Bang!
Lin Jie kicked open the door to his bookstore. He placed the young girl on the recliner chair and pulled out his communications device at the same time, thinking to himself that he had probably come across something troubling.
However, if he were to do nothing, once the flooding from the rain had subsided, the environment could easily lead to a more severe infection.
Lin Jie observed this young girl in a bloodstained white coat. Her long wet hair was plastered all over her face, but the blood on her cheeks was still obvious.
From head to toe, her snow-white skin that even seemed translucent was covered with wounds that were dripping blood.
The wounds covering the entire body seemed to have a certain directionality and along with the burnt flesh made Lin Jie guess that this young girl was likely a victim of a blast.
At least, according to Lin Jie's vast knowledge, the bruising throughout the body of this young girl was a clear sign of injury from experiencing a blast wave.
She should probably have been a distance away from the center of the explosion...
Lin Jie frowned. Blast injuries usually caused heavy internal damage and moderate external damage. An intense blast wave could cause internal organs to rupture, and the possibility of internal hemorrhaging and bone fractures was high.
However, the wounds on this young lady's body were minor, and internal bleeding wouldn't have resulted in such a large quantity of blood loss.
Furthermore, the bloodstains on her white coat were in huge splatters and didn't seem to coincide with the injuries on her body. It meant that this blood probably wasn't hers.
Lin Jie had no way of determining what exactly happened too.
Therefore, his first reaction was to use his communications device to call the hospital. However...
Beep... beep...
He was met with a busy tone.
Lin Jie sighed. It does make sense with such a massive fire over there. Seems like at least a dozen streets are affected, and the emergency teams probably aren't able to handle the large number of casualties.
At the very least, the phone lines for the hospitals in the area are probably flooded.
He put down his communications device and decided to try again in a bit.
——The so-called communications device was the cellphone of this world.
As previously mentioned, Azir's technological standards were comparable to Earth in the eighties and nineties. That period was roughly when the brick cellphone started to evolve into the flip phone.
However, the cellphone advancements in this world seemed a little quicker. The communications devices here were basically slider phones now.
Of course, such an item wasn't something most folk could afford at present. Just like how an old television set was something that could be flaunted by the next-door boss, those that could possess a communications device were basically people in the affluent category.
And Lin Jie's communications device had been given by a customer.
Lin Jie only knew a handful of people, and the backward gaming industry meant that there wasn't even a snake game installed. Thus, Lin Jie hadn't really used this communications device, but he still carried it with him all the time in case of emergencies.
Reality proved that his precaution was on-point.
As he tried calling the hospital again and hearing the busy tone once more, Lin Jie noticed the badge hanging from this young girl's neck.
He reached over and picked it up. The back of this badge had a faint white triangle printed on it, while some sort of warped ouroboros formed the edges.
I've never seen such an insignia before...
As Lin Jie thought to himself, he turned the badge over and was slightly startled when he saw that it had a photo of a young man.
Lin Jie's attention had been on the wounds as well as the stained coat so he hadn't noticed these clothes weren't her own.
Considering that widespread disaster in the distance and this young girl's still drenched body, Lin Jie guessed that she might be a casualty that had managed to flee from the blast and fire.
But she had on a researcher's lab coat which clearly didn't belong to her, and there was also that huge amount of blood. This meant to say that she wasn't an ordinary casualty.
Lin Jie interpreted it like how any normal person would.
This clothing isn’t the child's, but she shouldn't have put it on herself either.
The damage on her clothes doesn't align with the injuries on her body. She clearly didn't have these clothes on when she experienced the blast.
That means to say, she put on these clothes after she was injured.
Would anyone severely injured from a blast still take off other people's clothing to wear like it was nothing?
Moreover, even this identification badge is neatly hung around her neck.
Clearly, someone else had helped her put on these clothes, and it was likely to be the person on the ID badge.
As for why the disguise and its purpose, Lin Jie could merely make his own guess for such a deep question and definitely had no way of precisely knowing the truth.
"Gasp..."
At this moment, the young girl's eyelashes fluttered and before opening wide, revealing a look of loss and wariness.
Lin Jie squatted down and reached out to pat her head, trying his best with a gentle smile. "You're awake.Are you in discomfort? Don't move around too much for now.
"Your injuries are serious. Let me try contacting the hospital..."
The young girl noticed the warm smile on this person's face, then quickly observed the unfamiliar surroundings. Her tense body relaxed slightly when she instantly determined that this was a single young man who lived all on his own.
No aetheric fluctuations, an ordinary person.
He probably thought that the blood on her body was her own. In this case, gaining his trust wouldn't be too hard.
She reached out to grab the sleeve of Lin Jie's shirt, and whispered hoarsely, "Don't call the hospital, they want to kill me... I ran away."
Lin Jie was momentarily startled. Looking at the young girl's frail figure under these oversize clothes, he pondered for a bit, and a very popular character of the Detective Conan series came to his mind — Ai Haibara.
From his memory, Ai Haibara had escaped from her secret organization and had collapsed by the roadside in an oversized lab coat after shrinking.
Could it be...
Maybe not the part about shrinking, but could the blast and fire have been caused by some sort of top secret and dangerous research?
This hypothesis combined with the young girl's words seemed rather plausible.
The owner of this coat, presumably a researcher of a top secret organization, encountered some life-threatening danger, possibly occurring so quickly that he had no way of escaping the predicament.
And at the same time, this child that didn't have an ordinary relationship with the person was present. And from the large white coat this girl is wearing, perhaps...
The plot was like this— A researcher possessed a secret and was held hostage by a villainous organization with threats to his loved ones.
In the end, this researcher had enough and caused an explosion, no longer caring about his own life and letting this child wear the coat and escape to seek help.
Lin Jie felt that he already had both sides of the story.
Why was the young girl's entire body covered with wounds? Because there had been a battle between two sides at the scene then.
Why was this young girl completely drenched? This was to lessen the burn injuries she got in the process of escaping.
Why was she wearing someone else's clothes? Upon encountering terrifying threats, the owner of this coat had let her escape.
The young girl shook her head, staring at Lin Jie with her imploring eyes.
Lin Jie closed the communications device and sighed. He kept the communications device back in his pocket and consoled, "Alright, I won't make the call. But regardless of what happened, we still have to ensure you are fine... External injuries can be treated easily, but internal ones can't be seen. It's no laughing matter if your internal organs are damaged as it can become a matter of life and death."
He then continued with a serious expression, "Even though I'm not a doctor, I can still discern most injuries... You have to give me a reason to be at ease if you don't wish to go to the hospital.
“So, please cooperate and let me take a look at your injuries, alright?"
Lin Jie observed the young girl before him and put on a reliable and earnest look as he reached out to hold the young girl's cold little hands tightly, giving her some warmth and strength.
Sigh, I'm just too kindhearted and willing to help strangers overcome difficulties. This young girl wouldn't have been so lucky if she had run into others instead.
Such a horrible experience would definitely leave her with lingering trauma.
I must let her experience the warmth of the world!
The young girl stared at her hand which was being held and had made her feel an unprecedented sensation. She couldn't help freezing up before silently nodding her head.
"Alright, make sure to sound out if you feel uncomfortable."
Lin Jie reached out and pressed on some areas that could possibly hurt. "Is it painful?"
The young girl shook her head.
Lin Jie continued with a rough diagnosis on other areas of her body.
It was strange indeed.
Her body clearly showed signs of being battered by a blast wave yet it seemed like she hadn't suffered any ruptured organs, but there were definitely some slight fractures.
"There's no need to go to the hospital if you don't have any serious internal injuries. However, you still have to receive proper treatment..."
The young girl glanced at Lin Jie with a look of bewilderment. However, the thought of her recently attained freedom made her tighten her grip.
Having advised her this, Lin Jie continued, "Is there anything else you need? I'll be heading to the basement to get some tools to treat your external injuries. I'll be back in a bit."
"Cold." The young girl glanced towards the opened main door.
"Ah, I forgot to shut it. Give me a moment." Lin Jie chuckled before getting up and heading to the door.
The look in the young girl's eyes instantly turned cold. As she watched Lin Jie closely, she got up into a half-crouch on the recliner chair. Her entire body tensed like a drawn bowstring, ready to let loose at any moment, gracefully pouncing on and killing the young man before her...
Suddenly, she froze in her tracks. Her gaze that had tracked Lin Jie was drawn to the stone gargoyle on the countertop in the same direction.
Upon seeing the twinkling red eyes of the stone gargoyle, she sensed a large amount of sinister and rancorous aetheric activity from within it.
An eerie coldness gripped her heart. This was a sensation of being watched!
The stone gargoyle was alive!
It was akin to waking up from a nightmare for the young girl who became aware of this. She opened her eyes wide and surveyed her surroundings. Her aetheric affinity that hadn't recovered due to her injuries came flooding back to her.
Everything... here... was alive.
Her entire body stiffened as she looked towards Lin Jie who was now closing the door.
An ordinary human?
She laid back down on the recliner chair obediently.
Bang!
Lin Jie kicked open the door to his bookstore. He placed the young girl on the recliner chair and pulled out his communications device at the same time, thinking to himself that he had probably come across something troubling.
However, if he were to do nothing, once the flooding from the rain had subsided, the environment could easily lead to a more severe infection.
Lin Jie observed this young girl in a bloodstained white coat. Her long wet hair was plastered all over her face, but the blood on her cheeks was still obvious.
From head to toe, her snow-white skin that even seemed translucent was covered with wounds that were dripping blood.
The wounds covering the entire body seemed to have a certain directionality and along with the burnt flesh made Lin Jie guess that this young girl was likely a victim of a blast.
At least, according to Lin Jie's vast knowledge, the bruising throughout the body of this young girl was a clear sign of injury from experiencing a blast wave.
She should probably have been a distance away from the center of the explosion...
Lin Jie frowned. Blast injuries usually caused heavy internal damage and moderate external damage. An intense blast wave could cause internal organs to rupture, and the possibility of internal hemorrhaging and bone fractures was high.
However, the wounds on this young lady's body were minor, and internal bleeding wouldn't have resulted in such a large quantity of blood loss.
Furthermore, the bloodstains on her white coat were in huge splatters and didn't seem to coincide with the injuries on her body. It meant that this blood probably wasn't hers.
Lin Jie had no way of determining what exactly happened too.
Therefore, his first reaction was to use his communications device to call the hospital. However...
Beep... beep...
He was met with a busy tone.
Lin Jie sighed. It does make sense with such a massive fire over there. Seems like at least a dozen streets are affected, and the emergency teams probably aren't able to handle the large number of casualties.
At the very least, the phone lines for the hospitals in the area are probably flooded.
He put down his communications device and decided to try again in a bit.
——The so-called communications device was the cellphone of this world.
As previously mentioned, Azir's technological standards were comparable to Earth in the eighties and nineties. That period was roughly when the brick cellphone started to evolve into the flip phone.
However, the cellphone advancements in this world seemed a little quicker. The communications devices here were basically slider phones now.
Of course, such an item wasn't something most folk could afford at present. Just like how an old television set was something that could be flaunted by the next-door boss, those that could possess a communications device were basically people in the affluent category.
And Lin Jie's communications device had been given by a customer.
Lin Jie only knew a handful of people, and the backward gaming industry meant that there wasn't even a snake game installed. Thus, Lin Jie hadn't really used this communications device, but he still carried it with him all the time in case of emergencies.
Reality proved that his precaution was on-point.
As he tried calling the hospital again and hearing the busy tone once more, Lin Jie noticed the badge hanging from this young girl's neck.
He reached over and picked it up. The back of this badge had a faint white triangle printed on it, while some sort of warped ouroboros formed the edges.
I've never seen such an insignia before...
As Lin Jie thought to himself, he turned the badge over and was slightly startled when he saw that it had a photo of a young man.
Lin Jie's attention had been on the wounds as well as the stained coat so he hadn't noticed these clothes weren't her own.
Considering that widespread disaster in the distance and this young girl's still drenched body, Lin Jie guessed that she might be a casualty that had managed to flee from the blast and fire.
But she had on a researcher's lab coat which clearly didn't belong to her, and there was also that huge amount of blood. This meant to say that she wasn't an ordinary casualty.
Lin Jie interpreted it like how any normal person would.
This clothing isn’t the child's, but she shouldn't have put it on herself either.
The damage on her clothes doesn't align with the injuries on her body. She clearly didn't have these clothes on when she experienced the blast.
That means to say, she put on these clothes after she was injured.
Would anyone severely injured from a blast still take off other people's clothing to wear like it was nothing?
Moreover, even this identification badge is neatly hung around her neck.
Clearly, someone else had helped her put on these clothes, and it was likely to be the person on the ID badge.
As for why the disguise and its purpose, Lin Jie could merely make his own guess for such a deep question and definitely had no way of precisely knowing the truth.
"Gasp..."
At this moment, the young girl's eyelashes fluttered and before opening wide, revealing a look of loss and wariness.
Lin Jie squatted down and reached out to pat her head, trying his best with a gentle smile. "You're awake.Are you in discomfort? Don't move around too much for now.
"Your injuries are serious. Let me try contacting the hospital..."
The young girl noticed the warm smile on this person's face, then quickly observed the unfamiliar surroundings. Her tense body relaxed slightly when she instantly determined that this was a single young man who lived all on his own.
No aetheric fluctuations, an ordinary person.
He probably thought that the blood on her body was her own. In this case, gaining his trust wouldn't be too hard.
She reached out to grab the sleeve of Lin Jie's shirt, and whispered hoarsely, "Don't call the hospital, they want to kill me... I ran away."
Lin Jie was momentarily startled. Looking at the young girl's frail figure under these oversize clothes, he pondered for a bit, and a very popular character of the Detective Conan series came to his mind — Ai Haibara.
From his memory, Ai Haibara had escaped from her secret organization and had collapsed by the roadside in an oversized lab coat after shrinking.
Could it be...
Maybe not the part about shrinking, but could the blast and fire have been caused by some sort of top secret and dangerous research?
This hypothesis combined with the young girl's words seemed rather plausible.
The owner of this coat, presumably a researcher of a top secret organization, encountered some life-threatening danger, possibly occurring so quickly that he had no way of escaping the predicament.
And at the same time, this child that didn't have an ordinary relationship with the person was present. And from the large white coat this girl is wearing, perhaps...
The plot was like this— A researcher possessed a secret and was held hostage by a villainous organization with threats to his loved ones.
In the end, this researcher had enough and caused an explosion, no longer caring about his own life and letting this child wear the coat and escape to seek help.
Lin Jie felt that he already had both sides of the story.
Why was the young girl's entire body covered with wounds? Because there had been a battle between two sides at the scene then.
Why was this young girl completely drenched? This was to lessen the burn injuries she got in the process of escaping.
Why was she wearing someone else's clothes? Upon encountering terrifying threats, the owner of this coat had let her escape.
The young girl shook her head, staring at Lin Jie with her imploring eyes.
Lin Jie closed the communications device and sighed. He kept the communications device back in his pocket and consoled, "Alright, I won't make the call. But regardless of what happened, we still have to ensure you are fine... External injuries can be treated easily, but internal ones can't be seen. It's no laughing matter if your internal organs are damaged as it can become a matter of life and death."
He then continued with a serious expression, "Even though I'm not a doctor, I can still discern most injuries... You have to give me a reason to be at ease if you don't wish to go to the hospital.
“So, please cooperate and let me take a look at your injuries, alright?"
Lin Jie observed the young girl before him and put on a reliable and earnest look as he reached out to hold the young girl's cold little hands tightly, giving her some warmth and strength.
Sigh, I'm just too kindhearted and willing to help strangers overcome difficulties. This young girl wouldn't have been so lucky if she had run into others instead.
Such a horrible experience would definitely leave her with lingering trauma.
I must let her experience the warmth of the world!
The young girl stared at her hand which was being held and had made her feel an unprecedented sensation. She couldn't help freezing up before silently nodding her head.
"Alright, make sure to sound out if you feel uncomfortable."
Lin Jie reached out and pressed on some areas that could possibly hurt. "Is it painful?"
The young girl shook her head.
Lin Jie continued with a rough diagnosis on other areas of her body.
It was strange indeed.
Her body clearly showed signs of being battered by a blast wave yet it seemed like she hadn't suffered any ruptured organs, but there were definitely some slight fractures.
"There's no need to go to the hospital if you don't have any serious internal injuries. However, you still have to receive proper treatment..."
The young girl glanced at Lin Jie with a look of bewilderment. However, the thought of her recently attained freedom made her tighten her grip.
Having advised her this, Lin Jie continued, "Is there anything else you need? I'll be heading to the basement to get some tools to treat your external injuries. I'll be back in a bit."
"Cold." The young girl glanced towards the opened main door.
"Ah, I forgot to shut it. Give me a moment." Lin Jie chuckled before getting up and heading to the door.
The look in the young girl's eyes instantly turned cold. As she watched Lin Jie closely, she got up into a half-crouch on the recliner chair. Her entire body tensed like a drawn bowstring, ready to let loose at any moment, gracefully pouncing on and killing the young man before her...
Suddenly, she froze in her tracks. Her gaze that had tracked Lin Jie was drawn to the stone gargoyle on the countertop in the same direction.
Upon seeing the twinkling red eyes of the stone gargoyle, she sensed a large amount of sinister and rancorous aetheric activity from within it.
An eerie coldness gripped her heart. This was a sensation of being watched!
The stone gargoyle was alive!
It was akin to waking up from a nightmare for the young girl who became aware of this. She opened her eyes wide and surveyed her surroundings. Her aetheric affinity that hadn't recovered due to her injuries came flooding back to her.
Everything... here... was alive.
Her entire body stiffened as she looked towards Lin Jie who was now closing the door.
An ordinary human?
She laid back down on the recliner chair obediently.
