Chapter 107 (Part 1)
Purification, lining up.
The Guardians present had never imagined that these two concepts could ever be combined.
However, the Qi radiating from the person in front of them undeniably carried the aura of a Purifier.
Some also recalled the white Qi darting wildly around the East District yesterday. At the time, they had thought that Qi was lively and enthusiastic enough, but they didn’t expect to encounter something even more astonishing today.
The scene was plunged into a full ten seconds of silence due to sheer shock.
Until a voice broke the quiet.
“I… my pollution levels exceeded the limit a while ago. Can I be purified?”
He was precisely the Guardian who had been casually purified of a portion of his pollution by the white Qi floating across the battlefield yesterday.
At this moment, his face still carried a hint of apprehension.
He could tell that Luo Shizhen had already advanced to Rank 5, but he himself had been stuck at Rank 6 for a very long time.
Generally speaking, unless the Purifier inherently harbored a high degree of goodwill and intimacy toward an Awakener, it was impossible to cross ranks for purification.
Although he had been slightly purified yesterday, it was only by drifting Qi and he hadn’t made actual contact with the person.
Later, when he went to visit, he learned from Chen He’an that Luo Shizhen had been in the middle of advancing, delirious, and not consciously controlling the purification. His heart instantly sank halfway.
But now, this overly young Purifier, brimming with youthful vitality, stood there smiling naturally, exuding no rejection toward them whatsoever.
He just wanted to give it a try.
Luo Shizhen had no idea what this senior was thinking.
In his eyes, he had issued an invitation and someone had responded and accepted it. It was incredibly simple.
“You can.”
The young man, who had just advanced and subconsciously carried a spirited and energetic demeanor, agreed with a smile: “Please come and sit here!”
If it had been the past, facing so many “patients,” Luo Shizhen might have been a bit flustered.
But now, he was different!
He was someone who had been Zhen Shiluo.
Luo Shizhen, drawing on his vast experience, had even prepared chairs for the patients in advance.
Because according to his experience, when patients were in the process of being polluted, they wouldn’t even be able to stand steady due to the pain in their bodies. At a time like this, having a chair was extremely important.
“Others who have been polluted, please line up over here. There are chairs for you to sit on.”
The scene quieted down a few more degrees.
These Guardians had practically all engaged in combat with opportunistic Bizarres on their way to the cafeteria. They still seemed to carry the lingering resonance of battle, and the wounds on some of their faces were rapidly healing.
No matter how one looked at them, this group of Guardians—who seemed wreathed in the scent of gunpowder, wearing combat uniforms that revealed faintly taut muscles beneath—were the type who could take any pain without a single groan or change in expression.
Yet this excessively young Purifier in front of them looked at them entirely as if they were patients in need of care.
After another few seconds of silence, a Guardian—whose back bore hideous claw marks from a Bizarre that were slowly healing—silently sat down.
Rather than resting, his expression was so solemn and upright that it looked more like he had received a military order.
As if someone having set the precedent, the remaining men who had been classified as needing treatment also sat down one after another.
Much like the first Guardian who sat, everyone sat ramrod straight, as if they weren’t here to see a doctor, but to undergo inspection by a commanding officer.
The faint, underlying hostility and mutual repulsion between the Guardians from earlier had now been completely suppressed.
Everyone was doing their utmost to rein in their Qi, not wanting to frighten the young Purifier in front of them.
Luo Shizhen didn’t understand the reason, but seeing how cool and handsome they all looked sitting there, he secretly memorized their sitting postures.
He also knew that he hadn’t attended school for very long before rapidly becoming a Guardian due to the changing circumstances.
Strictly speaking, he hadn’t even graduated yet.
Viewing these older, highly experienced Guardians, Luo Shizhen harbored a deep admiration and yearning in his heart, much like how he admired his teachers at school.
He subconsciously straightened his back, instinctively copying them.
Seeing him suddenly stand up straight, the “patient” who had just arrived in front of him stiffened and actually assumed a standard military posture as well.
Compared to the others still sitting, he was the most nervous one.
Whether it was because Luo Shizhen was a Purifier, or because of his overly young and tender age.
The person in front of him was too young.
Even though Luo Shizhen subconsciously adopted Doctor Zhen Shiluo’s serious and reliable expression during the consultation, he wasn’t wearing makeup now; his face was his own.
This seriousness stretched across the young man’s face only made him look even more tender in the eyes of the older men.
It gave off the endearing feeling of watching a child pretending to be an adult.
The aura he carried was also different from theirs. If they were considered cold and hard, then the Purifier before him was gentle and calm, his eyes perfectly clear, looking nothing like an Awakener.
Are young Awakeners all like this?
This Guardian couldn’t help but recall when he first enrolled in school.
In his mind, aside from destroying school property, being punished by the principal to stand facing the wall or being locked in solitary confinement, and fighting his classmates to the death every day, he couldn’t seem to remember anything else.
Just as his thoughts were drifting away, he heard Luo Shizhen ask a very blunt question.
“Can I touch you?”
This Guardian: “…”
At this moment, he suddenly recalled a rumor he had heard before.
In order to encourage Energy Users to clear pollution for more Guardians, Yongzhou had once considered opening up a multi-partner system.
In the old Xia Country, this would have been an absolute joke.
But in this current era, where everyone lived precariously—an age that could practically be called the apocalypse—and people didn’t even know if they would see the sun the next day when they went to sleep at night, views on marriage, even among ordinary people, had become much more open than before.
Not to mention the Guardians, who fought Bizarres daily and bore an even greater pressure for survival.
Most Energy Users were sensitive and fragile, unwilling to get close to other Awakeners. Even with Yongzhou trying to promote it, progress had always been stalled.
When he first heard this news, he never thought it would ever concern him.
However…
Looking at the young man in front of him, with bright dark eyes, a slender figure, slightly pursed lips, and an earnest gaze…
Why did it feel like he was the one taking advantage?
The muscles across his entire body seemed stimulated, secretly tightening a few degrees, his entire frame drawn taut like a fully pulled bowstring, showcasing the beautiful curves originally hidden beneath his combat uniform.
“Ah, I… I… of course you can.”
He glanced at the other Guardians not far away: “But… right here?”
Luo Shizhen: “Because this area isn’t very large, I’ll have to ask you to make do for a bit, but we do have curtains.”
Knowing full well that some patients didn’t like being watched during the treatment process, Luo Shizhen thoughtfully pulled the curtain shut.
This curtain was actually made from vines by Lu Qiujin.
After pulling it shut, he noticed the other man was blushing.
The patient was a bit nervous.
His face was completely red.
However, despite the red face, he slowly nodded.
Once he got to work, carefully touching the patient’s arm, he discovered the skin beneath his hand was scalding hot, practically hot enough to boil an egg.
Was it because he was infected by pollution that he had a fever?
Then he really needed to purify him quickly.
The young Purifier grew a few degrees more serious. His hand patted along the man’s arm; the man’s muscles were too tense. Although they looked beautiful when flexed like that, he couldn’t insert the needles this way.
He said gently: “Please relax a bit.”
For some unknown reason, after saying that, the man seemed to become even more nervous.
Luo Shizhen thought about it and gave up on using the needles. He directly guided his already eager Qi to follow the optimal pollution spots he had located, beginning the purification.
The patient’s expression shifted slightly, looking somewhat dazed.
“Is it… starting to purify me already?”
Does just touching really cultivate intimacy?
Luo Shizhen answered seriously: “Yes.”
“…I thought, there would be other… procedures.”
Luo Shizhen was confused: “Are there other procedures? Maybe because I just graduated, I haven’t learned that part yet. What other procedures are there? How about you tell me, and I’ll do it again?”
The Guardian—whose entire body flexed with beautiful muscles, his abs faintly visible even through his combat uniform—looked into the clear eyes of the young Purifier.
“Cough… I remembered wrong.”
“Oh, okay.”
Luo Shizhen retracted his hand from his body.
Because he was being purified, his entire Qi felt as if it were submerged in warm water. The Guardian reluctantly snapped out of his comfortable daze.
He looked toward the young Guardian, opening his mouth as if wanting to say something.
But Luo Shizhen had already made a checkmark in his notebook, nodding with satisfaction:
“Your pollution levels have been controlled within the safe range. You can go out now.”
“Next!”
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