52: A lone man and three women spent over an hour together; it didn't seem like treatment at all!

The searing heat flowing back up through his fingertips was more intense than any high-concentration caffeine.

Su Chen gasped sharply, his lungs feeling as if someone had stuffed a handful of burning sand into them.

The eerie cyan-gold afterimage on his retinas hadn't fully dissipated, looking exactly like the embers of some ancient contract after it had been burned.

He didn't have time to worry about those chaotic hallucinations, his gaze immediately locking onto the data bar in the bottom right corner—Yang Energy: 18%.

This amount of power was barely enough to turn on a mobile phone.

But in this acid rain weather that could dissolve a person's very bones, it was barely enough to pull half a foot back from the gates of hell.

"Hiss..."

A very faint gasp came from his side.

Lin Mengyao's originally rosy cheeks were now deathly pale.

Her eyes, which always carried a hint of arrogance, were half-closed, and a layer of fine white frost hung on her long eyelashes.

That jade pendant wasn't just an object; it was a sacrificial vessel connected to her life fate.

It was like detonating the fuel tank just to ignite the engine.

Su Chen didn't waste any words on being gentle; he grabbed her wrist, which was as cold as an ice cube.

The sensation was like touching a piece of pork belly fresh out of a cold storage locker.

"Don't move."

Su Chen's voice was hoarse, carrying an unquestionable tone of command.

"With the jade shattered and your soul scattered, you're currently like a temporary wire without insulation; if you move, you'll short-circuit."

This woman really dared to risk her life to save him.

Zheng Lin, who had been cowering to the side, reacted extremely quickly. Without needing Su Chen's instructions, she scrambled to pour out a pile of debris from the girlish little cloth bag she kept in her embrace.

It was wood ash soap mixed with ginkgo leaf powder, which she usually hid away like a treasure, but she was being generous now.

Her hands were shaking violently, but under the pressure of Su Chen's stern gaze, she quickly used the few drops of floating "Holy Water" to mix the powder into a paste.

"Elbow pit, Chize acupoint, chest, Danzhong acupoint—apply it there."

Su Chen's instructions were short and precise.

Zheng Lin bit her lip, dipped her fingers into the clump of green paste that emitted a bitter, herbal scent, and carefully applied it to Lin Mengyao's key acupoints.

The sensation was cool, carrying a soothing power unique to certain plants, which allowed Lin Mengyao's tightly furrowed brows to relax slightly.

On the other side, Wu Qian wasn't idle either.

This sporty girl, who could usually run ten laps on the playground without panting, was currently holding her breath and focusing her mind.

Following the breathing frequency she had learned by secretly observing yesterday, she hovered her palm over Su Chen's Mingmen acupoint on his lower back.

The distance was 0.3 centimeters.

A fraction more and it would leak; a fraction less and it would break.

The thin calluses on her palms, worn from years of holding a relay baton, were slightly hot.

Although there was no direct contact, Su Chen could clearly feel a warm stream of energy attempting to establish a cycle with the pitiful amount of Yang Energy inside his body.

This wasn't some flirtatious trick; this was a desperate struggle.

The three of them were like precise gears, and in this narrow, cramped, and humid tin can, they relied on acupoint alignment and breath resonance to forcibly construct an energy closed loop.

Meanwhile, a very faint "rustling" sound came from outside the cabin wall.

It was the sound of chalk dust rubbing against metal, but to Su Chen, it sounded more like the chanting of some spell.

Through the imperceptible crack corroded in the lower part of the cabin wall, one could see the originally dried blood characters on the floor suddenly erupt with blinding golden light.

"Yang is on the outside, the envoy of Yin."

That woman Qin Ya had even brought out this kind of trump card, a secret technique of her sect.

Three almost invisible, translucent threads.

They were the "masters soul thread" formed from the hair Qin Ya had cut off earlier, and now they were actually seeping into the cabin wall like living creatures.

They precisely wrapped around the ankles of Su Chen, Lin Mengyao, and Wu Qian, forming a perfect equilateral triangle closed loop.

The data board in front of Su Chen popped up windows crazily as if infected by a virus:

【Synergy Mode Activated!】

【Emotional Synchronization Rate: 72% (In a superposition state of panic and reliance)】

【Action Error: < 0.5 seconds】

【Medium Compatibility: A+ (masters soul thread buff)】

"Hum—"

The eighth drop of Holy Water, which had been floating in the air for a long time, finally condensed and formed with a "plop," like a ripe fruit.

In that instant, a strange phenomenon occurred.

The large patch of blue-purple bruising on the side of Lin Mengyao's neck, which had appeared due to the backlash of cold energy, vanished rapidly like residual snow meeting the scorching sun.

Her skin returned to that rosy, blood-infused glow.

And on Wu Qian's palm, which was facing Su Chen's Mingmen acupoint, those thick old calluses actually began to peel off in layers, revealing the newborn, tender, baby-like skin underneath.

The most outrageous part was Zheng Lin.

A bit of the ginkgo leaf powder that had accidentally fallen from her cuff landed on the damp floor.

It didn't turn into mud; instead, it automatically gathered and faintly arranged itself into a miniature Bagua formation.

This thing is interesting.

Su Chen narrowed his eyes, feeling the warm current inside his body that had finally stopped darting around and was beginning to become docile and mellow, then looked down at Zheng Lin, who was still wiping Lin Mengyao's acupoints.

"Next time, increase the powder by 30%."

Zheng Lin was stunned for a moment, looked up at Su Chen, her eyes somewhat bewildered.

Su Chen leaned in closer and said in a voice only the two of them could hear: "And it must be ground by your own hands; only the special enzymes in your sweat can activate the time-release structure of this stuff, understand?"

Zheng Lin's face flushed red to the roots of her ears instantly, like a ripe tomato.

But looking at Su Chen's eyes, which were cold yet scrutinizing, she gritted her teeth and nodded firmly.

"Click."

The countdown for the purification program hit zero, and the cabin's hydraulic lock popped open automatically.

"What are you doing in there!"

As soon as the door opened a crack, Chen Wei's sharp voice drilled its way in.

She held up the temperature gun that had been repaired from who knows where, like a wife catching her husband in bed, and was about to charge in aggressively.

"One man and three women for over an hour; I don't think this is any treatment at all, it's just..."

"Body temperature 36.5°C, constant."

A calm voice interrupted her roar.

Li Sisi held that tattered notebook in her hand and blocked Chen Wei directly outside the door.

She pushed up the cracked glasses on the bridge of her nose, her tone sounding like she was reading an experimental report.

"According to the monitoring data, there were no abnormal, drastic hormone fluctuation curves in the cabin; dopamine secretion was at a survival stress level. Chen Wei, you are overthinking this."

Before Chen Wei could retort, Zhao Wanting's voice rang out.

"Su Chen, this is bad. A high-level symbiosis module has been detected. The purification priority for the whole bus has been raised to S-class. We must complete the full bus purification as soon as possible, otherwise, it will be easily affected by other buses."

Outside the window, the endless corrosive acid rain seemed to have been hit with a pause button and stopped abruptly.

Before the girls in the cabin could cheer, a loud noise suddenly came from the depths of the dead, white void in the distance.

"Boom!"

It wasn't thunder; it was the sound of metal colliding with metal, of steel tearing through flesh.

A second bus had smashed through this damn barrier.

Su Chen braced himself against the cabin door and stood up straight, his eyes instantly turning cold and sharp.

Trouble had arrived.

"Su... Su Chen..."

Li Sisi suddenly dropped the data report she had been using to shut down Chen Wei, her expression becoming even worse than Lin Mengyao's had been just moments ago.

She pointed her trembling finger toward the girl in the corner of the cabin who should have already recovered.

"Tang Yurou... her pupils..."