Chapter 61: Using Me as a Vessel

"Xu Yuan!"

A heart-rending, fear-fraught roar nearly pierced the roof of the entire café!

Time seemed to be infinitely stretched and slowed down in this very instant.

Amidst Lin Feifei's terrified, breathless scream and the sharp gasps of the surrounding customers, Jiang Yi moved.

In his crimson eyes, which had just been swept by a storm of hatred, there remained only a pure, frantic blankness ignited by ultimate terror. Before his mind could even process the thought, his body made the most instinctive reaction ahead of his consciousness.

Like a leopard driven to a desperate corner, he burst into the fastest speed of his life.

Right at the moment before the sharp little blade was about to slice open Xu Yuan's slender, fair wrist.

His bleeding, scalding-hot large hand grabbed the thin, shimmering blade like lightning.

"Sss-ch—"

The sound of the sharp blade embedding into flesh was chilling enough to make one's scalp tingle.

Blood, like a breached floodgate, instantly surged out from between his tightly clenched fingers, staining the silver knife into a glaring, bewitching crimson.

"Jiang Yi!"

In Xu Yuan's eyes, which had been as calm as stagnant water, the facade finally shattered completely the instant she saw his blood-covered hands.

As if scalded, she violently let go of her grip, and the knife, stained with both of their blood, dropped to the floor with a loud clatter.

"Are you crazy?! Have you lost your mind?!" she cried out, fumbling frantically as she tried to pry open his hand, which was still gripping the blade for dear life. But his hand was like a pair of red-hot iron tongs, not moving an inch.

"That's my line."

Jiang Yi stared fixedly at her. On his handsome face, turned pale by blood loss and rage, was an alarming expression of boundless lingering fear mixed with monstrous fury that Xu Yuan had never seen before.

He pulled her into his arms, trapping her tightly against his chest with a force so intense it felt as though he wanted to crush her bones and knead her into his own flesh and blood.

"Xu Yuan," he buried his head deep into the curve of her neck, his voice as hoarse as if it had been rubbed by sandpaper, every single word trembling with an uncontrollable, violent shudder, "you wanted to use your kidney to save your mother, didn't you?"

He wasn't asking.

He was stating, in the most cruel way possible, the terrifying truth that had almost driven him mad.

Xu Yuan's body stiffened abruptly.

"How did you..."

"How did I know?" Jiang Yi laughed, a sound uglier and more despairing than crying, "Because I am you, Xu Yuan."

"You fool, you absolute fool of the entire world!"

"Do you think doing this makes you brave? Makes you noble?"

"No! You are using the most selfish and cruelest way to punish everyone who loves you!"

"Have you ever thought about what I would do if something happened to you?!"

He abruptly lifted his head, his crimson eyes holding a decade-suppressed, ultimate fragility and pleading that he had never shown anyone before.

"What am I supposed to do..."

Like a child about to be abandoned by the entire world, he clung desperately to the last ray of light in his life.

Xu Yuan looked at him—looked at his mangled, bloodied hand, and looked at those fragile eyes written all over with "don't leave me"—and felt her heart squeezed mercilessly by an invisible hand, aching so badly she could barely breathe.

"I'm sorry..."

She reached out and gently hugged his trembling body back, her tears silently falling.

"Jiang Yi, I'm sorry."

"But I had no other choice."

"I only have one week."

"I can't just watch my mother..."

"Who says there's no other choice?!"

Lin Feifei's voice cracked open this suffocating sorrow like a sudden thunderclap.

Holding up her phone, her bright and flamboyant face streaked with two clear trails of tears, her eyes burned with an unyielding flame of hope.

"Dr. Wilson," she looked at Xu Yuan, pronouncing every single syllable clearly, dropping a name powerful enough to reverse the tides of fate. "He said he knows someone who might be able to save Aunt Xu."

Half an hour later, inside a VIP ward temporarily requisitioned as a "command center" at the First People's Hospital of Ning City.

Lu Xingyu's holographic projection appeared in the center of the room.

His usually expressionless face wore a rare hint of solemnity.

"The person Dr. Wilson mentioned is my mentor, Professor Carolyn Weber."

"She is the world's top expert in immunology and organ transplantation, especially skilled in handling the exact kind of drug-induced acute rejection renal failure we are facing right now."

"Three years ago, she successfully completed a surgery even more complicated than Aunt Xu's condition."

"However..."

Lu Xingyu pushed up his glasses, the gaze behind the lenses turning immensely complicated.

"A year ago, she announced her retirement and turned down invitations from every hospital and research institution worldwide. No one knows where she is right now."

"And," he paused, delivering a piece of even more despairing news, "her personality is extremely eccentric."

"She never accepts any commercially motivated invitations and only saves patients she finds 'interesting'."

"In other words, even if we manage to find her, she might not necessarily be willing to lend a hand."

The flame of hope, just ignited, was instantly doused by a basin of icy water.

The entire ward plunged into a dead silence.

Within a week, find a world-class expert whose whereabouts are unknown, whose personality is eccentric, and who might not even be willing to help?

This sounded even more fantastic than finding a matching living kidney source.

"She will agree."

Just as everyone fell into despair, Jiang Yi, who had remained silent all this while, suddenly spoke up.

His hand, wrapped tightly in layers of gauze and still throbbing with dull pain, firmly grasped Xu Yuan's icy hand.

He lifted his head, his eyes washed clean by tears and having recovered their stark black-and-white clarity, holding a calm madness unlike anything seen before.

"Because in our hands, we have a 'bargaining chip' she cannot refuse."

He turned his head to look at Lu Xingyu's holographic projection, enunciating clearly as he issued a command.

"Xingyu, I need you now to use all your clearance to help me check something."

"Ten years ago, Wen's Biotechnology, a subsidiary of the Wen Group, secretly developed a targeted wonder drug for cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases."

"The core formula of that project and all clinical trial data were completely destroyed on the eve of its market launch due to an 'accidental' fire."

"And the chief director of that project was none other than..."

A cold, bloodthirsty arc formed at the corner of Jiang Yi's mouth.

"My father, Jiang Wen."

"As well as..."

"At the time, as his most proud student who participated in the entire project from start to finish, Carolyn Weber."