Bai Yu suddenly opened his eyes, his pupils still lingering with fading terror and disbelief.
He stared blankly at the pristine white ceiling, but within two seconds, he was quickly snapped back to reality by the rich scent of disinfectant.
It was a familiar environment.
He forced his eyeballs to move, taking in his surroundings. The four sides were enclosed by thick frosted glass; the grayish-green glass surface faintly revealed the light from outside, but the interior was stiflingly dim. Only a bright yet soft lamp hung from the ceiling, casting light straight down and stretching a short, dark shadow beside him.
Next to the hospital bed stood various sophisticated and rare medical instruments. Less than half a meter away, there was even a medical robot assistant, its blue electronic eyes constantly watching him to monitor his latest physical condition at any moment.
Looking at all this familiarity, Bai Yu couldn’t help drawing a sharp breath. This was the special isolation ward where he received dedicated care.
After a moment of daze, he finally adjusted completely, pulling his consciousness away from the harrowing battle and realizing where he actually was.
He had truly returned to the reality of the apocalypse.
Or perhaps everything that had just happened was just like a dream; he had simply fallen asleep and encountered a bizarre, surreal world within his dream.
Yet that dream felt so real.
The ferocity and oppression of those mutated creatures, the current state of the alien world being even crueler than the apocalypse, and the red pupils with which that mysterious man had looked at him all felt genuinely authentic.
It felt as though his body still retained the excitement and exhaustion of having used an ability.
Thinking of this, Bai Yu couldn’t help lifting his hands.
However, the command over his hand movements was much slower than he expected. Even though he had commanded his limbs to raise both hands immediately, his hands rose limply, trembling, bit by bit from his sides. After a few seconds, they were finally fully displayed before him.
Bai Yu was instantly stunned. In the dream, he had possessed a healthy body, able to run, jump, and fight mutated creatures; he had almost completely adapted to such a role.
Yet upon waking from the dream, it turned out that everything was just a fleeting illusion.
After a few seconds, Bai Yu finally came to his senses completely, gradually accepting his original reality. It was just a dream, yet it had almost made him forget just how sickly and frail he truly was.
Even his whole body ached, aching so much that his body and mind felt utterly feeble.
He stared fixedly at his hands. These hands no longer radiated a healthy flush; aside from still being bony and slender, they bore no resemblance to his dream self. Pale and withered, the thin skin clung tightly to the bones, barely supported by protruding veins, perhaps with a negligible layer of subcutaneous fat, though it was hard to make out with the naked eye. His fingernails also bore an unhealthy greenish-gray tint.
After just a careful glance, Bai Yu’s thoughts snapped right back to reality.
A dream was indeed just a dream; he had simply gone mad wanting a healthy body.
Dropping his hands dejectedly, he lay back against the hospital bed as if drained of all strength, a helpless and unsightly ironic smile twisting his cold, indifferent face.
His heart was filled with disappointment.
Sensing that he had woken up, the medical robot’s blue eyes flicked, and it drew closer to Bai Yu, its body emitting a voice with a slightly noticeable AI accent.
“Hello, Bai Yu. You’re finally awake. Do you feel any better?” Medical robot 4408 greeted him routinely.
Hearing this, Bai Yu finally pulled himself out of his own thoughts. Shifting his gaze to 4408, the small white and blue-eyed robot, his brows and eyes carried the fatigue of just waking up, and his pupils mixed with heavy emotions, maintaining that same cold and aloof demeanor.
He stared at 4408 for a few seconds before squeezing out a “Yeah” from his lips.
Whether it was his imagination or not, he actually felt a bit better, at least lacking the intense physical agony he usually experienced. Before that dream, a lingering, unbearable pain radiated from his skin down to his internal organs, and even taking a breath felt like a knife cutting through him, yet his consciousness remained agonizingly clear.
And under those circumstances, whenever his spirits improved even slightly, the doctor in charge of his treatment would administer a sedative, and the research center staff would wheel him in a wheelchair to the adjacent laboratory for experiments.
The special isolation ward he was currently in hadn’t existed before. It was only because of his special medical needs that a small space of less than thirty square meters had been specially carved out within his original laboratory and renovated into a special ward, relying on the top medical team to keep his precarious life hanging by a thread.
Hearing Bai Yu’s reply, 4408 also chimed in with a “Yeah,” and then automatically initiated its scanning mode to conduct a basic physical examination on Bai Yu.
4408 wasn’t a particularly advanced medical robot. For Bai Yu, its primary functions were condition monitoring and providing mental companionship.
A few seconds later, 4408’s voice tone suddenly gained inflection, expressing a joy as vivid as a human’s.
“Congratulations, Bai Yu! Your bodily data seems to have recovered just a tiny bit. Usually, when you wake up, it triggers a mild fit of coughing, and your lungs suffer microscopic damage from the vibration, affecting your respiration and subsequently hindering blood circulation. But today, you didn’t experience that after waking up! Are you finally starting to get better?”
This remark left Bai Yu slightly stunned, followed by a slight frown as the corners of his mouth twitched imperceptibly.
Whatever, a robot’s comfort is comfort nonetheless.
“Really?” he played along and said. Usually, 4408 would also make some harmless jokes to soothe his spirit and encourage him to recuperate well, telling him that one day he would fully recover.
“Mm-hmm,” 4408 said cheerfully, before popping up a holographic projection to compare Bai Yu’s physical data before sleep with his data after waking up, shifting the screen right in front of Bai Yu.
“Look, this is the lung data. It has indeed improved. You only slept for three hours, yet the data changed so noticeably.”
Bai Yu couldn’t help looking at the holographic projection before him, gazing at the lung data mentioned by 4408. There was indeed a change, a relatively obvious change at that, and data from other areas had also shifted, though none were as prominent as the lung data.
Indeed, when he woke up this time, there had been no subtle yet prolonged fits of coughing.
Bai Yu couldn’t help falling into a daze.
In reality, he had only slept for three hours, whereas in the dream, he had spent nearly the entire day fleeing, from suddenly appearing in that town, getting captured, sent through a testing machine, locked up, to escaping. The itinerary was so dense it felt like playing an adventure game.
Yet upon waking from the dream, his body had actually recovered somewhat. It was somewhat surprising and rather unexplainable.
After all, the medication he was currently taking did not include any new drugs, so this recovery couldn’t be attributed to a new treatment.
Could everything in the dream have been real?
After transmigrating into the dream, had he acquired the ability to heal his body?
Thinking along these lines, Bai Yu tried using his willpower to manifest an ability, letting his imagination run wild.
He stared at the medical instrument behind 4408, trying to dismantle it.
Yet after staring for a few seconds, the medical instrument remained completely motionless, suffering no damage whatsoever from his willpower.
Realizing this, Bai Yu fell silent. As expected, abilities were merely settings within a dream; he had simply experienced a dream.
Thinking of this, he lowered his eyelids, a look of regret slipping into his expression.
If only everything had been real, he so desperately needed to recover his previous healthy body.
Not only for that research concerning the future destiny of humanity, but also for the peace and freedom he pursued in his heart.
He did not wish for his still-living soul to be trapped within a gradually withering vessel, marching step by step toward death and oblivion. That was far too painful, and left him with no choice at all.
Bai Yu fell silent for a moment, then struggled to sit up.
At that moment, an exquisite, gorgeously ornate book as thick as a brick, which had been resting on top of the quilt in front of him, suddenly slipped off due to his movement and hung precariously over the edge of the hospital bed.
Bai Yu’s gaze locked onto the book, a trace of surprise surfacing on his pale, lean face.
He remembered that before falling asleep, he had been reading this mysterious book that contained no content whatsoever, staring intently at the passage written on the very last page, letting his imagination run wild and pondering all possible interpretations.
When on earth had he written those words?
He couldn’t even remember the book’s appearance.
Slowly recovering his wits, Bai Yu reached out, pulled the thick book over, placed it in front of him, opened it to the middle, and fixed his dark pupils on the blank pages inside.
At that exact moment, however, a familiar figure flashed across his mind.
Black hair, red pupils, handsome face.
It was unmistakably the mysterious man who had saved him from the level 4 Tiangou right before waking from the dream.
And this figure overlapped with the other black-haired, red-eyed figures he had seen in his previous dreams.
Pausing for a moment, Bai Yu formed a hypothesis: perhaps this time was just like the other dreams, except that this one was exceptionally clear and possessed a strong sense of reality.
Yet was someone with black hair and red eyes, someone so powerful, truly in need of him to save them?
When all was said and done, it was nothing more than a dream.
People always say that before someone is on the verge of death, they dream frequently, blurring the lines between reality and illusion, and under that state of clouded consciousness, they calmly accept death.
Now, he was starting to believe in such a romantic notion.
“Bai Yu, why do you always stare at a book with no words? Is it more interesting than 4408?” 4408 finally couldn’t help asking.
The question pulled Bai Yu back to reality. He tilted his head to look at the seemingly serious 4408, a wave of mischievous humor suddenly welling up inside him as he replied indifferently, “Yeah.”
4408 let out a tiny, gasping cry of dismay, “Oh! 4408 thought it was more interesting! The creator said 4408 is the cutest little robot.”
The remark brought an involuntary smile to Bai Yu’s face, the corners of his mouth curving slightly upward, though they quickly straightened again into that same cold, aloof expression, his brows and eyes exuding casual detachment.
“Yes, 4408 is the cutest little robot.”
4408 chuckled happily. “And Bai Yu is the cutest master.”
Bai Yu was once again on the verge of losing control of his smile, but at that moment, 4408 turned serious again and said, “The guard is coming, and it’s also time for Bai Yu’s lunch. 4408 accompanied Bai Yu very well today, oh! Please remember to give 4408 a five-star review with the guard.”
Hearing this, the corners of Bai Yu’s mouth couldn’t help twitching again. He had no idea who designed this little robot’s AI dialogue system; that customer-service routine had truly been mastered to absolute perfection.
“Oh, fine then.”
4408 cheered, “Yay, then 4408 will also go take a nap for a few minutes, Bai Yu must eat properly, okay.”
“Yeah,” Bai Yu replied in a flat tone, showing very little enthusiasm for the prospect of eating.
Instead, he couldn’t help thinking about eating that bacon, salad, and vegetable sandwich in the dream, the long-lost sensation of chewing was a delicious flavor he could savor for a very long time.
And those wild litchis! Even if they were poisonous, they were deliciously sweet and tasty, whereas the fruit he could eat in reality mostly consisted of fruit puree, and his digestive system had deteriorated to the point where it couldn’t handle rougher foods anymore.
Finished speaking, 4408 rolled itself over to a corner not far away, where its exclusive charging station was located. Its resting time involved going over there to recharge and relax.
Bai Yu tucked the book beneath the quilt. At that moment, the grayish-green glass door emitted the mechanical sound alert indicating the door lock was opening.