Chapter 213 - The Mix Of Water And Flames (1)
When things quieted down inside the hospital room with only the soft snores of Chunhua that lay dreaming and with the transmitter from the Heavens finally silenced… Li Yang worked up the courage to approach the sleeping woman.
He didn't do it right away when he arrived.
Maybe they were excuses. Perhaps they weren't. But above all things, Li Yang wanted to make sure that Chunhua was fine and healthy.
He was never really a father, and Li Yang didn't think that there was an innate sense of connection that one had when they automatically became a father—but when he saw Chunhua, she was the only thing that mattered at that moment.
It was a conscious decision on his part.
Li Yang didn't want to think of himself as robotic, but whenever emotions sprang up high… his first instinct was always to keep his own emotions in control. No good would come out if both people were both controlled and relying solely on emotions.
.Now he finally paid more attention to Luo Ju Di…
A certain part of him couldn't help but want to connect it to Aurora in the ice coffin.
That was a silly comparison.
He only thought about it because he saw both of them in bed. But perhaps… this was just Li Yang's own hesitation and reluctance from imagining the woman waking up and what was supposed to happen after that.
Would Luo Ju Di wake up and then punch him into oblivion?
What exactly was a woman capable of when she was mad?
The two of them didn't connect that much, but Li Yang knew that Luo Ju Di was a fierce woman.
She wasn't afraid of claiming what she thought was right for her daughter, and he couldn't even recall if she ever apologized for not revealing that she was pregnant. Luo Ju Di decided that the Li family was too vicious for her child and never let him know.
Until last year, that was.
He rubbed his forehead at the thought.
Li Yang still needed to accept the time jump that happened and he needed to quit seeing Aurora in Luo Ju Di simply because the latter was currently comatose.
She wasn't capable of hurting him at all and neither could she probably stand right away either.
The woman in front of him was an ordinary person and nothing more.
And yet, while he first thought that the costs of reviving her weren't worth it… Luo Ju Di didn't deserve to be simply caught in a position like this and not be able to live her life.
While Li Yang decided against it before due to his own selfishness and being convinced that she'd recover on her own, this time, he opened his Inventory.
His gaze flickered past multiple beast items that needed to be sold at a later date. Li Yang ignored the beauty set available as well.
He only needed one thing.
Among all of the numerous items in his Inventory, the most important item was this healing item. All of the healing potions he bought from Han Jing was used up and this was what he had left.
The small vial hovered in the space in front of him and contained a beautiful ethereal glow.
[ Water of Rejuvenation ] (Rare)
A vial filled with the purest and cleanest waters across the Earthly Plane and is said to have come from a spring still untouched by foreign manipulations from its first burst. A life-giving water that can rejuvenate an individual from various states of impurity, poison and other afflictions which can cleanse the entire body and vital energies surrounding said body.
Can be consumed.
He reached out for it and grasped it within his hand. The vial was practically weightless that it almost felt like he was holding nothing when everything depended on this.
"Out of everything else in the first harem member's gift set, this one… I have to borrow it."
Li Yang was quite a terrible man in a way. He recognized that this item he received was supposedly a thing meant for Narissa the Mermaid because everything else in the gift set seemed to contain Undine-related and beauty-related items.
He respected Narissa's ownership of this immediately, especially of this vial, because it was valuable and she may have some need for it. But now he was going to use it on Luo Ju Di.
Li Yang wanted Chunhua to wake up and see her mother also awake by that time.
It would be the most pleasant surprise.
And if he could do anything for his child… after being gone for such a long time, then this was the least he could. Li Yang took another step forward towards the woman in comatose.
Being in this condition for far too long wasn't good—and if he knew that this would be the case, he really would have given the vial earlier.
Now, he opened the item's cap and looked at the woman's lips.
Despite being stuck in this condition and cooped up in this private room for such a long time, there was still a hint of warm glow to her. Even her lips surprisingly seemed moist and full of color.
It triggered something within him.
Li Yang's own memory of her from that night—the night he slept with her—was a vague grainy image that paired itself with a headache. It had been really a long time since that happened, but perhaps, it was only now that Li Yang acknowledged it.
He shook his head and thought about how to administer the water of rejuvenation to Luo Ju Di.
Consuming this vial would be the most efficient way to use it.
A part of him thought about feeding it to her.
Maybe raising her head gently to feed the contents of the vial to her… but Li Yang stared at the IV fluids currently attached to the patient. That was the safest way to administer liquids to her, but he wasn't a medical professional at all.
It was no doubt wrong to interfere.
But there was no way that he could ask a nurse to do it for him when the item he had was questionable—or too precious.
It was a terrible thing to be too squeamish right now when he had faced countless monster hordes in Frostborne Mountains and even Mashiro's Sacred Forest.
But Li Yang eventually replaced the IV bag and simply held on to the infusion line. He poured the solution of the vial down a little and carefully as he watched the liquid flow into Luo Ju Di's body.
He waited for her to suddenly rejuvenate much as the item promised. For Luo Ju Di's skin to rush with an even healthier color or even glow with a healing light that indicated her awakening and freedom from the disease or whatever condition afflicted her.
But none of that happened.
Did he need to use up everything?
Li Yang started pouring the entirety of the vial—when Chunhua woke up.
The young girl sat up startled, but then quickly saw him. "Stop! STOP!"
His eyes widened at the kid shouting and he halted immediately—but Bao finally decided to intervene. The creature reappeared from thin air, raised its paws to Chunhua's mouth and stopped the child from shouting.
But Chunhua only bit the creature's fur and then looked up to Li Yang with a terrible and pale expression on her face. "Mama's gone—she's gone."
"What?" Li Yang said.
The next couple of minutes resumed with Li Yang reattaching the IV bag back to the infusion line and ensuring that everything was clean. The half empty vial of the water of rejuvenation was stored back in his Inventory.
Around Chunhua's presence, he found no reason to hide anything at all.
But it seemed like the child herself had secrets of her own. Chunhua's head was bowed down as she sat on her separate bed. Every now and then, she looked up to her mother still resting in the bed, but eventually resumed fiddling with her thumbs and fingers.
"What happened?" Li Yang asked.
Chunhua flinched at his voice, but then looked up to him with a conflicted expression on her face.
Without saying a word, the young girl raised her hand up to him—as a small glow of a flame bursted out of her hands.
The fire burned brightly in Chunhua's hands but did no apparent harm to the child. There were no signs of any smoke or any hint of pain in her face or movements, but Li Yang felt the warmth that enveloped the entire room.
It was a fire that lit up something within him.
The mere sight of it was able to flicker something inside Li Yang, something he didn't know was possible. A soothing warmth covered him as if a loving and maternal figure covered his shoulders with a blanket—a crackling fire, the scent of wood and barbecue…
[ The Mental Effects of Hearth Fire Is Negated ]
[ Positive Emotions Are Nulled ]
Warmth quickly died within Li Yang and everything around him returned back to their normal temperature.
"What the actual fu—" Bao stopped itself from saying anything else. It was concerned about not saying any curses in front of the child.
And yet the answers to how this happened came along. Both Bao and Li Yang remembered the very first meeting that occurred over a year ago. When Luo Ju Di met up with him for the very first time, two Observers gave their blessings to Chunhua.
Thus Chunhua's sudden fire made even the Heavens react in their own way. Both the normal Observers and the VIP Observers made their presence known.
[ Observer 'Fire Dweller' Is Simply Silent ]
[ Observer 'Scythe Wheat' Looks Away ]
[ Observer 'Pomegranate' Blinks ]
[ Sea Foam: A minor blessing indeed ]
[ Owl Brain: It must have been the child's own talent… ]
[ The One Who Slaughters: This is why one must refrain from doling out blessings ]