Saving Unpermitted – Chapter 26

Table of Contents

Chapter 26: Immunity

The dreams that followed were chaotic and Shu Jun even dreamt of roast chicken floating in front of him. He stretched out his head happily and took a bite — it tasted warm, just that the meat was too chewy and bulky. Shu Jun opened his eyes in dissatisfaction, then he saw the man in front of him.

He was biting the base of Zhu Yanchen’s thumb.

Shu Jun felt a cool refreshing sensation on his face. Zhu Yanchen was holding a piece of soaked cloth in his hand, likely trying to wipe off Shu Jun’s sweat. At this moment, Zhu Yanchen stared at his bitten hand, then he looked at Shu Jun again, his expression blank.

……Luckily, Shu Jun was still dazed from his sleep and his bite wasn’t very strong. Shu Jun embarrassedly let go of Zhu Yanchen’s hand and laughed dryly.

Right now he was lying on the ground and underneath a blanket that he had no idea where it came from. There was also a pillow made of folded clothes under his head. A cup of water lay next to the pillow, which was well within his reach.

The marshal’s caretaking skill isn’t so bad, Shu Jun was stunned for a few seconds. Zhu Yanchen’s state was abnormally normal. If it weren’t for his empty stomach that was growling in protest, Shu Jun would’ve thought that everything earlier was just a nightmare.

“Don’t get up so fast, you need to rest.” Zhu Yanchen wiped his hands. Shu Jun’s sharp canine teeth didn’t bite into his skin and a little bit of saliva remained: “If you feel uncomfortable anywhere, tell me immediately.”

“Uhm.” Shu Jun replied, his voice still a bit hoarse.

While the scene in the dream hadn’t completely disappeared from his brain, in his subconsciousness, Shu Jun observed the man in front of him.

The style of Zhu Yanchen’s clothes seemed old, probably taken somewhere in this room. They seemed to be one-size-fits-all, yet after being put on him, the loose shirt and trousers had somehow become close-fitting.

This man had long and sturdy limbs, which likely meant he was well-trained. His body was neither too lean nor too muscular, but the clothes couldn’t hide the muscle lines underneath. As a former ‘professional player’, Shu Jun always paid attention to keeping in shape. On the surface, Zhu Yanchen had a body shape that was similar to his own, but considering that the man had gone through severe erosion, to maintain this state must be no easy feat.

Marshal Zhu’s skin was still pale but it didn’t look as sickly as before, and even naked eyes could see that the aura he exuded now felt a lot healthier. He no longer wrapped himself behind layers of clothes like a rice dumplings, nor did he wear those cumbersome protective devices. It was the first time Shu Jun had seen Zhu Yanchen dressed like this.

As if seeing Shu Jun’s gaze, Zhu Yanchen turned around, his habitual cold expression softening a bit.

……Perhaps it was Shu Jun’s illusion, but Zhu Yanchen’s unintentional restraint often hidden in his gestures had vanished, and he also seemed to no longer deliberately keep his distance. But Marshal Zhu always carried a cold temperament, and his sharp eyebrows simply gave out a sense of dispassion, so even when he relaxed his attitude, the man still looked nowhere similar to that little slim boy Shu Jun saw in his dream.

It was likely that the information in Sweet Vanguard’s memories got mixed into Shu Jun’s brain, causing him to have such a strange dream.

Like a pancake being flipped, Shu Jun turned over, held up the cup and took a few gulps. As the cool, clean water went down his throat, he couldn’t help but heave a long sigh.

“Hungry —” Seeing Shu Jun finally awake, Monday’s scream suddenly blew up. Its movement was so loud it could shatter the land and the sky, even carrying with it so much devastation that Shu Jun felt his scalp almost burst and he nearly choked on his water.

Zhu Yanchen sighed and decisively picked up Monday, putting it next to the purifier.

The scream stopped at once.

Monday was anxious, and its logic was quite simple — Shu Jun was an Alpha marsh that it couldn’t provoke. But could it deal with a mere human like Zhu Yanchen? Monday immediately wriggled its hilt, trying to pull a piece of flesh from this fearless human’s hand.

Then it found that it couldn’t do it.

The erosive substance couldn’t eat up that hand, rather, it was trying to stay away from Zhu Yanchen’s skin. As the marsh chomped down, its bite wasn’t even as strong as Shu Jun’s bite while he was dreaming, and it couldn’t even leave its saliva behind.

Monday’s IQ wasn’t high enough to understand what was happening. It could confirm only one thing — I have no food to eat and no one to bite. Such a very sad life.

So Shu Jun watched his broadsword dejectedly melt down and turned into a sad little lump next to the purifier, all while making a pitiful howl.

Zhu Yanchen moved his finger, seemingly caught in some thoughts. 

“What’s the situation?” Shu Jun really choked on the water this time.

“Most of my equipment is outside, so I can’t properly carry out my research.” Zhu Yanchen pointed to the items left on the table. There were a dozen test tubes filled with blood beside the machine. Shu Jun was sure that that dazzling red blood didn’t belong to him.

“But at the moment, it seems that I am immune to erosion.”

If he hadn’t swallowed the water, Shu Jun was confident he could choke the third time. Monday didn’t keep itself idle and sobbed quite cooperatively from the corner.

“I think I have to sleep for a while.” Shu Jun drank all the water in the cup and slowly lay down: “With all that information… my brain is having a bit of indigestion.”

“Sleep.” Zhu Yanchen said softly: “We have plenty of time.”

“Uhm. I like to hear such words.” Shu Jun muttered.

“……Shu Jun.”

“Huh?”

“Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” Shu Jun yawned: “Unless it’s me wanting to kill you, please don’t die so suddenly next time. I’m scared of crying.”

Zhu Yanchen’s mind that had stopped working in that second almost spewed the words “Me too”, but by the time he was calm enough to come up with a logical response, Shu Jun was already asleep. Zhu Yanchen wasn’t very clear what it was that Shu Jun did, but judging from Shu Jun’s physical state, it must be quite a labourious task — After all, in this world, there weren’t many things that could really exhaust and Alpha-level Erosion Marsh.

The equipment inside Zhu Rong’s room was barely usable. Before Shu Jun woke up, Zhu Yanchen tried his best to analyse his situation, and the result had him quite shocked.

Not long ago, his tissues were all gnawed like a honeycomb and he could barely suppress the erosion with the most powerful medicine. Now those lumps of erosive substance had changed their state, trembling and squeezing into a ball, simulating the state of normal cells, and even their metabolism obeyed the rules of the human body. Severely eroded cells had been expelled from the body, and his erosion scars had completely disappeared.

The pain that had accompanied him for more than ten years was gone, and his body was full of energy and feeling incredibly light, as though there wasn’t really a body.

Zhu Yanchen tried to infect his own tissue samples with externally-introduced erosion. The external erosive substance’s reaction was quite interesting  — it first happily came into contact with the tissues to obtain simple information, then it turned around and ran away, as though Zhu Yanchen was the source of infection.

Marshal Zhu didn’t know whether he should laugh or cry.

After collecting lot of data, he could make a rough guess. Since the erosive substance imitated a normal cell, of course its ‘new’ life wouldn’t feel as free as before. However, they were dominated by Shu Jun’s ‘suppression’ and had to instinctively stay here. The erosive substance had no brain and was used to rampage randomly inside a human body. Now that it had suffered a huge loss, it would inevitably try to spread negative information to the outside world out of desperation.

He did a series of experiments, and the results were similar. All the erosive substance would take a detour around his tissues. Even if there was a small amount of erosive substance that couldn’t let go of its original instinct and involuntarily eroded the tissues, it still ended up imitating the human cells while agonising over its fate — The cells made of erosive substance in his body even started to re-generate, swaggeringly replacing the older cells.

Coupled with the case of Monday the broadsword, the facts had been made clear. Just like how human beings couldn’t control the activities of human cells, an Erosion Marsh couldn’t control its erosive substance’s instinctive reaction.

Unless there was an Erosion Marsh that was smarter and tougher than Shu Jun and had a highly similar ability, this balance wouldn’t be broken.

……Looking at this result, Zhu Yanchen might be the first human being who was immune to erosion in history.

Once again, his life was rewritten by Shu Jun.

Zhu Yanchen simply sat down on the floor and quietly watched the sleeping Shu Jun. Since they met again, this man had disrupted all his plans: from the plan to go deep into the erosion zone alone then the plan to calmly face death by himself.

And even his plan from way earlier — he wanted to protect Shu Jun from afar.

If Zhu Yanchen could continue to live, it was indeed a great thing. There was no doubt that the plan must continue and that he must go on to do what he set out to. But regarding this variable that he didn’t plan for…… Zhu Yanchen had never been too good at personal communication. Before he could solve the problem of ‘how to alienate himself before his tragic death’, it had now changed to a new problem of ‘how to stay friendly after his deadline no longer existed’.

Marshal Zhu seriously thought about it for a moment and decided to simplify his strategy. Thinking about it, he picked up the blanket and pushed Shu Jun’s hand back underneath it.

Maybe it’s not that difficult, he thought again. At least, this person hadn’t changed at all.

At the same time, at Y City.

Master Zhu walked down from the stage with a gloomy expression on his face.

The former leader’s sense of oppression was too strong, making the reporters too fearful to come close — After all, it was always tragic that an older person had to watch a younger one die before him. The man just finished reading a eulogy for his own son, so no one wanted to be the first to go up and suffer his cheerless mood.

“Is Zhu Yanchen really dead? The Zhu family is really…” Below the stage, a reporter whispered.

“I remember that those two, urgh, their father-and-son relationship isn’t so good?”

“No matter how bad it is, Zhu Yanchen is still his son, and a reputable strategist. No one in his generation is comparable to him. It’s going to be tough for the Zhu family now. If I have to guess, Master Zhu will choose one of the children from the Xia family to become his successor.”

“Maybe Master Zhu will produce another one on his own.”

“Hey, don’t make such a joke.”

“In any case, it’s just finding another puppet. It’s not impossible to create another ‘genius’ — Isn’t Zhu Yan’s reputation known only through publicity? He may not have real skills. Even if Master Zhu agrees with Yi Ning’s propositions, he won’t really let the Tang family’s power rise so easily. Let’s wait and see… But now that we’re talking about this, before we could care about whose power will go up, isn’t it in Master Zhu’s palm to decide on the optimization of the Player System? Before, when the father and son appeared at odds with each other, wasn’t it because of their differing opinions on this matter? I really don’t know what Zhu Yanchen was thinking. Maybe a rich young master like him just doesn’t understand the suffering of common people —”

“The man is dead now. Watch your mouth, karma may come back to bite you.”

“Okay okay okay, I’m just nosy for something fun. The election is less than three months away. This is probably a sign for Y City. Ouch! Who just hit me?!”

The reporter was speaking halfway when he was hit on the shoulder by someone passing by. He raised his eyebrows to find that the other person was a delicate-looking lady, at which point he immediately flattened those eyebrows: “Miss, you look unfamiliar, where are you from — hey, ​​don’t go so fast?”

Ai Xiaoxiao broke the bubble she just blew from her gum, sneered coldly and squeezed herself through the crowd, getting away from the meeting hall.

She had seen what she needed to see, and the coffee flavour of the gum in her mouth had faded. Leaving aside the fact that she had to gather some intelligence, Zhu Yanchen was more or less her boss over the past few years, so it was only appropriate that she attended his funeral to properly bid him farewell.

She wrapped the bubble gum in a piece of paper and threw it into the trash can on the side. As soon as she pulled back her hand, the communication device in her pocket vibrated.

Strange. This was a reminder that would only appear when the messenger monster arrived. Last night, Zhu Yanchen had sent out the final set of data and even his last words. Did he become a mummy and come back to life?

Two hours later, there was a yell from the Ai’s Clinic, followed by a wicked laugh.

“This is really a masterpiece.” Ai Xiaoxiao looked at the news brought by the mutated monster and patted the table: “I need to contact Lao Dong… In the next three months, there’ll be a fun show to watch.”

Then she realised something, and the smile on her face slowly disappeared — If Zhu Yanchen had developed immunity, wouldn’t her drug experiment be unable to continue?

Forget it, Ai Xiaoxiao shook her head and opened a can of beer.

“To a healthy life.” She clanged the can of beer against the air.