Terminal Gray

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"Cough, cough—"

With a weak, dry cough, Bai Ina struggled to open his eyes. A wave of weakness washed over him, and the gnawing pain in his stomach from hunger left his face deathly pale.

Bai Ina licked his cracked lips and looked around.

He was on a shore littered with filthy junk. A pungent stench hung over the entire coast, and smoke rising from the waste had even formed a fog that shrouded the area.

"Where... is this?"

Bai Ina murmured. The stench cleared his head, and his expression suddenly changed. "Loxi—" He hurriedly looked at Loxi beside him, only to find him with his eyes shut, his pale cheeks flushed an unnatural red.

Seeing this, Bai Ina hurriedly untied the rope and went over to feel Loxi's forehead.

Bai Ina's expression changed at once. Loxi's skin was burning hot, his temperature close to forty degrees. "He's so hot. The fever still hasn't gone down. We have to find a doctor right away!"

It had already been four days since the shipwreck. Loxi had woken from his coma half a day after it happened.

But after going so long without food or water, Loxi, whose constitution was weak, had fallen unconscious again on the second day. He'd developed a high fever after spending so long immersed in seawater.

"Come on, let's go take a look over there. Maybe we'll find something valuable!"

"Ugh, when will this life ever end?"

"Haha, the day you find some treasure is the day this life ends. Haven't you heard? Old Wei from West Street got lucky and found some Eternal Hour Hand that had drifted in from who-knows-where. They say it's from the New World. Thanks to that thing, he went straight to live behind the high walls of the Goa Kingdom."

"Damn, what luck!"

"..."

Hearing the voices, Bai Ina's brows lifted with a flicker of joy. If there were people here, then this wasn't an uninhabited island. There had to be a doctor somewhere.

The two people in the distance gradually drew closer. Once they emerged from the fog, they spotted Bai Ina.

"Hm?" The older one looked over Bai Ina and Loxi's clothes, delight spreading across his face. "Haha, looks like we've found a big fish."

The other man glanced at Bai Ina, then at the sword at his waist, and suddenly grinned. "Looks like a poor fool washed ashore after a shipwreck." He stepped closer and carefully examined the long sword at Bai Ina's waist, then nodded. "Kid, hand over anything valuable you've got—and that sword!"

"Damn, you've got a sharp eye!" the older man laughed. Then he sneered at Bai Ina. "Hand it over. Don't hesitate. There's no law in this Terminal Gray. If you don't want to die, hurry up and give us everything valuable you've got."

"Terminal Gray?"

Bai Ina furrowed his brows. He'd heard of this place. It was where the Goa Kingdom dumped all its unwanted refuse—in plain terms, its garbage. The entire Terminal Gray was one enormous dump, where trash from every part of the Goa Kingdom was thrown away.

The people who lived here were all thugs and hooligans driven out of the Goa Kingdom. That was why Bai Ina frowned. Would a revolting place like this even have a doctor?

"Hey, brat, what the hell are you standing there for?"

The younger thug strode forward impatiently and slapped at Bai Ina's face.

Bai Ina's bowed head snapped up. A flash of red flickered in his pupils.

A sharp whoosh cut through the air, then silence fell again.

Bai Ina took his hand off the sword hilt and walked past the thug toward the other man. The instant he passed him, the thug's head rolled to the ground like a ball, blood spraying high into the air.

"Ahhhhhhh!"

The other man collapsed to the ground, screaming in terror.

Bai Ina walked straight up to him and drew his sword, resting its blade against the man's neck. "If you don't want to die, shut up!"

The icy touch of the sword brought the thug to his senses, and his screams stopped abruptly.

"Is there a hospital here?" Bai Ina asked, his voice edged with urgency.

"A hospital?"

The thug looked blankly at Loxi in the distance.

Bai Ina's brows knitted together. He pressed the sword down, and a trickle of blood ran along its blade. "I ask the questions, you answer them. Don't think about anything else!"

The sudden sting made the man's face change. "N-no, sir! T-there isn't a hospital here!"

At that, Bai Ina's expression darkened, and the sword in his hand trembled slightly.

The thug was terrified. Afraid Bai Ina might twitch and send his head flying just like his companion's, he hurriedly shouted, "S-sir, there's no hospital, but there's a swordsmanship dojo three or four miles north of here. The children the dojo master takes in have said their teacher is very skilled at medicine."

"How far is it?" Bai Ina asked urgently, brightening at the news.

"Go three or four miles north, and you'll see the dojo. It's easy to recognize. There's no smoke around it, and the garbage piled up there's all been cleared away."

Bai Ina breathed a sigh of relief. Fortunately, it wasn't far. If it had been too distant, getting there in his current condition would have been difficult. He looked down at the thug beneath his sword and considered for a moment. "Hand over your food and clean water, then get lost!"

The thug was overjoyed. He hurriedly rummaged around and pulled out a grimy cloth bag. Handing it to Bai Ina, he said, "This is all I've got left—one flatbread. As for water, there's a canteen at his waist." He pointed to the waist of the man whose head Bai Ina had cut off.

Bai Ina took the bag with the flatbread, went straight to the corpse, and removed the canteen from its waist. He gave it a shake, then nodded with satisfaction.

"Get lost!"

At Bai Ina's icy voice, the thug was overjoyed. He turned and ran, stumbling a few times along the way.

Bai Ina didn't even glance at him. He went straight back to Loxi, took out the flatbread, tore it into tiny pieces, and fed them into Loxi's mouth.

With something in his mouth, Loxi began chewing instinctively. Bai Ina hurriedly picked up the canteen and gave him a drink. The flatbread must have been sitting around for a long time. Bai Ina had noticed how hard it was as soon as he tore it apart. In Loxi's current condition, he could only chew it if he washed it down with water.

One small piece of flatbread, followed by a sip of water. Before long, Loxi had eaten the whole flatbread, and his complexion improved considerably.

Bai Ina slowly stood up, tipped the last mouthful of water from the canteen into his own mouth, and swallowed. He licked his parched lips, hoisted Loxi onto his shoulder again, and sprinted in the direction the thug had indicated...