I'm Trapped in the Block

Old Xu agreed, but his gaze drifted to the hospital room window.

He simply couldn’t control his intuition. When something felt off, it just felt off, and the jarring sensation was a constant alarm ringing in his mind.

Especially in the quiet of the hospital room, the feeling struck with such intensity that he couldn’t possibly ignore it.

This mental sensation was actually more unbearable than the physical emptiness in his chest.

’Something’s wrong with that window!’

His intuition kept nagging at him, and Old Xu couldn’t stop himself from looking at it again and again.

But given the doctor’s and the captain’s prior warnings, he had no intention of speaking up.

However, his odd expression caught the captain’s eye.

The captain glanced at the window, assuming Old Xu was cold. He walked over and shut it.

Just as he was walking back, a white bird flew straight into the closed window.

SMACK!

A bloody smear was left on the windowpane.

The captain stared at the window in shock, then turned to look at the innocent-faced Old Xu on the bed. His suspicion intensified.

The doctor hastily jotted this incident down as well.

’I’m done for.’ Watching their strong reactions, Old Xu grew even more flustered. He began to doubt his own ability.

’Is this really ’intuition’?’

As he continued to take notes, the doctor pulled out the scans that had just been taken.

"Look at your heart. Do you know why you always feel that emptiness?"

"I don’t know. I can’t make sense of it." Old Xu shook his head.

"Your heart has been gone for a while now," the doctor explained calmly. "Where your heart should be is just a mass of air—or maybe not even air. In any case, it’s a cavity. There’s nothing there."

Hearing the doctor’s blunt explanation, Old Xu felt that discomfort in his chest again.

"But your physiological functions haven’t been affected in the slightest. Blood still circulates normally. This void has completely taken over the function of your heart, and it’s actually doing an exceptionally good job."

"We haven’t found any other abnormalities for now. We’ll just have to keep you under observation."

After finishing his explanation, the doctor told Old Xu to get some more rest, then hurriedly left the room as if he were fleeing from something.

The captain acted the same way. After offering a few words, he pushed the door open and left, shutting it tightly behind him and leaving Old Xu completely alone...

Not long after, an order came down to seal the fountain off completely. No one was allowed to approach it.

From that day forward, Old Xu became an outcast.

Whenever he went on a mission, if he sensed something was wrong, danger would soon follow. But if a team went out without him, nothing would happen. So, eventually, no one wanted to team up with him anymore.

During construction projects, if he felt there was a problem with a certain area, an accident would inevitably happen. So people stopped letting him take part.

When it was time for planting, he told his companions that they shouldn’t plant yet. Sure enough, extreme weather hit a short time later, and the entire crop was lost.

Even if he kept quiet about his feelings, the accidents would happen anyway. Eventually, he decided he might as well just say what he felt, which caused his relationships with others to deteriorate even further.

He ended up living alone, building a simple shack of corrugated iron. He watched as the once-small monitoring station gradually grew into Oasis City, and all of his former teammates became its high-ranking leaders.

Towers rose up all around him, and his little iron shack became a sore thumb in the middle of the core district. But his old teammates, out of some lingering sentiment, made sure the city’s planning never touched Old Xu’s home.

He lived like that, all alone, for so many years.

"No one likes hanging around a jinx, someone who makes misfortune pop up all around them," Old Xu said with a self-deprecating chuckle.

"That fountain has always been a weight on my heart. I never forgot the captain’s warning. But then they reopened it—they even let children use it. That was something I could never accept."

The very fountain that had brought him a lifetime of solitude was now reopened with the tacit approval of the city’s leaders. Old Xu could never come to terms with it.

After hearing the story, Li Luo asked curiously, "How long has it been open?"

"Ten years. It’s been open for ten years. Countless children have used that fountain, creating an untold number of relics. I’ve gone to my old teammates, asked them to shut it down, but they just say the decision came from higher up."

Old Xu grew more and more furious as he spoke. "They saw what happened to me, yet they still insist on letting those kids use it! That’s why I go and cause a scene every year. It’s not like they dare to arrest me."

At that, Old Xu snatched up his cup and drained the herbal tea in one gulp, finally quelling his anger.

"Right, I still haven’t destroyed today’s relic," he said, suddenly remembering something. He began to rummage around inside his cloak.

He then pulled out a silver ring.

’It’s the ring that father and son got from the fountain. He actually stole it!’

"When did you steal it?" Li Xiangyi asked, shocked.

"Stealing? How can you call what an Investigation Team officer does ’stealing’? This is a confiscation!" Old Xu said indignantly. "The official Investigation Team has the authority to confiscate and destroy relics with unknown properties!"

He then tossed the silver ring into a nearby gutter. 𝗳𝚛𝚎𝚎𝘄𝕖𝕓𝕟𝕠𝚟𝚎𝕝.𝗰𝕠𝐦

The precious relic was carried away by the current, disappearing into the sewer system.

"I don’t think that’s the right way to destroy it," Li Xiangyi remarked wryly, watching the ring vanish.

Old Xu paid him no mind, continuing to rummage in his cloak. He pulled out a few other items and tossed them into the gutter as well.

"All set."

He then pulled a tattered red booklet from his cloak and opened it for Li Xiangyi to see.

"Deep Abyss Investigation, Third Squad. First-Class Operative, Xu Jian Country." The booklet prominently displayed Old Xu’s information, complete with various official stamps—the kind you rarely see anymore.

Tucked inside was an electronic card, also marked with his name.

Old Xu flipped to a specific page and pointed to a line that was written in black and white: "The Investigation Team possesses the authority to confiscate and destroy relics of unknown properties."

"See? I wasn’t lying, was I?" Old Xu said proudly, tilting his head back.

Li Xiangyi nodded quickly to show he had no objections. Then, he asked curiously, "And those other relics you destroyed... did you also just ’confiscate’ them?"

Hearing that Li Xiangyi was such a quick study, Old Xu replied happily, "Of course. I’ve been doing this for ten years; I’m not going to get caught."

"As for that last guy I started a fight with, that was to give the soldiers an out. They visit me from time to time, you know. By having them ’arrest’ me, I could make a clean getaway."

"If someone reports it later, they can just say the culprit was apprehended on the spot, but the stolen goods were never recovered."

"And of course, they’re not going to come looking for those ’stolen goods’ either."

Saying this, Old Xu pointed to his credentials again.

"My confiscations are officially sanctioned."

’So ’brilliant’...’ Both Li Luo and Li Xiangyi were stunned by Old Xu’s audacity.

"Don’t just stand there gawking. Drink up. Your tea’s getting cold."

Old Xu sipped his tea, the picture of nonchalance, like a reclusive master who had long left his fame and achievements behind.