Richard was forty-one this year. He had been a Transcendent for over a decade, and he had practiced medicine even longer—more than twenty years.
Over the years, he had seen every kind of person, from refugees whose lives were as cheap as grass to noble lords who wielded great power.
He had always believed one thing: there was only one illness in this world—the disease of poverty.
But poverty was not a real disease. No medicine could cure it.
That was why he had given up studying medicine to save people and instead devoted himself to Transcendence, becoming one of Moth Chasing Flame. In the blink of an eye, many years had passed. Today, he suddenly realized that perhaps he had been too shallow.
Besides the disease of poverty, there was probably also the disease of madness.
People always said Moth Chasing Flame was mad. But whether Moth Chasing Flame was mad or not, wouldn't he, its acting chief, know?
Moth Chasing Flame was not mad. The mad ones were the lords.
Richard was a doctor. When he learned that the heart medicine on this island could explode, he had already developed a bad feeling.
When he heard Theus speak of stuffing a Steam Engine into the human body, he felt that this lord had finally gone mad.
It was hardly surprising. Anyone would go mad upon seeing factories across the land that devoured Pollution and spat out steel, or Skyveil Behemoths blotting out the sky, their bodies painted with vicious fangs.
But after the lord finished speaking, Richard felt that he was the one who ought to be mad—he actually thought the idea seemed to have no real problem.
"Flesh and steel will reject each other. They cannot truly merge. But shells are different. These bizarre bodies will not