

Light and shadow distorted, forcibly spreading a fragmented and nauseating scene across the windshield:

It was a dim ancestral hall draped in funeral scrolls.

Hundreds of young girls dressed in red bridal gowns knelt on the ground, their wrists slit, blood flowing along the grooves in the floor toward a giant bronze coffin in the center.

Above the giant coffin, several blurred elders were bowing and chanting toward a withered male corpse.

"When the Yang Body reaches completion, feed the furnace with Yin. Wait until the fire is bright, then cut open the belly to take the Dan, and sacrifice it to the ruins god..."

The "Yang Body" in the image, though his face was blurred, had features and contours that were clearly seventy percent similar to Su Chen's.

Su Chen felt a chill rush from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head, instantly overpowering the feverish heat in his body.

What bullshit 'Chosen One,' what 'Goddess throwing herself at him'?

It turned out this so-called "Sacred Yang Divine Body" was fundamentally a pig-butchering scam set up by the Lin Family hundreds of years ago?

He was merely that pig being carefully fed, waiting for the New Year to be slaughtered for the ancestral sacrifice!