Black Light

Li Wei wrapped Li Cheng tightly in a blanket.

The ten-year-old child looked only six or seven.

His little head drooped, his neck was frighteningly thin, and bluish-black veins flickered beneath his skin. The sight made Li Wei's chest feel heavy.

Just then, a doctor's call came from the emergency treatment room.

"Are Li Cheng's family members here? Please come in for a moment."

"Ah, coming." Li Wei hurriedly answered, not forgetting to remind Li Cheng, "Don't run around, okay?"

Li Cheng shifted inside the blanket and looked up at Li Wei.

"You wrapped me up like this. How am I supposed to run?"

"Uh..." Li Wei was stumped. Her slender white hand rose and scratched twice at her lovely, high-bridged nose.

She—or rather, "he"—had originally been called Li Wei.

Three days ago, Li Wei had still been an ordinary young man from the twenty-first century.

Then he woke up to a world turned upside down.

Not only had he transmigrated to this perilous parallel world where martial strength reigned supreme, but he had also been transformed into a bottom-of-the-class girl who had just been admitted to a third-rate martial university.

She simply hadn't had time to dwell on the change in gender.

The crushing weight of life had come down like a great mountain, smashing her flat onto the ground.

Li Wei's father had been a security officer.

Two and a half years earlier, he had died in the line of duty during an Abyss monster attack.

Her mother couldn't bear the blow and followed him less than a month later.

Her younger brother, Li Cheng, suffered from congenital Abyss erosion syndrome and needed expensive medicine every month.

Her father's compensation, together with donations from the uncles and aunties at the security bureau, had barely kept them going until now. It was essentially all gone.

Medicine, tuition, rent—none of it had been settled.

A father who died young, a mother who followed him in death, a brother with a terminal illness, and her, shattered.

What a brutal start...

The key was that she had inherited the original body's memories and emotions in their entirety.

This burden, this family bond—she couldn't cast them off, and she couldn't run from them.

Of course, even without all that, having taken over someone else's body, could she really abandon her only younger brother?

"Phew..."

Li Wei drew a breath and walked into the treatment room beside them.

Behind the desk, a middle-aged male doctor with a dangerously receding hairline was looking over the medical records. Only after she sat down did he raise his head.

Perhaps dazzled for a moment by Li Wei's breathtaking beauty, the doctor paused before asking, "Where are the adults in your family?"

"...They're gone." Li Wei's voice was somewhat muffled.

"Huh?" The doctor froze. When he looked at her again, his eyes held a little more pity. "Are you Li Cheng's...?"

"My younger brother."

The doctor fell silent for a long while before speaking.

"I just gave him three rounds of enhanced injections. You know what that means, right?"

Li Wei's head buzzed. Her ten fingers clenched unconsciously, wrinkling her washed-white school uniform trousers. Beneath the severely worn cuffs, a section of pale, slender calf showed.

Congenital Abyss erosion syndrome was also called "Black Blood Disease."

There was no cure. It could only be dragged out with targeted medicine.

First-stage medicine cost over two thousand a month. Li Cheng had taken it from the age of one to five.

Second-stage medicine cost over ten thousand a month, and he had taken that for another three years.

Less than a year after their parents died, the second-stage medicine stopped working too. They switched to third-stage medicine, costing over fifty thousand a month, and that was how the family's savings had been drained dry.

As a martial student, Li Wei had been at the most crucial stage of nourishing her vitality as a Quasi-Martial Artist, yet she couldn't even bear to eat a single pill of the lowest-grade Vitality-Nourishing Pill.

In the martial university entrance examination, her Vitality Value had been only 53. She had barely passed the national minimum admission standard for martial universities and gotten into the third-rate Anhe Martial University in the province.

They had burned through an entire family, only to reach this point.

The emotions left behind by the original body couldn't accept it, and Li Wei herself found it impossible to let go.

The third round of enhanced injections was the final injection before the third-stage targeted medicine failed.

After it was administered, the patient could hold on for at most another seven days. It was tantamount to sentencing Li Cheng to death.

Seeing her deathly pale face, the doctor felt awful too. But he had seen too many such things at the hospital and soon recovered, making his tone as gentle as possible.

"If... I mean, if you can get a Grandmaster to act, there may still be hope. As for the hospital..." He paused. "There's no need for him to be hospitalized. Go home and think of a way."

Li Wei came out of the treatment room and dropped back down beside Li Cheng. She stared at the emergency department lobby at half past one in the morning, her gaze drifting.

There were a few scattered patients receiving IV drips in the corners. Some waited alone, while others had family members with them.

The young woman in pink pajamas was the liveliest of them all. She played on her phone while the boy beside her fed her, occasionally laughing aloud.

Their world was vibrant and alive, yet it shut the siblings away in a corner.

Suddenly, Li Cheng lifted his little face and nudged Li Wei. "Hey, am I about to die?"

Li Wei came back to herself. She pressed her lips together and took several breaths before suddenly waving her hand, putting on a bold front.

"Don't be ridiculous! Your illness? I don't think it's just a little better. It's looking absolutely fantastic!"

"Tch!" Li Cheng rolled his eyes, his gaze far too world-weary for a child. "Do you take me for an idiot?"

"Phew..." Li Wei's mouth drooped like a deflated ball. "Come on, come on. Let's go home and sleep."

She scooped Li Cheng up and hurried out of the hospital with her head down.

Amid the swaying shadows of the streetlamps, Li Wei's mind raced as she searched through the original body's memories.

She knew what the doctor meant by finding a Grandmaster.

A Grandmaster could cleanse the muscles and marrow and purge the Abyss erosion from the body. It was the only way to cure Black Blood Disease.

The news had reported last year that a six-year-old child in Hangcheng had been saved from the brink of death after his family spent thirty million to invite a Grandmaster.

The original body had apparently been excited at the time, but the moment she saw the number thirty million, her heart had gone cold.

But she was Li Wei—and also Li Wei!

In her previous life, she had lived nearly thirty years as an orphan. What trouble had she never encountered?

As long as there was even a sliver of hope, she would never surrender.

Wait, I seem to be ridiculously good-looking now... Li Wei suddenly came up with a daring idea.

"Li Cheng, what do you think? What if I sold myself?"

The latter's little head was buried against the side of Li Wei's neck. At that, he turned his head. "You? Sold to whom?"

A honeyed smile spread across Li Wei's bright face.

"I was at least the school belle at No. 5 High School, right? My admirers could line up all the way from here to over there!" She pointed toward the distant high-rises. "Take Cheng Hao from our class. Isn't his family in real estate? Do you think he'd be willing to spend thirty million to buy me?"

Li Cheng maintained his dead-fish eyes. "Thirty million? Are you encrusted with diamonds?"

"Damn! Who taught you to say that?"

"I saw it in a short video."

"..."

"All right, all right!"

Li Cheng was getting a little impatient.

"Stop thinking about these crooked schemes... I'm telling you, I miss Mom and Dad. Especially the little pastries Mom used to make. They were sweet and fragrant..."

His voice grew softer and softer.

"Li Wei, let me go... I'm in pain every day. The pain keeps me from sleeping, and when I do fall asleep, I have nightmares. I really can't take it anymore."

Li Wei's steps halted. Her arms tightened instinctively, holding Li Cheng even more securely.

She walked and walked. The farther she went, the more her nose stung and the more her eyes burned.

Her mind felt like a tangled mess. It was a sensation neither of her two lives had ever experienced before.

Who knew how long passed...

BOOM—!

A muffled roll of thunder exploded. Torrential rain came down without warning, pouring from the sky like a waterfall.

Li Wei jolted and looked up to see a bus shelter a dozen meters away. She hurriedly circulated her vitality and dashed over in a few strides.

But only after reaching the shelter did she realize the wind was too strong. The rain slashed in at an angle, like bullets.

She quickly turned around, sat on the bench with her back to the wind and rain, and shielded the little person in her arms with her body.

RUMBLE-RUMBLE! SPLASH-SPLASH—!

The rain grew heavier, pounding her back until it ached, while her memories tangled together at that very moment.

Li Wei's and Li Wei's; the distant past and the recent past... They were densely intertwined, churning together.

Somehow, she remembered a line.

"When a hemp rope snaps, it always breaks at the thinnest point; misfortune only seeks out the wretched."

What a...

As melancholy took hold, rainwater from her hair trickled into her eyes. They stung, and her chest felt terribly blocked.

Fortunately, the rain came fast and left just as quickly. It stopped in less than twenty minutes.

The dark clouds parted, the moon emerged, and its cold light spilled down once more.

Li Wei wiped the water from her hair and was just about to stand when a string of "wee-oo, wee-oo" sirens came from the end of the street.

She turned her head. A black SUV led the way, followed by an ambulance, both speeding over like the wind and lightning.

She hadn't paid much attention at first. It had nothing to do with her.

But when the two vehicles passed the bus stop, a thread of black light suddenly shot out from the ambulance and, with a whoosh, burrowed into the center of Li Wei's brows.

Her eyes widened as she stared blankly at the sudden cascade of information before her.

Abyss Essence detected; absorbed

High Martial Minor Assistant activated

Name: Li Wei/Li Wei

Realm: Quasi-Martial Artist

Vitality: 53(+)

Combat Method: None

Mind Method: "National Middle School Vitality-Nourishing Guidance Technique (Ninth Revised Edition)" (cannot be upgraded)

Abyss Essence: 357

Li Wei's gloomy mood instantly brightened, and the corner of her mouth rose with it.

"See? I knew it. How could a transmigrator possibly not have a cheat?"