World-ending Level

"Oh, right," she added. "This is a secret. Otherwise, if I ran into an enemy, a single healing spell would leave me in trouble."

"Then can you find out what illness it is?" Su Ming asked.

"There's a way to find out." White Bone reached out and activated a water-element spell formation to examine her body.

"Viral and bacterial infections." She sighed softly and deployed another spell formation around herself. Then her face suddenly turned deathly pale!

The runic halos on White Bone's body turned a multitude of colors, concentrating on her lungs, liver, respiratory tract, throat, and heart.

Su Ming didn't understand the spell, but that didn't stop him from guessing the result. "You've been infected with a lot of different kinds?"

"Why is this happening?" Deep bewilderment showed on the girl's weak face. "I've never been infected with so many at once, and they're all unknown types... The virus in my lungs has strong light resistance-last time, I was only infected with two kinds that were nowhere near this serious, and I nearly died!"

"What will happen to you if this body dies?" Su Ming asked.

"The White Bone Fortress will still exist, and you'll still be able to control it, but my soul will dissipate." White Bone closed her eyes as she spoke. "I can't escape this time. From now on, you'll have to rely on yourself. Once I've rested a little, there are many things I need to tell you."

Su Ming clenched his fists and stepped forward.

"Don't come near me. It's contagious." White Bone's consciousness was beginning to fade, but she still warned him.

"I have another way. Are our bodies very different?" Su Ming gripped the girl's shoulders and shook her, bringing her back to her senses a little.

"They have the same fundamental composition." White Bone stared blankly for a moment before answering. "Within the scope of what I can examine, I can't find any differences."

"All right, then. Rest easy," Su Ming said. "I already know what's going on. I passed these viruses on to you, and I have a way to save you."

"...So that's what happened. An invasion of microorganisms from another world-I was careless."

Su Ming stopped the Zhiyuan and let it drift on the ocean. He found the medicine the truck driver had been carrying: a small box of amoxicillin and ibuprofen.

It certainly wasn't enough, but it could ease White Bone's symptoms and slow the spread of the infection.

Su Ming had read plenty of transmigration novels and imagined all sorts of scenarios. But he had never imagined that, just days after arriving in another world, he would be one step away from destroying it!

Su Ming himself was healthy, but he carried various viruses from Earth. His immune system kept them at bay, preventing them from making him sick, and some even coexisted with him.

But it was different for the humans of this world. A single tiny particle carried by Su Ming was an entirely new pathogen here, one they had no resistance to. Any one of them could easily cause a plague.

In particular, the light-resistant pneumonia virus in White Bone's lungs spread at a disaster-class speed.

The only stroke of luck was that he had stayed inside the White Bone Fortress the whole time, gone nowhere else, and had no contact with anyone other than White Bone. Aside from two trips to the top of the tower, he spent his time in the main hall, where White Bone wouldn't even let him open a window, citing safety.

Everyone in this world ought to build a shrine to White Bone while she was still alive!

When Su Ming returned to the room with the medicine and water, the girl was already fast asleep. He shook her for a long time, but she wouldn't wake, so he could only crush the medicine into a paste and force it into her mouth.

But unsurprisingly, he failed. The girl woke up choking as he handled her.

White Bone opened her eyes blearily, then started to close them again.

This time, Su Ming seized the chance and put a fresh batch of powdered medicine into her mouth. After much effort, he managed to persuade her to swallow it.

Su Ming breathed out. He filled his insulated cup with warm water and placed it beside the girl's pillow. He took out his phone and checked it. It was four in the afternoon on Earth.

Time to get to work!

He connected to Little Spiky Head, and an Earth-style scene loaded into view.

Everything in the basement was as usual. There was no sign that anyone had been near Little Spiky Head, so it seemed he had successfully shaken off the police earlier.

It was evening here, and the sky wasn't completely dark yet, so it wasn't really a good time to go out. In particular, Su Ming could more or less guess that the wanted notice for him and Little Spiky Head had already been sent to the local police stations.

After all, he'd been important enough for them to send a sniper after him. He had to keep that in mind.

Su Ming had other clothes in his backpack. He took them out and changed into them, replacing his mask as well. He threw away his hat and switched to a scarf, and replaced his sunglasses with non-prescription glasses. The glasses couldn't hide the skull's eye sockets, but in the dark, they would be enough as long as no one got too close. After all, wearing sunglasses in the evening was far too suspicious.

He wrapped the scarf around his head, then pulled it down to cover most of Little Spiky Head's forehead and went out.

The area was remote, with very few people around. He found his motorcycle, took off the license plate, and found a place to bury it.

By fugitive standards, I should be pretty hard to catch, right? Su Ming silently mocked himself.

First, he needed to find somewhere to get online. It was the most convenient channel for information. He rode slowly along the way, scanning his surroundings with Spirit Vision. Before long, he spotted a Wi-Fi password on the wall of a restaurant.

He parked behind the restaurant, then crouched by the roadside and bent over his phone, pretending to be waiting for someone.

He found the relevant news with barely any effort. According to an official release, police had discovered a dismembered body near the scene of a natural gas transport truck explosion on the XX Expressway. The deceased had been identified as a nineteen-year-old woman surnamed Miao.

The next paragraph said that Su Ming of the XX Machinery Factory was a prime suspect. Anyone who knew his whereabouts was asked to contact Officer XXXX, and a reward of XXX yuan would be given for information verified as genuine and useful.

The press release didn't say why Su Ming was a suspect. He logged onto the city forum for the area where the machinery factory was located and, sure enough, found several long threads. He looked specifically for posts with a lot of text and soon got a fairly good picture of what had happened.

While inspecting a small grove, the investigators looking into the natural gas explosion had unexpectedly discovered a dismembered body with no bones. The murdered girl was named Miao Xin, and she had gone missing two months earlier.

At the same time, the machinery factory had reported to the police that its employee Su Ming was missing and his dormitory room had been robbed. Although he was supposed to have been on the truck transporting materials, the driver's body had been found at the scene, but his had not. Expressway surveillance showed that he had indeed entered the expressway in the truck and passed a road surveillance camera several kilometers farther along with it.

The investigators had therefore concluded that Su Ming had gotten out nearby before the explosion.

In addition, there were many inexplicable phenomena at the scene of the natural gas transport truck explosion, and a preliminary assessment suggested it might have been caused by human action. The people sharing this information didn't know why the investigators thought so, either.

But Su Ming had an idea.

When Little Spiky Head was hiding in the factory's utility room, Su Ming had used the Damage Transfer Technique, shattering one of its shoulder blades. Miao Xin's remaining bones naturally contained her DNA. The machinery factory was less than twenty kilometers from where the dismembered body had been found, and Su Ming lived alone in a dormitory room after work, giving him ample opportunity to commit the crime.

And so, Su Ming had become a prime murder suspect!