"Looks like I'll need to go out fishing after getting my injection tomorrow! If I can fish a bluefin tuna, boy, there'll be hundreds of thousand pounds more in my bank account."
Zheng Yang looked at the remaining balance in his account and continued browsing the online fishing forums.
At that moment, he received a call from the landline.
A supple female voice came from the other end, and an image of a cute girl with a smattering of freckles on her face came to mind. "Good day, Mr. Zheng Yang. This is Viya, calling from Emily's private clinic."
Zheng Yang moved his attention away from the posts, rubbed his forehead, and said, "So, Viya, you agree to go on a date with me, then?"
"Impossible." Viya's tone was full of disbelief. "I'm just calling to remind you to get your shot on time tomorrow morning."
"Alright, I'll be there."
…
Zheng Yang showed up at the clinic at nine in the morning the next day. He brought a dried fish and a fresh one along as gifts.
Emily gave Zheng Yang his injection just like last time, but the session wasn't over just yet. She took out a bottle of fluorescent, transparent liquid and said, "You came into contact with Rovni and her men. According to what they told me, that mad dog had been tainted by some demonic power and was turned into a hellhound. The rabies virus that it might have carried might have undergone some demonic mutation as well.
"Getting infected with a mutated virus might lead to a breakdown of the genetic chain, or make the infected mutate into a monster like Desmond, losing all capacity for reasoning.
"Conventional vaccines won't be enough to prevent the spread of such a mutated virus, so I've concocted a specific mystical medicine for you. Now that you've received two doses, you'll no longer need to come for a third one."
Zheng Yang was delighted to hear that. "Thank you very much, Ms. Emily."
"However, in the next seven days, you'll need to come here every day for a gene stability check."
Zheng Yang felt a little dizzy as the medicine was pumped into his biceps through the needle. He realized that the medicine that was being injected into his arm was triggering some peculiar changes in his body.
"The meds work that quickly?" he thought, frowning.
He then got up and said goodbye to Emily.
She was busy packing up her things with her head down and had failed to notice his peculiar reaction to the medicine. She simply returned his goodbye as he left the treatment room.
Zheng Yang then sensed the changes in his body speeding up, and his head grew increasingly heavy. It got so bad that he didn't even actually hear what Viya said to him before he left the clinic, heading back to his boat as quickly as possible.
His gut feeling told him that he was in trouble and that he would only be able to rid himself of said trouble after getting back to his spirit vessel.
Shhhhhhh~
Zheng Yang slumped onto the deck as soon as he got back to the cabin. His insides felt like they were boiling at the moment, as if he were being cooked alive from the inside out. The pain forced his dazed brain to be alert and made him breathe hard.
"Sh**, are Emily, Rovni and her gang trying to kill me or something?"
Zheng Yang did his best to endure the pain, clenching his teeth so hard that they felt like they were going to break.
That fluorescent medicine had obviously triggered something latent in his body, and a fierce battle was taking place between the two sides.
While said forces continued waging the intense battle, he sensed yet another power rising from somewhere deep within his being before joining the fray.
The battle between the two parties turned into a free-for-all involving three parties instead.
He shrieked in pain and siphoned spirit power from the vessel to suppress the forces duking it out in his system. He felt a lot better once the spirit power entered his body, yet the battle between the three forces continued.
The spirit power reserves dwindled bit by bit.
Voom~
Zheng Yang spontaneously combusted. Flames spouted from his hands but were quickly suppressed.
Roooarrr~
Suddenly, he opened his mouth and let out a low-pitched roar. But what happened next caught him by surprise. He found that his body had grown larger and that his teeth had elongated and sharpened into fangs, while unnervingly sharp claws that glinted coldly had sprouted from his fingers. An intense bloodlust welled up in his mind, and he became increasingly enraged, becoming completely filled with the urge to destroy.
Yet, before he was able to act on this urge, the boat stripped away his frenzied emotions, bringing him back to his senses.
The very next moment, the spirit vessel's magic formation appeared and enveloped him in silvery light. A surge of power gushed into him. That surge of power was not spirit power but some other form of energy that interfered with what was happening inside his body. He knew very well that the power came from the spirit vessel's magic formation and the ritual he'd conducted to transform the boat into a spirit vessel.
That surge of power was extremely potent, quickly crushing all three forces that were fighting within his body before gently guiding them to blend with each other in harmony. That surge of power even left a part of itself inside him, serving as the base to completely fuse all three forces into a single entity before embedding itself deep within his being.
Zheng Yang panted hard as he straightened up. His body had returned to normal, and the pain had completely disappeared, leaving him with the sense of ease that comes after being tortured.
"God**mn it. I sure as h*ll am never gonna let anyone just inject me with something in the future.
"Never ever again!"
Zheng Yang was completely terrified. While it seemed as if he had gained a lot after undergoing all that pain, the trauma nonetheless remained. What happened earlier had been completely beyond his control, including the boat intervening with its power. While he felt that the boat was an extension of his being, its power wasn't something that he could control.
It was a state of complete surrender, and that feeling of extreme helplessness didn't sit well with him.
After recovering, he started to look into what he'd gained from the recent changes. He threw punches and moved about for a bit, feeling that his physique had improved in all aspects, becoming twice as strong as before.
He then looked at his hands and willed. The bones of his fingers shot out of his skin, and half of his palm quickly calcified, turning into bladed claws. He willed further, and the claws that had grown from his four straightened fingers on each hand lengthened by seven inches, becoming bone claws that looked like four rows of sickle blades.
"Sh**, what the hell is this? Am I becoming like Wolverine or something?"
He looked at his claws with a dazed expression on his face as he recalled the changes he'd witnessed in Desmond during that night, not knowing what to make of it all.
"What kind of monster have I become now?"
However, due to all that he'd learned back in his past life, he didn't reject any of these changes.
He was able to lengthen his canines as well, but he had no intention of using that part of his power. He swiped his bone claws around, finding that while they lacked the reach of his machete, they were more than enough to cut flesh apart.
He wouldn't even need to bring a knife with him when he ventured outside.
He then willed his claws to retract and directed his focus to inside his body. Then, he lifted his right hand, and a flame ignited with a poof on his palm, quickly raising the temperature in the cabin.
"So, this is the power that comes from having the bloodline of a witch, eh?" He could feel traces of energy being drawn from his body, transforming into the flames dancing on his palm. He then tried to substitute the power source with spirit power and found that the effects remained. Spirit power could trigger the combustion effect just the same.
Burning Thorn.
The first mudra awakened with the bloodline of a witch.
A ring of burning thorn was added to his mental landscape at that moment, consisting of tightly packed runes and patterns.
He extinguished the flames and brought the information page up, finding that "Character Information" had been added next to "Basic Information."