The muscles in Long Qi's throat relaxed.
His instinct to laugh, that natural neural reflex, failed to kick in.
Long Qi knew something was wrong. Everyone around him was looking at him strangely, yet he wasn't angry. He remained excited and high-spirited, with the faint buzz of someone who had been drinking.
He even wanted to laugh at them...
I'm screwed!
Long Qi was alert but unable to control himself. This emotional abnormality, coupled with the numb disconnect in his neural responses, led him to a conclusion:
"I've been poisoned!"
The conclusion was clear, but his thoughts were muddled—how had he gotten poisoned?
At that moment, Ronan took a step forward, closing the distance between them. "Excuse me."
As he spoke, he reached out. Long Qi had wanted to dodge, but he had no chance. A sharp pain pricked his scalp. Ronan had pulled out one—no, two—hairs.
Ronan casually patted the top of his head. "That'll do."
It was like a spell. Long Qi's numb body rebounded from rock bottom, and the Format Fire governed by his Machine Core finally jolted awake, flaring up in an instant and sweeping over him from head to toe according to standard automatic defense protocols.
Everywhere else was fine, but when it "burned" down to the area below his neck, close to the back of his neck, an unimaginable agony struck without warning.
Caught off guard, Long Qi let out a miserable scream. He instinctively gathered his strength, his neck tightening again as though a chunk of flesh had been torn away.
The habits forged through professional training and years of real combat made him force himself to ignore the pain. He lunged forward first, then twisted around in midair to look back. Just in time, he saw a dark-red "threadworm" three to five