; Ah, Baldy!

A dry heat flooded Lu Yifang's body, yet it could not be dispelled through sweat. A stifling, oppressive sensation clogged his chest, as if a heavy weight were pressing down upon it. Though Lu Yifang lay on his bed with his eyes tightly shut, the distress on his face was plain to see.

He had a fever!

In this half-awake, half-dreaming state, a disoriented Lu Yifang felt a pair of aged hands stroking his head. Throughout the process, those hands kept tapping against his forehead.

Lu Yifang desperately wanted to do something, but his body felt as if it had lost all control, his soul imprisoned within his own flesh, unable to move a muscle.

This feeling was agonizing. It reminded him of the time he had first transmigrated and become an infant. Back then, his mind was already mature, but constrained by the frailty of an infant's body, he couldn't even move, let alone think—even thinking was a massive burden. He could only eat and sleep, muddling through that initial period of his life.

Lu Yifang's consciousness struggled desperately, trying to regain control of his body. Under his strenuous efforts, he finally managed to force his eyelids open.

In the dim, blurred vision before him, the first thing Lu Yifang saw was a shiny... bald old man. The man was wearing a suit and pressing down on Lu Yifang's chest, using his aged yet fair-skinned hands to stroke Lu Yifang's head while tapping it from time to time.

Lu Yifang wanted to see the man's face clearly, but it remained a vague blur. As Lu Yifang opened his eyes, the faceless old man seemed to notice. The bald elder lowered his head slightly and flashed a sinister smile at Lu Yifang!

"Ah!!" Lu Yifang screamed as he snapped his eyes open.

"Child, what's wrong?" At that moment, a gentle woman's voice reached him, and a pair of warm hands reached out to hold him, trying to soothe him.

The bald old man in his vision had vanished; standing before Lu Yifang was a blonde woman. She looked to be in her fifties. Even careful maintenance could not hide the wrinkles at the corners of her eyes, but her aging face still revealed the beauty she must have possessed in her youth.

"Ms. Emma, so it's you." Seeing the blonde woman, Lu Yifang let out a sigh of relief, then spoke with an apologetic look.

"I'm sorry, I had a nightmare."

"It's alright, child." Ms. Emma shook her head, her gentle smile as warm as ever. She was a kind and tender woman.

As the director of Howard Orphanage, she treated every child who came here with equal tenderness, caring for them like a mother. Even for someone like Lu Yifang, who was nearly eighteen and still hadn't been adopted, she never stinted on her warmth and love.

"Yifang, can you tell me about the dream you just had?" Ms. Emma asked, holding Lu Yifang's hand.

"There's really nothing to tell. I just dreamed of a strange... bald man," Lu Yifang said casually.

"A bald man? What kind of bald man?" Ms. Emma pressed further.

"It was... well, I remember it was..." Lu Yifang scratched his head, as if he had forgotten or found it difficult to express.

"Was it like this?" Under Lu Yifang's gaze, Ms. Emma suddenly ripped off her long blonde hair, revealing the same sinister smile as the bald old man.

"Ah, a bald man!" Lu Yifang shouted as he sat up in bed.

At the same time, the sound of a young girl being startled reached him.

Lu Yifang turned his head to look. It was a girl wearing dark blue jeans and a black leather jacket. She looked to be about fifteen or sixteen, with long, dark brown hair. Although her body hadn't fully matured, her curves were already quite apparent.

"Oh, it's Katie. Why are you here? Cough, cough, cough..." Lu Yifang said, coughing dryly. Memories flooded back into his brain, but the heat and chest tightness from the dream hadn't improved in the slightest, because he really did have a fever.

"Ms. Emma asked me to watch over you, and she told me to give you this fever medicine once you woke up." The girl named Katie had calmed down by now, handing a glass of water and some pills to Lu Yifang.

"Oh, thanks!"

"You're welcome. We're friends, after all." Watching Lu Yifang take the water and medicine, Katie turned back to the desk and began typing on her keyboard with an expressionless face.

"The Wi-Fi in your room really is the best in the entire orphanage. It's truly enviable."

Lu Yifang: "..."

He suspected that the reason this girl was patiently watching over him wasn't because of Ms. Emma's request or their years of camaraderie in the orphanage, but purely to leech off his internet.

"Did you have a nightmare?" The sound of the keyboard suddenly stopped, and the girl turned her head slightly to ask.

"Yeah, and it was a two-hundred-percent terrifying double nightmare, cough!" Lu Yifang said through gritted teeth while coughing.

"What did you dream about? You were talking in your sleep just now, muttering, 'Bald man, such a scary bald man!'" Katie looked at Lu Yifang. Although her expression didn't change much, the curiosity in her eyes was hard to hide.

"If you don't mention bald men in front of me, we can still be friends," Lu Yifang said with some annoyance. He didn't know what was wrong with him lately; he had been having nightmares every single day, and they were all about bald men.

Damn it, have I been haunted by a bald ghost? If you have the guts, show your true form! I'll go to the church and buy ten or twenty pounds of crucifixes. Even if I can't exorcise this bastard, I'll beat him to death with them... Hmm, the church priest charges too much. Better go to the grocery store.

"Do you want to see a doctor? You've been running a fever for days," Katie asked.

"Forget it, it's too much trouble," Lu Yifang shook his head. "There's only that one private clinic nearby. Unless it's an emergency, you have to wait two or three days just for an appointment."

"It's fine. I just hacked that clinic's computer. If you want to go, you can definitely be first in line," Katie said, her face unchanged.

Lu Yifang was well aware of Katie's skills as a hacker, but after thinking about it, he still refused.

"Better not. It's just a low-grade fever, not even 39 degrees. I'll just take the medicine and tough it out. Besides..." Lu Yifang's voice trailed off, and he sighed, a bitter smile appearing on his face.

"You should know that I'll be an adult in half a month. If I weren't sick, I would have already left the orphanage. Money doesn't go very far once you're out. I should save where I can. A registration fee alone is ten dollars. Even with health insurance, it doesn't cover everything for free."

"Suit yourself." Hearing this, Katie turned her head and focused back on her computer, ignoring him.

The clack-clack of the keyboard resumed. To Lu Yifang, it sounded like a lullaby. It seemed the medicine was kicking in. He hoped that after this sleep, the fever would finally break.

And also... don't let me dream of any more bald men. I hate bald men.

Ten minutes later, Katie stopped what she was doing and frowned as she looked at Lu Yifang on the bed. At that moment, Lu Yifang was muttering in his sleep: "Bald man... damn bald man, so many damn bald men!"

Meanwhile, beneath a seemingly ordinary school in New York, inside a massive spherical metal room, a bald old man in a suit sitting in a wheelchair was removing a specialized helmet from his head.

"Professor, did you find the awakened child?" A man wearing glasses that looked like a scanner walked up behind him and asked with concern.

"I found him, yet I didn't," the bald old man rubbed his brow wearily. With his mental power, using Cerebro once shouldn't have left him this exhausted, but this child was different.

"He is very special. He can shield himself from my power. My mental power cannot enter his mind to complete a dialogue, and because of the interference from his abilities, even my ability to pinpoint his location has become somewhat blurred."

"So, this child's ability is of the psychic-type?" The man pondered as he listened to the bald old man.

"Not exactly." The bald professor shook his head.

"Although I am not certain what his specific ability is, based on my experience, it should have nothing to do with the psychic-type. We must find him as soon as possible; his powers have not fully awakened and are extremely unstable. I can feel that the child is currently very anxious and unsettled. I have tried to soothe him, but it seems to have had little effect, so I have no choice but to do my best to locate him and speak with him in person."

Despite his fatigue, the bald professor picked up the helmet once more.

"Professor, you should go and rest. You have been overexerting your mental power for days on end just to find this child." Watching his teacher pick up the helmet again, the man finally could not hold back.

"Professor, I don't understand. There are many mutants in this world. While our goal is to help those in need, there are still many mutants who do not require our assistance; they are perfectly capable of surviving among ordinary people. Why are you so fixated on a mutant child whose powers haven't even fully awakened? Perhaps he isn't in such desperate need of our help."

"Scott." The bald professor looked at his most outstanding student.

"Regardless of whether this child needs our help or not, we must find him, because as I said just now, he is very special."

After a moment of silence, the bald professor continued his explanation: "Through the Cerebro Amplifier, I can vaguely sense the magnitude of this child's power—it is far beyond what even my old friend and I possess."

Upon hearing this, Scott drew a sharp breath, his voice filled with disbelief. "Professor, are you saying..."

"That's right. It is highly likely that this child is a Level 5 mutant." As the bald professor spoke, he placed the helmet back onto his head.

"We must find this child as quickly as possible, at the very least, before my old friend Magneto finds him."