19: Chapter 19 The Price of Fate's Gift

Lin Ye's mind raced.

He stared at his right knee, rubbing his fingers hard over the spot where the wound had been.

No pain, no tactile sense of a scar.

Could it be a passive healing skill that comes with the Eye of Destiny?

No.

This thought had barely surfaced before he mentally slapped it down.

If it were the Eye of Destiny, using it would definitely consume energy.

Yesterday, apart from the micro-operations of 'blink-framing', his left eye hadn't transmitted any extra stinging sensation.

Moreover, the consumption of mental energy leads to genuine exhaustion.

Lin Ye's expression turned grim.

Since it wasn't done by the Eye of Destiny, it could only be this body's own reaction.

Yesterday, he saw it clearly with his left eye: those gray patches were firmly attached to the wound, impossible to have evaporated into thin air.

So, only one truth remained.

His own body... had absorbed and assimilated that pollution.

Holy shit!

A chill ran down Lin Ye's spine.

Will I turn into some kind of monster covered in tentacles?

He tried hopping in place a couple of times.

No pain, no itch, joints flexible, muscles contracting smoothly, no discomfort whatsoever.

No wonder I woke up this morning feeling no fatigue, like I had endless energy throughout my body.

My mind is sharp too, as if I'm pumped full of adrenaline.

...

At that moment, inside the Great Xia Live Stream.

One second ago, everyone was still wondering why this kid had suddenly stopped moving.

The next second, the screen was flooded with question marks.

[??? Am I seeing things?!]

[Where's the wound? That big, bloody gash?]

[This is too creepy! Not even a scar left overnight!]

[With this recovery speed, he's the Great Xia branch of Wolverine, right?]

[Case closed! Brother Eye isn't some sneaky lurker; he's a freaking domestically-produced latest model cyborg!]

[Don't start praising him yet, everyone. Switch screens and look at the other Challengers.]

[Yeah, yeah! I just came from Soldier King Xu Haifeng's stream. His injuries healed pretty fast too!]

The last few comments cooled the brief frenzy in the livestream by a few degrees.

...

Great Xia Disaster Prevention Administration, Third Research Group.

In the laboratory, Lu Chen sported a pair of dark circles under his eyes.

On the computer screen before him was the exact moment Lin Ye checked his knee.

To his left stood a giant display screen, five meters long.

It was densely divided into over a hundred windows, playing back the livestream recordings of various countries' Challengers at high speed.

On the notebook in front of him, various data were messily recorded.

Among them, two words were circled in red pen.

'pollution', 'Spirit Grid'.

People on Blue Star couldn't glean much information from the 'Endgame Simulation'.

They could only analyze the Challengers' words, knowing they could see a personal status screen in their vision.

But the specifics of what data it contained were unclear to anyone.

Therefore, for the entire night yesterday, Lu Chen had pulled the recordings of hundreds of Challengers from around the world, from the aircraft cabin opening to their post-landing survival.

Using the fragments of information they revealed, he pieced together, translated, and ultimately summarized these two concepts bit by bit.

What 'Spirit Grid' is, there's currently too little evidence to draw a conclusion.

But the word 'pollution', judging from its literal meaning, clearly represents an undesirable state.

And the National Destiny Challenge had quantified this attribute.

Lu Chen's mind raced:

In the Void Sea, whether eating, drinking, or even simple physical abrasions, all lead to an increase in one's own 'pollution' value.

As for what this pollution specifically is—alien bacteria, radioactive virus, or something else?

There's no definitive conclusion yet, and he has no experimental samples on hand to dissect.

As for the materials returned from the critical hits, the nation had them tested immediately.

Apart from being different species from those on Blue Star, they possessed no negative attributes.

Clean, as if they had been purified.

*Click.*

Lu Chen enlarged Lin Ye's livestream feed and slowed down the playback speed.

In the footage, Lin Ye had just muttered a sentence.

His voice was extremely low; the livestream only picked up a few blurred syllables.

But Lu Chen didn't need the audio at all.

He knew a thing or two about lip-reading.

Staring at Lin Ye's moving lips, he silently mouthed the four words in sync.

'Pol... lu... tion... zeroed.'

Lu Chen grabbed the mouse on the desk and pulled up the footage from yesterday when Lin Ye, after boarding the Level 2 Floating Island, checked the wound on his knee.

Back then, he should have discovered the 'pollution' condition affecting him.

That's it!

Another deduction loop closed!

Lin Ye's left eye can visualize the existence of this 'pollution'!

Only this can explain his nearly obsessive-compulsive, bizarre footwork and pickiness.

He wasn't blindly choosing based on luck; he was screening for pollution sources!

And what Lin Ye just said revealed an even more startling piece of information.

The 'pollution' was metabolized by some unknown physiological mechanism in the human body.

No, to be precise, it was absorbed and assimilated.

This means that the 'pollution' attached to the human body isn't a one-way, dead-end accumulation.

'Interesting... utterly fascinating.'

A fanatical light gleamed in Lu Chen's eyes.

He grew increasingly curious about that world called the 'Void Sea'.

At the same time, he became even more eager to know.

Was Lin Ye's left eye a mutation caused by the Void Sea environment?

Or did he obtain some unknown, miraculous encounter back on Blue Star?

Lu Chen took off his glasses and rubbed his dry eyes.

'If only I could have Lin Ye dig out his left eye for me to properly dissect and study!'

...

Void Sea, Level 2 Floating Island.

Lin Ye walked cautiously through the jungle.

He wasn't happy about his pollution value dropping to zero.

On the contrary, the innate wariness in his bones was cranked up to its peak.

All gifts bestowed by fate have their price secretly marked in advance.

This physical healing that defies human logic must hide an unknown, lethal mechanism behind it.

Once it exceeds a certain threshold, what awaits him might be genetic collapse or directly mutating into some kind of monster.

'Stay calm, survival is key. Absolutely must not get reckless.'

Following the route from his memory of yesterday, he headed towards the direction of that stream.

The morning jungle was shrouded in a thin layer of mist.

Lin Ye's method of advancement still maintained that maddening yet flawless 'bizarre footwork' from yesterday.

Walk a stretch, stop, then suddenly make a sharp turn, or circle widely for no apparent reason.

If it were yesterday, the audience in the Great Xia Live Stream would have been cursing up a storm.

But today, seeing this 'psychotic' sense of direction once again, countless viewers felt a peculiar sense of security rise in their hearts.

[That's more like it! This is our Brother Eye!]

[Seeing him this cautious finally puts my anxious heart at ease.]

[Can the person in front speak properly? This is called tactical maneuvering!]

[That guy from the neighboring third country just stepped on a pile of leaves and fell into a snake pit. Gone, just like that.]

[Brother Eye: As long as I walk off the beaten path enough, danger can never catch up to me.]

[Honestly, Brother Eye's gait is kind of catchy after watching it for a while. Who's gonna add some BGM?]

Lin Ye weaved through the dense forest.

His trip to the stream this time wasn't just to catch a few fish to fill his stomach.

It was also to verify one thing.