A Toilet Plunger Turned Out to Be a Life-Saving Miracle Tool!

The morning was quiet.

Several empty liquor bottles and folding stools lay scattered around the courtyard. On the table sat half a pot of hotpot broth left over from last night, its oil congealed into a white film.

The blue-skinned girl was hanging from the old scholar tree.

Her limbs were loosely tangled among the branches, her head hung down, and a glistening trail of drool dangled from the corner of her mouth.

A breeze blew, and she swayed twice with the branches without waking up.

Sing Sing walked out of the main house and looked up at her for a couple of seconds.

"Sleeping in a tree attracts mosquitoes. A spatial ability user dying of dengue fever? That wouldn't sound good."

He shook his head and was about to find a broom to clean up last night's battlefield when the door to the east wing opened.

Polaris's hair was a little messy. Before the two could greet each other, Sing Sing's phone rang.

The moment he answered, Director Wang's roar exploded from the phone.

"Ling Ling Qi!!"

"Good morning, Director. Your dantian's full of energy. Sounds like you slept well last night."

"Cut the crap!"

"Get to the medical room right now! If you're still dawdling in the courtyard, I'll tear up that reimbursement form!"

"Director, calm down. Getting angry in the morning is bad for your liver."

"Bad for your head! Get over here! He's better!"

The call ended with a click.

Sing Sing put his phone away, turned, and shouted into the courtyard.

"Everybody, wake up! Big news!"

The Wandering Girl in the tree twitched. Her arms went slack, and she dropped into a pile of fallen leaves with a thump.

After rolling over, she sat up groggily, leaves stuck all over her head.

"Earthquake?"

"More important than an earthquake."

Soft Serve came out of the west wing, rubbing her eyes. "Is it time for breakfast?"

Riptide came out too, his hair a mess, his eyelids swollen and his cheeks pale. He even staggered as he walked.

Last night, he had listened to Toad's construction-site stories while drinking Erguotou. In the end, Toad had clapped him on the shoulder and made him down three shots to celebrate "fellow workers' friendship."

It turned out that the former Brotherhood of Mutants member was good at controlling tornadoes, but his resistance to China's construction-site drinking culture was practically zero.

Toad was the most energetic of the lot. He had drunk the most last night, yet this morning he looked the most like a normal worker.

Seeing him like that, Sing Sing figured he had probably been drinking with Lao Liu every day at the Guizhou construction site and had built up his tolerance long ago.

"Ah Qi, what's going on?" Toad came over, his heavily accented Guizhou Mandarin making Sing Sing's teeth ache.

"There's news about Anton."

Those few words instantly cleared Riptide's eyes.

His hangover, headache and nausea were all gone.

"Really?"

"Do I look like the kind of person who jokes around?"

Everyone in the courtyard looked at him at once, their expressions identical.

He did.

Very much so.

Sing Sing cleared his throat and forced himself to save face.

"I mean, when it comes to major matters of principle, like employee safety and the survival of my reimbursement form, I never joke."

He waved his hand.

"Come on, let's go see Wenxi's physical treatment skills."

The group crowded into Sing Sing's van and hurried to their destination.

The underground medical room.

Several people were standing inside.

Director Wang stood by the bed with his hands behind his back, a complicated expression on his face.

He looked as though someone had just fed him a mouthful of bitter medicine and he'd had to admit that it worked.

Da Vinci stood beside him, a toilet plunger hanging from his white coat.

The bald patch on top of his head gleamed under the light, and he looked somewhat smug.

The last time Da Vinci had looked this smug was when his "Soul Resonance Detector"—actually two soda cans connected by a length of cotton string—had really detected an ancient tomb.

Anton was half-reclining on the bed.

His complexion was much better than it had been in the underground laboratory in New York.

The collar of his surgical gown lay open, revealing a reddish-purple circular mark in the center of his chest.

It was clear and complete, about eight centimeters across.

Sing Sing stared at the mark for two seconds.

Then he looked at the toilet plunger in Da Vinci's hand.

Then back at the mark.

The sizes matched perfectly.

"Wenxi."

"Yes?"

"This... is cupping, isn't it?"

Da Vinci pushed up his glasses, his face solemn. "Mr. Zhou, don't underestimate cupping."

"Mr. Zhou, I'll say it again. This isn't cupping."

"Then what is it?"

"Negative-pressure guidance."

"So it is cupping."

"It's the result of applying the Cellular Coexistence Persuasion Device in practice!"

Da Vinci held the toilet plunger across his chest like a general brandishing a weapon.

"I spent a full twelve hours on it! I changed the flashlight batteries three times! Adjusted the radio antenna seventy-four times! Rang the copper bell thirteen hundred times!"

"I also played him 'Jasmine Flower,' 'The Internationale,' and some cosmic white noise."

"Through light, sound, negative pressure, vibration, and my own sincere initiative for peace between cells, I finally brought about a historic reconciliation between the foreign X-Gene and his body's own cells!"

"Your so-called historic reconciliation was just you sucking on him with a toilet plunger all night?"

Da Vinci looked serious. "Director, you're reducing complex scientific research to something crude."

Sing Sing's eye twitched, and he looked at the doctor beside him.

"What do the reports say?"

"I... I've never seen anything like this."

The doctor, Lao Fan, was in his fifties. He held a stack of test reports and looked even more conflicted than Director Wang.

He had the bewildered look of a man whose decades of medical knowledge had just been slapped in the face with a toilet plunger.

He held up the reports, his eyes full of disbelief.

"The rejection response in his body is gone."

"Gone?"

Riptide stepped forward.

"Yes, gone. His magnetic field response was extremely chaotic before, but now it's stabilized too."

"How stable is it?" Director Wang's brow furrowed.

Doctor Fan glanced at the report, as though checking that he hadn't misread it. "Stable enough that his body is actively strengthening the electromagnetic signals around him."

Sing Sing: "..."

Director Wang: "..."

Da Vinci: "See? I told you combining white noise with negative pressure had a solid scientific basis."

Doctor Fan added with difficulty, "Not only that, the silver-gray patterns on his body have actually become an enhanced signal amplifier."

"What does that mean?"

Doctor Fan looked at the phone screen by the bed.

"A phone gets full bars within five meters of him. Carry him up to the roof, and the nearby residential areas can all get free internet."

A long silence fell over everyone.

Anton's eyes were still a little unfocused as he stared blankly at the ceiling.

"...Brother?"

"I'm here."

Anton blinked and looked down at the circular mark on his chest. "This... what's this?"

Sing Sing coughed, his expression serious.

"That's a treatment mark."

"What kind of treatment?"

"Physical cupping."

"...Cupping can cure this?"

"You don't understand. Our country's traditional medicine is profound and extensive." Sing Sing patted him on the shoulder. "How do you feel now?"

Anton slowly moved his arm, then sat up.

"It doesn't hurt anymore."

He tried raising his hand, and a few tiny silver sparks flickered in his palm. An old medical instrument beside him beeped, and its screen lit up for two seconds.

"Holy shit? This kid really has turned into an antenna."

Toad scratched his head, looking envious. "That ability's really useful. The signal's always terrible up in the mountains where our construction site is."

Sing Sing slapped the table.

"What antenna? Choose your words more carefully."

"He's a human amplifier."

He stared at Anton and nodded earnestly.

"Archives clerk, and temporary communications enhancement equipment for the bureau. From now on, moving confidential documents, relaying signals in the basement, and providing coverage in mountain areas with weak networks will all be your job."

Anton stared at him. "I can do that?"

"You were a librarian, so you're perfect for organizing records."

Sing Sing spoke with a perfectly straight face:

"You were already a librarian, so you're perfect for organizing records. Do you know how many old files there are in the 749 Bureau's underground archives? Qing dynasty zombie registration records, Republic-era fox spirit household registration transfer records, reports of water monster sightings in Northeast China from the early years of the People's Republic—it's all a complete mess." "Once you're there, start with numbering, registration and filing."

"And your constitution means you don't have to worry about static or magnetic interference, plus you come with built-in signal amplification. You're a real talent. If you work a little harder, I can even nominate you for an outstanding communications support individual award."

Riptide stood beside the bed, his eyes already red.

He said nothing, simply reaching out and pulling his younger brother into a tight embrace.

For a moment, no one in the room spoke.

After a long while, Riptide finally let go and turned to bow to Sing Sing and Director Wang.

"Stephen, I owe you my life."

"Don't get so sentimental. You brothers are both part of the organization now."

He turned to look at Director Wang.

"Director, now that he's all right, isn't it time to hand out the benefits?"