Chapter 150: Testing

I walked to the passenger seat in silence. Bai Zang started the car and the engine let out a low roar, breaking the silence.

The pickup truck jolted through the rubble, its body swaying violently. I subconsciously grasped the door handle, my eyes fixed on the rapidly receding city wreckage outside the window, like a giant scar.

The space inside the car is small and silent like an invisible membrane, filled only by the roar of the engine and the noise of the bumpy car body.

I took a look at the frostbite on my arm. It was not the usual frostbite. Moreover, the coldness felt like it was drilling into my bones. If I just leave it like this, it might not recover on its own. I have to find a way to deal with it.

But I can't rashly use my other eyes to check the frostbite on my arm now. I don't want to expose too much in front of Bai Zang at the moment.

Thinking of this, I glanced at him out of the corner of my eye.

Bai Zang was concentrating on driving. His profile wasn't cold, but it held the tenseness of someone used to giving orders. His grip on the steering wheel was steady, his knuckles distinct, and veins faintly visible at his wrists.

My eyes inadvertently fell on the windshield in front of the passenger seat, which was covered with dust and tiny cracks.

The sunlight struggled to penetrate the thick polluted clouds, casting a blurry spot of light on the glass, looking at my vague shadow reflected on the windshield.

Maybe I can jump into the mirror to see what's going on. At least if I make a copy of my shadow outside, he won't be able to find it.

Besides, I'm quite curious about what ability he has awakened.

Although his abilities were acquired through his evolution intentionally, in reality, the only things I can do are "blessing" him and passing on some knowledge or information. What specific abilities are awakened depends on the subjective initiative of the infected person himself.

This is also the reason why even if it is the same source of pollution, different infected people evolve different abilities.

Moreover, there is more than one source of pollution, and the abilities evolved under cross-contamination from different pollution sources are even more diverse.

There is more than one kind of pollution on me...

As for Bai Zang, I haven't cared about them since my last "blessing". Maybe I can take this opportunity to test them.

Thinking of this, I calmly jumped into the windshield mirror and replaced my real-world self with the mirror projection without anyone noticing.

The world in the mirror instantly replicated the cockpit. The angle was a bit odd, looking out from the inside of the glass, but it was clear enough.

I immediately looked at the frostbite on my arm and touched it with my fingers to feel the situation. Although I don’t have the healing and purification abilities like Lin Hanning, I have absorbed some of Gali’s power and can sense it to some extent with this power.

Fortunately, apart from the biting cold, there is no particularly serious impact, although if it happened to an ordinary person, the arm might have been frozen to pieces.

But this is still frostbite in the physical sense. With my current physical condition, I can definitely withstand it and I have the ability to recover slowly.

After confirming the extent of the injury, I felt relieved and started to look out the windshield.

I saw my reflection in the glass, his slightly dull eyes, and the silhouette of Bai Zang who was concentrating on driving next to him.

His outline in the mirror was blurred by the smudges and cracks on the windshield, but one could still clearly see the line of his tightly pursed lips and the afterimages of the rapidly passing ruins reflected in his dark gray eyes. Gazing at the real world from the mirror, he seemed to have less of the gang leader's animosity than in reality, and more...focus and fatigue?

At that moment, the dark grey eyes of the real-world Bai Zang shifted ever so slightly, almost imperceptibly, to the right. His gaze seemed to penetrate the boundary between reality and fiction, accurately "looking" at the "me" reflected in the mirror—or rather, at the real me in the mirrored world at that moment!

My heart trembled slightly, and I met his eyes through the glass.

He can feel it... I calmly cut off the connection with the mirror space, my consciousness returned to reality, and my eyes quickly moved away from the windshield, pretending to just look out the window.

"Is watching the road boring?" Bai Zang's voice suddenly rang out, breaking the silence. His gaze remained fixed on the bumpy road ahead, his tone flat, no emotion discernible.

"A little," I replied vaguely. Judging from his reaction just now, he must have noticed it. It seems that his awakened ability is also related to illusion... But that's not surprising, after all, the authority I currently hold is over the relationship between illusion and reality.

Since he can perceive it, there are two possibilities. One is that he can accurately distinguish between the mirror projection and real things. The other is that he has the ability to directly see the virtual world.

It’s not bad, although it’s a bit useless at the moment, but with Bai Zang’s strength, I think he should be able to play a good role.

Moreover, these seemingly useless basic abilities have a chance of evolving into very useful abilities in the future.

It needs to be cultivated well...

I suddenly felt so relieved, and a sense of anticipation arose in my heart, similar to the anticipation for slaughtering the New Year pig...

As we were driving, we suddenly felt another violent jolt. The car suddenly tilted to the left, and I was caught off guard. Inertia threw me hard towards the driver's seat, and my shoulder almost hit Bai Zang's arm!

In the instant before contact, Bai Zang's right arm rose with remarkable naturalness, almost reflexively, elbow slightly bent, blocking the path of my shoulder's forward thrust. His movement was lightning-fast, a practiced defensive instinct. My shoulder collided with the hard muscles of his forearm, deftly displacing the force, avoiding a direct collision.

The contact was extremely brief and separated immediately.

"Hold on tight." He retracted his arm, his voice flat, as if he'd just casually deflected a flying stone. He didn't even glance at me, his gaze fixed on the road ahead.

"Can you drive?" I looked at him speechlessly.

He just chuckled softly and said provocatively, "How about you open it?"

I knew he was just saying it casually, and I didn't plan to drive, so I didn't respond and just leaned back in my seat with my eyes closed.

…

The pickup truck sped all the way and returned to the base after about 30 minutes.

The people at the stronghold were all surprised to see that I went out in the morning and came back in the afternoon. It seemed that they didn't expect that I could come back alive. Everyone was looking at me out of the corner of their eyes without saying a word.

I was about to go back to my room when Bai Zang suddenly called me.

"etc."

I stopped, looked back at him, and waited for his next words.

"I have some frostbite cream. The wound on your hand needs to be treated."