"Here." Wang Long took a deep breath and pointed through the air at the location of his liver.
Xia Shou nodded. "First, get three nurses to watch from the side. I need their fields of vision to use my ability."
Then Xia Shou said to Su Weiyu, "Weiyu, stand behind me. We'll probably have to operate from the back to remove the kidneys. Watch closely for me. Alice can let me see through your eyes."
Three nurses who had no idea what was happening were pressed into service. They stood timidly to one side, staring in terror at the scalpels floating in midair.
They still seemed unable to see Alice herself, but their spiritual sight had indeed improved. Otherwise, they would have ignored even the anomalous patients and the floating scalpels. Entering the closed domain had probably heightened their perception of the uncanny.
"Don't be afraid. We specialize in handling supernatural incidents. We're government-sanctioned ability users," Wang Long volunteered. Once this incident was over, everyone involved would have to undergo cognitive sanitization anyway, so it didn't matter what he told them now.
As long as it calmed them down, he could even call himself Iron Man and tell them Xia Shou was Spider-Man.
Sure enough, the nurses became much less frightened upon hearing that they were government-sanctioned ability users.
They had no idea what sort of organization that actually was, but even if they had never seen one in real life, they had read about plenty of them in novels.
"So all we have to do now is watch?"
"Yes, just watch. Dr. Wang, please point out where to make the incision," Xia Shou said.
Wang Long pointed through the air at the lower edge of Xia Shou's ribs. "Start here and cut in this direction."
Xia Shou clenched his teeth and had Alice make the incision along the line Wang Long indicated.
Agonizing pain struck, and Xia Shou's body trembled involuntarily. But Alice's other arms held him firmly in place, keeping him from moving, while the hand wielding the scalpel remained swift and steady.
"D-do you need anesthesia?" a nurse asked in a trembling voice.
"Shut up! Just keep watching!" Wang Long snapped. He stared unblinkingly at Xia Shou's open wound. Almost no blood flowed from it; only a few tiny beads seeped out along the incision.
Was this another effect of his ability?
It seemed this insane decision really had been carefully thought through.
"Be bolder. Cut as much as you need! The wound will heal right afterward," Xia Shou said through gritted teeth, wanting only to get it over with.
This was madness. Would it really work? Wang Long clenched his teeth, wiped the cold sweat from his forehead, and pointed at the incision in Xia Shou's abdomen as he gave instructions:
"Here, cut like this... yes. Since there's no bleeding, just cut away the whole section. That'll give us a clearer view. Right, now sever this, and this too. Then just take it out."
Performing this operation on an ordinary person would have taken a long time. They would have needed to consider the size of the incision, the blood loss, and many other unpredictable factors.
With Xia Shou, none of that mattered. He needed no stitches and didn't care how large the wound was. They only had to remove the diseased liver intact. It made Wang Long feel less like a doctor and more like a butcher gutting a pig.
At first, Xia Shou's features were contorted with pain, but his expression soon settled into calm. His mind felt as clear as glass, his thoughts like spots of light projected within it. His precision in controlling his skills reached an unprecedented peak.
He used [Blood Rampage] to control the blood flowing through his vessels, diverting it around the severed arteries and veins and through other intact vessels to maintain a complete circulation.
Apart from the tiny capillaries he had no time to attend to, all his blood followed his instructions, flowing along the designated routes. As a result, his wound barely bled.
It was his first time using Blood Rampage for precision work, and even Xia Shou was astonished by his own fine control.
Now he had four fields of vision before him. Through the eyes of the nurses and Su Weiyu, he could see his own diseased liver. It was a strange, entirely new experience.
When the diseased liver was exposed to everyone's sight, one of the watching nurses couldn't help wrinkling her nose. "Ugh! That's disgusting!"
"Even deliberately tampering with it couldn't make it rot this badly. It's practically a piece of grotesque art." Even Wang Long, with his extensive clinical experience, felt sick.
Then Alice lifted the liver out of his abdominal cavity with her translucent ghostly hands and dropped it into the sealable plastic bag they had prepared.
Once the operation was over, Xia Shou activated [Heal Wounds with Blood]. The blood in his body began rapidly dwindling, while the missing liver regenerated inside his abdomen at a speed visible to the naked eye!
Within seconds, Xia Shou's face turned deathly pale.
But to Wang Long's delight, the yellow tinge of Xia Shou's skin was slowly returning to normal!
"It worked! It really worked!" Wang Long exclaimed.
"Good... Alice, sorry for the trouble, but give me a transfusion, then remove the next one," Xia Shou said. The pain had vanished from his face, leaving an almost numb expression.
The Deep-Sea Ruler in his left eye underwent a slight change.
His deep-dive level had been consumed...
That was the price of using Heal Wounds with Blood.
With the experience of removing the first internal organ behind them, the subsequent operations went smoothly.
Once the diseased lungs, liver, and kidneys had all been removed, Xia Shou immediately felt much better.
He was now certain that this Anomalous Entity's ability worked by infecting those it touched with "imagined symptoms of disease," transforming the associated organs in their bodies into anomalous derivatives.
Once that anomalous derivative was removed, its effects on the host would gradually fade.
"It actually worked... unbelievable. How did you come up with that?" Wang Long braced his hands on his knees and shakily stood up. His legs had gone completely numb from squatting for so long.
The prolonged, intense concentration had left him utterly exhausted, his limbs weak and his clothes soaked in cold sweat.
He was very curious about how Xia Shou had thought of this solution. How could an ordinary person possibly imagine that removing internal organs would neutralize an anomaly's effects?
Xia Shou silently put his clothes back on and explained his reasoning. "It's simple. You said that when the patient with mania coughed himself to death, he coughed his entire lungs out through his mouth.
"That clearly contradicts human anatomy and common sense. There seemed to be something about it that deliberately emphasized the diseased organs.
"Rather than saying this Anomalous Entity kills people with disease, I'd say it kills them with their
"fear of disease. And that final manner of death, so strongly emphasizing the diseased organs, seems intended to reinforce the focal point of that fear.
"So I wondered... could this anomaly be transforming the corresponding organs inside people through contact, then using those transformed organs to exert supernatural power and kill their hosts?
"If that theory held true, removing the transformed organs might eliminate the symptoms. As it turned out, I was right."
"So that's it!"
Understanding dawned on Wang Long. He thought that, as expected of someone from the Investigation Department, Xia Shou's way of thinking was completely different from that of administrative personnel like himself. His mental fortitude was astonishing, too.
But Xia Shou had only shared part of his reasoning. He had deliberately concealed the connection between the Blood God and this incident.
"Director Wang, did you do this?" An unfamiliar voice suddenly came from behind them.
Xia Shou's nerves, which had only just relaxed, tightened again. Alice thoughtfully picked up a mirror and held it in front of him, letting him immediately see what was behind him without turning his head.
Standing behind them was a doctor... a doctor carrying a chainsaw.
Before you continue