Realm Walker

The scanner's yellow warning light flickered on with a beep, casting a red line of light across Zhang Yuanqing's forehead. The machine emitted an electronic tone.

"Beep beep. Beginning diagnosis... Condition detected..."

Zhang Yuanqing held his breath, his anticipation building as he waited for the almighty Divine Physician Scanner to deliver its verdict.

But the electronic voice stuttered and stalled. A few seconds later, it started up again.

"Beep beep. Beginning diagnosis... Condition detected..."

"Beep beep. Beginning diagnosis... Condition detected..."

"Beep beep. Beginning diagnosis... Condition detected..."

The voice kept looping, resetting every time it was about to reveal the condition, cycling over and over again.

"Hmm?" The female doctor held the scanner steady, glancing between the main console and the T-shaped wand in her hand, her expression blank with confusion.

Zhang Yuanqing's confusion ran deeper than hers, and was also tinged with disappointment and anxiety. It was like booking a hotel room with your girlfriend for a deep and meaningful evening, getting everything ready, and then hearing her say, "Sorry, it's that time of the month."

Not that he had a girlfriend, of course. But the feeling was the same.

"Is the machine broken?" Jiang Jingwei asked.

She walked over to the cylindrical device, and without a second thought, gave it two solid kicks.

"Jingwei, stop kicking it!"

Li Dongze nearly had a heart attack. The scanner was a high-tier item that the Songhai Branch had purchased from a noble Musician family at enormous expense. Moreover, support-class items weren't as rugged as combat gear, and broke down all the time.

"Whenever the appliances at home act up, a couple kicks does the trick," Jingwei said, delivering two more solid whacks.

The female doctor finally couldn't take it anymore and snapped, "You, stop that!"

"Beep beep... System restarting," The scanner chimed. The screen went black, then lit up again as the reboot sequence began.

Jingwei beamed with satisfaction. "See? A good beating fixes everything."

Teng Yuan pushed his glasses up the bridge of his nose and said flatly, "Don't worry. If you break it, the organization is obligated to reimburse you."

Li Dongze looked utterly helpless.

Guan Ya shot a glance at Yuanshi and smiled. "I'm more curious about what's wrong with your body."

Zhang Yuanqing forced a grin and squeezed out, "Probably Scorpio Syndrome. Or maybe An Obsessive Fixation on the Sculpting Effects of Black Nylon on A Female's Lower Extremities."

Was it a coincidence that the machine just happened to malfunction? He swept his gaze over his companions. Their expressions were perfectly casual, as if they all assumed it was nothing more than a trivial glitch. Only Wang Tai was frowning deeply.

"Something's off," he muttered, scratching his head.

He walked up to the scanner, tapping and poking at it, then pulled up the operating interface on the screen and studied it carefully. As a Scholar, Wang Tai was a future Artifact Forger with deep expertise in items and equipment. He fiddled with it for a long while before delivering his verdict.

"There's no malfunction. And an item of this caliber shouldn't malfunction in the first place. You guys might not know this, but Musician-class items are the most durable of all, and this one even has a self-repair function."

Hmm? Guan Ya and Li Dongze, both Scouts, frowned simultaneously and turned to look at Yuanshi, only to find him wearing the same bewildered expression they did.

Just then, the scanner finished rebooting.

"I'm not sure what caused that, but it seems fine now," the female doctor said.

She raised the scanner and aimed it at Zhang Yuanqing's forehead once more. The others said nothing more and watched in silence. The yellow light came on, and the electronic voice spoke again.

"Beep beep. Beginning diagnosis... Condition detected... Beep beep. Please do not simultaneously—"

The voice cut out abruptly.

"It seems like there's still a small issue," the doctor said. "Let me try again."

She frowned, lowered the scanner, waited a few seconds, then raised it and aimed at Zhang Yuanqing's forehead once more.

The yellow light came back on, and the electronic voice made its announcement.

"Beep beep. No conditions detected. Your body is in excellent health. Please maintain... Diagnosis complete!"

The doctor exhaled softly and smiled. "No issues. You're in perfect health. Keep it up."

"Oh, great!" Zhang Yuanqing stood and looked around at his teammates with a grin. "Looks like I'm healthy too."

Guan Ya and Li Dongze exchanged a glance and shared a knowing smile.

However, Wang Tai's brow was still furrowed. "That's not right. Something about this item feels off today. Doctor, can I stay behind and look into it?"

The doctor's expression hardened. "Absolutely not. This item is extremely valuable. It's not something you can just disassemble and tinker with."

"Fine," Wang Tai conceded reluctantly.

***

The group left the examination room, and Li Dongze led the team toward the stairwell.

"The stewards are waiting for us on the second floor. Centurion Fu is there too. The next part is the mental health evaluation. In previous years it was just a psychological assessment, but this year they've added a lie detection component."

He was addressing Yuanshi specifically, the only newcomer on the team, but Zhang Yuanqing barely registered any of it. His mind was looping endlessly on the scanner's output.

The first scan had clearly detected something wrong with him, and he genuinely was sick, so a malfunction was out of the question. Why hadn't it stated the condition, then? Was it unable to identify the condition, or was there another reason?

As for the second attempt, the machine had started to say "please do not simultaneously." That meant after the reboot, the scanner had already identified his problem and was about to deliver a diagnosis. But just before it could, it just cut out.

Please do not simultaneously what? What had it been trying to say?

The more he thought about it, the heavier it weighed on him, and the more wrong it all felt. A series of doubts cascaded through his mind, each one tracing back to the root of the matter: where had the headaches come from in the first place?

The headaches had appeared out of nowhere one day, while he was still in high school. One night, the pain had struck him so savagely that blood streamed from his nose, and his aunt and cousin rushed him to the hospital. They ran tests from morning to night, using every piece of equipment available, but the doctors declared he was perfectly healthy. They could detect nothing wrong with him.

His family hadn't thought much of it back then. They'd told him to rest, and that was that. But then the second episode hit, worse than the first, and he ended up being hospitalized.

When his mother heard the news, she finally deigned to set aside her work and spare a fraction of her attention for her son. She dragged him from hospital to hospital, but none of them could find the cause. Then one day, his mother returned from overseas with a special medication.

Not being able to find a cause was strange enough on its own, but then his mother had somehow managed to bring back the exact medicine he needed without even taking him abroad for examination. Now that he thought about it, that second part was even stranger.

Now, even stranger still was the fact that even a Spirit Realm item couldn't identify the cause.

Could this really be an ordinary illness?

***

While Zhang Yuanqing was lost in thought, the group arrived on the second floor. It was much smaller than the spacious first-floor lobby. The area was packed with more than twenty examinees and a roughly equal number of security personnel. The corridor was a sea of heads and shoulders, making it feel cramped and claustrophobic.

Wang Tai's expression soured instantly, his posture stiffening with visible discomfort. Zhang Yuanqing noticed it and had an idea.

"Bro Tai, I think I saw a restroom downstairs. Wanna go drain the pipes?" he suggested.

Wang Tai nodded eagerly. "Yes, yes, let's go."

The two of them headed back down the stairs to the first floor and into the restroom. Zhang Yuanqing pushed open each stall door one by one to confirm they were alone, then stepped up to a urinal. He unholstered his biological weapon and adopted an air of casual indifference.

"That scanner is pretty impressive. Is it a Saint-tier item?"

"Yep," Wang Tai replied, focused on the task at hand.

"An item at that level should have some kind of self awareness, right? My rule-type item has a mind of its own."

Wang Tai nodded. "Oh, yeah. It does have self awareness. It can be considered a form of artificial intelligence."

Damn, Zhang Yuanqing cursed inwardly. So it really was self aware.

That meant it had changed its mind earlier on and deliberately chosen not to reveal his condition. Zhang Yuanqing's feelings were a tangled mess.

***

The two finished up and returned to the second floor. The wait was long as the other official Walkers ahead of them completed their psychological evaluations one after another. Most passed without issue, though a small number were flagged as needing some form of mental health counseling.

A few Fire Sages, for instance, had tempers so volcanic they were diagnosed with severe mania. Some Wood Demons had excessive compulsions of a carnal nature and required a mix of counseling and pharmacological intervention to rein in their hormones. On top of that, some Scouts had developed voyeuristic tendencies.

Finally, it was Squad Two's turn, and the team's collective mental state was, to put it gently, cause for concern. Li Dongze had severe obsessive compulsive disorder. Guan Ya had germaphobia paired with a defeatist outlook. Jiang Jingwei was manic and irritable. Teng Yuan was pessimistic and withdrawn, and suffered from moderate depression.

Eventually, Wang Tai emerged from the consultation room, freshly diagnosed with moderate social anxiety disorder.

He looked at Zhang Yuanqing seated on the bench and said, "Your turn."

Zhang Yuanqing stepped inside and found a middle-aged doctor in a white coat seated behind a desk.

"Please, have a seat!" the doctor said with a smile, gesturing toward a chair. "So you're Yuanshi Tianzun. Handsome indeed, and a real prodigy. My surname is Sun. I'm a steward from Chaomen District, Scout class, Level 5 Saint, and also have a doctorate in psychology. I'm going to conduct a brief psychological evaluation. It'll just be a few questions."

His smile was warm, but his eyes were penetrating, as though they could see straight through a person's soul.

A steward-level psychologist. This guy was leagues sharper than Guan Ya and the squad leader.

Zhang Yuanqing sat down. "Understood."

Dr. Sun smiled. "No need to be nervous. I may ask some personal questions, but there are no surveillance cameras or listening devices in this room. Nobody will know what you say here except me, and I have my professional ethics. Whatever you reveal will remain strictly between us."

"Yuanshi Tianzun, age twenty-one. A Songhai native. My family has money and a car. Dad has passed on, and I've never had a girlfriend. I boast a special talent of twenty centimeters."

After concluding his introduction, Zhang Yuanqing put on his most earnest expression. "Please, by all means, share that with everyone."

Dr. Sun blinked, then fixed him with a long, piercing gaze. "You're nervous, and instinctively deflecting with humor to ease the tension. Like I said, there's no need to be so uptight. We're friends here."

Zhang Yuanqing took a deep breath.

He knew that cracking jokes was pointless in front of a Saint-tier Scout, so he straightened up and said, "That was just a joke. Let's begin."

Dr. Sun nodded and began. "Do you enjoy watching action films? I'm referring to romantic action films, specifically. If so, what category do you gravitate toward: domestic or foreign productions? What is the age range of the actors you prefer? Do you skip ahead while watching? And after you finish, do you reach for a girlfriend or a box of tissues?"

The rapid-fire barrage of questions left Zhang Yuanqing reeling. Had this man installed cameras in his apartment? Every question was a precision strike, a blade aimed squarely at the vital points.

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