Chapter 253: The Second Attack

After an afternoon of waiting, the two cultivators stationed in the tavern attic had waited for the reinforcements assigned by Green, waited for the order to notify the professor, but had not waited for that professor and his assistant to return.

Lights flickered on in the clinic, the scent of food drifted out and then faded, and the carriage that traveled daily between the academy and the clinic did not return.

"I think there is nothing happening today."

His companion and Luo Bin swapped places; the latter was sitting by the bed tearing open bread with a slightly crispy crust, eating it with a slice of cheese.

"Can you stop that?" Luo Bin swallowed the dry, powdery food in his mouth, took a gulp of water to suppress the woody feeling stuck to his throat, and roughly understood the reason the clinic had to run its own canteen. "Focus. You could have said this tomorrow morning."

"Alright." The person on duty shut up and continued watching silently, while the person resting continued to battle the hard dinner, creating a creaking sound like unstable wooden furniture shaking.

This sound was nothing in the night; the tavern downstairs was still open for business, and men who had finished their daytime labor immediately spent part of their day's earnings on one of the only two daily entertainment activities.

Alcohol numbed the mind, temporarily blocked fatigue, and also produced more emotions and noise.

The clinic diagonally opposite seemed like another world; quiet, bright lights shone through the first-floor windows, and occasionally figures carrying trays or jars walked steadily past the window.

Judging by the observation experience of this period, they must be working overtime. The shorter the professor's time in the clinic, the longer the lights would stay on at night.

A window on the second floor facing the street lit up on time; unlike the ward downstairs, it did so every night, turning on and off according to its own rhythm. Behind the window was a desk, belonging to the girl who often appeared near the professor.

Luo Bin had some impression of her; after all, the proportion of women in the academy was about the same as in the church, rarer than the hair on top of the heads of the Bufenzhu Sect and professors, rounding up to approximately zero.

While ordinary girls of the same age from common families were learning housework from their mothers, and Young Ladies were full of vague longings for emotions, a special figure who was literally gnawing on books was particularly conspicuous.

To use a somewhat inappropriate metaphor, Luo Bin felt she was receiving training more akin to that of men in the current era, as a bearer of certain responsibilities.

This was contradictory; although he did not know if those doctors would be willing to let a member of the opposite sex enter their exclusive domain, by analogy, the bishops would absolutely never allow a female bishop to appear.

"Perhaps this is a useless act," the companion commented. This reminded him of the time when cultivation courses made his head dizzy, and he felt some admiration and sympathy; these efforts might find it hard to locate a corresponding position in the future to display themselves.

"Who knows?" Luo Bin walked to his side, glanced at the small figure sitting undisturbed by the noise behind the half-open window, sat back on the bed to rest, and said, "Don't stare at the window, watch the surroundings. I'll take the second half of the night. If something happens, then..."

Besides them, others were watching the clinic from other angles, but this was not a reason to relax vigilance.

"I know. If something happens, blow the whistle to notify them. At that time, half a dozen angry young men who haven't slept all night will rush out and give the ungrateful fellow a warm welcome." The companion raised a small object in his hand that looked like half a flute; that was the agreed-upon warning signal.

"No matter who it is or for what reason, their face will probably have a few more colors on it by tomorrow morning."

The newly added helpers always made people feel much more at ease. Luo Bin lay half-reclined on the bed, resting his head on a rough straw mat, and fell into a deep sleep.

His spirit did not completely sink into stillness but maintained a minimum state of alertness, swaying slightly amidst the noise and vibrations coming from downstairs, like soft grass leaves rippling with the water current.

Memories accumulated during the day were like silt deposited at the bottom of the water, stirred up by the subconscious and surging upward.

Those suspicious figures who appeared occasionally wore unprofessional disguises, with strange, incongruous long arms hanging by their sides, while strong sunlight painted their faces with blurred features, reflections, and intense shadows.

Like flying flies, those figures lingered around, appearing from the edge of vision and disappearing into blind spots.

Actually, he did not know if his report was necessary, because it was indeed hard to find any describable decisive point of suspicion; instead, a vague sense of dissonance frequently surfaced in retrospect.

This feeling accompanied the entire period of light sleep between waking and dreaming, until a low-pitched, highly penetrating ringing sound appeared in its background noise, like a sharpened small knife being dragged across paper, cleanly and unnoticedly slicing through the dream.

Luo Bin opened his eyes alertly and saw his companion's face.

"I was just about to wake you." The other person had no whistle in his mouth, but that low-pitched whistle sound penetrating the night had not yet stopped.

"The whistle, it wasn't us blowing it. Where is it?" Luo Bin rushed to the window, tried to distinguish for a few seconds, and could only roughly perceive that it came from the other side of the clinic, over there in the cluster of buildings and alleys.

"Quick, let's go over there!"

Unlike his slightly dull colleague, Luo Bin's alarm bells rang loudly in his mind. After hesitating for a moment at the door, he chose to step directly out of the window, used his sense of touch to step on the protruding wooden frame of the second floor for cushioning, jumped directly onto the street, and ran toward the direction from which the whistle sound came.

"Be careful... no, wait for me!" During the time he was hesitating, Luo Bin, rubbing his aching knees, had already rushed across the street and disappeared into the dark alley.

The guidance of the whistle sound disappeared soon after entering the alley. Realizing with a slow-motion delay that he had not brought any lighting equipment, he groped forward by moonlight for a distance until the lantern light not far ahead helped him meet up with the person who had raised the alarm.

A person with pale lips leaned against the wall, biting a whistle, with his short sword and lantern lying on the ground.

Luo Bin recognized him as the cultivator assigned to this place by Green during the day. At this moment, one of his arms was bent at an unnatural angle, his chest heaved violently, and cold sweat soaked his collar.

"What's the situation?!"

The fallen cultivator took a deep breath. This action aggravated his injuries, making his expression even more painful. "At least three people. I don't know where they came from. They thought I was dead."

It seemed the gap between the two sides was huge, and the other party had other objectives. The injured person pointed in a direction with a finger that could still move, shook his head slightly to indicate he would not die for a while, held the whistle in his mouth, and blew again.

【Clinic】

Luo Bin picked up the lantern from the ground. Spilled oil was burning on half of the lamp frame, and the exhausted light illuminated the narrow alley.

Multiple different messy wet marks appeared from under a lifted stone slab, dripping water and extending toward the clinic, emitting a rotten, fermented fishy smell.

"Keep blowing! Someone will be here soon!"

The situation was urgent. Luo Bin, holding the hot lantern, followed the wet tracks to track them down. The water marks disappeared completely in the middle of the alley beside the clinic, and the tracks and their maker seemed to have suddenly evaporated there.

He nervously looked around. This action shifted his gaze from the ground, and he saw a reflection on the brick wall.

A string of upward water marks.

"Damn it, the second floor!"