Apocalypse: I Can Upgrade Everything

Chapter 185: The Familiar Process

Chen Ye ate his dinner alone in the dim light of the ruined restaurant.

Captain Chu Che was utterly drained from navigating the Anomaly-infested city and had already passed out in one of the private dining rooms. Zhang Yanping had carefully packed away the captain’s portion, leaving it ready to reheat whenever he woke. As the designated cook for the Sequence Beyonders, she had already received her payment from Manager Xue Nan and was eager to prove her worth.

Just as Chen Ye was finishing his meal, Doctor Luo arrived. Hovering nervously behind him was his wife, her face pale and drawn.

Seeing Chen Ye casually eating, Doctor Luo’s fear was momentarily eclipsed by a surge of desperate anger. “Chen Ye,” he spat loudly, “don’t push your luck! You don’t own this convoy!”

He had marched over here half-convinced that if Chen Ye pushed him too far this time, he would fight the man to the death.

Chen Ye slowly paused his chewing. He didn’t say a word. He simply shifted his gaze, fixing Doctor Luo with the cold, dead stare of his glowing red left eye.

In that single, agonizing second, every ounce of courage Doctor Luo had painstakingly gathered evaporated into the cold air. His knees went weak, and a visible tremble took hold of his frame. Yet, despite his overwhelming terror, he stubbornly shifted his stance, physically shielding his wife from Chen Ye’s line of sight.

The woman peeked out from behind her husband’s shoulder. Her expression was a heartbreaking mix of raw fear and exhausted resignation. They had danced this waltz before. She knew exactly what was about to happen.

Is this man a complete psychopath? she thought bitterly. If he needs my husband’s medical skills, why must he always resort to taking hostages? Chen Ye felt absolutely nothing in the face of Doctor Luo’s righteous anger. He didn’t even bother to raise an eyebrow. He simply broke eye contact and went back to his food.

To Chen Ye, an ordinary human was fundamentally incapable of posing a threat. Even if he handed Doctor Luo a loaded assault rifle, the man lacked the killer instinct to pull the trigger before Chen Ye snapped his neck.

“Once I’m done eating,” Chen Ye said, his voice flat and muffled by a mouthful of rice, “I need you to surgically extract my right eye.”

“You… you absolute lunatic!” Doctor Luo stammered, his mind short-circuiting at the sheer absurdity of the demand.

“Do exactly as I say. I don’t require your medical opinion on the matter,” Chen Ye replied coldly. “Go back to your vehicle and prep your tools. Be back here in exactly thirty minutes.”

Chen Ye swallowed his food and finally looked up. “When the extraction is successful, I will pay you with an entire crate of instant noodles. You know exactly what that kind of caloric density means out here.”

He had a spare crate sitting in the backseat of the Doomsday Pickup. It was an easy price to pay for a clean surgery.

Doctor Luo opened his mouth to argue, but the words died in his throat. An entire crate of instant noodles?

The last time he had performed a forced surgery for Chen Ye, he had been paid with a full barrel of gasoline. That single barrel had bought him and his wife a standard of living that other survivors could only dream of.

Operating under these unsanitary conditions… before the apocalypse, a stunt like this would have seen his medical license permanently revoked and landed him in prison. But the old world was dead, and his “patient” was a monster draped in human skin.

Doctor Luo grabbed his wife’s hand, intending to drag her back to their vehicle to prepare.

Suddenly, thick black smoke began to pour from Chen Ye’s palm, swirling and condensing in the center of the room until it formed a towering, featureless humanoid silhouette. Doctor Luo gasped, shoving his wife behind him as he stumbled backward.

“Old rules,” Chen Ye said without looking up from his plate. “Your wife stays here as collateral.”

“You bastard…” Doctor Luo hissed, glaring daggers at the man.

Chen Ye ignored him, scraping the last bit of food from his bowl.

It wasn’t their first rodeo. Doctor Luo was terrified, but he wasn’t completely blinded by panic like last time. He turned to his wife, squeezed her hands, and offered a few breathless words of comfort before turning and sprinting out the door into the fog.

When Zhang Yanping had fetched him earlier, she had only mentioned that Chen Ye requested his presence. Doctor Luo hadn’t anticipated that the lunatic wanted to gouge out his other eye. He hadn’t brought a single piece of surgical equipment.

Doctor Luo’s wife looked at Chen Ye, then cast a nervous glance at the towering smoke-phantom standing guard by the door. Without a word, she obediently found a chair in the corner and sat down.

She was roughly the same age as her husband, a middle-aged woman in her early forties. She wore a pair of thin-framed glasses and possessed a very plain, unremarkable face, but she carried herself with the quiet, intellectual dignity of a former academic. From the desperate way Doctor Luo protected her, it was obvious their marriage was built on deep, genuine affection.

Chen Ye wasn’t a man ruled by his lower half. He wouldn’t lose his mind over a stunning beauty, let alone harbor any dark intentions toward an ordinary, terrified housewife.

The silence in the restaurant was deafening. Neither spoke a single word.

The smoke-phantom guarding the door was nothing more than a crude visual simulation. It possessed no combat abilities or physical mass. But against an ordinary civilian, the psychological intimidation was more than enough.

Ten minutes later, Doctor Luo burst back through the doors, clutching a white medical kit to his chest. This time, he was far better prepared.

Chen Ye wiped his mouth and stood up. The restaurant had two private dining rooms in the back. Chu Che was passed out in one. Chen Ye claimed the other.

As for Iron Lion, the massive Titan Sequence Beyonder had been dragged into the main dining hall by a team of survivors and dumped on the floor. He hadn’t stirred once.

The surgical setup was a nightmare of psychological tension.

The smoke-phantom stood directly behind Doctor Luo’s wife, a silent, looming threat.

Chen Ye sat heavily on a leather sofa. In his right hand, he gripped a heavy steel meat cleaver he’d scavenged from the restaurant’s kitchen, pressing the razor-sharp edge firmly against Doctor Luo’s jugular.

He hadn’t dared to use the Heavy Machete for this. Hatred was an Artifact ranked 2001, and it possessed a violently unstable, sentient malice. Until the blood sacrifice was complete, Chen Ye couldn’t risk the living blade throwing a tantrum and decapitating the doctor mid-surgery. The meat cleaver was a safer bet.

Despite having survived this exact scenario before, Doctor Luo was sweating profusely. His hands shook uncontrollably as he unrolled his surgical kit, his forehead slick with cold perspiration.

If Iron Lion had been awake, Chen Ye would have simply asked the giant to hold Doctor Luo hostage. But relying on Captain Chu Che for this? Absolutely not. The man’s mind was a labyrinth of calculated schemes. If Chu Che offered to “help” oversee the surgery, Chen Ye would have canceled it entirely.

Doctor Luo swallowed hard. He had never been trained to perform delicate ocular extraction with a butcher’s knife pressed against his carotid artery.

Well, he thought grimly, last time it was a machete hovering over my head. Same difference. It was the same psychotic patient. The only difference was the eye in question.

Surprisingly, the procedure went smoothly.

Thirty agonizing minutes later, Doctor Luo dropped a perfectly intact human eyeball into a stainless steel kidney dish with a wet thud.

The instant the eye hit the metal, Chen Ye lowered the meat cleaver.

Doctor Luo stumbled backward, gasping for air as he stared at the bloody, panting monster on the sofa. A deep, existential terror gripped his heart. Are Sequence Beyonders even human anymore? No ordinary man could sit perfectly still while a surgeon carved an eyeball out of their skull without a single drop of local anesthesia. But the man in front of him had just done exactly that.

This was Doctor Luo’s second time plunging his hands into the biology of a Beyonder. Each time, the sheer unnatural horror of their existence left him deeply shaken.

Where Chen Ye’s failing right eye had been, there was now only a raw, weeping socket—a dark, unsettling void.

Chen Ye was drenched in cold sweat, his chest heaving as his body fought off the massive spike of physiological shock. He looked just as ragged as the surgeon.

Doctor Luo didn’t waste a second. He rapidly packed the empty socket with sterile gauze and secured a heavy, medical-grade eyepatch over the wound. Now, the only thing visible on Chen Ye’s face was the terrifying, blood-red glow of his left eye.

“We’re done,” Chen Ye rasped, his muscles twitching violently from the fading adrenaline. “Get out.”

The smoke-phantom guarding Doctor Luo’s wife instantly dissolved into thin air, leaving no trace behind.

Doctor Luo frantically packed his bloodied tools into his kit. His wife scurried over, keeping her eyes glued to the floor, her hands trembling as she helped him snap the case shut.

“Xue Nan will deliver your payment,” Chen Ye muttered as they scrambled for the door.

Doctor Luo paused in the doorway. “Thank you,” he whispered.

He meant it. Chen Ye was a ruthless, terrifying bastard who thought nothing of using a man’s wife as a hostage, but the monster always paid his debts.

The door clicked shut, leaving Chen Ye alone in the dark.

A moment later, the door creaked open again. Xue Nan slipped into the room.

When the manager’s gaze met the glowing crimson light of Chen Ye’s remaining eye, a primal jolt of terror seized his heart. Xue Nan immediately averted his eyes and held out a small glass vial. “Captain Chu asked me to bring this to you.”

He paused, glancing nervously at the fresh, blood-soaked bandages. “Mr. Chen… are you alright?”

Chen Ye didn’t speak. He stared at Xue Nan with cold, lethal intensity. “Get out.”

Xue Nan bowed deeply and practically fled the room.

As the door closed behind him, Xue Nan realized his shirt was soaked in cold sweat. He knew exactly why Chen Ye was so hostile. The man had just undergone brutal surgery; he was at his absolute weakest. Chen Ye was hyper-vigilant, ready to instantly execute anyone who made a suspicious move—even the convoy’s own manager.

Alone once more, Chen Ye finally reached out and took the glass vial.

He recognized the pale, shimmering liquid immediately. It was a heavily diluted dose of Tears of the Death God. He hadn’t expected Chu Che to willingly part with such a valuable healing agent.

He uncorked the vial and took a cautious sniff. Nothing seemed tampered with.

Chen Ye downed the liquid. Almost instantly, a soothing, icy wave washed over the burning agony in his empty eye socket. The excruciating pain dulled to a manageable throb, and the raw tissues began to rapidly knit together.

Breathing a sigh of relief, Chen Ye turned his attention to the table beside him.

The blood-red scabbard of the Heavy Machete was vibrating violently.

Chen Ye reached out and grabbed the hilt. The moment his skin touched the wrapped willow branches, a wave of manic, bloodthirsty excitement flooded his mind.

Hatred was starving. The sentient blade was frantically urging him to complete the blood pact. The three-hour window was almost closed.