"You... what did you... blow up this time?" Old Mo approached Mu Daxian bit by bit, like a frame-by-frame stop-motion animation, and began examining him from both sides.
After asking, he didn’t wait for Mu Daxian to reply but pulled out a kitchen knife from nowhere and began scraping it on Mu Daxian’s arm like performing Gua Sha.
Though his movements seemed a bit "jerky", he was quite adept at Gua Sha, his expression focused, almost unrecognizable from his usual numb self.
Mu Daxian gradually started recounting the ordeal he had faced that evening, like a war-returning general entrusting his severely wounded body to a knife-wielding doctor without any guard.
Seeing this, Mao Feiyang began to lower his guard towards Old Mo.
When Old Mo heard that Mu Daxian was pursued by the Sneering Angel, he scowled, "You should have led it here."
"No chance..." Mu Daxian shook his head helplessly, "Besides, even if I had led them here, then what?"
"Then... I would have... intervened..." While speaking, a sharp glint flashed in Old Mo’s eyes, like a thunderbolt rending the night sky, giving Lin Yi a déjà vu of Little Li’s flying dagger.
"Cut it out, you can barely talk straight, and you’re talking about wielding a knife? Just stick to the logistics... Leave the front-line action to us who aren’t afraid to die." Mu Daxian unapologetically mocked.
Old Mo’s grip on the knife tightened, causing Mu Daxian to sit up straight in alarm, "Okay, okay, next time I’ll leave it to you, next time."
He wiped off his sweat, thinking he had almost blundered into a mistake due to his careless talk while his arm was still in Old Mo’s grip...
Calmly, Old Mo inquired, "Do you want to... test... the sharpness... of this... blade?"
"Alright, alright, enough of that, let’s focus on healing..." Mu Daxian retorted with a grimace.
Before long, Mu Daxian’s arm had gradually recovered under Old Mo’s scraping therapy, the entire process’s mechanism completely baffling Lin Yi. He only sensed some transcendent powers flowing into Mu Daxian’s arm through the air, then something else seemed to be stripped away from inside it...
"Done..." Old Mo released Mu Daxian’s arm.
Mu Daxian pressed his shoulder joint, swung his arm, and chuckled, "Hehe, fully restored! No need to worry about the sneak attacks from pseudo-human art students anymore! Hehe..."
"Wait... were you worried about sneak attacks earlier, and that’s why you were silent all along?" Mao Feiyang seemed to have realized something.
Mu Daxian then laughed, "What else? If they had ambushed me, I’d have been dead on the spot."
"Wait... Brother Xian, you couldn’t handle them just now?"
Mu Daxian shrugged, "Yeah, I was bluffing them, so we had to run away just now."
"Damn..." Mao Feiyang took a sharp breath, followed by some speechlessness, "They’re really easy to fool."
Mu Daxian glanced at unlikable Maozi, thinking kid what the hell are you even here for, still have the nerve to feel speechless, do you?
"Easy to fool?" He scoffed coldly, "They’re sharp all right. That’s why they didn’t dare to bet that my gun was actually unloaded."
Mao Feiyang was momentarily stunned, then suddenly grasped the perilous and bold gamble behind Mu Daxian’s strategy, his face gradually showing respect.
Mu Daxian patted his shoulder: "Xiao Mao, remember, when you’re out here, the confidence is all self-made. As long as you act the part well enough, you can bluff your way through anything."
"Uh, even angels?" Mao Feiyang cheekily retorted.
"Get lost, it’s your turn to heal."
Saying that, he pushed Mao Feiyang in front of Old Mo.
Old Mo grabbed Mao Feiyang’s arm, about to start cutting, but then he hesitated.
"What’s wrong?" Mu Daxian asked.
Old Mo pondered, "A very... familiar... breath..."
Mu Daxian was silent for a moment, then suggested, "Xiao Mao triggered His mark left on the streetlamp, maybe it’s that kind of breath?"
Old Mo hesitated for a moment, then shook his head slightly: "I can’t... deal... with His... mark..."
Mu Daxian replied, "No need to deal with it, just heal his hand for now, we’ll discuss the rest back at the Art Building."
"..." Old Mo nodded, "Okay."
Lin Yi quietly watched the scene of Old Mo scraping Mao Feiyang’s arm, harboring a guess. He wondered if it were accurate, that the "familiar breath" Old Mo mentioned might be because during the day, he, Hetian Bufan, and the others had passed by him...
Since Mao Feiyang had spread the contamination earlier, they all could share a similar breath.
"Wait a minute!" Lin Yi’s eyes brightened, "So this layer where ’Old Mo’ is, that must be the same layer as the other passages!"
"Eh, that’s not right!"
He then turned to look at the path Mu Daxian and Mao Feiyang had just walked from.
He had a faint, indescribably strange feeling earlier, and now he finally remembered — the step that Maozi tripped over didn’t exist!
He recalled that when he came via the Student Passage at lunch, he went to the side to wait for Hetian Bufan and the others. The place he waited at was just ahead of where Mao Feiyang tripped, and there... in his memory, there was a wall!
But when Mao Feiyang and Mu Daxian came up from another passage, what was originally a wall had turned into a step!