The fat man stared at the figure's back for a good while, and finally tentatively asked, "Young Master?"

Hearing the familiar voice, I turned back and said, "Eh, Fatty, Han Yu, what are you doing here?"

"Damn, it really is you!" Fatty rushed up and hugged me, his arms like iron pincers squeezing the breath out of me.

"Hey, wait." Fatty took a step back and carefully sized me up. After looking for a good while, he finally spoke, firing off questions like a string of firecrackers: "You… how did you get so old… how did you get so thin… and how did you get out of that underground palace…?"

I stroked the slightly gray stubble on my chin, not knowing where to start.

…

Rouyi recounted the entire search and rescue process of the Brazilian fishing boat that had been missing for months near Charleston Harbor, the discovery of the thirty-one crew members, and my experiences to Fatty and Han Yu from beginning to end.

The fat man and Han Yu gaped, and if they hadn't experienced that ordeal in the Himalayas, no one would have believed such a bizarre story.

"In that case, wouldn't he be listed as the number one criminal suspect by the police? Will there be any problems taking him out like this?" Han Yu asked worriedly.

Rouyi shook her head and said, "Don't worry, the Z Organization is very experienced in extracting people from the police… After discovering the Young Master, I used every means to get him out of the Z Organization's surveillance. Later, I found the corpse of a homeless man whose physical condition was similar to his to replace him, and that's how we muddled through. Whether it's the police or the Z Organization, the information they have now is that the sole survivor of the fishing boat has died."

…

Fatty noticed something was wrong. He looked at his brother, with whom he'd shared life and death, and couldn't help but speak his mind.

"Hey! That's not right! He's clearly about the same age as me, only twenty-something, but now he looks like a middle-aged man in his forties. What's going on?"

Rouyi said, "That's why I came to find you."

Then, she took out a report and handed it to Fatty and Han Yu, saying, "This is his physical examination report."

The report showed that my physical condition, bone density, and a series of other tests all indicated that I was a person in my forties. This was not faked.

"We gave the Young Master a comprehensive examination, and everything looks normal except for the blood," Rouyi said.

"Blood?" Han Yu asked in confusion.

"There is a radioactive substance in his blood. We can't measure what element it is, and we don't know what it's made of. We only know that this substance is accelerating the aging of his body," Rouyi replied. "If left untreated, he will die of old age in less than half a year."

"Didn't the Young Master already achieve immortality? How can he still age?" Fatty suddenly asked.

Rouyi pointed to the scars left on my arm from the blood draw and said, "It takes a very long time for the Young Master to heal even a small wound now, let alone immortality or resurrection."

Han Yu walked up to me and sized me up from head to toe, as if observing an animal specimen. She suddenly asked, "Did you enter the 'water droplet' at the end?"

I nodded.

"What happened after that?" Han Yu couldn't suppress her curiosity and asked very seriously.

So, I told Fatty and Han Yu those experiences that I had told Rouyi before, all over again.

"...I didn't have a concept of time in the underground palace, so I can only estimate. I guessed that you had already gone down the mountain, so I carried the monster's remains towards the 'water droplet'.

The moment I touched the 'water droplet', everything around me suddenly changed. I didn't have the feeling of 'me' anymore.

I seemed to have become another existence. I couldn't see or hear, as if I had lost all my senses, but I seemed to be able to sense everything around me in another way.

It was as if the physical body disappeared and the spirit remained.

It was as if I was running in a corridor that didn't exist in this world. I didn't have legs, and I didn't know how I was running, but I was running. The corridor didn't seem to exist either, it was just a state that I imagined.

So, I kept shuttling and moving towards a target in some kind of channel, but when I approached the other end of the channel, I was suddenly thrown out by some force.

The moment I was thrown out, all the senses returned to my body.

After that, I was like an embryo slowly growing and developing in my mother's womb, and then slowly growing into an infant. I witnessed my entire growth process as an observer.

Later, my sense of smell appeared first. The wet and salty breath made me feel like I was by the sea. Then, sight, touch, and hearing slowly appeared. I felt like I was in an incomparably dark deep sea, and my body was constantly sinking.

I don't know how long later, this state of sinking was suddenly interrupted. Later, when I opened my eyes for the first time, I found myself in the cabin of a fishing boat.

Later, I was brought here. I can't remember what happened during this period..."

Fatty, Rouyi, and Li Decha were all confused as they listened. Although this was the second time Rouyi had heard me describe my feelings, she still didn't understand.

Han Yu looked at me with a strange expression, which made me feel uncomfortable. She slowly opened her mouth and asked me, "After feeling your body disappear, what was the world you felt like? Can you describe it?"

I thought for a moment and said, "Like a kaleidoscope when I was a child, all the familiar and common things were disrupted, decomposed, and twisted, and presented in a strange form. And I was feeling it with a strange sense, watching other things being twisted, and I was also being twisted."

I don't know if Han Yu understood, but judging from her expression, she should have heard something she wanted from my words.

After I revealed all the details of the matter, Rouyi asked Fatty and Han Yu to make a crucial choice.

"The Young Master only has half a year left to live. I have some clues here. If we dig deeper along these clues, it seems that we can help the Young Master, but I can't guarantee it. And we don't know what we will encounter later, maybe..." Rouyi said very seriously, "The Young Master saved my life. I want to try, what about you?"

I wanted to say something, but they didn't give me a chance.

"I'm in," Han Yu said without hesitation.

Han Yu's reaction really surprised Rouyi. She thought Fatty might be the first to stand up and say he wanted to help me, but it was actually Han Yu who spoke first.

This is not difficult to understand. There are too many mysteries in my experience that physics cannot explain, which is exactly what Han Yu has been pursuing and researching. She has no reason to give up such a good research opportunity. As for safety, she didn't think so much about it.

Seeing that Han Yu didn't hesitate at all to participate in my rescue operation, Fatty naturally shouldn't shirk his responsibility for both personal and logical reasons, so he patted his chest and agreed.

Seeing that Fatty and Han Yu decided to participate in the action concerning me, I was actually a little moved.