Undercurrents

Lu Yuan ran straight into Mary as he stepped out of the library's massive metal doors.

She was leaning against the corridor wall, a lighter flipping skillfully through her fingers with a series of crisp clicks.

Seeing Lu Yuan emerge, she glanced at the time on her wrist.

"Exactly four hours."

A hint of surprise flickered in Mary's lazy green eyes. "I thought you'd be like most newcomers encountering knowledge for the first time—staying inside until the Book Spirit kicked you out, or being carried out because your brain fried."

"Knowledge is fascinating, but life is more important." Lu Yuan straightened his wrinkled collar. Though his face showed signs of exhaustion, his eyes remained clear.

"Very sensible." Mary nodded and stood up straight. "It seems you really are suited for this path. But don't get ahead of yourself; you haven't encountered truly dangerous knowledge yet."

She tucked away her lighter and led Lu Yuan toward the upper levels.

"Business first. Regarding the situation of 'targeting doctors' you mentioned before, we looked into it."

Mary's voice echoed in the empty spiral staircase. "Your intuition was correct. Recently, there really has been a force secretly purging doctors in Gelimu Port, especially those who have come into contact with 'abnormal' cases."

"Though we haven't caught their tail yet, I can guarantee they won't dare move against you in the short term. After all, you're one of ours now."

"In the short term?" Lu Yuan keenly caught the keyword.

"The Nightwatchers can't provide twenty-four-hour personal protection for an outside consultant." Mary shrugged with a pragmatic tone. "We will increase the frequency of patrols passing by your clinic at night. Of course, if you can step onto a transcendent pathway as soon as possible and prove your value, we can consider moving your clinic to the inner harbor. It's much safer there than in the port district."

Lu Yuan remained noncommittal.

Moving to the inner harbor would certainly be safe, but it also meant moving away from his sources of information and his current pool of "experience points."

"Those are matters for the future." Lu Yuan stopped and looked at Mary. "At this rate, I might not last that long. Since I signed the contract, the Nightwatchers shouldn't just watch their own consultant get killed while unarmed, right?"

He held out his hands. "So, I need a weapon. Something that can deal with those people."

Mary stared at him for a moment before letting out a helpless laugh.

"You certainly aren't modest."

She pulled a compact, single-shot pistol from her waist holster and tossed it to Lu Yuan.

It was a silver-plated, ornate pistol, its body covered in complex runes and its grip fashioned from a dark wood. It felt heavy and cold in his hand.

"This is an alchemical weapon, though it's an obsolete model," Mary explained. "It only holds one bullet at a time, the reload speed is incredibly slow, and it's hardly lethal to humans unless you're at very close range."

"However, it has one great trait: the silver-plated bullets and the runes on the body can deal actual damage to specters and low-level eerie creatures."

Lu Yuan caught the pistol and examined it, feeling quite pleased.

【Faint xxx, unlocked new knowledge: Engraver xx】

"This will suffice."

After asking Mary for a holster, Lu Yuan finally returned to his clinic.

By the time he arrived, the sky had already turned dark.

Lu Yuan quickly ate a few bites of cold bread before diving back into the tedious work of studying and medicine-making.

With the accumulation from those four hours in the library, his understanding of Eerie Lore had deepened significantly. Though he hadn't broken through that final barrier yet, a sense of lateral thinking made handling medicinal herbs much smoother.

The guangyin grass mixture was boiling in the crucible, emitting a faint silver glow.

"The heat is still a bit off."

Lu Yuan frowned as he stared at the color of the liquid.

Although his success rate was higher than before, the final condensation step was always lacking.

"It seems I need to raise my Basic Medicinal Herbology to level 2 first."

Just as he was about to extinguish the fire and start over, the clinic door was forcefully thrown open.

"Bang!"

The cold wind rushed in, carrying the heavy scent of blood.

"Doctor! Quick! Save him!"

Two dockworkers, soaking wet and smelling of fish, rushed in carrying a door panel used as a stretcher.

A man lay on the panel, covered in blood, his face as pale as paper.

Lu Yuan set down his test tube and walked over quickly.

The person lying there was a familiar face—Thomas.

It was the dockworker with the leg injury from before, Lu Yuan's very first client.

His condition now was far more gruesome than the last time.

His clothes over his abdomen were shredded, revealing a hideous wound where flesh was torn and mangled; his intestines could almost be seen writhing inside.

"Lift him onto the bed."

Lu Yuan directed the two men to move Thomas to the hospital bed. He quickly cut away the clothing and began cleaning the wound.

The edges of the wound showed serrated tear marks, as if a large mouth with dense, sharp teeth had violently ripped a chunk of him away.

Furthermore, the skin around the injury was turning black and emitted a foul stench similar to rotting seaweed.

【Observation: Severe laceration accompanied by a slight infection of an unknown toxin. Treatment recommendation: Stop bleeding, suture, detoxify.】

【Basic Medicine: +0.8】

Lu Yuan's hands didn't stop. Using crow-beak forceps and guided by the injury analysis, he clamped the bleeding points.

"What happened?" Lu Yuan asked as he attempted to suture the wound.

The worker beside him wiped sweat from his face, looking shaken. "We were patrolling the sea surface. Because of his leg injury, the boss gave Thomas some light work—just making sure no cargo fell into the sea."

"A crate fell in today, and Thomas jumped down to retrieve it. Not long after he went under, a huge patch of blood surfaced..."

The worker swallowed hard. "When we pulled him up, he was like this. If a boat hadn't been passing by right then, he'd be dead."

Lu Yuan's hand paused briefly during the suturing.

The waters near the harbor had already become this dangerous?

This was not a good omen.

He had heard Brent say that while those "fish" were strange, they had never attacked anyone after being caught.

Launching an active attack in the shallow waters indicated that the situation in the sea was intensifying. Lu Yuan thought back to Brent's uncle, who had undergone a deep mutation.

'Things are getting restless.'

Lu Yuan thought to himself, his hands moving continuously under the guidance of the grey text.

"Finished."

Lu Yuan tied the final knot and applied a layer of specialized anti-inflammatory herbal paste to the wound.

"The wound looks terrifying, but it didn't hit his organs. His life is saved, but this toxin is troublesome. He'll need daily dressing changes."

Thomas woke up groggily at that moment, grimacing in pain.

"Doctor Lu... am I going to die?"

"You won't die." Lu Yuan tossed his bloodied gloves into a basin. "But your luck is indeed something else."