The Second Key

As Xia Shou was thinking, a sharp pain tore through his left eye without warning.

Another scalpel flew at him, burying itself deep in his eye socket.

The primal fear of losing an organ, combined with the pain signals from the nerves behind his eye, left Xia Shou almost incapable of adjusting his tactics. Still, the direction the scalpel had come from told him roughly where his enemy was.

And he was certain the Ear Doctor had not noticed the strands of blood drifting through the air!

The blood threads extending from his fingertips kept transmitting an unnatural tugging sensation as they were pulled.

He had pinpointed the Ear Doctor's location. Now he had a chance to touch his opponent, even if he would only get one!

Xia Shou gently patted Su Weiyu, signaling for her to get off his back.

Su Weiyu froze for a brief moment, then immediately understood what Xia Shou meant. She slipped silently off his back, her feet making almost no sound as they touched the floor, though such caution was virtually meaningless against the Ear Doctor's supernatural hearing.

Freed of the extra weight, Xia Shou gradually tensed and relaxed the muscles in his thighs and waist, silently loosening up to get his body into the best possible condition.

Even so, he knew he was no athlete.

Without his skills bolstering him, he was just an ordinary high school student who could barely scrape a passing grade on the thousand-meter run.

The next second, Xia Shou pushed off with both feet and lunged toward his enemy!

The chaotic tremors traveling through the blood threads at his fingertips told him that the Ear Doctor had started moving at the same time!

Although he did not know exactly which direction his opponent was moving in, Xia Shou stretched his hand out as far as he could, reaching ahead.

...His hand caught nothing but air.

He had missed.

Then an agonizing pain ripped through his side as a powerful kick slammed into his ribs.

Yet a smile spread across Xia Shou's face.

"I thought I'd failed, but you actually attacked me yourself!" Xia Shou said loudly, though he could no longer hear his own voice now that he was deaf.

None of that mattered, however, because his skill had successfully activated in that instant of contact.

[Shared Misery]!

This skill, obtained by devouring an anomalous patient, allowed him to transfer his body's negative sensations to anyone he touched.

The effect remained active throughout contact, but once contact broke, it could only last another thirty seconds.

At that moment, Xia Shou's discomfort came mainly from three sources.

A scalpel had pierced his throat. To heal that fatal wound, he had used [Heal Wounds with Blood], consuming some of his blood. The blood strands dispersed through the air had also left him with symptoms of anemia.

On top of that, he had deliberately left his pierced eyeball unhealed. His opponent would experience that excruciating pain as though it were his own!

Most importantly, he had deliberately deafened himself before making his move.

Now he had neutralized the Ear Doctor's greatest advantage: his superhuman hearing!

Although their brief contact had ended almost immediately, [Shared Misery] would last far longer than thirty seconds, because he had activated [Everlasting Wound] at the same time.

For ten minutes, any wounds he inflicted would be unable to heal at all.

Although his own wounds would also remain unable to heal as long as his opponent lived, that hardly mattered compared with the damage he had inflicted on his enemy!

Before using this skill, Xia Shou had not been sure whether the negative sensations he transferred would count as wounds.

But now, he was certain he could no longer consume blood to heal his eye.

That meant [Everlasting Wound] had activated successfully, and the negative effects caused by Shared Misery counted as "wounds" too!

"Su Weiyu, he can't hear now either! Kill him!" Xia Shou shouted.

Pain! Indescribable pain!

The negative sensations brought on by Shared Misery doubled. The pain drove Xia Shou to yank the scalpel out of his eye socket and gouge out the ruined eyeball inside.

Yet the pain did not diminish. Waves of agony kept surging from the eyeball that was no longer there.

Clearly, the price of Shared Misery could not be circumvented by the trick of replacing an old injury with a new one.

By then, Xia Shou was no longer capable of fighting. Every ounce of his mental strength went into battling his physical agony.

After an unknown amount of time, the pain in his eye suddenly eased.

Xia Shou immediately consumed blood to heal his eye and ears.

"Is he dead?"

"He's dead! I killed him! How are you?"

Su Weiyu took his hand and draped his arm over her shoulder, then wrapped her other arm around his back and helped him up from the floor.

"And you said you were fine! You were screaming so badly just now!" Su Weiyu's voice trembled with anxiety.

"Was I?" Xia Shou asked, puzzled.

Oh, I almost forgot. I was deaf just now, so I couldn't hear how badly I was screaming.

"It's nothing. I was just paying the price for my ability. Nothing actually happened to me." Xia Shou forced a smile, but as he spoke, he noticed his voice growing quieter again.

...He was deaf again.

The next second, the hand that had been gripping his tightly let go.

A little while later, two cold keys were pressed into his palm.

Xia Shou's sight returned, along with his hearing. For a brief moment, he was healthy again.

But Su Weiyu, standing before him, had become deaf and mute. She stood there in a daze, her eyes unfocused and her face full of worry.

"Is this the key to the ear department?"

Xia Shou rubbed the two intricately shaped keys in his palm, but an even greater despair engulfed his heart.

They still had a long way to go before escaping the domain. They would have to obtain three more keys of the same level.

Now, only one of them could ever hear the other's voice at a time. Unless the other could read lips, communicating would become extremely difficult.

Xia Shou returned the Ophthalmology Key to Su Weiyu, while using Alice to gain access to Su Weiyu's field of vision.

Now he could see too, but only what Su Weiyu saw. That meant he was looking at his own face, which felt rather like looking into a mirror.

Xia Shou crouched down and, using the view through Alice's eyes as a guide, began writing on the floor in blood... Since they could not communicate by speaking, they would have to use writing instead.

[We don't have any information about the next doctor, but judging from the first two doctors, the next doctor should have some kind of disguise involving the corresponding

body part.

Since the one responsible for eyes can make people unable to see, and the one responsible for ears can make people unable to hear, the ones responsible for hands and feet might be impossible to touch or kick. But that's only a guess. We'll have to adapt as we go.] Xia Shou wrote on the floor.

Su Weiyu nodded and wrote beside him: [Do you remember what Liu Guangyao said at the end?]