The insect egg was the size of a fist and emerald green. Through its crystal-clear membrane, one could see densely packed white filaments and a chubby green caterpillar coiled up inside.
By the lamplight, Chu Yin discovered countless white filaments growing from the inside out, rooting into the flesh around Wu Mu's abdominal wound like tree roots.
Whenever Wu Mu's skin was tugged, these filaments would extend outward, pushing up the dermal layer and forming earthworm-like ridges.
The stabbing pain made Wu Mu howl miserably. His face was red and covered in sweat, veins on his forehead throbbing as if they were about to burst, his entire back bending and shrinking like a cooked shrimp.
Wu Mu's screams echoed through the empty waiting hall, forcing Chu Yin to pull out a flat, metallic vodka bottle from her inventory, twist off the cap, and pour it down Wu Mu's throat.
[Name: Mr. Andronikov's Vodka]
[Type: Item]
[Quality: Rare]
[Special Effect: Painkilling Gulp. After consuming all the vodka in the bottle, temporarily lose all sense of pain and enhance the body's Self-healing Ability. Lasts for 10 minutes.]
[Consumption: During the effect, the drinker's Sanity Value gradually decreases by 50 points. The Sanity Value cannot recover naturally during this process.]
[Cooldown: 10 minutes]
[Equipping Requirement: None]
[Note: The liquor cannot leave the bottle except by direct drinking. It automatically refills every 10 minutes.]
[Note: Mr. Andronikov was a distinguished noble and an outstanding doctor; he has hidden various liquors collected over many years in wine cellars around the world. Collect them, blend them, and you will gain unexpected rewards.]
[Note: Doctor's Orders: One bottle of strong liquor, split between doctor and patient, thirty minutes before surgery. Bottoms up for mutual encouragement!]
After downing the bottle of vodka, Wu Mu's complexion eased somewhat, and he lay on the ground, gasping for air.
However, the emerald green insect egg in his abdomen seemed to have been stimulated somehow. It trembled and writhed constantly; the green caterpillar inside had also awakened and was circling within the egg.
It felt as though the insect egg could, at any moment, burst out of Wu Mu's abdomen like the creature from the sci-fi movie "Alien."
Chu Yin lifted her head, her expression solemn as she locked eyes with Ash.
The gazes of the two Special Affairs Bureau agents met. Ash took out his phone and tapped on the screen, accessing Wu Mu's profile as a Bounty Hunter within the Special Affairs Bureau's System. After confirming there were no issues, he gave Chu Yin a firm nod.
Chu Yin understood. She pulled out a leek as tall as herself from her inventory and stuffed it sideways into Wu Mu's mouth. She then took out an old-looking steel scalpel with a leather-wrapped handle, hesitating before placing the blade at Wu Mu's wound.
The green and white leek was one of Chu Yin's main weapons. It had an incredibly potent aroma and was soft on the outside but steel-like within. It could be used as a club to smash people or for cooking meals, creating dishes with healing effects.
Even if destroyed, as long as a small tuft of leek leaves remained, it could slowly regrow into a new leek.
The steel scalpel she held, on the other hand, was a user-bound Rare Level item named [Mr. Andronikov's Scalpel].
[Name: Mr. Andronikov's Scalpel]
[Type: Item (Exclusive)]
[Quality: Rare]
[Special Effect: Battlefield Surgery. Performs a high-speed, efficient surgery according to the user's needs, with a 100% success rate but somewhat unreliable outcomes.]
[Consumption: Stamina and Sanity Value proportional to the surgical workload.]
[Cooldown: 10 minutes]
[Equipment Requirement: Charm Value ≥ 7 points]
[Note: Mr. Andronikov's Scalpel has developed a sliver of self-awareness during its long battlefield career. It chose to become Princess Chu Yin's Knight, offering her its eternal and undying loyalty until one of them perishes.]
[Note: If I were you, I wouldn't use this scalpel on myself.]
This scalpel, just like the vodka from earlier, was an item Chu Yin had obtained during her first solo script mission.
That mission was set in the Tsarist Russia era, and the process was extremely perilous. If it weren't for Chu Yin's good luck—relying on her high attractiveness, her ability to act cute, and befriending a princess from the Romanov Royal Family—she likely wouldn't have survived, let alone obtained two rather decent pieces of equipment.
Past memories surfaced. Chu Yin shook her head, casting the jumbled thoughts aside. She held her breath, focused, and gently sliced open Wu Mu's abdomen with the scalpel.
This blade's special effect was to perform a surgery guaranteed to succeed.
No matter the user's bizarre request, as long as they gripped the handle and mentally envisioned the surgical requirements, the blade would control their hand and automatically complete the surgery.
Reattaching limbs, heart bypass surgery, frontal lobotomy, laparoscopic pancreatoduodenectomy, turning a man into a woman, a woman into a man, a Giant into a child, carving on a fly's leg, engraving on the large intestine, painting on the retina—it could do it all.
The entire process was extremely quick and smooth as silk.
The only problem, as described by the skill's special effect, was that the process was unreliable. All surgeries would randomly incur complications, altering the patient's physiology to varying degrees.
For example, changing gender, altering height and weight, adding or removing organs, stopping the secretion of foot sweat, an inexplicable wooden prosthesis replacing a limb, gaining extra eyes or ears, or causing the patient to see everything in shades of green.
Some of these side effects were severe, some minor, and some even counted as beneficial effects. The outcomes were completely uncontrollable. Once, at its worst, Chu Yin had even turned a Tsarist baron, who sought a heart operation, into a cow.
A female one at that.
If not for this scalpel, with its slight self-awareness, stubbornly clinging to Chu Yin, insisting on being her "loyal bootlicker" and becoming her exclusive item, she would have sold it long ago; it would be useless to other players anyway. It was, however, precisely because of this exclusive item that she had joined the Mobile Detachment as support personnel.
"The situation is urgent now, so I hope you won't blame me," Chu Yin muttered to herself, allowing her hand, under the scalpel's control, to dance back and forth over Wu Mu's belly.
Wu Mu, having lost both sensation and mobility, could only lie on his back, watching helplessly as his abdomen was sliced open.
Chu Yin, having also lost control of her own hand, watched as it firmly and steadily thrust the scalpel into the insect egg. It pulled out a wriggling, fat green caterpillar, squeezed it with a POP until it burst, and then mischievously rubbed the shriveled caterpillar skin, now smeared with yellow-green pus.
Her blood-spattered, sixteen-year-old face turned away towards the dark, empty walls of the abandoned subway station, revealing an exhausted and resigned expression, like that of someone in their sixties.
"That's why this scalpel is so damn annoying! AAAARGH!"