Chapter 178: Night of Evolution
Lin Jiayao didn’t rashly retrieve the serpent corpse with her main body, as she couldn’t test its mental attack capabilities in the Training Grounds. If she retrieved it while logged into a zombie and encountered a mental attack, she could simply switch her consciousness and abandon the zombie. But if something happened to her main body, she couldn’t exactly abandon it and transfer her consciousness to a zombie, could she? Although that sounded impossible anyway.
As Lin Jiayao was pondering when to log into Goldie again and attempt her promotion before studying the serpent corpse, her sister walked back into the room, holding a bottle of mineral water. In that short time, her sister’s expression had returned to normal. There were still a few beads of sweat on her forehead; she must have washed her face with cold water.
Upon entering, Lin Xiwan noticed the untouched bottle of water on the bedside table. She calmly walked to the bed, handed the bottle in her hand to her sister, picked up the one from the bedside table, opened it, and drank. Her movements were so smooth and natural, as if nothing awkward had happened.
Seeing her sister’s behavior, Lin Jiayao guessed that her saliva treatment might indeed be stimulating for humans, even though she couldn’t feel it herself.
“Was it very uncomfortable, Sister?” Lin Jiayao took a sip of water, looked up at her sister, and asked tentatively, “The treatment just now, was it very uncomfortable?”
If her sister found it uncomfortable, Lin Jiayao could research more comfortable treatment methods next time, or even spend a Blood Crystal to inherit some medical experience from the system.
“Ah? Uh…” Lin Xiwan hadn’t expected her sister to bring it up again. She lowered her head, holding the water bottle in her left hand and twirling a strand of hair with her right. “It wasn’t… uncomfortable…”
“So it was a little uncomfortable?” Lin Jiayao pressed, looking at her hesitant sister.
Hearing her sister ask this, Lin Xiwan felt conflicted. To be honest… her sister’s treatment was really effective, and it didn’t seem to take much out of her. But the process was a bit too… intimate. Even Lin Xiwan felt it was inappropriate.
If she got used to this, what if she was injured in a… sensitive area one day, and woke up to find her sister had healed all her wounds…
She wouldn’t be able to face her sister again.
Unless it was an absolute emergency, Lin Xiwan would rather endure the discomfort of blood crystal self-healing.
Thinking back to just now, when she looked down and saw her sister, face slightly tilted up, expressionlessly licking… something… Lin Xiwan felt her face burning again.
Gritting her teeth, Lin Xiwan decided to answer her sister’s question with a “lie to avoid embarrassment.”
“Yes, it was uncomfortable, very uncomfortable,” Lin Xiwan looked at her sister and said seriously, “Next time, I can heal these wounds myself with Blood Crystals…”
Hearing her sister’s answer and seeing the serious look on her face, Lin Jiayao nodded slowly.
This time, she hadn’t used blood as an anesthetic, but the treatment process still caused pain.
No wonder her sister always gritted her teeth and closed her eyes every time she received treatment, as if enduring something.
Now that she thought about it, it must have been pain.
Looking at the wrinkled bedsheet her sister had just clutched, Lin Jiayao nodded thoughtfully, then looked at her sister again and said:
“Okay, then I’ll try a more comfortable treatment method next time.”
No! Don’t! Lin Xiwan almost blurted out.
But she couldn’t refute her sister. After all, her sister meant well, wanting to improve the method after learning it caused her “pain.” If she refused again, it would definitely hurt her sister’s feelings.
Lin Xiwan already regretted lying. One lie required more and bigger lies to cover it up, and she didn’t dare to continue.
She even suspected that her clever sister had seen through her lie and was deliberately “teasing” her.
But from her sister’s calm expression, she couldn’t detect any amusement or other emotions, making it impossible to tell.
Sigh…
She didn’t know when it started, but her sister’s expressions seemed to be getting colder and colder, and she could hardly guess her thoughts from her expressions anymore.
“Let’s talk about it next time…” Lin Xiwan reached out and gently rubbed her sister’s hair, resignation lacing her tone.
“Sister, how many Blood Crystals did you use?” Lin Jiayao asked, looking at her sister sitting beside her.
When Lin Jiayao was cleaning her sister’s wound earlier, she had noticed the crystal-like scab. Lin Jiayao had probed it with her tongue; it was a penetrating wound, and it looked like it was made by a knife.
Combined with what Huayibai said when she first entered the room, Lin Jiayao guessed that this wound was self-inflicted.
Moreover, her sister had actively used Blood Crystals to heal the wound, accelerating the body’s absorption of Blood Crystals.
She just didn’t know how much her sister had absorbed. Her sister didn’t have many Blood Crystals stored, so she shouldn’t have absorbed many.
“Three…” After what happened just now, Lin Xiwan didn’t dare to hide anything else from her sister and confessed directly, “One was used on the wound, and the other two were directly absorbed by my body.”
“Still using your hands?” Lin Jiayao asked, reaching out and pinching her sister’s fair arm.
After all, her sister had used this method when she used Blood Crystals to reach C-rank.
“Yes.” Lin Xiwan nodded, extending both hands in front of her sister, letting her sister play with them.
“You can find an opportunity to be promoted. Now you only lack Blood Crystals.” Lin Jiayao came to this conclusion after observing.
Just now, Lin Jiayao released a drop of liquid blood crystal from her fingertip, and it was almost instantly absorbed by her sister’s skin.
This at least proved that her sister’s body was currently craving Blood Crystals. As long as there were enough Blood Crystals accumulated, her sister could complete the transformation from quantity to quality.
“Yes, I still lack a lot of Blood Crystals…” Lin Xiwan deeply agreed with her sister’s words, but she was still optimistic, “It’s okay, I can take Huayibai to find trouble with the zombies in the surrounding cities.”
“Huayibai is B-rank, and I’ll go with her, we’ll definitely kill a lot, and we should be able to collect them quickly…”
“The promotion probably needs about fifty Blood Crystals,” Lin Jiayao interrupted her sister, “Huayibai’s flapping-wing insect will deliver the Blood Crystals later, we can start directly then.”
Huayibai transported sixty-three Blood Crystals, she had twenty-four in the Blood Crystal Box, and fourteen in the Safehouse because she had freed up two slots for the blue serpent corpse.
Even subtracting Huayibai’s consumption along the way, Lin Jiayao probably had nearly a hundred Blood Crystals.
Therefore, as long as she waited for Huayibai’s flapping-wing insect to return, her sister could directly start evolving.
And she could also temporarily put aside logging into Goldie and stay with her sister until her evolution was complete. Even if something happened, she could react in time.
“Yes, that’s right, so slowly… huh?” Lin Xiwan turned her head mechanically, looking at her sister, “Fifty?”
No, the point wasn’t fifty, but that her sister seemed to be able to take out these fifty Blood Crystals at any time!
She only collected twenty or thirty Blood Crystals from the ash area last time. Even if her sister saved them all and didn’t use them, she couldn’t have so many, right?
And her sister’s tone was so casual, as if she had been promoted to B-rank many times, but her sister was clearly just at C-rank, and the amount of blood crystals in her body couldn’t lie.
“The B-rank zombie I fought in my dream before, I asked Huayibai to collect the Blood Crystals.” Lin Jiayao explained, “Except for the ones burned by the fire, Huayibai basically collected all of them.”
“Huayibai?” Lin Xiwan nodded slowly, feeling that it made a little more sense.
If Huayibai could go and collect the Blood Crystals from the places where her sister dreamed of fighting zombies, then her sister could indeed save up a large amount of Blood Crystals.
“Yao… how many Blood Crystals do you have now?” Lin Xiwan asked curiously, lowering her voice slightly.
She didn’t know that her current behavior was very similar to a husband who handed over all his money and salary, carefully asking his wife how much savings they had at home.
It was quite similar.
“About a hundred, I’ve used a lot.” Lin Jiayao didn’t hide it and directly revealed the number.
Of course, she didn’t say how many she had used.
Including the construction of all the facilities and the evolution of zombies, Lin Jiayao had used more than three hundred Blood Crystals.
This was too shocking for her sister, who a month ago, no, a week ago, would have wanted to split a Blood Crystal fragment into two.
“Used a lot… and there are still about a hundred left?” Lin Xiwan felt her breath stop when she heard this.
She knew that her sister was “rich”, but she didn’t expect her to be so “rich”.
Soon, Lin Xiwan recovered from the shock. She moved closer to her sister and whispered:
“You have to save these Blood Crystals, don’t let anyone know where you hide them, you can still use them when you evolve to B-rank in the future…”
“I know.” Lin Jiayao pushed her nervous sister away with her shoulder and comforted her with a smile, “The Blood Crystals are hidden in a very safe place, and I’ve already saved the Blood Crystals for promotion.”
The latter sentence was said by Lin Jiayao to comfort her sister, but it was also true.
Even if these Blood Crystals were all used up, when she needed Blood Crystals again, she could just log into Goldie and cut off its tentacles.
It was like a small reserve fund.
“That’s good…” Hearing her sister’s words, Lin Xiwan finally breathed a sigh of relief.
It seemed that her worries about the “huge sum of money” were completely unnecessary. Her sister was much more thoughtful than she was.
After knowing that they still had so many Blood Crystals, for some reason, Lin Xiwan suddenly felt that her anxiety and pressure had been greatly reduced.
Maybe this was the charm of Blood Crystals, just like gold bars before the apocalypse, making people feel at ease.
While the two sisters were chatting, the sound of “clanging” came from outside the window not far away.
They didn’t need to think to know that it must be Huayibai who had found the canned food and come back.
Sure enough, soon, this “clanging” sound approached from the window, and then a few white butterflies pulled open the “curtains” made of vines, and Huayibai, carrying a large bag of something, ran in.
“Phew…”
After running in, Huayibai tried her best to lift the plastic bag in her hand and shouted in Lin Jiayao’s direction: “Mommy, canned food!”
After Mommy gave her the task of finding canned food, Huayibai directly found a whole bag of canned food.
“Huayibai is so good.” Lin Xiwan got out of bed, walked to Huayibai, took the large plastic bag that Huayibai was holding, and praised, “Huayibai is so amazing, you actually found so many… uh… canned food…”
When she took the bag from Huayibai, Lin Xiwan saw what was inside.
It was indeed a bag full of canned food, but this…
Boxes and boxes of cat food cans, about a circle smaller than her palm, and slightly larger dog food cans, mixed with many canned foods whose cans were already bulging or damaged.
At a glance, there were only a few relatively normal meat cans.
It wasn’t that cat food cans and dog food cans couldn’t be eaten, but generally, the fishy smell inside would be particularly strong, and they would easily spoil and have a short shelf life. Usually, people wouldn’t eat them unless they were starving.
But fortunately, there were a few cans inside that seemed edible. Lin Xiwan picked them out first, checked that they were not damaged or bulging, and took them out to heat up.
“Yao, wait for me, I’ll go heat up the canned food.” After saying that, Lin Xiwan took those meat cans and walked directly out of the room, leaving her sister and Huayibai in the room.
“Mommy, Huayibai’s flying car is here.” Huayibai raised her hand, pointed in a certain direction on the ceiling, and said, “It’s already there!”
“Good job, you did a great job.” Lin Jiayao beckoned Huayibai to come to her side, stretched out her hands, rubbed her head with one hand, and scratched her chin with the other.
Lin Jiayao found that petting Huayibai was quite stress-relieving, mainly because it felt really good, her skin was like congealed fat, and she was soft and boneless.
After thinking for a while, Lin Jiayao decided to give Huayibai some rewards.
Huayibai herself didn’t care much about Blood Crystals, she just liked the things Mommy gave her, and she seemed to treasure whatever she received.
Of course, Lin Jiayao wouldn’t directly use rubbing her head or kissing her face as a reward for completing the task. Lin Jiayao wasn’t a capitalist, and she really wasn’t interested in exploiting her like this.
Looking at Huayibai, who was so comfortable in her hands that she squinted her eyes and giggled, Lin Jiayao slowly withdrew her hands and picked up her water bottle.
Using the bone spurs extending from her fingertips, she gently pricked her thumb, squeezed about half a drop of blood into the bottle, and Lin Jiayao’s wound had already completely recovered.
Closing the cap, shaking it slightly, and feeling that the blood had completely dissolved, she looked at the bottle of water that seemed to have not changed at all and nodded slightly.
If it was diluted like this, it shouldn’t make Huayibai directly fall into the drunken state like before.
But Huayibai was still driving a “flying car” now. If she gave it to her directly, wouldn’t it be drunk driving?
Lin Jiayao didn’t want the “flying car” to crash into a wall and cause all the Blood Crystals to scatter or lose a few when the things were about to arrive.
After tightening the cap, Lin Jiayao raised the bottle and held it in front of Huayibai, who had already widened her eyes, and instructed: “Remember, you can only drink it when you go to bed at night, understand?”
It just so happened that it could also synchronize Huayibai’s sleep with theirs. This drunken state could also help Huayibai recover some energy.
“Is… is this for Huayibai from Mommy?”
Huayibai tightly clutched the hem of her skirt, swallowed, and looked at Lin Jiayao with longing eyes.
“This is a reward for Huayibai being obedient.” Lin Jiayao nodded, gently shook the water bottle in her hand, and said, “Take it, remember to drink it at night.”
Lin Jiayao was very sure that Huayibai could resist. After all, even when she lost so much blood before and even got her permission, Huayibai could still resist the desire, let alone this small request.
“Okay!”
Huayibai nodded excitedly and reached out to take the water bottle from Mommy’s hand.
Then, Huayibai opened her mouth wide, picked up the 600ml water bottle, and directly stuffed it into her small cherry mouth.
Her mouth was stretched wide by the water bottle, and even the water bottle went directly through her mouth and into her throat. From Lin Jiayao’s perspective, Huayibai’s throat even bulged a little because of the water bottle.
“Gurgle—”
Just like this, Huayibai directly swallowed the water bottle into her stomach, then happily narrowed her eyes, turned around and ran to the window, squatted down, stuck her head out of the vine curtains, and looked outside.
“Nighttime, nighttime, nighttime…” Huayibai kept muttering repetitive words, rubbing her belly with one hand. It seemed that she couldn’t wait for nighttime to come.
Lin Jiayao was not surprised by Huayibai’s behavior.
After all, for Huayibai, she didn’t have the concept of a stomach or mouth. As long as she wanted, any part of her body could devour.
She just wanted to put the things Mommy gave her in the innermost part of her body, just like putting books away before, to keep them safe.
Half a drop of blood could make this child so happy… Lin Jiayao looked at Huayibai’s small back after she squatted down and shook her head helplessly.
Now she couldn’t help but become a capitalist.
She would find another opportunity to compensate Huayibai in other ways later.
After reminding Huayibai to call her when the “flying car” arrived, Lin Jiayao created a vine wheelchair and sat on it, supporting herself.
If nothing unexpected happened, tonight, she would be by her sister’s side as a guard, protecting her sister’s promotion to B-rank.
To ensure that nothing went wrong, after dinner later, Lin Jiayao would log into No. 7 again to find out what she needed to pay attention to when being promoted to B-rank.
After all, Lin Jiayao’s previous zombie promotions were all handled by the system, and she didn’t have any experience herself, so she had to ask experienced B-rank Awakened.
The other party would definitely find it strange that Lin Jiayao asked such a question, but Lin Jiayao had already prepared an excuse.
