Yang Shugao's parents saw Qin Yue and Zhang Yue behind her. Assuming they were acquaintances of their son, they hurriedly moved aside and thanked them repeatedly.
“You are so kind. You heard our Gaogao woke up and came all this way to see him... Thank you, thank you.”
Qin Yue did not deny it. Instead, she stared at Yang Shugao, carefully observing his expression.
Yang Shugao's vocal cords had also been damaged, and having not spoken for so long, he found it quite difficult to talk.
However, he was in high spirits, and his eyes sparkled with light.
Upon seeing Qin Yue, he seemed to come alive. A boundless light shone from his eyes as he turned his head toward her and opened his mouth.
“Qin... Qin...”
He clearly retained his memories from the Ghost Building.
She just didn't know why he was so anxious to see her.
“I am Qin Yue.”
Qin Yue took a step forward, leaning down close to his mouth.
“You wanted to see me because you have something to say? I am here now. Don't worry, you can wait until you've recovered a bit more before telling me everything you want to say or ask.”
“Real... real... didn't... lie...”
The ecstasy in Yang Shugao's eyes could not be hidden. He desperately shifted his gaze, looking at his right fist, which he had been clutching tightly without letting go.
“Have... have...”
His right fist was loosely closed, as if he had been holding onto something the entire time.
Qin Yue's heart stirred. Following his lead, she gently pried open Yang Shugao's hand.
It was a small porcelain bottle.
The bottle was exquisite, plain without any patterns, inexplicably bringing to mind ancient period dramas.
“What is this?”
Yang Shugao's parents also seemed shocked.
“Where did this come from? We haven't seen this before.”
“Dream... dream... fire... Ma... Guniang... eat...”
A tear fell from Yang Shugao's eye, tracing a path across his scarred skin and landing on the pillow.
“Eat... eat... medicine...”
He spoke each word with great effort, but Qin Yue still managed to capture the meaning behind them.
“You mean you saw Ma Guniang and me in a dream, and Ma Guniang told you to take this medicine? But you weren't sure if it was a dream, so you wanted to see me to verify if it was real?”
Qin Yue took the small medicine bottle and pulled out the stopper. Immediately, a faint scent of osmanthus lingered in the air.
“Did Ma Guniang say what kind of medicine this is?”
Yang Shugao blinked hard and slurred out two words: “Heal... wounds...”
Through Yang Shugao's intermittent descriptions, Qin Yue finally pieced together what he was trying to convey.
During the time Yang Shugao was in a coma, he had constantly dreamed of being trapped in a fire, muddled and confused.
He kept repeating the act of “saving people.” Although he vaguely understood that he shouldn't be there, he had no power to leave.
Until a woman suddenly appeared before him, calling herself a ghost. She spoke to him and asked who he was.
In his confusion, Yang Shugao revealed his identity and begged the woman to take him away.
But the woman only shook her head and gave a mysterious smile.
“The fate to save you does not lie with me. Shortly, a person named Qin Yue will come to save you. I see that you are trapped here because you were saving others and have been unable to find release for a long time. That fits my temperament well enough. I have here a wound medicine refined by the Mountain Lord, which I shall gift to you. Once you return to your physical body, you will naturally know how to use it.”
As for what happened next...
Yang Shugao didn't remember very clearly. He only knew that Ma Guniang had pressed something into his palm and given him a push.
In his daze, he heard someone calling his name, and when he woke up again, he was in the hospital ward.
“It's Ma Guniang!”
Zhang Yue whispered softly, and a brilliant light also flickered in Qin Yue's eyes.
“What Ma Guniang or Wang Guniang? That was all a dream! How can you take words from a dream seriously?”
After listening for a while, Yang Shugao's parents finally understood.
Their son had dreamed of this girl named Qin Yue and dreamed that someone gave him a bottle of medicine.
And after he woke up, there really was a bottle of medicine in his hand!
No matter how one looked at it, this matter was enough to make one's skin crawl.
While Yang Shugao was in a coma, his parents had taken care of him every day—washing him, inserting catheters, emptying urine bags, changing his clothes...
The two elderly people naturally knew exactly what was on Yang Shugao's body.
None of them had ever seen this suddenly appearing medicine bottle.
Mother Yang wiped her tears and tried to persuade her son.
“Gaogao, things from dreams are all fake. This thing came from nowhere; we don't even know if it's poisonous. What if it's bad for your body?”
“Exactly, your mother is right. How can something from a dream be real? You've been asleep for so long, it's normal to be confused between reality and dreams. Didn't the doctor say you need time to adjust?”
Father Yang also disapproved of Yang Shugao's decision, a trace of sorrow appearing on his resolute face.
“Gaogao, don't be afraid. Science and technology are so advanced now. Once your body is a bit better, we'll go to Jingbei, or even abroad, to find a good plastic surgeon...”
“Eat...”
Yang Shugao shook his head. That single movement seemed to exhaust all his strength.
“I trust... Ma... Gu... Qin... Yue...”
Qin Yue hesitated repeatedly but finally decided to follow Yang Shugao's own wishes.
She poured two small red pills from the porcelain bottle and fed them to him.
The pills were very small, only slightly larger than grains of rice. Yang Shugao swallowed them easily without even needing water.
“You child, why won't you listen! Doctor! Doctor!”
Yang Shugao's parents spun around in a panic and pressed the emergency call button, but in the next second, the old couple froze in place.
Yang Shugao blinked uncomfortably. Suddenly, half a piece of skin fell from his face.
It was a piece of white, dry skin about the size of a palm.
“!”
“!!”
“!”
Everyone was stunned.
But that single second of hesitation allowed them to witness an even more bizarre and mysterious scene.
Have you ever seen a snake shed its skin?
To become stronger, a snake sheds its old skin, slowly crawling out of the shriveled, rough exterior to reveal a layer of brand new, healthy scales.
Yang Shugao was the same.
In the blink of an eye, it was as if a violent chemical reaction had occurred within him.
His face, head, neck—everywhere there were burn marks—the skin cracked in large patches, looking like parched, broken earth.
Rustle... rustle...
Tender pink flesh grew rapidly, and countless white flakes of skin fell continuously. The scabbed parts turned black and dry quickly before falling off.
Beneath those originally hideous scars, a faint flesh pink emerged. Blood began to circulate through the skin again, and the epidermis took on a healthy color.
In just a few breaths, Yang Shugao's entire appearance had completely changed!
Aside from his bald head, which was as smooth as a polished egg, eighty percent of the burned skin on his body had fully recovered.
Except for a few small hypertrophic scars left behind by the growth, one could hardly tell he had suffered severe burns.
This process was like the growth of new grass or willow buds in early spring, accelerated countless times and displayed directly before everyone.
He himself had not expected this scene. He sat dazed on the hospital bed, letting the old, shed skin surround him.
“What... what's happening?”
Shock and disbelief were written on everyone's faces in the ward.
These changes had happened right before their eyes.
Even the world's most brilliant magician could not perform such a magic trick involving life itself.
!!
“He's better! He's better! Sob, sob... our Gaogao is better!!”
Yang Shugao's parents lunged forward, laughing and crying at the same time.
“Gaogao! Are you okay? Does it hurt? How do you feel?!”
“He's better! He's better! Thank the Bodhisattva, thank God, thank the immortals, thank the heavens! Just thank you, thank you! The heavens have opened their eyes!”
Zhang Yue stood dumbfounded, trying to process what she had just seen.
“What is this? What is this?! How is this possible?! Magic? Spells?”
It wasn't a fake. Those scars had truly, physically recovered.
All because of two tiny pills.
Even though she had grown accustomed to her lifelong perceptions being overturned since joining the Special Investigation Section, seeing this scene still felt absurd and surreal.
“No, it's none of those.”
Qin Yue stared at the new skin, a smile tugging at the corners of her lips.
“This is a miracle brought by a soft-hearted ghost god.”
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