Chapter 110: The Sea of Wandering 3
The drive from the headquarters building to Guanxing Tower usually took about half an hour, but with downtown congestion, by the time the two arrived home, the sky had completely darkened. Zhuang Ningyu changed into slippers and headed straight for the bathroom, but Yi Ke reached out to stop him, asking worriedly, “Headache?”
Not hurting. Zhuang Ningyu shook his head, feeling puzzled himself. The medical report clearly stated that “emotional stress can induce or aggravate symptoms of pericranial neuralgia.” This afternoon, when the unmanned sedan was about to rush into dozens of people, his emotional stress was definitely maxed out. His eardrums had swelled, his heart beat so frantically it almost burst from his chest, blood rushed to his brain, and every nerve was taut. Logically speaking, after the danger passed, his body should have quickly felt fine, pricking pain. Yet surprisingly, he was fine throughout.
Yi Ke leaned in to observe him closely and checked his forehead temperature. Only after confirming everything was normal did he let him into the bathroom. The sound of water splashing started. The shower’s constant temperature, usually just right, now felt slightly scalding on his skin. Zhuang Ningyu hissed lightly and took two steps back, only then discovering quite a few electrical burns on his body. Although not severe, the large red marks connected together still looked somewhat shocking.
He lowered the water temperature to the minimum to cool the burns but didn’t shower for too long. If he exceeded his usual shower time, someone would knock on the door the next moment… In fact, even if he didn’t exceed it today, there would be a knock. Five minutes later, Yi Ke, who had finished his shower, leaned against the bathroom door and yelled, “Wifey, I’m coming in?”
Zhuang Ningyu opened the door with one hand. He had already changed into a full set of loungewear, though his hair wasn’t fully dried and was still dripping. Yi Ke hadn’t expected him to finish so quickly, paused slightly, and then asked with concern, “Not feeling well?”
Zhuang Ningyu waved his hand and pointed to his stomach. Hungry.
Yi Ke breathed a sigh of relief, grabbed a dry towel, and pulled him to the bedside to dry his hair. “I ordered that lotus root soup you like; it’ll be here soon. Also, I just consulted Director Wang. He said the reason you didn’t suffer discomfort from the high-tension environment might be due to the high-voltage electricity. That strong electrical stimulation has a certain probability of alleviating the likelihood of neural headaches. The director wants us to go to the treatment center again tomorrow. Furthermore, he emphasized repeatedly that this situation is an extremely rare phenomenon and clinically strongly opposes any form of self-electrocution. He told you definitely not to run off and touch sockets.”
Although this medical advice sounded bizarre, behind every bizarre medical advice lay an even more bizarre patient. Zhuang Ningyu’s nursing level at the medical center was still the highest A0+, mainly attributed to an incident after a mission. During a blood draw, he suddenly dropped his backpack without warning, vaulted out of the fifteenth-floor laboratory window with one hand, and performed a dashing high-altitude rappel, leaving a room full of shocked colleagues and medical staff. After a brief silence, Qing Gang suddenly roared, “Is Captain Zhuang still under mental pollution?!” This single sentence scared the hair of the physical examination department supervisor straight up, leading to seven ambulances being dispatched across the city with sirens blaring to chase him.
In the end, Huo Ting resolved the matter. He arranged for Zhuang Ningyu to stay in Pei Yuan’s private hospital for a week under the pretext of “treating mental pollution.” Even though the pollution level of that mission was extremely mild, no better excuse could be found—they couldn’t just say Captain Zhuang only realized right before the blood draw that the prohibited substances in his body probably hadn’t finished metabolizing, could they?
The hair dryer buzzed. Yi Ke was already skilled at this task, usually finishing in a few minutes. But this time, Zhuang Ningyu felt his scalp burning, yet Yi Ke still hadn’t finished. Puzzled, he reached up to touch it—it’s very dry!
Yi Ke hesitated to speak. “Uh.”
Zhuang Ningyu’s hair was actually very soft and usually needed a bit of hairspray to style up. But now, looking in the mirror at the messy hairstyle that could be named “I brandish my sword to the sky and my hair stands on end,” his eyes were full of question marks. Yi Ke stood beside him comforting him incessantly: It’s okay, wifey, very cute. You look like a little savage from a cartoon right now.
*”When the current is on, they dance; when the power is off, they are messy as rags.”*Regardless of what metaphor the author intended with this sentence, at least right now, Zhuang Ningyu felt his hairstyle fit the description perfectly. He dived into the wardrobe and wordlessly dug out a peaked cap for himself.
Yi Ke: “Why wear a hat at home? Hubby won’t laugh at you!”
Zhuang Ningyu sat on the sofa and waved a hand, signaling him to shut up. Without lifting his head, he continued searching for nearby men’s barbershops on his phone, intending to use chemical power to solve this tricky problem.
Yi Ke hinted: “Anyway, you’re not going to work recently.”
Zhuang Ningyu: Going to work.
Yi Ke curled his lips. True, with such an outlaw combination of “suspected artificially drug-induced Evolver + foreign bandit” appearing in the city center, no one in the Order Maintenance Department could stay out of it. The computer in the study was on, constantly flashing meeting minutes sent by the secretary. Zhuang Ningyu saved the selected barbershop first, then righteously held out his hand palm up: Give me the computer, work!
Yi Ke laughed in exasperation, knocking lightly on his forehead with a knuckle: “Does your head really not hurt? Don’t lie to me.”
Really doesn’t hurt. Zhuang Ningyu patted his butt and went into the study himself. The customs side hadn’t matched the passport information of the gun-wielding foreign man in the system; he likely smuggled in. The black modified car that took the man away had a theft record in the public security system; the owner claimed it was lost over half an year ago. The unmanned white car was the same. Surveillance showed the white car drove out from a nearby municipal public parking lot half an hour before the incident and parked in a temporary spot opposite the pedestrian street, driverless the whole time.
“The white car is severely damaged; not sure if its intelligent driving system can be restored,” a colleague from the technical team said. “However, based on the driving route at the time, someone was obviously controlling it remotely. The car must have been within his line of sight, and the tallest building near the pedestrian street is the Yuanbao Building.”
Zhao Kai was also heading to the Yuanbao Building at that time. But simply locating the Yuanbao Building wasn’t enough. There were at least two hundred shops hidden inside, ranging from beauty salons to cinemas to private kitchens—all kinds of businesses, proper and improper. Investigating would take some effort.
Of course, if Zhao Kai were willing to cooperate, things would be much easier. But the problem lay in the fact that he couldn’t cooperate right now. Like Shi Cheng, who injected himself with illegal agents at Xinyin Biology, Zhao Kai had fallen into a similar deep coma after being brought back to the Order Maintenance Department.
Shi Cheng was already dead; this one absolutely couldn’t die. The medical center cleared an entire floor specifically for Zhao Kai, and experts from the capital had already boarded a flight to Jincheng. If Zhao Kai was truly an Evolver created by drugs, he might be the most successful case of “forced maturation” in the world to date, even passing the assessment center’s review.
It had been less than ten hours since the pedestrian street incident. The data reported by various departments was still mixed. Yi Ke didn’t let Zhuang Ningyu read for too long. Just past nine o’clock, he forcibly took the person back to bed, holding his face with both hands and teaching earnestly: “Don’t read every trivial thing yourself. Learn to extract the essence. Only then can you be a leader in the future, understand?”
Zhuang Ningyu accepted humbly. He was indeed tired of reading, so he shuffled in his slippers to the bathroom to brush his teeth, fished out an ice compress eye mask from the bedside table, and prepared for bedtime. Yi Ke was very satisfied with his obedience: “Wait here, Hubby is going to take a quick shower, then come back to continue telling you stories.”
He had already showered in the guest bathroom when he got home, but after preparing the ribs for tomorrow’s meal in the evening, he felt like he smelled of star anise and spices, so he planned to rinse off again. When the shower button was pressed, the water pouring out was bone-chillingly cold. Yi Ke shivered, glanced at the temperature with some confusion, and then suddenly realized something. He grabbed a towel, wrapped it hastily around his waist, returned to the bedroom without a word, and hauled the person out from under the duvet.
Zhuang Ningyu was startled. He lifted his eye mask, and his earphones rolled out of his ears. The solemn “The Golden Spindle of the Fourteenth Century and the Mysterious Realm of Flawlessness” came to an abrupt halt. His pajamas were lifted high up; it was too late to cover. Those red scars burned Yi Ke’s eyes tight. He didn’t speak, just looked for a while, then gently put the clothes down.
Concealing injuries is a grave crime. Zhuang Ningyu rubbed his face, trying to straighten his arms and lie flat forward again to muddle through. But before his palms touched the duvet, he was scooped into an embrace. Yi Ke usually liked to hold him tight, but this time his grip was very light, just loosely encircling him, asking by his ear: “Does it hurt?”
Actually, it didn’t hurt much. If it really hurt, Zhuang Ningyu wouldn’t have hidden it and not applied medicine. He estimated he could self-heal in three to five days. But since he was discovered, he cooperated and indicated: A little.
Yi Ke went downstairs to get burn ointment and casually pulled all his pants down. Zhuang Ningyu was stripped completely defenseless. He propped up his upper body with a confused expression, feeling that the other party’s action was somewhat abusing public power for private gain, so he reached out to grab his underwear. But Yi Ke asked, “Want me to take a photo for you to see yourself?”
Absolutely not necessary! Zhuang Ningyu immediately lay back in his original position, choosing to fully trust his lover’s noble character and high medical ethics. And Yi Ke didn’t betray this trust; his technique was so professional it was as if he were joining the hospital nursing department tomorrow. The room wasn’t cold, and Yi Ke’s movements were pure, but as a normal human being accustomed to wearing clothes, lying naked under the bright bedroom lights while being inspected back and forth for a long time inevitably gave rise to an objective demand for a more civilized way of medical examination in modern society.
So he patted Yi Ke’s shoulder and handed over the writing tablet: Doctor, I’m a bit embarrassed.
Yi Ke laughed in exasperation, his tense face finally relaxing. Zhuang Ningyu also smiled, turning his head to crook a finger at him. But Yi Ke didn’t take the bait, only pulling the thin blanket from the side to cover his body: “Don’t move around.”
A faint scent of medicine lingered in the bedroom.
By the time Yi Ke finished treating all the burns, packed up, and returned to the bedroom, Zhuang Ningyu had put the eye mask back on and was sleeping on his side facing away from him. A small, cute earplug stuck out of his ear, and on the other pillow lay the writing tablet filled with words. Yi Ke picked it up with a bit of curiosity and expectation, only to see—
“I WAS WRONG!!!!!!!!!”
Three words, plus three hundred exclamation marks.
He didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Burrowing into the duvet, he deliberately hugged the person fiercely into his arms, carefully routing his arms around the injured areas. Thus, Zhuang Ningyu didn’t feel pain. He only struggled symbolically a couple of times before pressing his entire back against the other’s chest, closing his eyes, and relaxing into sleep.
Yi Ke, however, wasn’t sleepy. Partly because of the burns, partly for other reasons. He held the hand resting on Zhuang’s lower abdomen, kneading it gently now and then. It should have been a very tender moment, but his mind kept replaying the video he watched in the afternoon from his colleague’s body cam—the unidentified foreign killer’s gaze full of interest upon seeing Zhuang Ningyu, the proactive leaning forward of his body, the hint of a smile at the corner of his lips… Everything made him extremely unhappy. Darkness might truly amplify negative emotions. Unknowingly, a suppressed, irritable sense of loss of control, like a trapped beast, similar to that day in the training building’s washroom, struck again. He unconsciously wanted to tighten his arms, wanting to crush the person in his arms into his bones, but abruptly braked amidst the “nightmare” upon hearing his lover’s steady breathing.
Zhuang Ningyu wasn’t sleeping too deeply. Seeming to sense something, he was about to turn around to look, but was hugged tightly by Yi Ke from behind.
“It’s okay.” A gentle kiss landed in his hair, accompanied by a low chuckle. “Sleep well.”
