Chapter 15 - A Surprising Discovery

"If I were them, I would have just killed an ungrateful leech like you." Hideki says.

This angers Fumio, but he cannot do anything.

"I still don't get it. Why would the family kick out a Class D like me, and let you, a useless fuck, get to stay?" Hideki continues, giving Fumio a time to get back his wind.

This angers Fumio further.

"*huff* How about violating, THEN killing three female non-superiori servants for a start? *huff*" Fumio says in between heavy gasps as he looks up at Hideki.

Hideki's smile freezes.

Seeing this Fumio feels a bit better for himself.

"Yeah. *huff* I know. Everyone in the clan knows. Everyone knows that you being the son of the head, is the reason why you're not in prison right now." He continues as he stands up, having recovered enough from Hideki's punch in the gut.

"And getting kicked out? Everyone knows that you were just grounded. All you have to do is clean your act up, and you're back in. So don't give me your bullshit." He concludes, feeling proud of himself for stand up to the clan bully.

"Y-you dare speak to me that way?" Hideki says, stunned.

"Why wouldn't I dare? You can't throw your status around anymore. I'm not a member of the clan. I have nothing to lose." Fumio says with a smug smile.

"OHO~…" Hideki smiles at Fumio.

Suddenly, Fumio sees a blur come towards him. Before he can even process what happened, he crashes to the floor, unable to move, his head hurting the worst he has ever felt in his life.

While slipping in and out of consciousness, he hears Hideki's voice one more time.

"B t th r 's s meth ng else you c n lose … Your life."

"Huh?"

Red suddenly feels something wrong just happened. If he was an average mortal, he will not take it seriously. He however, has lived eons upon eons and he knows better that such feeling has an explanation. He slowly stands up from the receptionist's desk as he processes the feeling more.

"Nothing's wrong with my body… Everything around is safe." He mutters after a few seconds.

Basing on his eons of instincts, Red knows that aside from himself being in imminent danger, the next most likely cause of such 'feeling' is if a person connected to him suffers a tragedy or death. The closer his connection is to the person, the stronger the feeling is.

"It can only be Fumio."

Fumio being the only person he has grown close to since he arrived in this world, is the only person Red can think of as the source of the feeling.

Red immediately casts a disguise illusion on himself, spreads out his spiritual sense, executes the high mortal level 'Still Lake Sauntering' traversing technique and he dashes out of Muscle Master.

With his high mortal body and his movement supplemented by his traversing technique, he immediately covers 100 meters distance in a second.

The people he passed by in the streets almost topple and cover their eyes from the dust from the air resistance being broken by Red as he zips through the roads. Despite the speed of which he is weaving and cutting through the streets and alleys, Red is still not satisfied.

"Tsk. Which way did he go?", he clicks his tongue in regret that he did not ask Fumio the exact directions of the dessert shop to make his search easier.

Ten seconds later, *Badump*, the same bad feeling knocks on his soul once more, much stronger than how he felt it before.

"He's close…" Red feels it.

Soon, his spiritual sense brushes upon an unconscious body in the alley behind a building and the next moment, he finds a scene that angers him.

Fumio is lying on the ground, his chest caved in, and blood leaking out of his mouth. He is barely breathing and Red can barely hear his heart beating. Red knows that if he does not do anything in two minutes, Fumio will be no more.

Red gets to work immediately.

He retrieves his spiritual sense that was actively scanning the surroundings and focuses it on Fumio's body. In just a few seconds, he finds with his spiritual scan that Fumio's left ribs are all broken, the bones puncturing Fumio's heart and lungs.

The lungs can barely inhale air, and the heart is too injured to beat and instead only weakly spasming.

Completing his assessment, Red hastily kneels by Fumio and undoes the layers of Fumio's kimono off to expose Fumio's chest. He then puts his left palm on Fumio's injury, executes a healing technique, his spiritual energy making his palms glow with cold blue light. As soon as Fumio's heart and lungs is touched by the light, they stop; the lungs stops breathing and the heart stops the blood from flowing.

Red quickly switches healing techniques and the light on his palm turns dull grey. With the technique, he moves the bones puncturing the heart and lungs.

He sighs in relief as there are no further damages.

He then switches healing techniques once again and light on his palm turns pink allowing him to hold in place the damaged veins, arteries, and the tissues in the lungs and the heart in their ideal positions.

With everything in their proper positions, he switches techniques once again and his palm lights up green, and with hit, he forces the damages to start healing immediately.

While his left palm is busy repairing the damages, Red materializes a very thin blade made out of the invisible spiritual energy with his right hand, does a swipe with it, before canceling the blade out.

Suddenly a small but deep cut appears on Fumio's chest, and from it, the accumulated blood from the internal bleeding around his heart and lungs starts draining.

A few more seconds later, Red, seeing that his left palm has healed enough damages on the softer tissues, he executes on his right palm another healing technique that makes it glow blue. With it, he restarts Fumio's breathing and heart once again.

He then anxiously cancels his blue palm and waits.

"Phew…" Soon, he sighs in relief that Fumio's lungs and heart are working on their own. He does not let his guard down however, and continues to resume his healing, not wasting a second.

Another minute later, Fumio is now breathing stably.

Red is now on his last steps mending the bones on Fumio's ribs. The ribs being the densest, are the slowest for Red to heal.

"You're all fine, buddy. You're all fine." Done with the bones, Red sits on his butt on the ground in relief. He takes a deep breath and he wipes the sweat off his forehead.

While the procedure which took only two and a half minutes in total and only drained a third of his spiritual energy, his spiritual sense is almost exhausted. After all, his spiritual sense is what allowed him maintain a complete and detailed visibility during the procedure without opening up Fumio's chest.

Five minutes later.

"Now… the head." Having enough a breather with his spiritual sense, and seeing that Fumio's respiratory and cardiac systems are improving, Red turns his attention on Fumio's head injury.

He is not as concerned with the head injury as he saw with his spirit sense earlier that Fumio only has concussion. While the concussion is severe, Red saw no obvious injuries. Red wants to be certain however that there are no micro injuries on Fumio's brain tissues, so he starts a thorough scan that he can still tolerate.

"… Huh…" He then notices something in Fumio's brain that makes his eyes widen in surprise.

Just to be sure, he scans the same place again, and "…it's there…", he confirms that what he saw is indeed present.

"A spirit root." He utters.

He can barely believe it. Just like any potential cultivator, Fumio has a spirit root in his brain stem.

"How did I miss this?" He utters in confusion.

Just like many people he encountered in this world; Red also scanned Fumio's brain to learn his instincts.

"Oh… I always ignored the brain stem…" He immediately realizes the reason.

Because there are no cultivators in this world, he assumed that the people in this world have no potential to cultivate.

-----

A few hours later.

~~~

"B t th r 's s meth ng you c n lose … Your life." Fumio sees Hideki raise his right foot.

"N-no…" Fumio struggles to say, but *THUD*, Hideki mercilessly stomps down on his chest.

Fumio curls up, feels his chest painfully cave in, and he loses his ability to breathe. Soon after, his world turns dark.

~~~

*GASP* Fumio awakens from his slumber in panic and he hurriedly sits up to look around.

Gradually, to his relief, he realizes that he is now in the living room of Red's apartment judging from the familiar looking plants around him, and he was lying down on the couch.

He then pats his chest where Hideki landed a blow on him, and to his confusion, "What the hell?...", he feels fine.

"Was that a dream?" He utters in uncertainty.

"No… The pain was real. The bastard did me in… But…" He holds his head, not knowing if his memory is real or not.

"Yes, that bastard did it to you." Fumio is startled by Red's sudden entrance to the living room from the balcony.

"*Phew* It's just you, boss." Fumio sighs in relief, before processing what Red said.

"W-what happened, boss? How'd I get here then?" He asks.

"I found you behind some building, dying." Red says as he approaches Fumio. "Unfortunately, whoever that bastard that almost killed you, got away before I got there."

"… Oh…" A feeling of rage builds up in Fumio's chest, before "Ooff.." he feels a painful heart palpitation.

"Calm down. Your heart needs more time to be how it used to be." Red says.

"Okay boss…" Fumio nods, before, "Wait… then wh- how am I fine?" he asks in disbelief.

Instead of an explanation, Fumio receives a palm on the chest as an answer from Red.

"…" He is too taken aback by Red's action to resist or recoil.

The next moment, he sees a purple light glow on Red's palm, before quickly disappearing.

As soon as Red retrieves his palm, Fumio feels a pleasant combination of coolness and warmth deep inside his chest.

"Huuuu…" He cannot help but take a long and deep breath and his emotions all settles back down, and he is now in a state of clarity.

That state of clarity allows him to think about the situation more clearly.

Red meanwhile, leaves Fumio alone for the kitchen.

A minute later, Red and Fumio are now sitting at the dining table across each other, with Red setting up the tea set on the table, and Fumio simply watching Red's actions in a daze.

"…" Fumio then stares at Red, trying to see through him.

Soon, *sigh*, he becomes frustrated that Red is simply pouring tea as if the events of the day does not have questions to be answered.

"Why are you staring?" Red asks.

"Boss… Who are you really?" Fumio asks in return.

"You know me. I'm Iwai Kichirou, your boss." Red simply answers before sliding a freshly poured cup of tea to Fumio.

"That's…" Fumio shakes his head at Red's answer and his curiosity intensified.

"Boss. Come on. You know wh-" Before he can ask more questions, "Why don't we talk about who did it to you?", Red interrupts him.

Fumio, failing to satisfy his curiosity, can only sigh, and instead "…It's my cousin.", answers Red's question.

The thought of Hideki and his actions is starting to make his blood boil, and Red sees it.

"This debt of blood, do you want to collect it?" Red asks.

"*nod*" Fumio responds in subtle determination.

"Do you want me to do it for you?" Red asks.