118: Black Belly

Ning fell into the cold water below, sank for a while, and then began to float upwards. He reached the surface and just floated there.

There were no waves, no fish, no sounds. He closed his eyes and felt the sun hitting his face at an angle. Slowly, the cold water washed away all his negative emotions until nothing was left.

The peace in his heart was something he had never felt before.

Finally, he started to truly think about what had happened.

The system was leaving him for 1 year and 4 months… 16 months in total.

Is it 4 months for every innocent person I killed? He wondered.

However, the answer wouldn't come for a long time. He floated there, thinking about other things that had happened.

He tried to see if it worked, but as expected, he couldn't gather energy anymore.

The system said I couldn't use energy-related skills, right? He thought and tried to check it with some. No more air cutters came out from in front of him. No more lighting candles. No more body transfers or parasites.

“Fortunately, most skills use mental energy,” he thought.

He could still use the different skills he had purchased, and the information he had bought was also retained.

He put his spear in storage and felt himself become lighter on the water's surface. “Storage also works,” he thought.

There was nothing he could do, so he let the water slowly carry him away.

He stayed on the surface, almost an entire day, feeling detached.

He also felt like doing nothing, so he did nothing.

Finally, in the late afternoon, he decided it was time to go back. His clothes were completely wet; however, the blood hadn't washed off, so he just took them off and threw them away.

He washed himself to remove the blood and finally swam back to the cliff. The cliff was very steep, and there was usually no way to walk back up. However, for Ning, it was nothing.

He made his fingers into claws and began to grip the cliff to make footholds.

“Next time I should learn how to fly,” he thought as he began to climb.

Soon, he reached the top and used the Yin To Heat technique to dry himself in the shade. He took out another set of robes to wear and then walked back to the city.

He didn't really keep track of how many people he saw on his walk back. He showed his ID at the gate and then walked in. It was already late, so he went straight to the teaching building.

However, before he reached his room, someone stopped him.

Ning looked up to see who it was, but he didn't recognize the person.

“Can I help you with something?” he asked calmly.

“You're Ning, right?” the person asked.

“Yes. That's me,” he said.

“Why weren't you in the volunteer hall today?” the person asked.

Ning tried to control his anger, but the person's questioning started to irritate him.

“This is a volunteer place. It's not our job, right? We can leave sometimes.”

“I needed a day off, so I took it,” Ning said.

“Well, that doesn't matter now. Come with me. We've been looking for you for a while now.”

Ning was a bit curious now. “A patient?” he asked, and then started walking.

“No, multiple. They came one after another, and the doctors don't know what to do,” the man said.

The doctors can't solve the problem? Then why call me? They shouldn't know I'm more talented than these doctors, right? He wondered.

“Why me?” he asked.

“Honestly, I don't know. We were just told to search for you immediately, so we did. We've already wasted so much time, let's hurry.” The man was already sprinting, and now he started running even faster.

Ning finally began to understand the seriousness of the situation.

But he still had one question, so he asked, “Who told you to find me?”

The name that came out of the man's mouth was probably the most unexpected name for him. “It was Elder Neil,” the man said.

Elder Neil? Why would he look for me? Did he encounter something? Ning thought of a possibility, and with the man saying there were multiple patients, he started to get scared.

His fear had been amplified by the system, and he thought his fear of dead people was gone, but now, a new fear emerged.

He quickly arrived at the guild and swiftly entered a large room with a dozen people present, half of whom were patients.

“Oh, no,” he was really scared now.

As he expected, the patients were all women with large bellies. However, they weren't pregnant; instead, they had black-blue bellies.

Just like the woman from a few weeks ago, these women had the same problem. But Ning remembered what would happen if he started to heal them.

The unique Yin they possessed was extremely harmful, and if he wasn't careful, it could destroy his body. He could see that he was being unreasonable; if these things happened, he could heal himself, but amplified fear was not something he could easily suppress.

‘Sh*t. Stupid system. Why did you amplify fear?’

‘Now, even the slightest hint makes me a mess.’ He finally gripped the fear and looked forward with determination.

Even if this was the last thing he did, he would help these people heal, and given that he was immortal, he knew it would never be the last thing he did.