Chapter 54: Hospice Care, One Good Deed a Day

The young lady squatted down, looked at the nose-ringed youth with a worried expression, and sighed, "Sigh! Brother Lu, you might as well rest in peace. It's not that I don't want to save you, but in university, I only ever dissected whole-body donors and learned simple human physiological structures. I really have no first-aid experience. If I try to treat you, you will only die faster and walk more peacefully. How about this, considering we were teammates, let me send you on the painless final leg of your journey?"

"Save... please..." Lu Rang's pupils were gradually losing focus, but driven by a strong desire to survive, he struggled to vomit blood as he choked out the words.

"You're putting me in a very difficult position. In your current condition, even the slightest movement is just accelerating your death."

Bang!

Another heavy whip kick landed squarely on his fragile neck, driving Granny Fish—whose vitality defied the heavens and who was trying to crawl up once more—crashing back down to the ground. Her skull cracked and bent at an unnatural angle as she slammed against the pavement.

Yuan Zhu took a few quick, light steps forward, aimed a vicious stomp at that thick and hard cranium, and drove the old grandmother deep into the flagstones.

Mai Lili, who had just managed to stand up, happened to witness this midnight murderer stomping the fallen old grandmother head-first into the paved street. She shuddered instantly and did not dare to meet his gaze.

At that moment, Yuan Zhu saw Meng Xiyue stuffing a grenade into Lu Rang's chest while helping him cross his arms over it to clutch the explosive, just as she was about to pull the pin. Yuan Zhu shouted a sudden, loud reminder, "Feed him a tomato, you idiot!"

Yuan Zhu's prompt startled the pink-haired maniac; her hand pulling the pin froze mid-motion. She then turned her head, flashed a smile at Lu Rang—who was staring wide-eyed with mortal hatred at his killer—and said, "Congratulations, you're saved!"

With the light fading from his eyes, Lu Rang struggled in despair, "Grenades..."

"This one's about to blow anyway. If you like them so much, I'll get you a new one later." As she spoke, she pulled out the grenade and tossed it toward a crazed tomato creature in the distance.

Boom! With an explosion, one of the mad tomato's legs was blown off.

Meanwhile, Meng Xiyue pulled three small red tomatoes—each sprouting a tongue, an ear, and a nose respectively—out of the side pocket of her backpack and shoved them all at once into Lu Rang's bleeding mouth.

Next, she picked up a dirty, broken little stick from the ground and began poking frantically at the youth's mouth: poke, poke, poke. She didn't care whether he swallowed successfully; as long as the bloody tomatoes were punctured and the juice flowed out, she considered it a win.

Sure enough, once the three fruits were mashed and spread across Lu Rang's mouth, a wave of heat surged from his throat into his body, beginning to repair his collapsed and sunken chest cavity and ribs.

His heartbeat grew strong once more, his breathing returned from nothingness, and his unfocused eyes refocused. The look Lu Rang cast at Meng Xiyue was a mix of gratitude and terror.

"More... I want... my... pants pocket..."

Lu Rang struggled to speak, his survival instinct exploding as he indicated that three fruits were not enough and there were more in his pocket. Meng Xiyue nodded in understanding, pulled out another three, and stuffed them into his mouth again.

This time, before she could even raise the broken stick in her hand, Lu Rang bit into the bloody tomatoes himself. Another wave of life-giving nourishment rapidly restored his condition. With tear-filled eyes and lingering terror, he said, "I... I'm alive!"

"You guys hurry up and run!"

By now, Yuan Zhu had torn off one of Granny Fish's arms and thrown it far away, while fiercely pinning her other leg to the ground to restrict her movement. In his heart, he muttered in puzzlement over why this group dragged their feet so much when running for their lives.

If you keep stalling like this, I'll damn well have to tear the old lady apart with my bare hands, completely wipe out these mad tomatoes, and then how am I supposed to secretly kidnap them and refine them into thralls?

Thinking of this, he slightly relaxed his foot, giving Granny Fish an opening. She swept her tail like a whip, which Yuan Zhu blocked with his raised arm, following up with a close-range combination of punches—wide open, bold, and immensely powerful—that beat the frenzied, berserk old granny back step by step. Finally, she rolled away to create distance, and they stood deadlocked in confrontation once more.

Seeing that Yuan Zhu was still entangled with Granny Fish, Meng Xiyue hoisted up the limp-limbed Lu Rang and retreated without looking back, "We'll go on ahead, catch up as fast as you can!"

***

"Alright!"

The shadow beneath Granny Fish's feet surged violently, suddenly shooting out strands of shadowy thread that tightly bound her waist, legs, single arm, cervical vertebrae, and tail. Pulling outward in opposite directions, the threads anchored her firmly in place.

Yuan Zhu turned his head, and upon seeing his teammates disappear around the corner, he suddenly grinned. No longer bothering to act out the fight, he activated his [Boss Template]. A terrifying, murderous aura instantly swept across the entire area, causing the mad tomatoes that had been creeping closer to turn tail and flee for their lives.

On the ground, the human shadow's silhouette gradually elongated and expanded, ultimately transforming into a pitch-black tiger demon.

Without needing him to strike personally, the skeletal snake-tail plunged into the ground first, then lashed out with the ten-meter-long upper body of a black giant snake, swallowing a fleeing mad tomato whole into the [Abyssal Belly].

Repeating this several times in succession, it collected five mad tomatoes for Yuan Zhu before slowly sinking back into the shadows and vanishing.

The tiger demon pulled its snake-tail out of the shadow and approached Granny Fish.

At this point, the old granny still had pale green eyes, her eyeballs filled with blood vessels. Beast-like roars issued from her throat, and her sharp fangs clashed together with a *clack clack clack* sound as she continuously provoked the tiger demon.

"Has she completely lost her mind?"

Little Spicy Stick asked: "Should we swallow her too?"

"We were teammates once, and I'm afraid of getting dirty. Respecting the elderly and loving the young is a traditional virtue of my hometown." Yuan Zhu shook his head. Then, controlling the countless shadows on the ground, he wrapped them around Granny Fish like boiling asphalt, rolling her up before letting them seep into his 'Foul-Blood Uniform' in an attempt to tear the source of contamination right off.

A burst of skin-peeling screams rang out, and Yuan Zhu chose to give up. The degree of fusion was too deep; this contaminated uniform had already grown together with her body, becoming a part of her flesh.

"Is the Fur King's uniform really this dangerous?" Yuan Zhu asked in surprise.

Little Spicy Stick replied: "Perhaps it's related to the 'Source of Contamination'? We can output a stronger 'Shadow Contamination' to suppress the foul blood inside her body."

"Let's try it!"

The tiger demon manipulated the shadows to pry open the old granny's mouth, beginning to pour asphalt-like shadow energy down her throat. The foul blood of limited concentration inside her body was gradually suppressed, but the old granny also began to bleed petroleum from her seven orifices... making her look even more evil and terrifying.

"Ugh... I, I can't hold on much longer. I just wanted to regain my youth, not turn into a monster; I shouldn't have absorbed that green blood. Young man, I beg you, kill me! Also, save my sheep. If you can't save it, eat it—don't waste it."

"Baa, baa..." Not far away, the little lamb with a broken spine, still lying on the ground waiting to die, let out a helpless, miserable bleat.

Yuan Zhu thought: Such a strong obsession, even on the verge of death she still doesn't forget to have people eat mutton.

"Uh... fine, I promise you."

"I have two more tomatoes on me, feed them to her," Granny Fish began giving her dying instructions.

Yuan Zhu nodded: "Alright, consider it done."

"I don't want to become a bloodthirsty monster, but I can't control myself. That feeling is too awful; you must never touch green blood."

As soon as Granny Fish finished speaking, her entire body was engulfed and flooded by even more shadow contamination. Figuring they were about to leave the city anyway, and that if they didn't squander this shadow power now they might never get the chance, the little sprite went wild.

It frantically drew shadow energy from the ubiquitous 'shadow pores' and violently flooded the old granny with it, using a massive quantity of mediocre 'Shadow Contamination' to flush and dilute the foul blood...

Granny Fish, who had deeply fused with the 'Foul-Bone Contaminated Blood,' could not withstand the influx of shadow contamination. That abnormally potent vitality was finally worn down bit by bit until it was completely extinguished.

To some extent, a potentially powerful foul-bone monster was essentially drowned by him with a massive amount of shadow power.

After finishing this, the tiger demon clawed an opening in the ground, and Granny Fish's corpse slipped down that wound into the shadow dimension. Perhaps, once she came into contact with enough Underworld Death Qi, she could fight in the martial world once more in the form of a corpse-ghost or a thrall?

By that time, however, the human consciousness would have long since dissipated, leaving only a brand-new 'Underworld Shadow Spirit' born from her corpse.

Stowing away the [Boss Template], concluding his end-of-life care, and feeling virtuous after doing one good deed for the day, Yuan Zhu walked over to the little lamb and chose to feed it the old granny's final legacy.

After a moment of thought, he plucked some greenish tomato seedlings that were growing directly out of the flesh of several dead mad tomatoes by the roadside and fed them to the little lamb as well.

Plain bloody tomatoes only had a minor healing effect for repairing wounds. If he wanted to completely save this crippled little lamb, he had to use heavy artillery!

Mad tomatoes contained mad blood, but at the same time, they possessed 'Tomato Bloodline' and the 'trace Buddhist teachings' injected into them by the Multi-Hearing Buddha Tomato, making them rich in nutrients. He even voluntarily chose to use 'mad tomatoes' to forge a thrall (after all, he couldn't find any safer Buddha tomatoes).

Before the latest version, the Multi-Hearing Buddha Tomato had clearly intended to demonic-stain all civilians before converting them back to Buddhism in order to achieve Buddhahood through them. Therefore, these 'mad tomato civilians' must carry a Buddhist backdoor, making them safer than pure foul-bone monsters.

Because of this, Yuan Zhu believed that feeding the little lamb the 'tomato seedlings' from the mad tomatoes' corpses would allow it to gain the vitality of the foul bone while simultaneously being suppressed by tomato starlight and Buddhist teachings, preventing it from completely falling into depravity.

Even if the little lamb entered the demonic path, he could easily suppress it and save (kill) it on the spot!

Therefore, saving a sheep's life builds a seven-story pagoda! Filled with confusion about this world, Yuan Zhu decided to use the little lamb for an 'I-reckon experiment'.

There was no need for a control group at all; he would just go by feel and see what kind of creature he could feed into existence!

"Eat up, eat up! Eat more mad tomato flesh and grass. Weren't you very eager to eat foul-bone monsters earlier? Now here's an even more high-end, upgraded version!"

"Baa-ye-ye! Baa-ye-ye!"

Sniffing the 'foul bone' aura on the mad tomato seedlings, the little lamb acted like a North American native smelling a leaf, instantly becoming greedy and frantic, eager to devour a mouthful without delay.

Thus, Yuan Zhu kept feeding, and the little lamb kept devouring.

He only reluctantly stopped after stripping clean all the tender seedlings growing on several mad tomato carcasses.

The lamb's mouth was left full of a fresh fragrance, its broken limbs and spine had unconsciously healed, and it began skipping blindly around Yuan Zhu, its keeper.

Despite being a lamb born only a short while ago, a pair of sharp, green-patterned spiral horns now sprouted from the top of its head. Around its horizontal, slit-shaped pupils, faint green bloodshot veins had also emerged, but it clearly wasn't as frenzied as the previous foul-bone monsters and still maintained its rationality.

"It actually didn't go crazy? Is it because these trashy mad tomatoes are too weak and their foul blood concentration is insufficient? Or is it the suppression effect of the tomato people and Buddhist teachings?" Yuan Zhu didn't understand the reason behind it, so he simply used his clothing to split off a shadow rope, tied it around the little lamb's neck, and dragged it along toward the city gate.