Fight, Flight, or Freeze: The Healer's Story
Chapter 269: Thought It Through Better

Chapter 269: Thought It Through Better

"I can," Wei Li Qin assured me. "But I would never ask them to. Unlike you, I am powerful in my own right and am more than capable of looking after myself."

"But I didn’t question your ability to look after yourself," I replied, feeling a bit confused. It was apparent that she could look after herself. She was the leader of this group of humans, and that wouldn’t have happened if she hadn’t been strong in her own right.

"But you did," replied the other woman. The glow from the firelight was reflecting off of her face, and I could see the look of hatred on her face toward me. "You wouldn’t need to know everything that those men are willing to do for you if you didn’t need them to do it in the first place. If I want or need someone killed, I would kill them myself."

At her words, I could feel the blood in my body starting to reverse its flow... my lungs struggled to inflate as I worked frantically to pull oxygen out of the air.

My skin felt tight and dry, like any sudden movement, and it would disintegrate right off of me.

I looked down at my hands to see my fingers becoming thinner until my joints protruded sickeningly. Even my heart was slowing down; each beat was a struggle for survival.

The smirk on the woman’s face fascinated me and made me realize that all this was her doing her plan.

"Interesting," I said as my dry lips began to crack. Only a few drops of blood came out, my blood becoming thicker, the lack of liquid in it forcing it to have a higher viscosity. "You are trying to kill me."

The woman laughed out loud, her head tilting back as her entire body shook with her laughter. "Are you just now figuring it out? A little slow, aren’t you? Now... where are your men? I see them, but not a single one has moved so much as a finger to come save you. Are you still so sure that they are willing to do anything for you?"

"Is that what you are seeing?" I asked, cocking my head to the side as more and more of my body started to shut down. Honestly, this was completely exciting to me. How far could I push myself before I was unable to heal? Well... I was about to find out.

"Is there something else to see?" snapped back the woman, raising her hand. Several men stood up, their guns out and pointing to the rescue party I had brought.

"Watch," I informed her. I wanted her to see that true strength, true power, wasn’t obtained by denying who you were. It was completely embracing it. "Cheng Bo Jing."

As soon as I called out his name, all of the guns had melted into a puddle of metal on the floor in front of them. I watched the metal crawl across the fire until it was resting at my feet.

I stuck my finger in the liquid, surprised to see how cool it was.

The snake on my arm lifted its head up and stuck it out from under my sleeve, his tongue scenting the air in front of him and the metal.

Letting it do whatever it wanted, I turned my attention back to the woman.

The look of shock on her face was a good start, but it wasn’t enough. "Ye Yao Zu?" I continued. "Nightmares, please."

While the man was amazing at reading minds, I had accidentally discovered that he enjoyed creating nightmares for people to relive over and over again.

The screams of the men and women around us echoed in the storeroom.

"And yet, you aren’t able to do jack shit without them," sneered the woman, not caring about what her people were going through. All she wanted to do was prove a point.

"Having trust in someone is not a matter of asking why... it’s a matter of asking who," I told her. The first time I heard those words, they resonated inside of me, and they were something that I have kept close to my heart ever since.

If you don’t trust the person asking you to do something, there is going to be an endless number of questions asking why you need to do it. But if someone that you trusted asked you to do something, you wouldn’t ask why you needed to do it; you would just do it.

That was trust. And the ultimate proof of whether or not you trusted that person or not.

My men trusted me. They didn’t need to ask why, and I didn’t need to explain what I wanted.

I trusted them to know what needed to be done, and they trusted me enough to know that I had a purpose for asking.

The woman continued to sneer as my body started to become more and more dehydrated. My muscles screamed and burned, and yet, I didn’t show it at all.

If nothing else, Camp Hell taught me how to control the pain and never let it show.

"Firefly," interjected Bin An Sha, coming over to me to stand right behind me.

I smiled. "Fine," I sighed. "You want to see my power?" I continued, raising to my feet. I wasn’t outside; I couldn’t call on the life force from the zombies or plants around me...

But I could call on hers.

Taking measured steps, Bin An Sha trailing behind me, his arms stretched out to reach me should I stumble or fall. I walked over to where the woman stood, still staring at me.

"I am a healer," I said slowly, my mouth dry. "I make sick people better, and the injured healed."

"Can you also make the blind see?" she sneered as I quickly shot my hand out and grabbed the bare skin of her arm. Unfortunately for her, I was holding her with my right hand, the one with the snake tattoo on it...

And the snake hated her.

"I haven’t tried that particular trick yet," I replied with a shrug, taking a small amount of her life force out of her body.

I really should have thought this plan through a bit better.