The Creatures That We Are

Chapter 51: Emergency Treatment

All Gao Yang felt when he woke up was thirst. To his wonderment, he didn’t feel any pain.

Didn’t I get stabbed in the sides from my back? Why doesn’t it hurt at all? All he felt was an itchiness that was so faint it was more like mosquito bites.

“Don’t move. Won’t take long,” a young voice said.

Blinking his vision clear, Gao Yang sat up with some difficulty and saw a girl who appeared to be seven or eight years old. Her hair was tied into cute buns, and she wore a modernized ruqun[1] with the collars tucked in the middle of her waist, under which was a white inner wear. On her light pink dress, peach blossoms bloomed.

She knelt down next to Gao Yang, holding his bigger hand with her chubby and petite ones. Her face was slightly flushed and round with baby fat, and her big eyes were clear and pure.

“And you’re...”

“Lovely Lamb of the Twelve Zodiac Signs. Everyone calls me Cute Little Lamb.”

“Did you heal me?” Gao Yang said gratefully.

“I didn’t. I only made Big Brother’s injury mine.”

“What?” Gao Yang was surprised.

“Talent: Injury Transfer, serial number 24, Life-type.” White Rabbit showed up and crouched down before Gao Yang, reaching out to ruffle Lovely Lamb’s hair. “It’s good enough. Go find Uncle Dead Pig.”

“Nah, gonna transfer all the injury from Big Brother,” Lovely Lamb said proudly.

“Didn’t see you being so thorough with anyone else. Why, do you have a crush on him?” White Rabbit smirked. “My oh my, are you starting to pine after boys at this age already? You like them good-looking, don’t you?”

“No! That’s not it!” Lovely Lamb let go of Gao Yang’s hand and ran away blushing.

Gao Yang’s attention was caught by White Rabbit’s feet. The earlier leap left holes on the heads of her white sneakers, revealing her toes. He noticed that the big toe of her right foot was painted with black nail polish, but only halfway.

“What are you looking at? Rude!” White Rabbit said, but her tone was relaxed with no heat.

Gao Yang hurriedly averted his gaze.

White Rabbit sat down cross-legged and took off her damaged sneakers. She then took out a bottle of black nail polish and finished the job right before Gao Yang. “I wasn’t able to do the whole nail because I left home in a hurry. You don’t mind, do you?”

“I don’t.”

“Then ask away. I’ll answer.”

“Qing Ling...is she okay?”

“Don’t worry. She was the first we treated. She almost died, but it wasn’t too difficult to save her. We brought Cute Little Lamb and Dead Pig with us for a reason.”

“What kind of Talent is Injury Transfer?” asked Gao Yang.

“Exactly what it sounds like. She can transfer someone’s injury to herself, but the target couldn’t have been injured more than thirty minutes ago.” White Rabbit paused. “We haven’t done the exact calculation, but the amount of injury she can absorb would kill you about ten times.”

Gao Yang didn’t intend to die that many times.

“However, Cute Little Lamb can’t deal with the damage herself. She has to transfer it elsewhere quickly.” White Rabbit finished painting her toenail and blew at it while holding her foot. “She does it the same way she absorbs the injury—by touching the target. There is a divide between species, however. Injury from humans can only be transferred to humans. Animals to animals, plants to plants, and monsters to monsters.”

Gao Yang was a little concerned. “Then isn’t she...”

“It’s fine. Let me introduce you to another bigshot in our organization—Uncle Dead Pig.” White Rabbit turned to point at the man wearing a pig head mask not far from them.

He looked to weigh about a hundred and fifty kilos. Sitting cross-legged on the floor topless, he looked either like a giant Maitreya or a mountain of flesh. However, his weight didn’t come from floppy fat like the case with Fat Jun, but tanned, well-built muscles. Therefore, he looked dependable rather than unkempt.

“I’m getting started, Uncle Dead Pig.” Lovely Lamb stood before the man and extended her cute little hands.

“Hoho, I’m ready.” Dead Pig spoke with his breaths coming out of his nose, his voice booming low and long-lasting like echoes in the valley.

Lovely Lamb put her hands on Dead Pig’s abdomen, and soon, the skin and flesh in his sides split into crimson wounds. Those were the exact places Gao Yang had been stabbed.

Although the wounds looked horrifying, they only bled a little rather than gushing out blood.

When Gao Yang got a good look, he realized that the wounds were mending at a noticeable speed, and in less than a minute, they were completely gone.

What made the whole thing even more unbelievable was that Dead Pig didn’t seem pained at all in the process. Instead, he fell asleep and even started snoring.

“Done.” Lovely Lamb pulled back and dusted her dress before skipping her way to White Rabbit, throwing her arms around her from the back. “Tee-hee.”

“Stop it!” White Rabbit was too focused on painting her toenails to spare her attention. “I don’t know what you’re so happy about.”

Lovely Lamb stuck her tongue out at White Rabbit. Then she looked up and snuck a glance at Gao Yang before running away bashfully. She stopped beside Heavenly Dog, who wasn’t far away from them.

“Dead Pig of the Twelve Zodiac Signs. Talent: Self Recovery, serial number 47, Life-type,” White Rabbit explained. “As you can see, with his impressive recovering power, a regular man would tire before killing him with a knife. That’s where he got the name from—Dead pigs fear no scalding water.[2]”

“That...strong?” Gao Yang felt like a frog stuck at the bottom of a well.

“That’s because Cute Little Lamb and Uncle Dead Pig have both reached level 4 with their Talents.” White Rabbit pouted. “There may only be a one level difference between level 3 and 4, but the difference is night and day.”

“Ah!” Gao Yang almost forgot to ask. “Where’s Wang Zikai? Is he still alive?”

“Oh, the wanderer?” White Rabbit said. “We didn’t save him.”

“Why?!” Gao Yang felt dizzy again when his heightened emotions pushed blood into his head.

“Say, ‘Ah.’”

“Don’t you...”

White Rabbit quickly threw something into Gao Yang’s mouth. It was an orange-flavored gummy.

Gao Yang didn’t chew on it.

“Eat something to get your blood sugar up. Don’t worry, I didn’t touch my foot with this hand.”

Gao Yang finally chewed and swallowed the gummy, his chest tightening again. “You said you don’t kill wanderers.”

“We don’t kill them, but that doesn’t mean we save them.”

“...”

“Alright, I’m just teasing you.” White Rabbit put another gummy in Gao Yang’s mouth. It was an apple-flavored one.

“He’s not dead?!” Gao Yang was overjoyed.

White Rabbit blinked her brown, almond-shaped eyes and said through the mask, “We didn’t save him because he didn’t need saving.”

“Your wanderer friend is quite a special one. It seems he’ll only die if his head is cut off or his heart is carved out. Blood loss isn’t a threat to him, and there’s nothing to worry about when his heart stops. That’s merely his body activating his self-recovery.”

“Isn’t that Dead Pig’s Talent?” Gao Yang was surprised. He really is born with great ‘talents’.

“Far from Uncle Dead Pig’s level, but enough to save himself.”

While they talked, Wang Zikai showed up from inside the ruined house with Fat Jun’s support, pressing a hand to his mostly recovered injury. He spotted Gao Yang in the front yard immediately, and he burst into laughter. “Ha, haha, hahahahaha...”

He laughed so hard that he started trembling, and the exertion made his mended wound split again. He grimaced in pain. Even so, he didn’t stop laughing.

Gao Yang was confused. Why is he laughing? Shit, he didn’t lose his mind, did he?

1. A type of Hanfu, namely traditional Chinese clothing, consisting of an upper garment and a wrap-around lower skirt. It was more often worn by women but could be men’s attire as well. ?

2. An idiom that describes someone who no longer fears insults and attacks because they have nothing to lose. It’s often used in the negative sense to say that someone’s shameless, but it can be used in the neutral sense. ?