The Natives of This World Are So Fierce Chapter 21: Giving back
Doudou and Huang Jiutian were naturally overjoyed to see Qin Xiaoxia wake up.
They gave him water and fussed over him with questions.
They only stopped after asking whether he needed a bowel movement or help collecting his urine.
But Qin Xiaoxia was already terribly weak, unable to muster any strength.
Learning that he had been forced to wear adult diapers all this time left him with mixed feelings and little reason to celebrate.
"Hey, buddy, you finally woke up. Guess we're in the same boat now."
The patient in the next bed had been watching television, but struck up a conversation when he saw Qin Xiaoxia awake.
"How do you feel?"
"Won't die..."
Qin Xiaoxia answered weakly, his voice hoarse, as though his throat were shot.
"Yeah, that's true. Neither of us is going to die. We're the lucky ones... Those other people, though..."
Those words stirred complicated feelings in Qin Xiaoxia.
Just then, the evening news began right on schedule.
After covering a number of major national stories, it finally reached the incident.
"There have been new developments regarding the sudden major accident during river restoration work in Qing Town, Kehua District, Yue City, on the sixteenth. According to reports, pollution and severe sediment buildup on the riverbed created a massive pocket of methane beneath the channel. Sparks generated by mechanical friction during dredging ignited the methane pocket, causing an explosion..."
"As of now, the accident has left eleven dead and more than twenty others hospitalized with injuries. Two victims fell to their deaths from a height after being struck by the blast, while most of the remaining deaths were caused by suffocation..."
Listening to the report, Qin Xiaoxia felt no particularly strong remorse or guilt.
He believed he had already done enough.
At most, he felt some regret, along with frustration over his current condition.
The patient next to him, however, became quite chatty.
"Heh, a methane explosion. That'll only fool out-of-towners watching the news. We saw it clear as day-a monster appeared in the Crooked Loach River!"
"There really was a monster?"
Huang Jiutian was peeling an apple for Qin Xiaoxia and asked in puzzlement when he heard that.
He had only recently arrived. Between looking after Qin Xiaoxia and comforting Doudou, he clearly hadn't had time to learn the "inside story."
"That's right!"
The patient lowered his voice as he spoke to Huang Jiutian.
"Just ask your friend. Three people had already been dragged under before the explosion... I bet the military sent a plane to bomb it. The news is just a cover story."
He spoke with utter conviction, even putting on a cautious, "I'm only telling you" air.
Hearing this, Qin Xiaoxia picked up his phone from beside the bed and entered the keywords "Qing Town river explosion."
A string of links quickly appeared.
The blanket censorship he had expected was nowhere to be seen.
One post even gave an account close to the truth.
The poster described a giant monster appearing while the river was being drained and dragging several people off the bank. An apparent strike to destroy the monster had then caused the so-called "major fire."
They also speculated that the military must have used a special weapon.
At the end of the post, they solemnly urged other users to consider that monsters might actually exist, or that prehistoric creatures might not have gone completely extinct.
The first few replies mocked the poster, until several self-proclaimed "eyewitnesses" stepped in to support the account, leaving those who replied afterward somewhat uncertain.
But soon, after the hundredth reply, everyone was condemning the poster for "spreading rumors," because the news had already explained the causes and course of the incident.
There were actually plenty of similar posts and Weibo messages, but most of the responses were skeptical, so they were soon lost in the flood of online content.
There were also two videos, but they showed only the fire afterward. Presumably, footage that had captured the monster at the beginning had already been confiscated.
Qin Xiaoxia soon lost interest.
He switched his phone to selfie mode to see how he looked.
"Holy crap!"
Qin Xiaoxia swore.
His sallow, haggard face was bad enough, but even his hair had gone gray.
"Doudou, what happened to my hair? Can it still be saved?"
Huang Jiutian smiled and handed Qin Xiaoxia the peeled apple.
"What would a kid know? This look isn't half bad. Very world-weary. You might not get this effect even if you paid to have it dyed. The doctor said it was prolonged malnutrition and excessive mental exhaustion. I reckon you've been jerking off too much."
"What you need now is proper nutrition."
Behind Huang Jiutian, Doudou spread his hands to show there was nothing he could do.
Qin Xiaoxia sighed, then turned his questions to Huang Jiutian.
"What brought you here? Did Brother Gou call you?"
"What else? Was I supposed to leave Doudou here looking after you alone? Anyway, since when did you have such an adorable little cousin? Didn't you say you had no relatives left?"
"I said I had no blood relatives left. This kid is related to Old Qin. Something happened to his family, and there was no one to raise him. When I found out, I couldn't just ignore it, so I took Doudou in."
At that, Doudou put on a suitably sorrowful expression, walked up to Qin Xiaoxia's bed, and rested his head beside him.
"Uh."
The corner of Qin Xiaoxia's mouth twitched. This little guy certainly learned fast.
Huang Jiutian looked somewhat touched, but he knew Qin Xiaoxia's character all too well. Someone this averse to trouble had taken Doudou in to raise him out of nothing but sympathy?
Regardless of whether Jiu Tian believed him, Qin Xiaoxia had already gone rigid.
With his consciousness restored, some sort of signal seemed to have sounded within his body. By now, the hollow emptiness inside him had been replaced by waves of magic.
You've got to be kidding... Again?
Sweat trickled down his forehead.
If it happened again, he definitely wouldn't live to see dawn.
In his panic, he crushed the apple in his hand.
"Hey, Qin Xiaoxia! That's going too far!"
Seeing the apple he had painstakingly peeled being ruined, Huang Jiutian had barely voiced his complaint when he noticed Qin Xiaoxia's rigid body and sweaty forehead.
"Are you all right...? Doudou, stay here and watch him. I'll get a doctor!"
With that, Huang Jiutian turned and rushed out of the ward.
Doudou huddled fearfully in his chair, watching Qin Xiaoxia with concern, wanting to approach but not daring to.
Fortunately, the worst did not happen.
After a brief, tense wait, the magic did not spiral out of control. Instead, it automatically drew his entire body into that state of exchanging magic with the surrounding environment.
And this time, it did not consume what pitifully little magic he had left.
Instead, something like a concept imbued with pleasure flowed in from the space around him.
"Ahh."
A refreshing sensation, like downing a bottle of ice-cold soda on a scorching summer day, instantly spread through his entire body.
An invisible presence coursed through Qin Xiaoxia, nourishing his previously tormented flesh and fostering a fundamental transformation throughout his body.
Only now, long after his magic had awakened, did the evolution of Qin Xiaoxia's body finally arrive.
In Margeson's academic terminology, Qin Xiaoxia believed he was probably undergoing "elvenization."
Elvenization did not mean turning into an elf, but a creature whose magic had awakened only became a true wielder of magic after undergoing it. It was more an evolutionary rite than a change of race.
This is definitely not elvenization!
Doudou watched Qin Xiaoxia with some alarm. From the very beginning, Qin Xiaoxia's magic had always given him faint heart palpitations, and now Qin Xiaoxia's body was beginning to give him a little of that same feeling.
It could not strictly be classified as fear. It was more like an instinctive trembling on the level of magic.
Though his wish magic was weak, it belonged to a transcendent form of rule-based magic and was exceptionally sensitive by nature.