Chapter 7 Chapter 7 Dying Dream
"By Earthling standards, it's impossible." 666 said, "But this is the DC Universe. My colleagues who've been to the DC Universe all say, 'Anything is possible in DC, even resurrecting the dead.'"
As soon as No. 666 finished speaking, Benjamin pulled Li Hua's legs away from the grave, then picked up the bird-beaked staff that Li Hua had dropped, smashed it on the grave and started digging.
Li Hua: "Hey hey hey! Why are you digging with my staff?"
No. 666: [You still know this is a staff? Didn't you have any problems using it as a hammer or hoe to hit people before?]
Li Hua slowly stood up, holding onto the tombstone of another man he didn't know who was on the grave. The buffs from his clothing had almost completely disappeared due to the dirt he had just been lying on. At this moment, Li Hua's physical strength was only slightly better than his depleted mana. "I mean, I'm going to find a shovel. Who uses a hoe to dig a hole?"
No. 666: ...
So in your heart, you really treat it as a hoe, right?
Li Hua found a shovel in a corner of the cemetery and exchanged tools with Benjamin. Benjamin used the shovel to dig, and Li Hua used the bird-beaked staff that turned into a hoe to loosen the soil so that Benjamin could use the shovel more easily.
But the transformation of the Omnitrix also consumes physical strength, and Benjamin's physical strength is running low. Even though he and Li Hua are both working hard to dig the grave, there is really no way they can dig a six-foot, or 1.8348-meter, pit in a few minutes.
Just when Benjamin was thinking about whether he should take another gamble and turn into an ice ghost to use intangibility to pull the person out, maybe this friend in the grave was just lucky today and was not destined to die, because suddenly heavy rain fell from the gloomy sky.
The rain soaked the soil, making the grave digging process go faster. The friend inside was also very determined and never gave up the desire to survive. At the beginning, he seemed to be just hammering the coffin lid with his hands, but after a few hits, he may have realized that he couldn't hammer it open, so he took some hard object and started digging. Li Hua and Benjamin could hear the creaking sound of wood being digged from below.
By the time Benjamin lifted the last handful of dirt, his friend had already dug a hole in the coffin with his belt buckle. After a while, he should be able to dig it out himself.
Seeing someone saving him, the man who breathed in the fresh air calmed down. He, Li Hua and Benjamin, three mud-covered men, gasped for breath in the grave-digging pit on the rainy night, trying to recover their rapidly consumed strength and oxygen.
This scene, which would seem funny on ordinary days, would probably be so frightening to an uninformed person at this time and place that they would call the police immediately. However, the three living people present were in no mood to pay any attention to this. They were so tired that they didn't want to move a finger for a while.
It was not until Li Hua said, "Let's dig a little deeper so that he can sit up or help him block the rain. He might choke if he lies on his back in the rain" that the two of them struggled to stand up with the digging tools, smashed the hole in the coffin wider, and helped the older brother sitting inside to sit up.
Then the three of them continued to sit beside the high mound in silence.
It’s not that they don’t want to talk, it’s mainly because Benjamin and Li Hua are so tired that they can’t say a word.
Only because Li Hua and No. 666 had a way to communicate privately through souls could he ask No. 666 to check the life status of the person they had just rescued from the grave without saying a word.
Number 666 dutifully reported: [15-year-old human male, Caucasian, with damage to the brain area controlling memory and language logic, extensive burns, multiple bone fractures and bruises throughout the body, fresh injuries to the fingers, and nails that have fallen off due to external forces... In short, he's a living dead covered in wounds but in surprisingly good health. Barring any unexpected consequences, he won't die easily if left alone.]
The long list of test results made Li Hua and Benjamin look unhappy.
Benjamin: "Did he have a car accident? Why was he buried?"
"I don't know how he ended up here, but if you ask why he was buried—it's obvious, because he's dead, or at least he was once dead." 666 said, "I detected space-time fluctuations in him. It's these fluctuations that affected his death state, which is why he's in this state of the living dead."
Space-time fluctuations...
Li Hua and Benjamin both thought of the portal that teleported them here, and the time magic that Li Hua had just used.
Li Hua swallowed his saliva: "...Is this old man woken up by me?"
Benjamin corrected: "If so, it was done by 'us'."
No. 666: [I don't know. You don't need to be so nervous, actually. Time and space fluctuations are perfectly normal in the DC Universe. It's famous for its chaotic timelines, its numerous intertwined timelines, its numerous parallel universes, and even its ability to automatically reboot mid-flight... Compared to all that, the resurrection of the dead is nothing special. So don't take the blame so readily. Besides, is it even a case of blame? Resurrection after death is a miracle many people would never hope for!]
Li Hua: "Ah, that's true. I'm really happy to know that I have a second life and even a healthy body."
Even though he already knew that Li Hua had died once, Benjamin was still choked by Li Hua's open-mindedness and was speechless: "So... are No. 666 and I the only ones here who haven't died yet?"
No. 666: [No, only you. Because I have no life form, let alone a human.]
Benjamin: “…”
Suddenly I felt out of place.
No. 666: [Alright, now that you've recovered your strength, stop chatting and figure out how to deal with this person you found in the blind box.]
"What else can we do? Send him home, of course." Benjamin looked at the black hair of the boy they had dug out and slapped his head. "Oh, right! What's his name? Li Hua, did you see his name when you looked at the tombstone?"
Looking at this brother's situation, he couldn't find his way home by himself, so it would be easier to find him if he had a name.
Li Hua: "I don't know. At that time, I was only thinking about the person's birth and death years. Besides, your watch doesn't shine very brightly in normal conditions. At worst, we can check it when we get up."
"Okay then." Benjamin stood up and gestured, "I'll push you up the slope first, then I'll push this person from below, and you pull from above, and then you use your staff to pull me up."
The plan went very smoothly in implementation. The man lying there, whose name is unknown for the time being, was also very cooperative. He knew to hold Li Hua's hand and climb up, which saved Benjamin and Li Hua a lot of effort.
After the group finally climbed out of the mud pit, everyone finally had the opportunity to see the name of this gentleman engraved on the tombstone.
Benjamin: "Jason Peter Todd... there's no contact information for his parents or family on his tombstone."
Li Hua: "Who would engrave a living person's contact information on a tombstone? And tombstones, especially those in cemeteries like this, generally don't include the deceased's household registration. At most, they'll say who placed the tombstone, or perhaps the relationship between the deceased and the person who erected it."
Benjamin: "Sorry, I haven't been to a cemetery many times, so I'm not very familiar with it."
Most of his elders and peers are still alive, and they don't visit the graves often. The most recent one they visited was for his grandfather, who didn't even have a tombstone.
If we have to say that there is a chance to go to the cemetery, it might be grandma, but as far as Benjamin can remember, his family has never visited grandma's grave.
Benjamin had never seen his grandmother since he was born. As far as he could remember, his family rarely talked about her. He only knew that she had passed away before he and his cousin Gwen were born...and only recently did Benjamin learn that his grandmother had literally "passed away."
Because his grandmother was an alien, she returned to her home planet after her children got married. It was not until recently that she heard about the sacrifice of Benjamin's grandfather that she rushed back from outer space to pay tribute to her husband.
Benjamin: "Then where do we go to check his family?"
Li Hua: "Maybe I need to check the information with the person who bought the cemetery plot... Do I need to check the tombstone number and family information before visiting a grave in an American cemetery?"
Benjamin: "The cemetery doesn't need it...right? At least not in my impression."
And to be honest, judging by the lush grass, moss and dilapidated tombstones on some of the surrounding graves, this is obviously a very old cemetery with poor management.
Otherwise, they have made a fuss about digging up graves and corpses, but there is no gravekeeper to deal with it. Maybe there is no gravekeeper managing this cemetery at all.
Li Hua squatted beside Jason Peter Todd's tombstone, looking at the boy, his body uncontrollably frozen in place like a living dead. He also watched Benjamin dragging the boy's hands, his nails turned outward, as he pulled out a splinter...
He seemed to be back on the operating table, back on the hospital bed, as if he looked down and saw the countless needle scars and retained needles on his hands...
Li Hua let out a heavy sigh, as if he was about to vomit out all the emotions in his lungs. He made a resolution: "No. 666, don't you have a bottle of healing medicine? Give it to me."
No. 666: […Your current physical condition will recover on its own even if you don’t drink.]
"I didn't give it to myself, I gave it to him." Li Hua looked at Jason, who was standing there and had just been given a second chance at life, and smiled brightly. "You said it can revive the dead, right? Then drinking it for the living dead is the perfect remedy!"
It wasn't a full second life yet, but it was almost there.
No. 666 said seriously: [Li Hua, I must emphasize to you that you only have one bottle of healing medicine right now, and it is used to save your life.]
Li Hua smiled and said, "Isn't that perfect? I can just save the person in front of me!"
Li Hua thought that the usually strict No. 666 would scold him, but No. 666, who was always ruthless in his words, was unusually silent.
Finally, the electronic sound that was supposed to be emotionless emitted a slight buzzing sound, which sounded like the sigh of AI.
[Forget it, you are the host, you have the final say.]
I didn't expect that even if it changed to a rookie host, it would still have this idiotic spirit of not caring about its own life for others. Maybe it should just accept its fate. It is its destiny to have such an idiotic host.
But to be fair, No. 666 doesn't hate such hosts.
It just hopes that they can live as long as possible, at least longer than it, its tool.
Li Hua felt the muddy pockets of her skirt falling down, and she took out a palm-sized glass bottle filled with berry-red liquid.
"Thank you, No. 666." Li Hua held the small bottle in his hand and said sincerely, "Thank you for giving me the opportunity to have a second life and giving me the power to help others have a second life as well."
"I'm just doing my job." Number 666 said, "Okay, go do what you need to do."
Just keep moving forward without hesitation, little rookie now.
Just like your predecessors did.
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PS: Corrected a mistake. According to the timeline of Benjamin in the original story, he discovered his grandfather or not long after that, his grandfather was "killed" in front of him (I put this episode at the end when writing this paragraph), so he didn't know that his grandfather was still alive.
【Catch the bug three times】
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