Chapter 227: Interrogation
Zhuang Xu only chatted briefly with his visitor. After getting a rough idea of the situation, he went to prepare Xu Zhi’s medicine. Mixing the prescriptions took quite a bit of time, and by the time he finished, another hour had passed.
“Your medication is really troublesome,” Zhuang Xu said. “I’m not overcharging you on purpose. If it weren’t for the fact that your case is quite interesting, I might not even bother treating you if you were someone else.”
After all, one wrong move and the patient could die. It was a hassle and didn’t even pay well.
“Alright. There isn’t much medicine this time. You basically have no external injuries left, but the internal damage is still serious. These are all oral meds—three times a day, after meals.”
“And this vial—make sure you keep it safe. Take it once a day, before bed.”
Most of Zhuang Xu’s time had gone into preparing those seven vials.
“That’s it. Next time, remember to bring the consultation fee. If there’s nothing else, you should head back now.”
There was a hint of deeper meaning in his final sentence.
The army was searching for people. In his view, the two sisters weren’t a problem, but the army wouldn’t listen to him. It was better for them to go back early and clear their names—otherwise, if the real culprit wasn’t found, they might end up getting dragged into trouble.
“Thank you, Doctor. See you next time.”
At some point, Xu Zhi had quietly become the one making the decisions. Qi Yanxin mostly followed beside her now, carrying the medicine and pushing the wheelchair.
Watching the sisters leave, the visitor blinked. “That’s a really strange pair of sisters.”
“Right?” Zhuang Xu replied. “The younger one in the wheelchair has a lot of presence. The older one—one look and you can tell she’s just an ordinary scavenger.”
The visitor nodded. “They don’t really look like sisters. Kind of… mismatched. Like they belong to two different worlds.”
“She’s an extraordinary, isn’t she?”
Zhuang Xu nodded. “Don’t worry about other people. Come here—I’ll take a look at you.”
The visitor waved him off. “What’s there to look at? It’s been like this for years. If I can’t go to the upper levels, then all that’s left is waiting to die.”
Zhuang Xu didn’t say anything more. In his silence, a trace of sorrow flickered across his face.
On the way home, Qi Yanxin was unusually quiet. Xu Zhi slightly lifted the brim of her cap and looked back at her, noticing the unease in her expression.
“What’s wrong?” Xu Zhi asked.
Qi Yanxin pressed her lips together. “I’m just… a little scared. I’ve never seen the army before.”
Xu Zhi was puzzled. “Are they really that scary?”
Qi Yanxin nodded. “They say everyone in the army kills without batting an eye. Anyone who disrespects them or disobeys orders gets executed.”
It sounded extremely authoritarian—nothing like the Federation’s army at all.
“If we just do what they say and don’t provoke them, it should be fine, right?” Xu Zhi said.
In truth, she was very curious about the lower-level army. She had thought about it before—among the few channels through which one could access ‘knowledge’ in the lower levels, the army might be one of them.
But without the right opportunity, she didn’t want to approach the army rashly. She could observe for a while longer, see if there were other options. Yet now, that “opportunity” had arrived far more suddenly than she expected.
As they neared the slum, they could already see the convoy parked on the outskirts and the freshly erected cordon lines.
The soldiers standing guard wore blue-black uniforms. The moment they saw Qi Yanxin and Xu Zhi approaching, sharp, alert gazes swept over them.
Under that piercing scrutiny, Qi Yanxin’s grip on the wheelchair tightened slightly. Suppressing her fear of the army, she kept moving toward their home. After only a few steps, the two of them were stopped.
The soldier who intercepted them didn’t ask a single question. He simply ordered the person beside him, “Take them in for questioning.”
Xu Zhi was a little surprised. This was truly authoritarian—or perhaps, to them, people from the slums simply had no “rights” to speak of.
The interrogation site was a temporary tent. Because Xu Zhi was in a wheelchair, the soldiers escorting them were relatively patient and didn’t rush them along.
The sky was overcast, as if rain were coming. The light inside the tent was dim. When Xu Zhi was pushed inside, she narrowed her eyes. Although her recovering extraordinary abilities had slightly improved her vision, she could still only see clearly within a short distance—about four or five meters. Beyond that, everything blurred together; past ten meters, she couldn’t even distinguish men from women.
Looking around the tent now, she could barely make out a table set in the middle, with two rows of chairs on either side, occupied by many scavengers waiting to be questioned.
Behind the table stood two armed soldiers, and a seated officer who was writing something.
When Xu Zhi and Qi Yanxin were brought in, the officer looked up. Xu Zhi felt that there was probably some change in the officer’s expression upon seeing her in a wheelchair, but from this distance, she couldn’t see clearly.
“Name. Address. Why were you approaching this area?”
A string of formulaic questions came out of the officer’s mouth. Only when she heard the voice did Xu Zhi realize it was a fairly young female officer.
Qi Yanxin’s voice sounded especially stiff as she answered carefully. When she finished, the officer raised her head and looked at them again.
“Buying medicine? What illness?”
Was that really something that needed to be asked?
Qi Yanxin was momentarily at a loss. She didn’t even know how to explain what illness Xu Zhi had.
“Officer, we don’t know either,” Xu Zhi spoke up for her. “We just take whatever medicine the doctor prescribes.”
Compared to Qi Yanxin, Xu Zhi’s voice was much clearer and more composed.
“Take out the medicine for inspection.” The female officer’s tone was emotionless—cold and rigid.
“This—” Qi Yanxin seemed to want to say something, but the soldier approaching her didn’t give her the chance. He directly took the medicine from her hands and placed it in front of the officer.
The sound of rummaging through pockets followed. Soon, those few vials were in the officer’s hands.
“Medicine for extraordinary beings?” Her tone turned distinctly dangerous. “Which one of you is the extraordinary?”
Xu Zhi recalled what the visitor had said—everyone was guessing that the perpetrator of the bloodbath was an extraordinary. But extraordinary beings were extremely rare in the slums. Now, with medicine meant for an extraordinary suddenly appearing in Qi Yanxin’s pocket, it was only natural that they would become a target.
However, before entering the tent, Xu Zhi had already made up her mind.
She spoke calmly. “Officer, this medicine is mine. I’m an extraordinary.”
“You?” A hint of doubt crept into the voice.
A frail slum girl in a wheelchair claiming to be an extraordinary?
It sounded like a joke. Yet the officer still asked seriously, “What attribute?”
She gave a look to her adjutant. The adjutant nodded and walked out to prepare the attribute-testing reagents.
Even though she asked Xu Zhi directly, confirmation through testing was still required.
Very soon, an answer came from the girl’s mouth—one the officer had never expected.
“Lamp.”
“I’m a Lamp-attribute extraordinary, Officer.”
Impossible.
That was the officer’s first reaction.
How could a [Lamp]-attribute extraordinary possibly appear in a place like this?
She lifted her head, no longer giving a cursory glance, but fixing Xu Zhi with a sharp, searching gaze, examining her carefully.
