Li Ban gritted his teeth, looking at the girl's cold and indifferent expression before turning to leave.
Indeed, in this Death Prison, he was the biggest fool.
When Li Ban stumbled back to the storage room, the mimic rat was still curled up in tears.
But Li Ban no longer felt any sympathy for her.
Who would sympathize with him?
He went to the nearby cabinet and took out a short cleaver, the kind used for boning.
Tightening his grip on the cleaver, Li Ban quickly walked behind the mimic rat.
The mimic rat had buried her head in her knees, showing no reaction to Li Ban's approach.
Li Ban lowered his right hand, grabbed the mimic rat's tail, stretched it taut, and in the moment when the creature looked up in confusion—chopped it off.
The little girl-like mimic rat immediately jumped up, hitting her head against the top of the iron cage before bouncing back down.
She seemed to be in terrible pain, darting around the cage, baring her teeth at Li Ban every time she looked his way.
Utterly furious!
Li Ban simply coiled up the severed tail and stuffed it into his clothes.
He didn't know if the tree-person jailers allowed taking "ingredients" outside, but he couldn't care less now.
With his face already covered in blood, the scent of the mimic rat's tail wouldn't stand out anyway.
His dizziness was getting worse.
Li Ban nearly fell while climbing the slope.
Staggering to the water room, he found the door slightly ajar. Shouldering it open, he stumbled inside.
The girl inside had already lit a simple torch, holding it in her left hand while extending her empty right hand toward Li Ban.
A trade—tail for fire.
Li Ban's hand holding the tail was shaking, but fortunately the girl kept her word.
Taking the torch, Li Ban immediately turned to leave.
The girl stood by the stove and quietly reminded him, "Remember, you stole this."
But Li Ban had no time to think too much.
His dizziness worsened, his stomach began hurting, and his knees kept giving out as he walked—it took tremendous willpower not to collapse.
The water room was only about a hundred meters from where the former jailer hung.
Yet those hundred meters felt impossibly difficult for Li Ban.
Gasping for breath, his vision darkening intermittently, his face wet with what might be sweat or blood.
Suddenly, Li Ban felt someone shove his shoulder.
Already barely maintaining balance, his legs gave way completely, sending him sprawling face-first.
Even while falling, he carefully protected the torch in his hand.
"Jailer! Jailer!"
Someone was actually shouting for the jailer right beside Li Ban.
From the voice, it was the young man who came with him.
"Don't shout! I'll die!" Li Ban struggled to sit up, looking at the young man standing over him.
The young man glanced down at Li Ban.
With the sunlight casting shadows from above, his expression was unreadable.
The next second, the young man shouted again, "Jailer! Someone's using fire outside!"
Li Ban froze, his fear instantly replaced by hatred.
"Who! Who dares violate the rules with fire?"
The jailer who had been absent all day arrived surprisingly fast this time.
He snatched the makeshift torch from Li Ban's hand and kicked up a pile of dirt to smother it.
Soon the torch was extinguished, leaving only faint red embers flickering.
The last light in Li Ban's left eye seemed to go out with it.
He crawled painfully toward the embers, but could only stare blankly at the dying sparks.
"Who gave you the fire?" the tree-person jailer demanded harshly.
Li Ban ignored him.
When you're already worse than dead, why bother with a jailer?
The tree-person's vertical pupils dilated as it raised its arm high.
"Sir, Jailer sir." Suddenly the girl rushed out from the water room.
Gone was her earlier composure during the trade with Li Ban—now she was pale, trembling, and threw herself to her knees before the jailer.
"Sir, it was me, it was me, I'm sorry! He said he wanted hot water, so I... I let him boil some, but then he suddenly took a burning stick—"
SMACK!
SMACK!
The tree-person struck both the girl and Li Ban across their backs without hesitation.
"You're responsible for boiling water—no one else touches the fire!" This was directed at the girl.
"You dare take fire outside? Go deliver meals now! One more slip-up and you're dead!" This was for Li Ban, showing no concern whether his injuries were fatal.
"Neither of you eat today!" This applied to both.
"Yes, yes!" The girl pressed her face into the dirt.
Li Ban remained motionless.
Yet the tree-person didn't scold Li Ban for his disrespect.
It glanced at him with eyes that seemed to see a corpse.
"You—good job." Finally, the tree-person praised the young informer before hurrying back into the prison.
The moment the tree-person left, the girl stopped trembling and sobbing instantly.
She stood up slowly, expressionless, and returned to the water room.
The young man watched her go with a cold laugh, then glanced at Li Ban on the ground—not even bothering to sneer—before walking away.
Now only Li Ban remained in the clearing, half-prone beside the dying torch.
He seemed utterly hopeless, waiting until everyone had left before slowly crawling toward the faint embers...
"Haa..."
A soft breath.
Three or four nearly dead embers brightened slightly.
Li Ban hadn't stopped moving earlier out of true despair.
But because that emotionless mechanical female voice had sounded in his mind again:
[Detected element "fire." Extract?]
With others nearby, Li Ban hadn't dared to extract.
He'd guarded those embers desperately, refusing to look away even as his vision darkened repeatedly, terrified someone might stomp them out.
Finally, he got his moment alone—and the embers hadn't completely died.
Extract.
He thought silently.
Whoosh!
The last embers vanished.
Panic flashed through Li Ban—until he heard the voice in his head:
[Element "fire" extracted.]
Li Ban scrambled up, staggering toward the gallows.
If the prompt said it was needed for the mission, surely it could ignite the former jailer?
He practically threw himself at the hanging corpse, nearly tearing off its tattered pants in the process.
The former jailer's grotesque smile was gone, offering no words—apparently Li Ban wasn't worth conversing with after failing to bring fire.
Yet as the corpse continued playing dead, Li Ban thought: "Use element 'fire'—burn him!"
[Releasing element "fire."]
A small flame suddenly ignited on the corpse, rapidly expanding into a massive fireball that engulfed it completely.
Li Ban stumbled back two steps, landing hard on his rear.
The flames licked upward hungrily toward the head.
"The eye, the eye!"
Remembering his true goal—restoring his right eye—Li Ban urgently addressed the burning corpse.
The former jailer's body hung limply, like any ordinary corpse.
Then suddenly—his right eye shot out as if spring-loaded, landing perfectly in Li Ban's palm.
What the corpse said next nearly made Li Ban drop it:
"Keep it up, kid. I have high hopes for you. You'll complete the mission for sure."
With that, the former jailer was fully consumed by flames.
[Detected element "eye." Extract?]
"Yes," Li Ban answered immediately in his mind.
[Extracted.]
[Detected missing "eye" component in host. Fuse newly extracted "eye" element?]
"Yes."
[Fusion complete.]
[Ability gained through "eye" element: Superhuman Vision.]