John Qin stood up, a corner of his mouth curling up involuntarily.
He reached out to steady himself against the tree, but his legs were trembling.
“Nope, my legs can’t handle this.” He had thought it was just a simple muscle strain, but now it was clearly far worse than expected.
The drawback of overusing his power had given him a harsh wake-up call the very first time it manifested.
With no other choice, John pulled his phone out of his bag and called Gwen, asking her to have his future father-in-law, Henry, come over to pick him up.
Gwen arrived alongside her mother, Alyssa.
The two of them were even more concerned about John’s health than he was.
As soon as they heard his legs were injured, they called Aunt Tina.
Aunt Tina truly had connections; with a single phone call, she arranged a hospital visit.
It was a hospital on the Columbia University campus, and she had even booked an appointment with a renowned neurosurgeon there.
John originally wanted to say that a couple of days’ rest would fix him right up, but unable to withstand the tearful onslaught from Gwen and his mother-in-law, he could only let his pouting father-in-law drive him to the hospital for a checkup first.
John phoned Uncle Ben to let him know—without mentioning the injury, only saying he was at the farm.
Gwen chatted with Uncle Ben on the phone for a couple of sentences before hanging up.
When they drove to the destination and looked up, John was left dumbfounded: NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital on the Columbia University campus.
Now that was impressive.
Endorsed by two prestigious Ivy League institutions—Columbia University and Weill Cornell Medicine—with a top-tier neurosurgery team, a deep, seemingly bottomless reserve of medical talent, and a baseline of 5,000 neurosurgeries a year.
He wondered what kind of status his aunt’s husband held; arranging this so casually was beyond luxurious.
John looked down at his legs and suddenly felt his injuries were a bit too minor.
Bringing a tiny scratch like this to a hospital of this caliber felt almost embarrassing to show the doctors.
Be that as it may, now that he was here, he might as well go through with it.
Just as John was getting ready to step out of the car, the wheelchair arranged by the hospital arrived.
He was wheeled all the way into the building and up to the third floor.
Before even seeing a doctor, he was assigned a private room for inpatient admission.
Wait, John felt they should probably examine him first.
If they kept delaying, he’d be fully healed in two days, making this hospital stay a complete waste.
Fortunately, the hospital had a plan.
A few residents came in first to inspect his injuries.
Then John went dead silent.
His mind was a total mess.
[Superior gene template detected.
Recorded: Immortal’s Touch.
Missing required data: 95%.
Unable to parse, unable to optimize.
Submitting Immortal’s Touch gene template…
Martial Saint receiving…
Insufficient data.
Martial Saint rejected submission.] First of all, John wanted to state for the record that he hadn’t provoked anyone…
His gaze darted back and forth between the residents until he finally spotted a familiar name on one of their badges: Stephen Vincent Strange.
In 2008, Strange, a Columbia University graduate, was working as a resident in neurosurgery at NewYork-Presbyterian?
What kind of obscure knowledge was this?
Who watching a 2012 movie would pay attention to where and what the main character was doing back in 2008?
John hadn’t even known that Strange had graduated from Columbia University.
Besides, what kind of gene template was “Immortal’s Touch”?
He had loaded up on so much knowledge—biology, physics, electromechanics, chemistry, mechanics, relativity…
and that only filled 5% of the progress bar?
Strange was a character template from the magic side, wasn’t he?
Was he unable to escape the destiny of getting smacked around by the Ancient One?
John complained helplessly in his head.
Still, having it was better than nothing.
Now John genuinely suspected that Wenqu had a limited slot capacity.
At least up until now, two gene templates had never appeared simultaneously.
However, once a template was parsed, Wenqu’s processing speed was far faster than he had imagined.
Still, this also made John a little worried.
If that was the case, it meant he had to master the Immortal’s Touch gene template first.
With so much stored knowledge—especially books related to biological genetics, which took top priority—the biology section of his Mind Palace already filled three large bookshelves.
Even with all that, Immortal’s Touch only stood at 5% progress, and there was no specific direction for supplementing the data.
How long would it take to complete the template?
Didn’t that mean once Immortal’s Touch occupied Wenqu’s slot, any other gene templates he encountered couldn’t be copied?
No, no, look on the bright side.
A single slot might just be his own assumption; maybe he was just overthinking things.
John’s inner monologue didn’t interrupt the doctors’ actions.
After examining him, the residents wrote up their respective reports and handed them to an older doctor standing behind them.
The doctor reviewed them one by one, then stepped forward to observe John’s legs and nodded.
“Fortunately, there’s no irreversible nerve damage.
Surgery won’t be necessary, but you still need to rest.
Avoid strenuous exercise for the next two weeks.
It’s best to rely on a wheelchair for getting around.
After two days, you can start doing light walking, and only consider light jogging for rehabilitation after half a month.
Also, I’ll prescribe some medication.
Take the pills and apply the spray according to the doctor’s orders when you get back.” His mother-in-law went to fetch the medicine, dragging along his sulking father-in-law on her way out.
Once everyone left, only John and Gwen remained in the room.
Teary-eyed, Gwen sat beside John, her face full of heartache.
“How did you end up so badly hurt out of nowhere?” John cracked a smile, reached out to wipe away the young girl’s tears, and took Gwen’s hand.
“Don’t cry.
I just didn’t push proper limits during training.
I’ll definitely be careful in the future.
I have to stay safe and sound, if only so you won’t worry.” “You only know how to say sweet things to trick me.” Gwen thought about how John would have to leave for MIT in half a month, which coincided right when his legs would be fully healed.
However, during these two weeks, John could only rest and certainly wouldn’t be able to come to the farm often to hang out with her.
Meanwhile, she had to stay on the farm to help her father, Henry, manage farm affairs and couldn’t leave either.
Not knowing when they would see each other next made her feel downcast.
John could tell roughly what she was thinking just by watching her eyes wander.
“I know martial arts, you know.
My physical constitution is way better than average people’s.
Don’t take the doctor’s grave tone too seriously.
Once I get back and rest properly, I’ll probably be mostly recovered by next week.
When that time comes, I’ll bring Peter to the farm to visit you.
He likes you a lot, and I like you very much, too.” John spoke quite directly.
Gwen stared at him, undoubtedly touched, but still felt a bit sad inside.
“I know, John, I know.
But you’re attending MIT, and my grades aren’t great.
I can’t get in there.
We’ll still have to be apart for a long time.
Honestly, you’re so amazing that I’m a little scared.” John thought for a moment, calculated the dates in his head, and looked at Gwen.
“If I remember correctly, your birthday is in May, right?” Gwen nodded.
“How about this: in May, I’ll come back to New York, and we’ll get engaged?
Consider it my eighteenth birthday gift to you.” At that moment, John felt Gwen’s eyes light up brilliantly.
“You promise?” “Yes, I promise.” On the way back, father-in-law Henry’s face was even sourer.
Ignoring the protests of Gwen and his wife, he dumped John right in front of the Parker home and drove off in a hurry.
John, who had originally wanted to invite him inside for a visit, could only drop his outstretched hand and roll himself home in the wheelchair.
Uncle Ben and Aunt May worriedly pushed John into the house, only calming down after confirming several times that he hadn’t been permanently crippled.
Aunt May angrily swatted John a few times.
Peter was like this, John was like this—neither of her two nephews gave her peace of mind.
Uncle Ben, who had originally intended for John to go off to college on his own, decided to travel with him to Cambridge, taking Aunt May and Peter along for a relaxing trip while they were at it.
John naturally had no objections.
After all the commotion, night had fallen.
John lay in bed, unable to fall asleep no matter what, his mind completely consumed by the Immortal’s Touch gene template.
*High in the heavens lies the White Jade Capital, with twelve towers and five cities.
An immortal touches my crown, tying my hair and granting eternal life.* John knew this poem by Li Bai.
The native Chinese roots deep in his core had caused a bit of culture shock when interacting with his Golden Finger’s translation function.
The previous two gene templates would have been named something like Super Strength or Robustness in Western terms, along with Endurance and Speed.
Yet once translated through Wenqu, they became Divine Strength and Blitz.
Immortal’s Touch carried far too strong a flavor of Chinese xianxia fantasy.
If it truly pertained to internal qi and true elemental energy as John suspected, it would no longer be a matter of genetic science—it would involve cultivation!
But how could a person practice cultivation without a cultivation technique?
Although the allure was immensely strong—after all, it touched upon the energy source problem for his physical strength that he had always wanted to solve—the sheer pressure and dread brought by Immortal’s Touch made John somewhat hesitant to dabble in it.
Obtaining this template from Strange was likely connected to the Supreme Sorcerer’s natural talent.
Kamar-Taj had plenty of disciples, some of whom couldn’t open a portal even after years of meditation and training.
Yet when Strange was dropped onto a snowy mountain by the Ancient One, he managed to open one purely through sheer willpower.
One detail that many people overlooked was that at the time, Strange wasn’t connecting to an extradimensional realm.
In other words, he had no source of magic power, nor had he undergone any relevant meditation training.
Where did he get the magic power to open a portal?
The only explanation was that Strange was truly a born sorcerer whose body was constantly absorbing and storing ambient magic floating in the air, which gave him the foundation to become the Supreme Sorcerer.
That was also why Wenqu had been able to copy Immortal’s Touch from him.
It wasn’t that John was afraid of parsing Immortal’s Touch; he was afraid of Wenqu’s bizarre optimization capability.
What if Immortal’s Touch really optimized a surge of overwhelmingly powerful energy that the Martial Saint converted and crammed into his body?
Without any cultivation technique to guide it, wouldn’t he end up blown into scattered pieces?
At the very least, he needed to find a way to develop internal energy first so his body had an adaptation period and a channel for channeling the energy.
Otherwise, John had no choice but to temporarily set this template aside and make sure to avoid accumulating progress toward Immortal’s Touch whenever he absorbed knowledge.
His current abilities were sufficient to guarantee the Parker family’s safety.
At least before the Battle of New York, John could keep them out of harm’s way.
Thus, putting Immortal’s Touch on hold for now wasn’t an unbearable sacrifice.
Furthermore, given his tight financial situation and Blitz’s impressive performance, John felt he still needed to make a trip to Afghanistan.
Tony Stark was an alumnus of MIT, after all—could John just stand by and let others bully him?
*He is my beloved senior, after all.* As John expected, a week later, his legs had basically recovered, and Aunt May stored the wheelchair up in the attic.
This incident served as a wake-up call for Uncle Ben, who repeatedly admonished John to practice his martial arts steadily and absolutely avoid straying into qi deviation.
John didn’t dare correct him and could only obediently nod and admit his fault.