Xia Luo Is Actually Me

Kazuo and Kazuhiro walked into Kirinji's medical room carrying washing utensils and breakfast. After Kirinji's emergency Kaidō treatment last night, their forearms and hands had already recovered as if nothing had happened.

"Big Brother, you've worked hard. Please, wash up and have something to eat!" The brothers placed the items on a small table to the side and bowed respectfully to Kirinji.

Thirty-some years ago, Kirinji had pulled the two from the brink of death, and they had served as his assistants ever since. No matter how many "medical accidents" like yesterday's they endured, in the brothers' hearts, Kirinji remained their eternal Big Brother.

"How do your arms feel?" Kirinji splashed water on his face and tilted his head to ask.

Kazuo and his brother flexed their arms to show they had recovered. "Big Brother's Kaidō is absolutely flawless. Our condition is even better than it was yesterday!"

"Hmm. Before I ask about your symptoms, I have something to say..." Kirinji finished washing his face and hair, speaking in a low voice as he dried off.

Kazuo nodded, waiting respectfully for what was to come. "Please, Big Brother."

"When are you two idiots going to remember to bring me my hair oil after I finish washing up!?

Without hair oil, what am I supposed to do about my pompadour??? Am I supposed to hold it up with my own hands???"

The two brothers were instantly drenched in a metaphorical bucket of cold water. Kazuhiro panicked and scrambled out of the room, sprinting toward Kirinji's quarters.

Kirinji glanced at Lin Nan on the hospital bed, then said calmly to Kazuo, "The kid's condition should be stable now. Tell me about yourselves!

Yesterday, when your arms turned into white bone, what did you feel?"

Kazuo looked down at his forearms and hands, which had only recently been restored by Kaidō and still looked somewhat pale and tender, and recalled:

"At first, the skin felt itchy, and the parts submerged in the water felt swollen and sore. Immediately after, it felt like something was trying to burrow out from inside the muscles. The sensation was extremely rapid; the moment one feeling became distinct, the next symptom had already begun.

By the time we realized something was wrong and pulled our hands out of the water, we discovered that the flesh and skin of our entire forearms had rotted away into a mangled mess and fallen off on their own."

Kirinji sat at the head of Lin Nan's bed, eating his breakfast distractedly while closing his eyes to ponder Kazuo's words, his thoughts hitting a dead end.

"Skin and flesh rotting away without feeling pain; the sensation of something trying to burrow out..." He cycled through various possibilities in his mind, freezing in place with his chopsticks still in hand.

"Could it be that the Reiatsu ratio created toxicity? Triggering an abnormal reaction in the body?..."

Kazuhiro returned to the medical room with the hair oil just then. Seeing their boss still deep in thought, he stood beside Kazuo, and the two waited respectfully without saying a word.

At that moment, Lin Nan shifted slightly on the hospital bed, unconsciously reaching out to scratch his body. "Why is it so itchy?"

He gradually opened his eyes, only to be met with Kirinji's lean, blade-like face and his comical, unstyled hair.

"Whoa! What kind of act is this? Are you using my sleeping posture as a side dish?"

Seeing Kirinji frozen at the bedside with chopsticks in hand, and the two brothers standing stiffly not far away, Lin Nan sat up by reflex.

He cautiously lifted a corner of his blanket to peek inside, and only after confirming his clothes were still on did he let out a sigh of relief.

Waking up this time was far too sudden, unlike before.

Previously, when returning to the real world from the Playback Room, there was a distinct process where his form would slowly fade in that dim space before his consciousness returned to reality.

But this time, Lin Nan had been carefully studying Kirinji's Shunpo movements in the recording one second, and the next, he opened his eyes to see the man's giant face filling his entire field of vision.

This feeling was even more stimulating than "waking up from a wet dream to find the heroine beside you."

Unfortunately, it was the bad kind of stimulation.

"Wait, where's your bicycle seat?" Lin Nan examined the still-petrified Kirinji with curiosity. "Though, you look much more pleasing to the eye like this..."

Seeing no reaction from the man, he looked toward the Kazuo brothers with a questioning gaze.

Kazuo shook his head, using the faintest voice and lip movements to tell Lin Nan, "Big Brother is thinking. Don't disturb him."

Hearing this, memories of last night suddenly flooded into Lin Nan's mind.

He rose slowly, put on his outer garment, and eased himself off the bed. After adjusting to a sudden wave of dizziness, he walked over to Kazuo and gestured for him to follow him outside.

The two reached the hallway. Lin Nan rubbed his still-itchy skin and whispered:

"Let him keep thinking in there. You tell me what happened yesterday. I only remember being pushed into the water by you two, and then waking up just now."

Kazuo quietly pulled the door shut behind them to avoid disturbing Kirinji's thoughts, then recounted the events of the previous day.

Lin Nan listened while deep in thought. As a loyal reader of the original work, he remembered many of the settings quite clearly. By comparing them to yesterday's situation, he could easily analyze where the problem lay.

In the original work, Kirinji Tenjirō's signature treasures were the two hot springs located in the Kirin Palace: "White Bone Hell" and "Blood Pond Hell."

Patients would enter "White Bone Hell" to purge damaged blood and Reiatsu from their bodies, then enter "Blood Pond Hell" to replace their original blood with the blood-red spring water, achieving a rebirth-like healing effect.

But at this point in time, Kirinji clearly hadn't reached that level yet. That "prototype hot spring" from yesterday was obviously a crude, early version of those two springs—it couldn't even be called a "prototype."

"I don't think the cause is what he just guessed—toxicity or anything like that," Lin Nan said, scratching his itch while recalling details mentioned in the manga.

"I think it's possible that the potency of this pool was just too high, causing the body to over-recover. Once it exceeded the physical limits of the flesh, it resulted in the rotting phenomenon..."

Whoosh! The sliding door beside them was flung open.

Kirinji stood behind the door, chopsticks in hand, staring straight at Lin Nan. "What did you say?"

Lin Nan was startled. "Are you sick? How do you move without making a sound?"

Kirinji stared intensely at Lin Nan, his narrow eyes flashing with excitement. "What you just said—say it to me again. Quickly!"

It was the first time Lin Nan had seen such a near-demented expression on Kirinji's face. "Calm down. I've just recovered from a serious illness; don't scare me back into one."

To avoid exposing his identity as a transmigrator, he combined his knowledge of the original setting and repeated his hypothesis in more layman's terms. After all, he still knew nothing about Kaidō and couldn't master the professional terminology.

As Lin Nan spoke, Kirinji's eyes grew brighter and brighter. He suddenly threw his hands high into the air and laughed loudly: "Hahaha! Yes, that must be it! That's exactly it!! I really am a genius!!"

Lin Nan stood to the side with a face full of black lines: "Brother Genius, that idea was clearly something I just told you, what are you getting so hyped up for?"

A smug smile spread across Kirinji's face: "How could you mortals ever hope to understand a genius? As long as the principle is understood, I have a way to improve my hot springs—this is what it means to be a genius."

Looking at his rather punchable expression, a bold idea suddenly sprouted in Lin Nan's mind.

Since he already knew how the plot would unfold, why not have a little fun?

He cleared his throat and said: "I think your hot springs combine healing and recovery, but the energy is too intense. It's very easy for something to go wrong due to improper control—just like what happened to the three of us yesterday. So, how about this idea of mine..."

He gestured with his hands, describing the functional designs of "White Bone Hell" and "Blood Pond Hell" in detail using his own words. Naturally, he thoughtfully omitted the names, leaving a little room for Kirinji to exercise his own creativity.

As he spoke, Kirinji and the Kazuo brothers nearby nearly let their jaws hit the floor.

"You... how did you come up with these?" Kirinji's small eyes twitched incessantly as he stared at Lin Nan in disbelief, as if looking at a monster.

Lin Nan suppressed his laughter, feigning deep thought, and switched to terms easier for Kirinji to understand, explaining it simply.

"Of course, I only thought of the logic; the specific details and construction will have to be done by you personally, Brother Genius."

The way Kirinji looked at Lin Nan changed completely; he was no longer aloof or dismissive, but wore the look one reserves for a fellow genius.

"Feasible! This line of thinking is truly feasible! Excessive reishi concentration leading to over-recovery—how could I be so stupid? I never even considered that point!" Kirinji was so excited he was scratching his head and ears.

Lin Nan held back his laughter, thinking: If you had ever lived in a dormitory and dealt with power trips caused by high-wattage appliances, you would have figured this out too.

The Kazuo brothers were even more shocked to the point of speechlessness: the problem that had plagued their genius big brother to the point of losing his appetite was solved by this youth in just a few short sentences???

"Lord Lin Nan, thank you for resolving our troubles! We brothers thank you on behalf of our big brother!" The two bowed deeply to Lin Nan.

Lin Nan kept a straight face, and as he faced their reverent gazes, he thought to himself:

So, this is why being Xia Luo feels so good...