Chapter 346 - The cure

Chapter 346: Chapter 346 - The cure

Yunfeng woke to shouting.

For a second he thought it was a dream—some leftover echo of the past, a raid horn, a warning siren from a life that no longer existed. His body reacted before his mind did, hand already fisting the blanket, muscles tensing to move.

Then the words broke through.

"—YUNFENG! YUNFENG, WHERE ARE YOU—"

Yunfeng groaned and dragged a hand down his face. Beside him, Muchen stirred, mumbling something unintelligible into the pillow, one arm thrown loosely across Yunfeng’s waist. The weight of it was warm. Comfortable. Yunfeng really, really did not want to move.

The shouting got louder.

"YUNFENG! I KNOW YOU’RE IN THERE—"

"It’s the doctor," Yunfeng muttered, more to himself than anyone. "Why is the doctor screaming at dawn."

He rubbed his eyes, sat up, and gently pried Muchen’s arm off him. Muchen made a complaining noise and rolled over, cracking one eye open just far enough to glare at the ceiling.

"What time is it," he rasped.

"Too early."

"Who’s dying."

"Nobody, hopefully." Yunfeng swung his legs over the side of the bed. "Go back to sleep."

Muchen grunted, already half gone again. Yunfeng leaned over and tucked the blanket back up around his shoulders, smoothing it down over his chest the way you would with a child. Muchen hummed, satisfied, and burrowed deeper into the pillow.

Yunfeng stood, pulled on a loose shirt, and padded out of the room barefoot.

The shouting had stopped. That was somehow more worrying than when it was still going.

He came to the top of the stairs and looked down.

The front door of the mansion was wide open. Daylight spilled in, long and thin across the floorboards. And there, standing in the middle of the entryway like he had run the whole way here—probably because he had—was Qiu Yue.

The doctor looked terrible.

There were black circles carved under both eyes, deep as bruises. His hair stuck up in a dozen directions. His usually neat coat hung crooked off one shoulder. He was breathing hard, chest heaving, and he was clutching something to his chest with both hands like it might try to escape.

But he was grinning.

Not a small grin. Not a tired one.

A huge, manic, slightly unhinged grin.

"Yunfeng," he said, the second he spotted him.

Yunfeng came down the stairs slowly, one hand on the rail, still blinking sleep out of his eyes. "Doctor. What—"

Qiu Yue held up his hands.

In them were three small glass vials.

They were sealed with wax and tied with thread, each one filled with a dark liquid that caught the morning light. It was thick. It was red. It looked, unmistakably, like blood.

"I got it," Qiu Yue breathed.

Yunfeng stopped halfway down the stairs.

"I got it, I got it, this—" The doctor’s voice cracked with something between exhaustion and joy. He thrust the vials higher like an offering. "Look. Look."

Yunfeng finished coming down, took the doctor by the elbow, and steered him toward the sofa in the next room before he collapsed where he stood. Qiu Yue stumbled along willingly, still talking a mile a minute, words tumbling over each other so fast they barely formed sentences.

"Three nights. Three whole nights, Yunfeng, I didn’t sleep, I couldn’t—there was a pattern, there was always a pattern, and once I saw it I couldn’t unsee it—"

"Sit."

Qiu Yue sat.

Yunfeng crouched in front of him and gently pried one of the vials out of his grip. Qiu Yue let him, but his hands stayed curled like he couldn’t quite make them let go. He watched Yunfeng’s face instead, eyes bright and feverish, waiting.

"What is it?" Yunfeng asked quietly.

Qiu Yue’s grin somehow got even wider.

"It’s the cure."

Yunfeng’s thumb went still against the glass.

"The cure to solve everything," Qiu Yue said. He lunged forward suddenly, grabbing Yunfeng’s wrist, pulling him closer so their faces were only inches apart. His eyes bored into Yunfeng’s, wild and certain, like a man who had seen god and was determined to make someone else see it too. "Everything, Yunfeng. The turning. The dead coming back. All of it. it was right there the whole time—"

"Doctor." Yunfeng’s voice was steady, but his heart had started to pound. "Slow down. Explain it to me. From the top."

Qiu Yue’s grip tightened.

And for the first time, some of the frenzy in his face softened into something quieter. Something almost fragile.

"The dead stop coming back," he whispered.

Yunfeng stared at him.

The room was silent except for Qiu Yue’s ragged breathing.

"Say that again," Yunfeng said.

The doctor leaned closer still, until his forehead almost touched Yunfeng’s, and he was smiling so hard it looked like it hurt.

"The dead stop coming back."

Yunfeng’s hand closed around the vial.

For a long moment he didn’t say anything. He just stared at the little glass in his palm, at the dark red liquid inside it, and felt something in his chest open up like a door he’d forgotten was locked.

The dead stop coming back.

He had grown up in the world where they did. Where every corpse was a threat, where every quiet night was just the space between waves. He had died in that world once. He had woken up in this one and thought it was just an earlier version of the same hell.

But if Qiu Yue was right—

If this really worked—

Then the future Yunfeng came from wasn’t inevitable. It wasn’t some fixed point waiting to happen again. It could be changed.

Right here. Right now.

"How sure are you?" Yunfeng asked, voice low.

Qiu Yue’s grin faltered, just a little. "Sure enough to bet my life on it."

"That’s honest."

"I’m a doctor. Honesty is the job."

Yunfeng huffed something that was almost a laugh. He turned the vial in his fingers, watching the light catch the liquid, and already his mind was racing ahead—samples, trials, who to tell, who to trust.

Above them, the floorboards creaked.

Muchen’s voice drifted down the stairs, thick with sleep.

"Yunfeng. Why is the doctor in our living room."

Yunfeng looked at Qiu Yue. Qiu Yue looked back, still grinning like a madman.

"It’s a long story," Yunfeng called up. "Come down. You’re going to want to hear this one."