CHAPTER 72: CHAPTER 72; ESCAPE 1

"Shuyin, what’s happening to you?" He kept his voice calm despite the panic clawing at his chest. "Talk to me. Help me understand your situation."

Her jade eye, still uncovered, still glowing with that eerie bioluminescence, fixed on his face. "Don’t ask too many questions... Just take me back to the mansion... I need to rest.." Through the shivers, she managed to speak, her voice cold and frosted.

"Don’t you think you need medical attention?" He didn’t know why go home when they could see a doctor since they were in the hospital.

"Did they heal your daughter?" She hoarsely muttered and Lu Yuze couldn’t argue with her.

"You are saying it ain’t poison, but this looks like the cold poison that nearly killed Yuyan!"

"It’s not... poison," she insisted. "It’ll just pass in no time."

"When will that happen?" Lu Yuze demanded. "How long?"

"You are nagging me like an old woman..." Shuyin was annoyed with his relentless questions. They weren’t going to help her. She just wanted to rest.

The elevator reached the ground floor with a soft chime. The doors opened to reveal the hospital’s main reception area, a vast space of marble floors and expensive furniture, usually calm and orderly.

Right now, it was all chaotic.

Security personnel were everywhere, responding to the alerts from the upper floors. Medical staff rushed past with equipment. Visitors stood in confused clusters, trying to understand what was happening.

Lu Yuze stepped out of the elevator, and immediately, his personal guards spotted him. They rushed over, weapons drawn but held low, professional despite the obvious tension.

"Sir! Are you alright? We received reports of some kind of incident on the VIP floor..." Some of the guards who had been stationed on the upper floors had called for backup after hearing their boss’s urgent commands over the comms system.

"I’m fine," Lu Yuze cut them off tersely, his attention divided between the guards and Shuyin, who was visibly deteriorating in his arms.

"Sixth Master Lu," another guard approached, holding a tablet, "they need your signature at the reception desk. The discharge papers are ready, and there are some liability waivers regarding the... incident on the 40th floor."

Lu Yuze glanced down at Shuyin. Her eyes were closed now, her breathing shallow, frost still spreading across her skin in delicate crystalline patterns. He needed to get her somewhere safe, somewhere warm, but bureaucracy demanded its pound of flesh first.

"Fine," he muttered, carefully setting Shuyin down on a cushioned waiting couch positioned along the corridor. "Wait here. I’ll be right back."

But the moment he released her, Shuyin’s eyes snapped open. The cold radiating from her body was so intense that nearby visitors instinctively moved away, feeling the unnatural chill even from several feet away. Condensation was forming on the metal armrests of the couch. The temperature around her had dropped noticeably.

She didn’t want to sit there. Didn’t want people staring, noticing, asking questions about why the air around her seemed to shimmer with frost despite it being a warm afternoon inside the climate-controlled hospital.

With effort that cost her more than it should have, Shuyin pushed herself to her feet. Her legs trembled, threatening to give out, but she forced herself to take a step. Then another.

She had made it perhaps three steps when chaos erupted.

A disheveled woman came charging through the reception area, hospital gown hanging off one shoulder, wild dark hair matted with sweat, eyes blazing with desperate determination. She moved with the frantic energy of someone who had nothing left to lose.

And before anyone could react, before the guards could intercept, before Lu Yuze could even process what was happening...

The woman grabbed Shuyin from behind.

A scalpel appeared in her hand, stolen from God-knows-where, its blade glinting under the bright reception lights as she pressed it against Shuyin’s throat with trembling but determined pressure.

Shuyin was too weak to defend herself. Too drained from the energy expenditure and the cold ravaging her system. She could only stand there, feeling the sharp edge of the blade against her skin, acutely aware of how easy it would be for this woman to sever her carotid artery with one wrong move.

"Don’t you dare come any closer!" the woman screamed, her voice cracking with hysteria and desperation.

The entire reception area froze.

"I will kill her!"

"I will kill her!"

That menacing voice echoed through the marble-floored space, bouncing off expensive artwork and plate-glass windows. Other visitors scattered, security personnel drew weapons but didn’t dare fire, and medical staff stopped mid-stride.

Lu Yuze’s blood turned to ice in his veins. He’d survived corporate warfare, hostile takeovers, and assassination attempts by rival businessmen. But watching a blade pressed to his wife’s throat was a different kind of terror entirely.

"Damn it! I just became a free woman!" Shuyin mumbled beneath her breath cursing the misfortunes following her.

"Madam," a man in a white coat, the head doctor, based on his bearing and the way other staff deferred to him, took a careful step forward, his hands raised in a placating gesture. "You need your medicine. You’re not well. Please, let’s talk about this...."

"Come back here," another doctor urged, also stepping forward. "We can help you..."

"Don’t hurt innocent people!" the head doctor continued, taking another slow step. "Whatever you’re going through, we can...."

"I’m not sick!" The woman’s voice rose to a near-shriek. "I keep telling you I’m not sick and you don’t listen!"

"I’m not sick...."

Her hand was shaking, making the blade waver dangerously against Shuyin’s throat. A thin line of blood appeared where the edge pressed too hard.

"I’ll say it again!" the woman screamed. "I’m not sick! If you get any closer, I will kill her!"

"Don’t..." Lu Yuze’s voice cut through the chaos, cold and authoritative. "Please don’t kill my wife."

The doctors froze, several of them turning to look at Lu Yuze with expressions of shock. They hadn’t realized this was the Sixth Master’s wife. Since when had he gotten married? But now the situation had become infinitely more complicated.