Lu Rong did not reply to Shen Danshi immediately. A trace of cold, suppressed tension knitted his brows as he straightened up and shifted his gaze to the wound on Fenie’s collarbone, which showed not the slightest sign of healing.
From the moment they first met, Lu Rong had known a great deal of information regarding the Feathered Serpents.
Unlike other beastmen, Feathered Serpents were an exceptionally superior, special breed of beastmen, capable of transforming into full beast form, half-beast form, and human form. Their full beast form was a winged, serpentine creature with a wingspan of eight meters and an adult body length exceeding twenty meters—a majestic beast capable of soaring straight into the clouds.
Currently, Fenie was in his half-beast form: human torso, serpentine tail, and a pair of wings attached to his back, with a body size and wingspan smaller than his full beast form.
Yet, regardless of the form, Feathered Serpents possessed mimicry abilities and a high degree of self-healing capabilities.
By all logic, the wounds on Fenie’s body should not have been showing zero inclination to heal.
Lu Rong pointed at the wound on Fenie’s collarbone. “A Feathered Serpent’s regenerative ability is extremely powerful. Why is there no sign of improvement even inside the medical fluid?” He then looked toward Fenie’s tail. “Under normal circumstances, even with an injured tail, he shouldn’t be unable to recover.”
Shen Danshi fell silent, lowering her gaze to study the Feathered Serpent, who remained completely unresponsive within the medical fluid.
“X01,” Lu Rong called out.
X01 understood. One of his eight mechanical tentacles lifted, its tip transforming into a scanning port as it began scanning outward from the severed stump of Fenie’s tail. His analytical functions were far superior to medical optics in this regard, yielding much more precise results. He quickly generated a detailed breakdown chart, transmitting it simultaneously to the terminals of both Shen Danshi and Lu Rong.
Shen Danshi studied the data quietly and earnestly for a moment. “I think I understand. This is a very specialized processing technique. It utilizes the Feathered Serpent’s self-healing traits to freeze his life within this hibernation phase. This bionic tail was most likely forced onto him—possibly even ripped away raw and installed on the spot—in order to activate his hibernation characteristics.”
Recalling the black market’s special handling of beastmen mentioned by Lucas, Lu Rong gradually began to put the pieces together.
Shen Danshi explained, “A Feathered Serpent’s tail is an essential weapon for attack, a tool for courtship, and a fatal weakness. Back in their early evolution, an unassisted Feathered Serpent with a severed tail would die very quickly.”
“The only solution was to enter a dormant state in a safe place to repair the tail section. Because they would die if they didn’t hibernate, evolution eventually ensured that whenever any such crisis occurred and their tail was severed, the body would automatically enter hibernation, prioritizing the repair of the tail wound.”
“The person who created this tail exploited this exact physiological trait of the Feathered Serpent: they stripped away the flesh and skin of the tail section while leaving the bone and nerves behind, keeping the Feathered Serpent’s body in a perpetual state of hibernation and repair. However, because the prosthetic functions like a cage, it ends up restricting the tail’s recovery, leaving him stuck in a half-dead, hibernating limbo.”
Shen Danshi paused to weigh her phrasing, hoping to sound a bit more refined, though she ultimately failed. “This kind of method is truly something only those who create ‘Everlasting Flowers’ would use: cruel and vicious.”
Lu Rong continued to gaze fixedly at Fenie, never blinking. “So, is there truly no hope at all?”
As he asked the question, a hollow emptiness opened up inside him. Perhaps it was because Fenie was the first person he had ever met in this universe, and he had paid attention to Fenie for a very long time; or perhaps it was because Fenie had once saved his life, and he simply did not wish to see Fenie die like this.
He had seen Fenie alive and vibrant—fierce, decisive, and merciless—making it somewhat impossible for him to imagine Fenie devoid of life.
Shen Danshi frowned in thought. After a moment, she looked up at him. “Well, if we rule out euthanasia, then let’s formulate a treatment plan.”
Lu Rong smiled, looking as though a heavy burden had been lifted from his shoulders. “Tell me whenever you need anything.”
Shen Danshi lowered her head to examine the analysis report generated by X01 once more. “Before that, I still need to tell you: right now, the medical fluid’s effects on him are negligible. That only happens to people who are nearing death, so even with treatment, the odds aren’t high. The likely outcome is that he will either experience natural regression during treatment, or if he is saved, he will suffer a certain degree of brain damage. You cannot pin too much hope on this treatment. But as long as you don’t give up, I will cooperate with all my might.”
Lu Rong stared unblinkingly at Fenie. “I won’t give up. We have to try.”
“Alright.” Shen Danshi circled two spots on the analysis report. “There is an anti-tamper structure here that requires an engineer to inspect. The interconnected structure beside it looks a bit like some sort of sustained-release drug delivery device. His wounds are healing so slowly even inside the medical fluid; I suspect this might be a sustained-release medication interfering with the treatment.”
Lu Rong crooked a finger at X01. The ‘engineer’ X01 automatically began a finer, more detailed scan and inspection of Fenie’s tail.
Putting the report away, Shen Danshi said, “Given his current condition, I can offer two treatment plans. The first is more conservative: increase the dosage of the medical fluid. If the treatment takes effect and he builds up a certain level of tolerance, we can proceed to the next step. The second is more aggressive: first remove the bionic prosthesis on the tail to activate the Feathered Serpent’s own self-healing capabilities. If the second option succeeds, his prognosis will be very optimistic.”
After careful deliberation, Lu Rong said, “Let’s do both. Increase the treatment dosage, and at the same time, I’ll figure out a way to remove the prosthesis.”
Upon hearing this, Shen Danshi smiled helplessly. “I might have some rather bad news.”
Wearing rubber gloves, she lifted Fenie’s tail, pressed it against the joint interface, wiggled the connection point slightly, and pointed it out to Lu Rong. “The designs for these ‘Everlasting Flowers’ are all quite vicious. Joints like this are usually locked tight, and the anti-tamper mechanism likely extends far beyond just the one we can see right now. Detaching it directly is practically impossible. If you want to remove the prosthesis quickly, the only way is to sever the whole section cleanly from a point higher up.”
After finishing, Shen Danshi glanced at Fenie’s real-time vital signs. “The problem is that given his current state, he probably can’t withstand such a procedure. I suggest we hold off for now, keep him under conservative treatment inside the medical chamber for a while, and reevaluate the situation later.”
Lu Rong gripped the stiff tail tip of Fenie’s prosthetic limb, kneading it slightly. “It’s not necessarily impossible to take apart. I’ll figure out a way around this part; you just go ahead and start him on Plan A.” He tapped his knuckles against X01’s metallic torso. “I want a detailed 3D model and a component breakdown of the entire prosthesis.”
The signal light on top of X01’s head flashed to indicate he understood.
Shen Danshi said no more and set about compounding a higher-concentration batch of medical fluid.
X01 spent three standard cosmic days reconstructing the prosthesis on Fenie’s tail. Just as Shen Danshi had described, the structure of the prosthesis was rigorous and without blind spots; every single interface was mutually dependent, meaning that tampering with even a single port would trigger a chain reaction, causing the massive store of drugs contained within the prosthesis to release instantaneously.
As for the medication stored inside the delivery device, Shen Danshi had already deduced its specific composition through blood testing: it was a fast-acting agent that antagonized the Feathered Serpent’s regenerative genes, linked directly to a dismantling alarm. The moment anyone attempted to dismantle the prosthesis, it would instantly release all of its drugs, and the toxic, hyper-dosed load would destroy the body’s regenerative capacity and cause instant death.
The good news was that the designer of all this had perhaps never anticipated that one day someone would insist on tearing this prosthesis apart, nor had they imagined that someone would want to save a dying Feathered Serpent. Although the medication circulating in his blood lacked an antidote, its molecules were not hidden; it could be filtered out through hemodialysis.
By the second day, a dialysis machine had been installed in the treatment room. Shen Danshi adjusted the composition of the medical fluid to accelerate metabolism and promote the excretion of the existing drugs from Fenie’s body.
The bad news was that the original design intent of the “Everlasting Flower” was to preserve beastman specimens for hundreds or thousands of years. The mechanism controlling the continuous release of the inhibitory drug was concentration-regulated, holding enough medication inside the delivery device to last for at least 500 years. If left to its original release rate, they would have to wait half a millennium before taking the next step in treatment.
Fortunately, the drug delivery device possessed a flaw that wasn’t quite a defect: as a concentration-regulated delivery system, it constantly monitored the drug concentration in the bloodstream. The moment it detected that the drug concentration had dropped below the maintenance threshold, it would release a massive dose in an attempt to maintain the effective level.
Based on this principle, Lu Rong designed a spoofing device. The drug concentration within this device underwent molecular processing, tricking the monitoring system into constantly registering the drug concentration as zero. As long as it was installed at the point where the delivery device fed into the bloodstream, it would trick the delivery device’s monitors into signaling an over-depleted concentration, causing it to continuously discharge more medication.
Armed with this device, clearing out all the medication would take only a month. Once the drugs were entirely flushed out, dismantling the prosthesis would become much safer.
After the spoofing device was implanted into Fenie’s body, the treatment officially entered its first stage, and the medical routine stabilized. Shen Danshi no longer stayed in the treatment room around the clock, shifting instead to fixed morning and evening rounds.
Lu Rong, however, remained in the ward every day. Because stripping away the prosthesis required extensive preparatory work—and he did not want to leak the news of Fenie’s presence here—he had to handle everything personally. For instance, before formally removing the prosthesis, he had to meticulously peel away the scales and bionic skin adhering to the outside of the prosthesis, bit by bit, to expose its metallic core.
Dressed in a white medical uniform provided by Shen Danshi, wearing protective goggles and isolation gloves, Lu Rong lifted Fenie’s tail out of the medical fluid. He began working from the tail tip upward. X01’s claws converged into a spotlight beam focused upon Fenie’s body, while Lu Rong used tweezers and pliers to peel away the scales and synthetic skin piece by piece.
X01: “These scales don’t look fake.”
Lu Rong dropped a scale into the tray beside him, his eyes lingering on its sharp lower edge. “They should be his own.”
“The person who did this… that ‘Wanderer,'” X01 stammered slightly. “Why would he do such a thing? If he wanted to interrogate him for the whereabouts of the Star Core, doing this makes no sense.”
Lu Rong’s movements as he peeled off the bionic skin were very slow. He stripped away a piece and tossed it into the yellow medical waste bin nearby. “An insignificant person. What he thinks doesn’t matter.” He glanced at the water line of the medical fluid. “Replenish some medical fluid for him.”
Four limbs sprouted from X01’s main body, coalescing into a single claw that grabbed a replacement container of medical fluid from nearby and poured it into the mixing chamber beside the treatment pod.
The capacity of this mixing chamber was quite large; logically speaking, once filled, it should have lasted a long time. However, because the medical fluid Fenie used was freshly compounded by Shen Danshi every day, it had to be replenished in small doses, refilled whenever it ran out.
After pouring the medical fluid, X01 flew to Lu Rong’s side and tapped Lu Rong’s shoulder with a metallic claw. “Don’t you think this scene looks a lot like when you two first met? You were adding medical fluid for him back then, too, and then you guys…”
Lu Rong stopped what he was doing, resting a hand on his knee as he looked up. “We… what?”
Sensing a hint of dangerous aura, X01 clamped his mouth shut, instantly turning his claw back into four legs and scuttling back to his main body.
Lu Rong appeared calm and unperturbed, continuing with his task as if nothing had happened. In reality, however, his thoughts paused for a few moments. A few minutes later, collecting his thoughts, he knocked on X01’s flat little head with his knuckles, flicking it so hard that X01 tilted sideways.
“Should I cut your power supply?”
X01 raised an unengaged leg to cover his eyes, putting on a crying act. Unfortunately, the body he had designed for himself had nothing to do with cuteness; his eight eyes leaking digital tears looked like a row of commas hovering above his head, failing entirely to evoke any pity.
Lu Rong grabbed a treatment towel and tossed it over X01’s head, out of sight and out of mind.
Yet, he could not deny that he had indeed been stirred by X01 into recalling those memories. Seemingly as weightless as falling feathers, these memories nonetheless wove a massive loop that snared him, leaving him uncertain to this day how to evaluate his initial encounter with Fenie.
Back then, it felt as though he had suddenly tumbled into a giant blender, encountering a bizarre, kaleidoscopic world, struck by a cascade of new problems before he even had time to grieve his losses.
The very first “problem” he encountered had been Fenie himself, an utterly intractable problem who wouldn’t listen to reason at all.
Fortunately, he was accustomed to solving problems.