Shackles of Humanity

The next day, Fourth Aunt arrived right on time. Behind her, in addition to Gao Fei, was a dark-skinned man carrying a Curved Long Saber on his back. His eyes glinted sharply, and he projected an aura as piercing as a drawn blade.

Luo Kai managed to lift his head, saying weakly, ”Is Li Gui too scared to see me?”

”Hee hee, isn’t my company enough for you?”

Luo Kai’s eyes roamed over her body, and he smiled back. ”More than enough. It’s just that I don’t know your name. You don’t look that old, so I can’t keep calling you Fourth Aunt, can I?”

Fourth Aunt gave him a coquettish look. ”Little one, I’m really starting to like you more and more. You can call me Bai Ge.”

Seeing Bai Ge take out the bamboo tube filled with pale blue liquid again, Luo Kai sighed in defeat. ”This stuff is addictive, isn’t it? What do you want from me? This can’t just be for the sake of torturing me.”

Gao Fei said coldly, ”Tell us everything about your background and where you came from!”

Luo Kai shot him a sidelong glance. ”What if I told you I don’t know myself? Would you believe me?”

Just then, the man with the Curved Long Saber suddenly drew the blade from his back. A cold light flashed. Luo Kai instinctively jerked his hand back, but days of torture, combined with the drug’s anesthetic effect on his muscles, made it impossible for him to dodge. A sharp pain shot through him as a section of a finger went flying. His arm was saved, but the middle finger of his right hand had been severed. His bones were flexible, but they couldn’t withstand a sharp blade.

”Gao Fei, I’ll chop off all his limbs right now to get revenge for you!”

The man attacked so suddenly that both Gao Fei and Bai Ge were startled. They rushed to stop him. ”Third Brother, we’re supposed to be studying him, not killing him!”

”Hmph, what’s there to study? Li Gui said we can’t kill him, but he never said we can’t chop off his hands and feet!”

”Third Brother, the amount of blood in his body is already down to two-thirds of a normal person’s. He’s in a near-death state. If you cut off his limbs, he’ll probably die on the spot!”

Gao Fei hesitated, then also tried to persuade him. ”Third Uncle, Mr. Li said this kid has taken a High-Level Gene Potion. We’re extracting his Essence Blood for research. We’re at a critical stage and can’t give up halfway!”

While the three of them argued, Luo Kai expressionlessly turned his head to look at his severed finger. Not much blood flowed from the wound. He automatically ignored the excruciating pain, but a trace of malevolence began to breed and multiply in the depths of his heart like bacteria. ’This saber-wielding man must be Pang Kun, the Commander of the Dragon Shark Camp. They’re playing good cop, bad cop to scare me. Otherwise, there’s no way I could have dodged that last strike.’

For the next few days, Bai Ge injected Luo Kai daily with a neuro-hallucinogenic drug. It muddled his thoughts, leaving him in a constant, dazed stupor. The line between dream and reality blurred. His consciousness grew dull, and he ate, defecated, and had his blood drawn purely on instinct.

Faced with this version of him, Bai Ge naturally couldn’t get any answers, and her expression grew increasingly strange.

Gao Fei said anxiously, ”Fourth Aunt, he hasn’t become a complete idiot, has he?”

Bai Ge shook her head in confusion. ”I don’t know. Logically, as soon as we stop the drug, he should be begging me like a puppy, ready to become my slave. But why has he ended up like this? Was the dosage too high?”

”No, it’s definitely not the dosage. Fourth Aunt, you have no idea. The dose I used on this kid last time was enough to anesthetize a full-grown orca, yet he was still able to seriously injure me. This... this kid’s constitution is just too powerful.”

Bai Ge said coldly, ”Then he’s just pretending? Hmph, let’s see how long you can keep up the act!”

When the room was finally empty, the dullness in Luo Kai’s eyes slowly gave way to clarity. The hallucinogen was like a drug, highly addictive. But his Spiritual Will had now reached a certain level of toughness; a small bit of mental pleasure couldn’t affect his consciousness.

He was indeed pretending. But this bunch of pirates were all ruthless and cunning experts; it was impossible to fool them for long. His real goal was to buy time, to grasp for that slim, fated chance at survival. And the source of that chance lay in frequency.

Ever since his battle with Liu Hou, he had been trying to understand what ”frequency” was, but to no avail. This wasn’t something that could be acquired simply by relying on the accumulated knowledge of one’s predecessors. It depended on personal insight—or rather, on whether one could truly quiet their mind and feel the world.

Now, in this desperate situation, during one of the hallucinogen injections, Luo Kai’s spiritual consciousness had finally resonated with a certain frequency. For the first time, he understood what frequency was. Everything in the world has a frequency. In scientific terms, this frequency could be collectively called a Magnetic Field. The Magnetic Field is the Source of Ten Thousand Forces, and frequency is the sole bridge for communication between all things.

Unlike indirect communication tools like sound and images, a living being’s spiritual consciousness also produces a frequency. When two frequencies align, every fluctuation in one’s thoughts can be perceived by the other, achieving a true meeting of minds. This was true for communication between living beings, but it also applied to non-living things. All things have a spirit. When you get close to its frequency, you can understand it, and even make use of it!

He was currently trying to perceive the frequencies of all the materials around him: people, as well as the Magnetic Fields of various inorganic materials like metal, wood, plastic, and concrete. He could even sense the Magnetic Field of his own blood. His first target, of course, was the blood that had been drawn from his body—or more accurately, the frequency of water!

At the very moment Luo Kai first grasped the concept of frequency and began to try using it, the nearby Blood Essence laboratory erupted into chaos. Luo Kai’s blood had suddenly and rapidly lost its activity. It wasn’t just the freshly drawn blood; even the blood that had been refrigerated with saltpeter was rapidly deteriorating. Normally, when human blood is kept in cold storage, the red blood cells enter a kind of hibernation. But now, it was as if they had gained self-awareness and were all dying at the exact same time!

After the incident in the lab, Bai Ge, Gao Fei, and the others all rushed over. Staring at the purple-black blood slowly coagulating inside the Blood Bottles, their faces were all ice-cold. To them, Luo Kai wasn’t just a simple Blood Slave; he was a massive treasure trove. The first Blood Essence created from his blood a few days ago had shown astonishing effects. It could be said that every single drop of his blood was worth no less than a Low-Level Gene Potion.

”Have you figured out the cause?”

Fur Monkey replied with a long face, ”I don’t know! Luo Kai’s blood is incredibly active. It would be fine even if left at room temperature for ten days or half a month! But now...”

”Fourth Aunt, do you think that kid could be behind this?!” Gao Fei was both jealous and afraid of Luo Kai, so his thoughts immediately jumped to him.

Bai Ge’s face was ashen. ”I don’t know. If it’s gone, then go draw more!”

Fur Monkey frantically waved his hands. ”We can’t! We just drew his blood. We have to wait a couple of days, or his life will be in danger!”

Bai Ge took a deep breath, strode into Luo Kai’s room, and looked at his face, which was deathly pale from blood loss. She asked hatefully, ”Was this your doing?!”

Luo Kai opened his eyes and said nonchalantly, ”Have Li Gui come see me.”

”You should know I have ten thousand ways to turn you into a drooling idiot!”

Luo Kai smirked. ”Bring it on.”

Bai Ge took another deep breath, forcing down her anger. Suddenly, she noticed that Luo Kai’s eyes had changed. For the past few days, they had been dull and lifeless, but now they were like the Abyss. Ripples swirled within them like vortexes, as if they could pull a person’s very soul inside. Her Heart Spirit wavered, and she suddenly found herself answering obediently, ”Mr. Li has returned to Broken Star Island.”

Luo Kai closed his eyes again, and the mystical connection vanished. Bai Ge came to her senses. She stood there in a daze for a moment before turning to leave.