True Colors (Part 2)

Ronan planted his feet and endured the initial bout of vertigo. Once it passed, he tried moving his hands and curling his toes, only to find that some of his fingers and joints were sore and numb. He felt as though he had drunk too much, his reactions inexplicably slowed by a whole level.

The flashes of inspiration and surging thoughts from earlier were gone as well. It felt as though a film covered his brain, leaving him groggy and desperately sleepy.

Ronan did not panic. He merely sighed. So it's finally here.

Because he had been detained aboard the warship yesterday and had only gotten out early this morning, there was no way he could prepare his medicine... Well, given his remaining supply of ingredients, even going home would not have helped. Thus, the daily medicine preparation he had painstakingly maintained for nearly five years had finally been interrupted.

Most of the discomfort he had just felt came from abnormal activity in his nervous system—a kind of drug withdrawal reaction.

Ronan had mentally prepared himself for this ever since his drug supply channels had run into trouble. He had also remained vigilant while accelerating his metabolism yesterday. He just had not expected that, after getting through all the periods when he had been most on guard, the problem would only erupt now.

Ronan staggered forward a few steps. He felt all right, barely able to hold on, though he knew without looking in a mirror that his complexion must have been awful.

Fine. Now he had a perfectly legitimate reason to visit the Medical Department.

Twenty minutes later, Ronan strolled into the Medical Department. It was both the medical faculty of Zhi Xing Institute and a fairly renowned general hospital in Xia City. It was open to students free of charge, though appointments and identity verification had to be completed online before entry.

Ronan's standard for choosing a doctor was simple: he picked whichever one had the longest waiting line. After making the appointment, he ignored the information on the appointment slip and simply wandered around the Medical Department.

He appeared aimless, but the moment he entered the Medical Department's main building, his sense of the target had already become extremely clear.

It should be around seventy meters east... That meant the inpatient department.

As the distance closed, Ronan could even sense the target's heart overflowing with resentment and fear. Those emotions were twisting together in an intensely distorted manner, scorching and entangling, while an endless stream of stray emotional thoughts mixed in, like seasonings constantly being sprinkled over grilling meat.

Uh, why did he think of that?

Even as he wondered at his own wandering train of thought, the ground beneath his feet began to shake, quickly growing more violent. The doors and windows of the Medical Department rattled loudly.

"Again!" Amid the commotion, patients, students, professors, and others poured hurriedly out of the various buildings like ants relocating their nest. Within minutes, they had filled the central courtyard.

The hospital's emergency evacuation routes opened one after another, ready to transfer critically ill patients at any moment.

But that was all the earthquake amounted to. The "routine earthquake" lasted about half a minute, followed by two aftershocks, before falling silent once more.

Curses broke out across the courtyard. Xia City's seismic activity over the past half month had left special public spaces like hospitals on edge. Every earthquake required evacuating the crowds according to regulations, then resuming treatment afterward. With all that repeated disruption, it was sheer dumb luck that no medical accidents had occurred.

Ronan took several steps through the bustling, chaotic crowd, then suddenly stopped. He sensed that the target, originally in the inpatient department, was moving rapidly toward him.

Several seconds later, an electric sightseeing cart drove out from the eastern inpatient department, weaving along the pedestrian path. On it sat a casually dressed young man and several burly men who looked like bodyguards.

Ronan fixed his gaze on the young man's face. He knew this person, and it was not the least bit surprising. Yes, it was Li Xuecheng, whom he had hypnotized into suffocating and falling unconscious yesterday!

Li Xuecheng still did not look well. His face was bruised and swollen in several places, and he looked listless, yet extremely agitated. He kept babbling at the bodyguards beside him. Whenever he became worked up, he would slap their shoulders and backs hard while berating them, showing no regard whatsoever for the public setting. He already seemed thoroughly unhinged.

Naturally, Li Xuecheng in that state did not notice his "sworn enemy" among the roadside crowd. Ronan, however, caught his own name in the fragments of conversation drifting over.

Just as expected... It was him.

Ronan cast his gaze toward him. Before he could decide what to do, a sudden change occurred.

A dark red mist of light suddenly rose from Li Xuecheng's body. Amid the interwoven shadows of the Medical Department building and the roadside trees, it twisted and shifted, ultimately forming a vaguely humanoid, sinister demon shadow.

No one saw it except Ronan. His pupils contracted slightly as he stood still, unmoving.

There was probably no one more familiar with this thing than Ronan.

A Burning Demon Shadow—another Burning Demon Shadow!

So there was more than one Burning Demon Shadow...

Yet the most unbelievable thing was that, in that instant, Ronan did not feel surprise, vigilance, or tension. What he felt was hunger—an uncontrollable hunger.

The grain he had planted was ripe;

the dish he had prepared was ready.

It looked delicious. Come on, have a hearty meal...

"Clatter!"

The Dark Heavy Chains rang out, the sound like a sharp needle stabbing viciously into Ronan's brow. He shuddered violently, and all thoughts of delicious food and hunger instantly shattered.

Meanwhile, this brand-new Burning Demon Shadow radiated scorching power from the Mental Layer, pressing down on Ronan. It was clearly filled with hunger and greed!

The demon shadow swept forward, pouncing at Ronan.

Ronan remained motionless, deep in thought. The powerful greedy instinct emanating from this Burning Demon Shadow seemed to be revealing something to him.

At the same time, stimulated by the rapidly approaching threat, the clattering of chains above his heart rang out in overlapping layers. The power from his body-and-mind framework accumulated continuously through an unknown form, until it reached a certain limit.

The next moment, the membrane between reality and illusion silently tore open. The Dark Heavy Chains shot out from Ronan's brow, colliding head-on with the incoming Burning Demon Shadow and instantly piercing into it!

"Buzz!"

For an instant, a shriek that existed only in the Mental Layer descended upon reality. Hundreds of doctors, nurses, students, and patients at the scene were briefly dazed. But the vague sensation quickly vanished, because the abstract symbol at the tip of the Dark Heavy Chains had begun to glow with Yingying light.

Dark red light illuminated the previously black interior of the Burning Demon Shadow and released a certain force, instantly transforming into a rapidly contracting vortex.

The vortex's power was immensely strong. In no more than a blink, the Burning Demon Shadow Ronan had just "met" could no longer retain its shape. Most of its body was sucked into the abstract symbol, increasing its brightness, while a small portion directly collapsed and dissipated into the void.

Almost at the same moment, the bodyguards on the electric sightseeing cart that had just passed him cried out in alarm. Li Xuecheng, who had been angrily berating them moments ago, suddenly fainted inside the cart, completely unconscious.

A small disturbance broke out in the courtyard. The bodyguards hurriedly carried Li Xuecheng out of the cart and laid him on the nearby lawn. His eyes had rolled upward, foam spilled from his mouth, and his face was ashen like that of a corpse.

Ronan turned his eyes and saw Li Xuecheng's life force pouring out in great quantities, like floodwaters released from a dam. On a level invisible to the naked eye, it turned into wisps of smoke and, together with the collapsing Burning Demon Shadow, was drawn into the void vortex.

Ronan's brows furrowed tightly. With a slight movement of his mind, the Dark Heavy Chains retracted. The dark red abstract symbol withdrew into his brow as well, and the void vortex vanished.

Li Xuecheng's life force stopped leaking abruptly, but he had already fallen into a deep coma.

Ronan stared at the unconscious Li Xuecheng on the lawn, his expression grave. The victory had been utterly crushing, yet he felt no joy at all.

After a moment, Ronan shifted his gaze away from Li Xuecheng and toward the people nearby. Some watched curiously, some glanced over and ignored it completely, while doctors and nurses hurried over.

This was a hospital—what couldn't happen here? Everything was simply a change in reality that people could understand.

But who knew that on a level beyond their reach, invisible demon shadows were brazenly coming and going, corroding Human Hearts and draining vital essence?

Ronan was one. Li Xuecheng was another.

Perhaps the "uLing" couple, who had suffered that horrific domestic tragedy, belonged to this category as well.

How many more were there? Just how many demons had that howl from the Research Zone unleashed? And how many had already taken shape like this and begun claiming lives?

Moreover, there was clearly competition and devouring among the Burning Demon Shadows. They formed a faintly discernible food-chain web.

Ronan stared blankly at the noisy courtyard:

Was this still the world I knew?