The Price

When his consciousness left his body, Lu Yan did not feel the lightness of returning. Instead, he was struck by a piercing pain, as if he had been torn apart by a thousand knives and then roughly stitched back together.

This pain was not ordinary physical suffering, but rather a pain that came from the very marrow and the depths of the soul, so intense that one almost wished only to faint as soon as possible and be freed from it.

"A-Yan--! A-Yan, what's wrong!"

I could almost hear Aemeath's anxious cries.

But he eventually lost consciousness completely.

A late night in early summer.

The soft moonlight filtered through the thin curtains and fell gently on the large double bed.

However, this tranquility was shattered by a chilling tearing sound and the pungent smell of blood.

Aemeath was awakened by a warm, sticky sensation.

She groggily snuggled closer to Lu Yan, instinctively wanting to hug his broad back, but instead touched something wet and slippery.

"A-Yan?"

She called out softly, her voice still nasal from just waking up.

There was no response, only the extremely heavy, painful breathing of the man beside her, and the "drip-drip" sound of some liquid falling onto the wooden floor.

An ominous premonition instantly gripped Aemeath's heart.

She sat up abruptly and snapped the bedside lamp on.

The moment the dim light came on, Aemeath's pupils contracted to their maximum size, and it felt as if a wad of wet cotton was stuffed into her throat, rendering her unable to utter a sound.

Blood.

It was all blood.

The once pristine white sheets and the blankets where the two had slept in each other's arms were now completely soaked in large, shocking patches of dark red.

Lu Yan was curled up in pain at that moment.

What terrified Aemeath even more were the wounds on his body.

It wasn't caused by a sharp object cutting him or a blunt object hitting him; his skin was covered with terrifying, fine, spiderweb-like cracks.

Blood was gushing uncontrollably from the cracks.

"A-Yan--! A-Yan, what's wrong!"

Aemeath finally let out a piercing cry.

Her hands trembled as she hovered in mid-air, wanting to touch him but afraid to, lest she accidentally worsen his injuries.

"How could this happen... She was perfectly fine just now..." Aemeath's tears flowed uncontrollably. She frantically grabbed her phone from the bedside table and dialed the emergency number with her blood-stained, slippery fingers, which were almost too wet to press the numbers accurately.

"Ambulance! Hurry! There's someone bleeding heavily here! Please, hurry!"

Her voice was filled with heartbreaking despair and pleading.

After hanging up the phone, watching Lu Yan's increasingly weak breathing and the continuous flow of blood, Aemeath knew that at this rate of bleeding, he definitely wouldn't make it to the ambulance.

"Everything will be alright, A-Yan, I won't let anything happen to you..."

Aemeath bit her lower lip, forcing herself to calm down.

Without hesitation, she pressed her blood-stained hands firmly against Lu Yan's cracked chest.

The next second, the iconic heart-shaped Tacit Mark on her chest burst forth with a dazzling and warm pink light.

She sensed the dissipating Frequency within Lu Yan's body.

Without any hesitation, she pressed her hands firmly against Lu Yan's chest, closed her eyes, and desperately urged the Frequency within her body.

A pale pink light illuminated the dark bedroom.

She tried to fill the void in his battered body with her own Frequency.

A miracle happened. The moment her Frequency flowed into Lu Yan's body, there was no rejection whatsoever!

That shared Frequency, seemingly belonging to each other from the same source, acted like the most potent adhesive, briefly stabilizing the frantically tearing force within Lu Yan's body.

"It works... Great, it works..."

Aemeath, tears streaming down her face, relentlessly poured out all her strength.

Only when the sharp siren of an ambulance reached them in the distance did the cracks on Lu Yan's body finally stop expanding under Aemeath's relentless Frequency of repair. The overflowing golden light was also forcibly suppressed back into his body, though blood stained half the bed.

Outside the emergency room, the corridor lights were blindingly white and utterly cold.

Aemeath sat blankly on the bench.

She was still wearing that pink nightgown, the upper part of which was stained dark brown with Lu Yan's blood, clinging tightly to her fair skin.

Her hands, arms, and even cheeks were stained with dried blood.

The nurse tried to wipe her down with a warm towel and even brought her a coat to put on her, but she didn't react at all.

Her gaze was fixed on the tightly closed emergency room door and the "Operating" indicator light above it, which was shining with a glaring red light.

Time here seems to be stretched out into countless long centuries.

For Aemeath, these few hours of waiting were even more unbearable than the years she spent searching for Lu Yan.

At that time, she still had hope of surviving by relying on her memories and the Frequency in the amulet.

But now, having tasted the warmth of his embrace and grown accustomed to waking up in his arms every morning, she would truly go crazy if she lost him again.

Aemeath crossed her arms tightly in front of her chest in a prayerful gesture, her nails digging deep into her flesh, yet she felt no pain.

"Bite--"

After an unknown amount of time, the red light that seemed destined to never go out finally turned green.

The emergency room doors slid open to both sides.

Aemeath jumped up from the bench as if she had been electrocuted and rushed over.

Several nurses pushed a mobile hospital bed out.

Lu Yan lay there quietly, wearing an oxygen mask and covered in tubes from various monitoring instruments. His face was as pale as a translucent sheet of paper.

But the faint yet steady rise and fall of his chest told Aemeath: he was still alive.

"A-Yan..." Aemeath rushed to the bedside, her hands trembling as she tried to hold his, but afraid of hurting him, she could only keep a little distance and gaze at his face.

"Family members, please step aside. The patient's vital signs are extremely fragile and they need to be transferred to the intensive care unit immediately for 24-hour continuous observation."

The nurse quietly but firmly separated Aemeath.

Aemeath didn't dare to stop him, and could only follow closely beside the trolley until she watched Lu Yan being pushed through the even heavier ICU door.

Just then, a female doctor in her thirties, wearing a white coat and glasses, with a stern face but also looking somewhat tired, walked out of the emergency room.

She took off her blood-stained medical mask, let out a long breath, and looked at the girl in front of her, who was covered in blood and looked as if most of her soul had been taken away. A trace of pity flashed in her eyes.

"You're Lu Yan's family member, Aemeath, right?"

Doctor Yu walked up to Aemeath, her voice filled with barely concealed doubt.

"Yes, I'm his family." Aemeath turned around quickly, looking at Doctor Yu as if she had grasped at a lifeline. "Doctor Yu, how is A-Yan? Is he out of danger?"

Doctor Yu nodded, but her brow remained furrowed. "His life has been saved, the bleeding has stopped, but his condition is still very dangerous. He needs to be transferred to the intensive care unit immediately for 24-hour observation."

Upon hearing the words "her life is saved," Aemeath's tense nerves relaxed abruptly, and she almost collapsed to the ground.

"Thank you... thank you so much..."

Doctor Yu didn't leave immediately. She frowned slightly, glanced at the emergency record in her hand, and spoke with deep doubt:

"Family member, there's something I need to understand clearly. What exactly happened to this patient before they were brought here?"

Aemeath paused, then looked up, somewhat bewildered. "I don't know, we were just sleeping, and suddenly he started bleeding..."

That's strange.

Doctor Yu's brow furrowed even more. She adjusted her glasses, lowered her voice, and said with the rigor and confusion of a professional doctor, "During the resuscitation, I carefully examined his wound."

These lacerations are very strange; there are absolutely no signs of cutting with a sharp object or being struck with a blunt object.

"Doctor Yu paused, looked directly at Aemeath, and said, word by word:"

"His wound looked like it had split open from the inside."

"From subcutaneous tissue to muscle fibers, and even at the microscopic cellular level, large-scale, irregular breakdowns have occurred."

"It was as if... his body was instantly torn apart from the inside by a terrifying force far exceeding his own limits."

"In all my years of medical practice, I've never seen anything so bizarre. It was like a bomb exploding inside his body."

Doctor Yu's words were like a thunderclap from a clear sky, exploding loudly in Aemeath's ears.

"Cracked from the inside."

"Endure terrifying power."

"Torn apart from the inside."

Aemeath's pupils contracted sharply.

She felt as if she had returned to that dimly lit training pod.

She recalled the image of A-Yan in the cockpit, his body covered in cracks, shining like shattered porcelain, before finally turning into dust before her eyes.

That was a nightmare she would never forget.

Aemeath stood there, stunned, tears streaming silently down her face like a burst dam.

Doctor Yu looked at the girl who suddenly started crying. Although she didn't know what the girl had remembered, the deep despair and self-blame she felt were undeniable.

As a doctor, she was used to seeing life and death, and she also knew that some things involved the patient's privacy, so she didn't ask any more questions.

"No matter what, as long as you're alive, there's hope. The next few days are crucial, so you need to be mentally prepared."

Doctor Yu gently patted Aemeath's shoulder, sighed, and turned to arrange the subsequent room transfer.

The next three days were the longest and darkest three days of Aemeath's life.

Lu Yan was in the ICU, his vital signs barely maintained by machines.

Aemeath was kept outside the glass window, and she stayed there without leaving for a moment, even while eating, her eyes fixed on the wavy lines of the instruments.

Her heart would clench violently at the slightest fluctuation in her heart rate.

On the fourth day, Lu Yan's vital signs finally stabilized, and he was transferred to a private VIP ward.

In the days that followed, Aemeath stayed by her bedside day and night.

Every day, she would carefully wipe his uninjured skin with a warm towel, and tell him about their past moments over and over again, afraid that he would lose his way home during his long coma.