THE REAL PROTEGE-Chapter 518: THE FINGER OF EXTERNAL ARBITER

Otako's Myth: Healer - Continue

Shun exhaled slowly.

"That's not healing," he uttered under his breath.

The Azure Dragon nodded.

"It is not mending.

It is to correct."

He leaned back slightly.

"If the injury can be corrected, it vanishes.

If the body is beyond salvation… it collapses into dust.

A cold shudder ran down Fatty's spine as he imagined his own form breaking into nothingness. His skin shuddered as though a winter wind sliced straight through to his marrow. The flavor of copper seemed to rise in his mouth, sour and metallic, as his thoughts tumbled wildly -

'Would it be agony, sharp and blinding, or simply a sudden blankness, a resonant absence where he had formerly existed?' Fatty tried to swallow, but his throat stuck. The notion held to him, sticky and stubborn, winding in his gut like a live worm.

Lily slid closer to Ren, her breath rising in small, quick puffs. She couldn't drag her eyes from her sister's hands; the memory of tenderness from countless embraces now appeared unfamiliar, as if those fingers could just as easily dissolve her. An electric ache pulsed in her own fingertips as she flexed them, knuckles tight with dread. The fear was intimate — Lily's next heartbeat told her it was possible, even a sibling was no shield, just a delicate tie quivering on the edge of nothing.

Questions tumbled through her, hot and wild. 'Did love mean protection, or was it merely another weakness waiting to snap?'

Even Mushu, stoic and unreadable, let his fist clench just a fraction tighter, the creak of his leather glove faint amid the silence. There was a phantom pressure behind his breastbone, as if something enormous and ancient pressed back against his will. Beneath his composed exterior, a helplessness crawled through him; he had forced his body to withstand any physical pain, but this kind of vanishing was a threat raw and alien. He wondered, almost bitterly, whether years of discipline or the vows of loyalty could serve as protection against this silent judgment, or if nothing could stand before it at all.

Fatty covered his mouth.

"Otako does not try," the Azure Dragon said calmly.

"Otako decides."

A long pause followed.

The koi pond reflected a cloud floating slowly across the sky.

"During the process," the Auzre Dragon continued, "there is no radiance. No aura. Only a faint distortion in space around his fingertip… and the terrifying silence that follows.

People do not see energy move.

They only see results."

Shi Min's eyes darkened thoughtfully.

The Dragon's voice lowered.

"The technique was not created to heal."

"It was created to erase."

Ren's heart skipped.

"Otako once perfected a killing art so absolute that it could erase a person's existence down to the meridians."

A light tremor of shock ran through the younger ones.

"After decades… he refined it.

Instead of erasing the entire structure, Otako learned to erase only the damaged parts.

Healing became a side effect of perfect control over destruction."

The Azure Dragon's eyes mellowed just slightly.

"Otako does not know warmth.

He only knows precision."

Ling Li's lashes lowered.

Red glanced at Ling Li quietly. Deep inside, she wanted to laugh and tease her. But her husband had warned her earlier that no one knew Ling Li was Otako. Still, Red sometimes caught the trace of distance in Ling Li's gaze — a longing, or perhaps a weight, that made her seem apart from everyone, even when surrounded by friends.

For a moment, while the conversation edged closer to dangerous truths, Red saw something glimmer behind Ling Li's serene eyes. It was gone in a heartbeat, replaced by her usual calm, but the sense of truths waiting beneath persisted just out of sight.

Everyone listened in absolute focus.

"However," the Azure Dragon added, lifting his teacup again, "this technique is only applicable if the recipient's body can withstand immortal resonance."

Shi Min's gaze focused further.

"And when it does…"

The Dragon's voice turned almost solemn.

"Though it is extremely painful — it feels like enduring a lightning tribulation — the injuries heal stronger than before.

The meridians widen.

The bones densify.

The flesh becomes more resilient."

Ren swallowed.

"So… it strengthens the person?"

"Yes," the Azure Dragon nodded.

"But only if they survive the correction.

Those who fail cannot bear the strain, and their bodies reject the resonance, unraveling from within. Flesh blackens and fractures, meridians split apart, and in the end, all that remains is brittle dust and a memory quickly engulfed by silence. There is no hope of recovery, no second attempt. The technique either restores or utterly erases.

For those who survive, however, nothing remains as it was before. Some speak of phantom aches in what was once wounded, or of flashes of impossible clarity that linger beyond their eyes. Others carry subtle marks that cannot be seen, or traces of silence beneath every heartbeat. Most return altered in ways no one else can measure — changed in body, mind, or spirit, as if a shadow walks with them ever after.

The hall became heavy again.

Fatty rubbed his arms unconsciously.

"That's insane," he muttered.

Shun looked at Ren instinctively.

Ren held his gaze.

She comprehended the subtext.

Healing.

Strengthening.

Correction.

Gift or threat.

Shi Min finally spoke, voice collected.

"Has anyone survived this correction?"

The Azure Dragon's lips curved faintly.

"A handful."

He let his gaze linger amid the hush. "One of them was Bai Zhu. Years ago, a poisoned arrow pierced his heart in the midst of battle. After Otako touched his wound, Bai Zhu lay lost to the living for three days, hushed as a grave, not breathing nor stirring — a pale effigy engulfed by shadow and silence."

Myths murmured that in those days, he drifted the margins of existence, drifting along the edge betwixt worlds where the river of souls parts as haze. When he returned, the wound was gone, and a new strength flooded his sinew and spirit, as if he had drunk from the endless sky.

Yet he mentioned an immense emptiness within, as though he had gazed into the darkness beyond creation and returned with its frost entwined in his marrow. Others saw him as marked ever after, touched by the touchless, carrying the muteness of that crossing within his skin — both more and less than what he was before."

The Azure Dragon's eyes flicked briefly toward Ling Li. 𝑓𝘳𝘦𝑒𝑤𝑒𝘣𝘯ℴ𝘷𝘦𝓁.𝑐𝑜𝑚

Then away.

Four Eyes caught that.

Again.

A quiet current began moving through his thoughts.

Ling Li had told them to avoid Otako.

She knew him personally.

The Azure Dragon spoke with familiarity.

Shi Min resembled him.

And Otako's techniques were exclusive.

Coincidence?

Or something even deeper?

The bamboo outside resumed its whisper.

But the atmosphere in the hall had irreversibly changed.

Otako was no longer merely a name.

He was now—

Judgment.

Correction.

Inevitable authority.

And perhaps—

Closer to them than any of them realized.

"How does he revive the dead?" Lily once again asked in excitement.

"...."

Everyone was still absorbing what they heard.