Chapter 364: The Surgery Was a Success

Luo Jinyou didn't know how long they had been unconscious.

Their consciousness kept drifting in darkness; they seemed to vaguely sense the surrounding war erupting, then being swallowed by a long, dead silence.

The concept of time seemed to have completely vanished; they didn't know how long had passed, didn't know where they were, and weren't even sure if they were still alive.

Then, they opened their eyes.

A grayish sky came into view.

It wasn't the fake night sky of Tianmian City dyed with neon, but a desolate firmament dotted with a few gusts of wind‑raised dust that made their throat itch.

Wilderness?

Luo Jinyou's brain slowly processed the information.

How did they end up here?

What happened?

They tried to move a finger; it could move, and bodily sensations were gradually returning—though sluggish, they were definitely present.

Before their brain could fully load the current situation, a fluorescent green head they knew all too well stared straight into their vision.

Ying Duo still wore that black cat‑ear hood, a few strands of fluorescent green hair poking out from under the brim, standing out sharply against the dim sky.

She was looking down at Luo Jinyou, golden eyes as unruffled as always, like the routine morning greeting:

"You're awake?"

Luo Jinyou opened their mouth, about to say something, when they heard a line that completely crashed Luo Jinyou's system:

"The surgery was a success; you are no longer a man."

Luo Jinyou: "......"

Luo Jinyou's still‑unconscious mind froze dead.

They lay on that makeshift "bed" of iron sheet, as if a pause button had been pressed on their whole being.

The next second, they performed a somersault like a koi fish; the motion was so big they almost rolled off the bed, and they scrambled to steady themselves, and the first thing they did was—

Lower their head.

Check.

Still, still there.

Luo Jinyou let out a long breath, feeling their heartbeat finally return to normal; waking up to such shocking news made their brain snap awake instantly.

Ying Duo watched this series of actions, expressionless, standing beside them, asking knowingly.

"What are you confirming?"

Luo Jinyou lifted their head, their gaze filled with an indescribable complexity.

"....... the sentence you just said."

"Which one?"

"The one that said 'you're no longer a man.'"

"Oh," Ying Duo nodded, "I was telling the truth."

Luo Jinyou: "......"

Forget it, after all this person is Ying Duo.

They looked around, beginning to assess the surroundings.

It was clearly a desolate wilderness; the sky was grayish, distant rolling mountain outlines could be faintly seen, nearby was rubble and sand, and occasional nameless withered yellow plants shivered in the wind.

The "bed" they were lying on still bore obvious bullet holes in places, showing it had endured many storms.

Scattered on the ground beside it were many components—Rune circuit boards, energy cores, and some things they couldn't even name—piled into a small hill.

The only thing here that could be called "intact" was a black sedan.

No, it couldn't be called perfect.

Its body lines were sleek, the shell heavy, clearly a high‑end item of considerable value.

The car stood a few meters away, its body bearing obvious repair marks; some metal plates were clearly newly welded, their color contrasting sharply with the surrounding black paint.

Though the repairs were good, the lack of black paint left those patches glaringly exposed, silently telling what the car had been through.

Luo Jinyou withdrew their gaze and looked back at Ying Duo.

Ying Duo stood beside the pile of components, a semi‑transparent virtual keyboard hovering at their hand, fluorescent green energy lines extending from their fingertips into the parts.

They were assembling something.

Luo Jinyou opened their mouth; many questions swirled, but they didn't know which to ask first.

In the end, they asked the most basic one:

"Where are we?"

Ying Duo lifted a hand, fingers gliding lightly through the void.

The next second, a semi‑transparent, edge‑glowing fluorescent green virtual keyboard materialized out of thin air, hovering by their hand, and their fingers landed on it to start typing.

Luo Jinyou was stunned.

What was that?

They had never seen anything like it.

It was not Aberrant Arts, not a Rune, not anything they knew.

Those fluorescent green energy lines stretched from Ying Duo's fingertips into the keyboard, penetrated its interior, then emerged, sketching complex patterns in the air.

Ying Duo kept typing, never raising their head, and said:

"Wilderness?"

"I know it's wilderness," Luo Jinyou said helplessly, "I'm asking for the specific location."

"Don't know, we were swept here by a temporal‑spatial turbulence and landed right here."

Luo Jinyou fell silent.

Space‑time turbulence.

He remembered.

Before his consciousness completely blurred, he vaguely recalled that he was falling, and then—what happened?

He looked around again, this time more carefully.

A desolate wilderness.

No signs of life.

Parts piled up like a mountain.

A little car being patched up.

A roommate who was assembling something.

"Well…," Luo Jinyou hesitated, "What about the others?"

"Just the two of us," Ying Duo replied offhand.

Since that earlier space‑time turbulence, the avatars of everyone else in the Team Channel turned gray, except Fang Zhiyan.

Fang Zhiyan seemed to have escaped the turbulence before them, so as soon as he emerged, Ying Duo contacted him.

Fang Zhiyan said the others might still be trapped in a temporal rift, not yet expelled, so they couldn't be reached for now.

For now, just consider them dead.

Fang Zhiyan was carried by the time rift to a small town on the fringe of the Church's territory, far from them, so he sent the map to them, asking them to take Luo Jinyou northward to the Dome's jurisdiction.

Because Bai Mu Yun's car was still in Ying Duo's hands, Yang Yixie had originally thought this would be a simple matter.

But problems often arise from the most unexpected places.

Ying Duo raised a hand, swiped through the air, and a semi‑transparent three‑dimensional map materialized.

The map showed two green dots: one far away, the other at the center, marking their current location.

Ying Duo pointed at the distant green dot, "We need to go to the northern Dome territory."

Luo Jinyou stared at the map, his mind still processing the information.

Go to the Dome?

Why go to the Dome?

He was about to ask when he suddenly realized something.

He looked down at his hand; faint markings spread beneath the skin on the back of his hand.

The patterns resembled some strange totem; he rolled up his sleeve and saw similar markings on his arm.