Buying Medicine

One day later.

"Cough, cough, cough!"

After a violent fit of coughing, Fang Linyan's face was deathly pale, his teeth clenched so tightly they ground audibly, cold sweat beading across his forehead. His entire body curled up like a shrimp out of water.

It took him a long while to recover. He wiped his lips with a handkerchief, stared at the shocking dark red stains on the cloth, then coldly tossed it aside and stepped into an old residential building.

After checking the number, he arrived at the door of the right-hand unit on the third floor. Just as he was about to raise his hand to knock, the door swung open on its own. A burly man with a crew cut and a green tattoo creeping up his neck stood there, one arm in a sling hanging across his chest. He barked rudely:

"Kid, piss off!"

He shoved past Fang Linyan and left.

As soon as Fang Linyan entered, the smell of disinfectant hit him. The floor was filthy, the furniture in disarray, scattered with bloodstained tissues and cigarette butts—but no one was in sight. He coughed and said:

"Is Doctor Zhou here?"

From the adjacent bathroom came the sound of flushing water. A moment later, a pale, haggard, gaunt middle-aged man emerged. He looked like he'd pulled an all-nighter—stubble-covered, deep-set eyes, a grimy white lab coat that hadn't been washed in who knows how long, with a few dark bloodstains on it.

The man didn't answer. Instead, he stared coldly and warily and asked:

"Who sent you?"

Fang Linyan spread his hands and said:

"Old Xia, the car guy, said you've got things here you can't get anywhere else."

Hearing the name "Old Xia," Doctor Zhou relaxed a little. He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, looked over the thin Fang Linyan from head to toe, and said impatiently:

"Got money? Take it out and put it on the table!"

Fang Linyan pulled two thousand yuan from his pocket.

Seeing the cash, Doctor Zhou picked it up, counted it, then said flatly:

"Alright. You want Madness Powder or Happy Water? I've also got Wave King No. 1. Just those three. But Wave King No. 1 costs extra."

Fang Linyan shook his head and said:

"No. I want EVE, and that inhalable Hercules Super Nitrogen Pump. Twenty EVE pills and two bottles of the pump."

Doctor Zhou paused, then cursed irritably:

"You trying to get yourself killed?! Mixing EVE with Hercules won't get you high—it'll just numb your nerves hard and keep you from sleeping all night! Do that for two or three years, and you'll end up with severe kidney failure!"

Fang Linyan said coldly:

"Two or three years. That's too long."

Doctor Zhou was stunned. "What?"

Fang Linyan said:

"I've got terminal lung cancer. I'm not buying this to get high. I'm buying it to make the days I have left less unbearable."

Doctor Zhou was silent for a moment, then said:

"Confirmed?"

Fang Linyan gave a bitter smile. "I wish it weren't."

Doctor Zhou didn't say much more. He turned and went into another room, soon returning with a plastic bag:

"This is Caloni, smuggled in from the Netherlands. Used with the Hercules Super Nitrogen Pump, it's better for pain relief. But no more than one pill at a time, and no more than three a day. Got it?"

He tossed the bag to Fang Linyan, glanced at the money on the table, took a single hundred-yuan bill, and shoved the rest back at Fang Linyan impatiently:

"Get out, get out. Don't hold up my business. Seriously."

Fang Linyan hesitated for a moment but was already pushed out the door. He stood there silently, didn't say thank you, but after taking a few steps, he turned back and gave Doctor Zhou a long, deep look before walking away.

About half an hour later, Fang Linyan returned to his place with the medicine.

Using the two together would let him suppress the pain of terminal cancer and wring out the last bit of energy from his failing body like twisting a towel dry. Doing this was certainly no good thing—it would even shorten his expected eight months of life to four. But at this point, what choice did Fang Linyan have?

On his desk lay a sheet of paper, scrawled with a few lines of handwriting. It was his summary of the intelligence and clues he'd gathered. But the sudden, excruciating pain of terminal cancer had forced him to stop midway and go buy medicine.

What was written on that sheet of paper was none other than Fang Linyan's analysis of Fang.

Yes, it was obvious to anyone with eyes that the key to Fang Linyan's survival lay with that powerful and mysterious figure, Fang. What Fang Linyan had to do was kill him and take back the retroviral vector injection.

That was the only chance for survival Fang Linyan could find now!!

But for Fang Linyan, killing someone as formidable as Fang was a task that seemed harder than reaching the heavens. Forget Fang—at this point, even killing a chicken might leave Fang Linyan feeling powerless!

***

At the same time, The incident at the dock, The theft of something like the retroviral vector injection was already enough to cause a massive uproar. This thing was said to be at least two generations ahead of current cutting-edge technology. The organization that created it was exceptionally powerful.

The organization that managed to steal it from the secret research institute in Sweden also wielded immense influence.

Now they had lost both their man and the goods, not even leaving a single survivor at the dock. They vowed to investigate the truth at any cost and recover the shipment.

But based on the intelligence they had so far, they were completely in the dark about the attackers' identities, utterly baffled. According to the many professionals who had visited the scene, there were far too many anomalies in that fight—things that defied common sense.

What these people never expected was that the information on the attacker they were desperately seeking was sitting right on a young man's desk.

After taking the newly purchased medicine, Fang Linyan sat back down at his desk. His pale cheeks now bore two unnatural patches of red, and his eyes seemed to gleam with light—the result of burning his life force at all costs to gain a burst of energy. He began to refine the notes he had written.