Chapter 655: Ten Years

Ten years later.

The cobblestone streets of the old district of Mist City had been repaved; the potholes filled with new stones, their color lighter than the surrounding ones, like several fresh patches on a dusty old coat.

The gas streetlamps at the corner had been replaced with electric lights, wires stretching from the direction of the factories, weaving a dense net across the old district's sky.

The bread shop's owner was still there, but her son had taken over the business.

She sat behind the counter on a chair, wearing reading glasses and knitting wool, occasionally glancing up at customers entering and leaving.

The used bookstore was still there. This novel is originally published on Daily Novel Reading, perfect for killing boredom, 🅣🅣🅚🅢. 🅣🅦 offering you error-free, properly ordered chapters.

The wooden door had been repainted, its hinges replaced, no longer emitting that long, creaking groan.

The wooden sign above the door had also been replaced; the characters were neater, with a simple floral pattern carved along the edges.

But the three characters "Used Bookstore" remained unchanged, exactly as they had been ten years ago.

A small clinic had been expanded beside the bookstore.

Calling it an expansion was misleading—it was really just renting the abandoned house next door, knocking down the shared wall, and redoing the interior.

The clinic's entrance was modest: a glass door, with a sign hanging outside, blue letters on a white background, reading "Plane Nuolun Clinic."

Below it, in smaller text: "Specialty in Anomalous Trauma and Soul Damage."

At this moment, the clinic door opened from inside.

Eric stepped out.

He was taller than ten years ago, his shoulders broader, his back straight and rigid.

The youthfulness on his face had completely faded, replaced by a calm composure forged through years of witnessing countless injuries and illnesses.

He wore a long white coat, a pen clipped to the left chest pocket, and held a medical file in his right hand.

His hair was shorter now, revealing a full forehead, a sharp jawline, bearing a ruggedness uncommon in the young.

Behind him followed a middle-aged man in a dark blue uniform.

His left arm was suspended in a sling, the bandages wrapped tightly from shoulder to wrist, yet not a single drop of blood showed on the surface.

A fresh scar ran from the tail of his eyebrow to his cheekbone.

"Mr. Collins, come back next Wednesday to have the stitches removed."

Eric stood on the clinic's steps, flipped the medical file to the last page, tore off a slip of paper, and handed it over.

"You can change the dressing yourself if you like, using the method I taught you last time. But if you see black streaks forming around the wound, don't treat it yourself—go straight to the Association's headquarters and find Doctor Valentine. Have him contact me."

The middle-aged man took the slip, folded it, and tucked it into his pocket.

He moved his suspended arm, flexing his fingers with ease, then nodded in satisfaction.

"Doctor Eric, your skill is truly unmatched," the man said, his voice rough and hoarse. "The doctors at headquarters spent three days studying my case. They said my soul damage would take at least six months to heal, and might leave permanent sequelae. You treated me twice, and now I can barely feel it myself."

""

"It's because your foundation is strong," Eric smiled. "You've been coexisting with the anomaly for nearly twenty years—your soul's resilience is far stronger than an ordinary person's. I just reconnected the broken parts. The rest healed on its own."

At this, the middle-aged man's expression grew complex.

"No, it's your skill," he said, tone unwavering. "No other doctor has this ability."

Eric said nothing, only shook his head slightly, tucked the medical file under his arm, and pulled open the glass door for the man.

The middle-aged man stepped out of the clinic and paused at the bottom of the steps.

His gaze swept over the gray, hazy sky of the old district, finally settling on the dark green wooden door beside the clinic.

"That one—wasn't here today?" he whispered, nodding toward the bookstore.

Eric followed his gaze and shook his head.

"The teacher's consultation hours are not publicly listed. If needed, the Association will make formal appointments."

The man grunted "Ah," and asked no more.

He had been receiving treatment here for nearly a month, yet had never seen the legendary "Doctor Plane Nuolun" in person.

Inside the Association, rumors about that doctor were plentiful: some said he was very old, others claimed he wasn't a doctor at all but a retired Gao Gao Jie spirit medium, and some even whispered he was connected to the incident at the old asylum.

But no one could confirm any of it.

He only knew that this young doctor, Eric, was the doctor's student.

And Eric's skill already surpassed the best physician at Association headquarters by an incalculable margin.

"Then see you next Wednesday," the man said, turning toward the alley entrance.

A black Association vehicle waited at the alley's mouth; the driver was already seated in the driver's seat.

Eric stood at the clinic's entrance, watched the man get into the car, sighed, and turned back inside.

The clinic was small, but its functional zones were clearly divided.

Behind the examination room lay a short corridor.

To the left of the corridor was the treatment room. Eric walked to its door, opened it, placed the medical file on a shelf behind it, and began tidying the treatment table.

Used gauze, cotton balls, gloves—sorted into separate trash bins.

Surgical instruments were placed into the ultrasonic cleaner, and the start button pressed.

A small sticker of a rune, hand-drawn by Gao Jie Ming, remained on the table. He carefully peeled it off with tweezers, stuck it onto a special preservation board, labeled it with the date and patient ID, and stored it in a drawer.

That was Gao Jie Ming's work.

Eric had studied for ten years, and believed himself superior to any physician in the Association in the field of "treatment."

But compared to Gao Jie Ming, he felt he was still crawling, while his teacher was flying.

He couldn't even articulate exactly where Gao Jie Ming surpassed him.

Or rather, Gao Jie Ming's superiority was total, transcending any single technique.

Understanding of anomalies, insight into souls, prediction of energy flows—

When Eric handled a complex soul damage case, he had to repeatedly inspect, cautiously probe, and advance step by step.

But Gao Jie Ming needed only one glance to know exactly where the problem lay, how to fix it, and how long it would take.

Ten years.

He thought he had come far, but every time he saw Gao Jie Ming act, he was reminded anew: the distance between him and his teacher had not shrunk by even a millimeter.

As Eric sank into memory, the doorbell rang.

But the sound came not from the clinic's door, but from the wooden door of the bookstore next door.

Eric leaned out from the treatment room and, through the clinic's window, saw the bookstore's door open.

An elderly man with white hair stood at the threshold, holding a metal case.

It was Harding.

Inside the bookstore, Gao Jie Ming lay as always in his rocking chair.

He looked no different from ten years ago; every time Harding saw him, he half-believed time had barely passed.

"You're here," Gao Jie Ming said, picking up a teacup from the small table beside his chair, pouring water into it, and pushing it to the other side.

Harding placed the metal case on the table, pulled out a chair, and sat down.

His movements were slower than ten years ago—he was no longer young.

His hair was entirely white, but his spirit remained sharp; his face bore few wrinkles, his eyes still piercing.

Harding now wore casual clothes.

He had not worn his uniform since the day he retired; it hung in his closet, its shoulder insignia and badges polished to a shine.

"This quarter's data," Harding tapped the metal case, its surface engraved with the Spirit Medium Association's emblem and classification seal. "The chairman personally asked me to deliver it—he doesn't trust the regular channels."

Gao Jie Ming nodded, pushed the case aside onto the floor beside his chair, and did not open it.

For ten years, every batch of data and materials Harding delivered had been flawless.

"I heard Deke went north?" Gao Jie Ming lifted his teacup, blowing gently on the steam.

Harding also lifted his cup, took a sip, then leaned back, his expression turning reflective.

The look of an old friend speaking of a young protégé—mixing pride and concern.

"He left last month. Three northern cities experienced catastrophic anomaly outbreaks. The Association headquarters deployed five chairman-level spirit mediums to assist—Deke was one of them."

"That kid's become something else now. The Shadow Serpent has fused with his soul to the seventh level—now everyone calls him Shadow Serpent Deke."

Gao Jie Ming's lips curved slightly, a faint smile.

He remembered the young man, pale-faced and trembling fingers, who had first encountered the shark-like anomaly in the abandoned factory ten years ago.

Now, he had risen to become a high-ranking official of the Spirit Medium Association.

"And you? How's your health?" Gao Jie Ming asked.

Harding set down his teacup, raised his right hand, fingers spreading wide, then clenching tightly.

The motion was slow, but steady, without a single tremor.

"Last year I had a full checkup. The doctors at headquarters said my soul stability has improved by three percentage points since retirement." His tone carried unhidden pride. "I told them it was because I get regular maintenance from Doctor Plane Nuolun—their faces turned green."

"1

Gao Jie Ming said nothing, only poured Harding another cup of water.

The current peace we enjoy is thanks to that notebook from long ago—

No! Strictly speaking, what the professor left behind went far beyond that black notebook.

Ten years ago, after the ruins of the asylum were cleared, the Spirit Medium Association spent months excavating beneath the rubble.

Among the collapsed fragments of the anomalous space, they recovered vast quantities of undestroyed research materials: box after box of experimental logs, data analyses, anomaly specimen files.

The Association sealed those materials, then, through a cooperation agreement, Gao Jie Ming gradually exchanged them out.

They were the professor's entire life's work.

Decades of research, detailed dissections of over a hundred anomalies, data from thousands of fusion experiments.

In fact, the technology provided by that sorcerer back then was merely a spark; long before that, the professor had already completed the vast majority of the path himself.

Gao Jie Ming spent some time organizing and archiving all the materials, then spent several more years building upon them to establish a complete, reproducible theoretical framework for the study of the Strange.

Under the support of this theoretical framework, he developed numerous scattered technologies.

Of these, the two most critical were an improved sealing technique.

Traditional sealing techniques caused the Strange's power to continuously erode the host's soul, like water pressure slowly seeping through cracks in a dam.

The longer the seal held, the deeper the erosion, until one day the dam collapsed.

Thus, for a Spirit Medium, the very moment they became one, they entered a countdown to death.

Gao Jie Ming's new technique drastically reduced the rate at which the Strange eroded the soul.

Spirit Mediums who previously lasted only ten years could now endure thirty, fifty, or even longer.

The second key technology was Strange separation.

Traditional fusion was irreversible; once the Strange was sealed within, it could not be removed unless the Spirit Medium's death triggered a Strange outbreak.

Moreover, damage to the sealing array would cause the Strange to go completely berserk, instantly consuming the host's soul.

Gao Jie Ming's separation technique could, when a Spirit Medium no longer needed the Strange's power, fully "peel" the Strange from the host's soul without damaging the host's spiritual core.

The separated Strange could then be resealed, studied, or destroyed.

With the combination of these two technologies, Spirit Mediums who had devoted their lives to the Association could finally enjoy peaceful retirements.

It was due to this achievement that Gao Jie Ming's later research received increasing support from the Spirit Medium Association.

Harding was one of the beneficiaries of these two technologies.

His Storm Eye, under Gao Jie Ming's improved seal, now eroded at only one-fifth its original rate.

Last year, just before Dek went north, Gao Jie Ming performed his first Strange separation surgery on him, safely peeling the Storm Eye from Harding's body.

The surgery was a success; Harding's soul suffered almost no damage.

He is now an ordinary man—without Strange power, yet no longer racing against death.

"Before Dek left, he asked me to pass on a message." Harding pulled an envelope from his pocket and placed it on the table. "He said that when he returns, you should give him a full examination. He feels his fusion with the Shadow Serpent has hit a bottleneck and may need you to adjust the sealing structure."

Gao Jie Ming picked up the envelope but did not open it; he merely squeezed it, feeling its thickness.

There was something inside—not paper, perhaps a sample or an energy imprint.

"Tell him to come directly to me when he returns." Gao Jie Ming slipped the envelope into his pocket.

The two chatted for a few more minutes—about recent personnel changes in the Association, progress on the Catastrophic Strange to the north, and which of the new restaurants in the old district served the best food.

The conversation jumped casually between topics, like two elderly neighbors chatting by a winter hearth.

Half an hour later, Harding checked his watch and stood up.

"It's getting late. I must go." He drained his tea and walked toward the door.

Gao Jie Ming did not accompany him; he simply nodded from his rocking chair.

Harding pulled open the wooden door and paused at the threshold.

His gaze fell toward the clinic, where Eric could be seen through the glass door, organizing instruments in the sterilization cabinet.

The young man bowed his head, meticulously placing each surgical tool into a tray, his movements precise as if performing surgery.

"That boy Eric has made great progress," Harding's voice lowered. "Last month, the Association's medical division sent me a report saying their team came here to study, and since then, survival rates for soul injury treatment have improved by nearly forty percent. Forty percent—in just half a year."

Gao Jie Ming said nothing.

"But he still feels he's far behind you," Harding turned to look at Gao Jie Ming. "Every time I ask him how he rates himself, he says 'okay,' but 'Master does better.' I can tell he's not being modest—he truly believes it."

"He's right," Gao Jie Ming lifted his teacup, took a sip, his tone as calm as if commenting on the weather.

Harding stared at him for two seconds, then shook his head and smiled—a smile filled with many things.

"Fine, you're the Master. You decide." He opened the door and stepped out.

At the alley's mouth, the Association's black official vehicle had already turned around, its rear door open.

The middle-aged man who had been injured sat inside, flipping through a book with his uninjured hand.

Harding walked over, opened the door, and slid into the front passenger seat.

The car started, exhaling a puff of white vapor that trailed faintly through the gray air.

The car rounded the corner and vanished into the depths of the old district's alleys.

Eric stood at the clinic's entrance, watching the car's taillights blur into two dim red dots in the fog, then disappear.

He turned and looked toward the bookstore.

Gao Jie Ming had risen from his rocking chair and now stood at the doorway, hands in his pockets, gazing at the departing car.

The gray-white daylight fell upon him, casting a cool halo over his dark coat.

The master and apprentice exchanged a glance.

Gao Jie Ming said nothing, turned, and walked back into the bookstore.

Eric followed him inside.

The oil lamp in the bookstore was gone.

A ceiling lamp now hung down, its warm yellow light softly filling every corner.

The bookshelves held far more books than ten years ago—not just old volumes, but also newly published professional works on Strange research and soul medicine.

Some bore labels from the Association's library—books Harding had "borrowed" from the Association's internal archives and gifted to Gao Jie Ming.

Gao Jie Ming sat down in his rocking chair.

Eric stood quietly beside the bookshelf, knowing his master had something to say.

"Put up the 'Closed' sign," Gao Jie Ming said, his voice quiet, his pace slow, each word clear. "You may begin your fifth sealing."

At these words, Eric's expression remained, if anything, calm.

"Yes, Master," he said.

He did not ask if he was ready—he knew his master's nature; such a question would be an insult.

He turned and walked to the door, reaching out to flip the sign from "Open" to "Closed."

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