“Douglas, What are you doing?” William asked in shock.
Douglas had put on his protective gear. He replied right before putting on his respirator.
“Gaia needs me.”
Douglas opened the partition door and walked into the cave without any hesitation.
Douglas said quickly.
“Inject 20cc of tranquilizer, apply oxygen mask, 70% concentration, prepare a cardiac pacemaker.”
At this moment, Gaia’s face was purplish-red. He was operating the machine to suture the incision while observing his own condition through the display screen, thinking of strategies.
He could use an emergency protocol to temporarily halt the stress reflex of the spores, but that meant that the surgery would fail.
After the spores’ stress reflex stopped, it would continue to corrode Gaia’s body, causing further and possibly permanent damage.
“Goddammit!”
Gaia looked at the screen. A lot of the data on the screen had red symbols next to them.
Since his heart had started to corrode, his heart was not pumping oxygen to his body efficiently, causing Gaia to suffer from hypoxia.
Looking at the countdown on the screen, there was one more minute until he would be forcefully injected with a special medicine by the operating table and enter an induced sleep.
At this moment, Douglas appeared in Gaia’s field of vision.
“You have already done very well. Leave the rest to me,” Douglas said in a flat tone. There was even a hint of fatigue on his face as if he had just woken up.
However, only those who understood him knew that Douglas had entered his zone.
At this moment, he was the God of the operating hall.
Gaia smiled and closed his eyes.
“I’ll leave it to you. I hope I can live to see you again.”
“You definitely will,” Douglas said firmly.
The next second, Gaia fell into a deep sleep.
This was because the tranquilizer that Douglas had injected had already taken effect.
“Prepare to open up the chest cavity. Be aware of the blood flow,” Douglas ordered.
The robotic arm was about to open up the chest in Douglas’s place. However, Douglas pushed it away and canceled the command given to the robotic arm.
“Machines are non-sentient objects after all. How can they even compare to humans?” Douglas said in a disdainful tone.
“Scalpel!” Douglas said.
Then, the robotic arm handed over a scalpel.
Douglas took it and cut open Gaia’s chest without hesitation. The bright red heart was exposed.
At this moment, half of the heart was already covered by a yellow spore cluster. It was like a leech that was crazily sucking up everything and rapidly expanding.
At this moment, Gaia had entered a very dangerous state.
Once the spore assembly completely covered the heart, it would stop the blood flow, causing Gaia to die.
“The situation is worse than expected. We can’t delay any longer. We have to carry out the surgery.”
Douglas said calmly.
Everyone outside was extremely worried when they saw this scene,
Brad gulp hard. He looked at the heart and was completely stunned. Any surgery that involved the heart was extremely advanced.
In this kind of surgical environment, could it be successful?
“Continue with the surgery!”
The robotic arm immediately handed over a clean scalpel.
The next second, Douglas made a decision that shocked everyone.
They saw Douglas take off the protective glove on his right arm. Then, he took the scalpel and nonchalantly cut his own right arm.
“Huh? What is Douglas doing? Be careful of the infection!”
Sears said in disbelief.
Everyone outside was stunned when they saw Douglas reached his right hand above Gaia’s heart as he let the blood drip down.
“Splash!”
Blood poured down onto Gaia’s heart like warm spring rain. The spore cluster that was wriggling suddenly stopped. Then, it raised its head crazily and tried to crawl towards Douglas’s arm.
“What?” Brad asked in confusion.
“Why would the spore cluster react like this?”
William had worked with Douglas for a long period of time, so he knew some secrets about Douglas.
He slowly said, “Douglas is different from the rest of us. His blood has more red and white blood cells. For the spore assembly, that’s equivalent to having a plate of gourmet food placed in front of them.”
William did not go into it any more than that. After all, it involved some secrets of Planet Azure.
Secrets that ordinary people should never have access to.
Perhaps, with the appearance of Planet Mushu, these secrets might eventually be exposed to the world.
William also took note of the information the United States was releasing. It seemed like a sign.
———————— —
Douglas’s arm pressed down almost squishing Gaia’s heart.
As soon as the spore cluster touched Douglas’s[1] skin, they spat out a large amount of acid, which corroded the flesh as they worked their way in.
Witnessing such a horrific scene for the first time, even the battle-hardened soldiers outside started to tremble uncontrollably.
“Start the blood transfusion. Prepare the thread, I will close the incision.”
Douglas said.
“Huh! Douglas, is Douglas not gonna treat his hand?” Sears asked in shock.
The spore clustery was digging into Douglas’s body at an extremely fast speed. A large part of his arm had already started to visibly swell up. However, Douglas did not even blink.
“Shut up and watch how Douglas does it,” William reprimanded.
Douglas’s orders were right. This kind of wound had to be treated as soon as possible, or else Gaia would die on the operating table.
After spending two minutes treating Gaia’s wound, Douglas finally had time to douse his arm with disinfectant. He was already a little dizzy from losing too much blood.
“What Will Douglas do next?” Sears was very worried. Who knew where the spore cluster would move to.
“He has already made his decision. There’s no need for us to worry,” William replied.
Then, everyone saw Douglas rip off his scrubs.
Then, he turned on the radio and spoke into the microphone.
“The spore cluster absorbed a lot of my red and white blood cells. Now, it urgently needs to absorb energy to digest theseblood cells. Coincidentally, the fat cells are the cells that store the most energy in the body.”
“You’re still in the mood to give us a lecture? At a time like this?”
Brad was so anxious that he was about to piss his pants. However, it needed to be said, Douglas’s body was really good. He usually looked a little thin, but when he took off his clothes, his muscles were looked like they were hand-sculpted by a master craftsman.
“Fortunately, it’s in the right abdomen. Otherwise, I wouldn’t be able to remove it with one hand.” Douglas smiled.
However, with his hand drenched with blood, this rare smile on his face looked even creepier.
[1] The raw text said Gaia, though it feels like a typo on the author’s part.