Chapter Thirty-Nine: A Tremendous Response

This was a scene that would leave anyone with even a shred of common sense utterly shocked. Where Catherine’s left arm had been completely severed at the wrist, as soon as that pulpy mass was applied, it began to wriggle and squirm. Then, at the jagged end of the bone, the periosteum started to regenerate—a thin, translucent membrane tinged with white stretched forward, shedding grayish-white powder as it grew. These particles clung to the membrane, supporting and shaping it until it began to resemble real bone.

If one looked straight into the growing seam, they’d see pale pink marrow slowly filling the hollow canal, and soon enough, the bones of the forearm and wrist were fully formed. Immediately after came the metacarpals, then the phalanges…

Three minutes and twenty-two seconds!

That was all it took for a complete skeletal hand to regenerate. The pale, skeletal fingers were now attached to Catherine’s arm, standing in stark contrast to the soft pink skin of her forearm. This sight utterly shattered her worldview. She stared, stunned, at her arm, so dazed she didn’t even notice when Ling Mo set her gently on the ground.

After a long moment, Catherine snapped back to herself and hurriedly asked Ling Mo, “Master, why did it stop growing? Is it finished just because the bones are back?”

“Of course not,” Ling Mo gestured for her to calm down. “Your muscle tissue was destroyed by the butcher bird’s wind magic. Now, there's too much necrotic flesh on your arm. Your body detects that further growth would be unfavorable, so it automatically stopped.”

Catherine’s eyes brimmed with tears. Alarmed, she asked, “How could that be? What should I do?!”

“It’s simple!” Ling Mo didn’t wait for her to react. With a flick of his dagger, he made a circular incision at the edge of the muscle, and with a deft twist, all the rotten flesh was cleanly removed, leaving only bone. Fresh blood gushed from the smooth cut before Catherine could even cry out in pain, and Ling Mo quickly applied the remainder of the meat paste.

This time, regeneration was swift. First, a network of tendons spread over the bone, followed by layers of blood vessels, muscle, and connective tissue. Once the yellowish subcutaneous tissue wrapped around the crimson muscle, the dermis and epidermis formed within seconds. In less than five minutes, Catherine’s left hand had been flawlessly restored!

She flexed her fingers, made a fist, rotated her wrist—Catherine couldn’t stop moving her newly grown hand, marveling at how perfectly it obeyed her brain’s commands, with no hesitation or stiffness at all. It was as if her hand had never been severed, as if it was her own all along. The joy of regaining what was lost nearly brought her to tears.

While Catherine was lost in this feeling, her live stream was in absolute uproar. In mere moments, it had drawn massive attention, with viewers flooding in until her peak popularity reached five million—and the numbers kept rising!

Earlier, people were still debating Catherine’s skills and marveling at the battle, but now no one cared about such trivialities. When they saw her severed hand regenerate in just a few minutes, everyone went mad.

“Oh Io! God of Creation! What did I just witness?!”

“True limb regeneration! And after a complete traumatic amputation! It’s reborn!”

“How long did it take for that hand to regrow? Only a few minutes? Incredible!”

“From now on, martial arts is my faith! Master Ling is like a father to me!”

“What is magic compared to this? I want to train in martial arts! Master Ling, please accept me as your disciple!”

“Viewer ‘SkySpray’ sends a Meteor Shower to the streamer! Message: I was wrong! I’ll never doubt martial arts again! My father’s leg has been lame for five years, please, Master Ling, save my father!”

“Viewer ‘GloriousSisCon’ sends three Chaos Meteors! Message: Daddy Ling! My sister was paralyzed after being hit by a magic car seven years ago! Please, save her! I’ll pay any price!”

“VIP user ‘Principal Bai’ sends two World-Enders! Message: Master Ling! My grandfather lost an arm in the war when he was young—please heal him! I’ll offer anything you want as a reward; if I haggle, I’m your grandson!”

“VIP user…”

Bullet comments flooded the screen, accompanied by countless gifts, one after another, each more desperate than the last. All begged Ling Mo to heal themselves, their parents, friends, or relatives. In this modern world, accidents were ever more common, especially since the widespread use of magic-driven vehicles. According to a United Nations report two years ago, there were seventy to eighty million disabled people on the continent of Noah’s Law alone! Even the most conservative estimates put those with severe limb disabilities at over ten million.

These people had long resigned themselves to fate, grown numb with despair, but now, right before their eyes and in high definition, someone’s severed limb had truly regrown. The reality of this scene was like a beam of dawn in a world of darkness—even the most stoic could not suppress their excitement.

Among the tens of thousands watching Catherine’s stream, few were disabled themselves, but who didn’t have friends or family in such a situation? In less than ten minutes, at least a hundred thousand disabled people received the news and flocked to the stream for updates. The longer someone had been bedridden, the more frantically they showered Catherine with gifts.

Catherine, busy testing her new hand, didn’t see the bullet comments, but Ling Mo, who was sharing the feed, saw everything. He frowned, surprised by their fervor, then spoke coldly:

“You’re celebrating too soon! While martial arts can regenerate lost limbs, intermediate martial artist is the absolute minimum. For a junior practitioner, regrowing a limb is as hard as defeating an eighth-level magical beast!”

Hearing this, Catherine snapped out of her excitement. She, after all, had a disabled sister and cared deeply about this issue. She hurried over to ask, “Master, is it hard to become an intermediate martial artist? I thought it was fairly easy?”

“Easy? Ha! For a genius, anything is easy. But as I understand it, there are 3.5 billion magic apprentices on the continent, just over a hundred million become junior mages, and only about three million reach intermediate level—a promotion rate of less than one in a thousand. Martial arts requires even greater innate talent, so the rate is lower still!”

“One in a thousand…” Catherine bowed her head, worried for her sister’s prospects. But she quickly rallied: “One in a thousand is still hope! That’s better than no hope at all. No matter what, I have to try. How else will I know I’m not that one in a thousand?”

The viewers in the chat replied:

“Since I lost my leg, I’ve tried every quack remedy out there and nearly went bankrupt more than once. Those things didn’t give even one in ten thousand odds—one in a thousand is amazing!”

“Life without legs is like being a dog! Before, we had no choice. Now that I know there’s hope, even if it means risking death, I’ll try!”

“VIP user ‘HeavenlyCripple’ sends ten World-Enders! Message: Exactly! I have to try! Even if it’s one in ten thousand, I’d believe I’m that one!”

…

Seeing these messages, Catherine smiled. She pointed to the battered corpse of the male butcher bird nearby and asked, “Master, was it thanks to this thing’s heart that my hand grew back?”

“Yes,” Ling Mo nodded. “The butcher bird is a very peculiar species. The female’s talent is ‘Wind,’ but the male’s is ‘Space.’ It stores its spatial energy in its heart. For creatures with high cellular activity, this organ can induce cell dedifferentiation, which is why limbs can regenerate.”

“Dedifferentiation?”

“When a human is in the womb, all cells are totipotent stem cells, then they gradually evolve irreversibly into the body’s various organs. The male butcher bird’s heart can reverse this process and achieve regeneration.” At this, Ling Mo gave Catherine a strange look. “But plenty of magical beasts know this secret, and they’re all powerful species. That’s why male butcher birds live miserable lives, only daring to forage under the cover of darkness. Still want to be a male butcher bird?”

“No, thank you…” Catherine shrank back, thinking: So it’s not just beasts who know the secret—now humans do, too. The butcher bird will soon be hunted to extinction! She quickly said, “Master, should we catch a few male butcher birds for emergencies?”

“No need. For now, no one but us can use this.”

“Why not?”

“Because the regenerative mechanism is dedifferentiation. If a person’s cellular activity is insufficient, the cells won’t dedifferentiate enough. Instead of regrowing a limb, they’ll end up with something everyone’s familiar with—a tumor.”

Catherine’s eyes widened. “So if someone without enough strength applies this, they’ll get cancer?!”

“That’s right. And it’s one hundred percent certain. Since the male butcher bird’s heart paste must contact blood, the mutated blood cells will spread throughout the body—straight to late-stage leukemia. Or, as ordinary people call it, ‘blood cancer.’”

At this, Catherine nearly coughed up blood. “Immediate late-stage leukemia? The mortality rate at that stage is over 99.57%, isn’t it? Master, is the male butcher bird really that deadly? I was just thinking of stockpiling a few!”

“Heh. In some primitive tribes, the butcher bird is called the ‘Death Bird.’ You think it’s because of its fourth-level magical beast strength? I know a lot of people watching this stream are thinking of hunting a butcher bird to try their luck. When you die, don’t come blaming me! For now, forget about them. Come with me—it’s getting dark, and we need to go.”