Chapter 620: End of Volume: The Torrent of the Era

"It’s okay, it’s okay." Lin Yuanming held his wife, comforting her as he forced himself to sound cheerful. "We’ll figure this out. You’re just a little forgetful, that’s all. It’s not a big deal."

"Don’t worry. I swear I’ll find a cure for you!"

"...Xiange’s cerebral dysfunction is severe. Lesions have formed in her central nervous system for unknown reasons. Even with the most advanced treatments, we can only offer temporary relief, not a permanent cure."

In the hospital, a physician—white-haired but still sharp, with a persuasive tone of voice—showed Lin Yuanming the brain analysis report. "You see, Xiange’s memory decay and impairment are already extremely severe. While she can still occasionally recall everything, as the lesions worsen, her brain will eventually become unable to access her memories at all. She will also lose the ability to form new ones."

"In other words, she will forget everything. Eventually, her brain will die completely."

"...Is there any treatment? Money is no object."

Lin Yuanming clenched his fists. Li Xiaoxin was resting in her room, leaving him alone with the physician in her office. "I heard about something called an ’Electronic Brain.’ Can’t we just replace the damaged parts with machinery? That should make her normal again, right?"

"And what about the Soul?! If the Soul is strong enough, someone can think and remember even without a brain, can’t they?!"

"Sir." The female physician, a woman in her sixties, tapped the desk to calm the agitated Lin Yuanming. She shook her head. "I am truly sorry about Xiange’s condition. But putting aside the ’Electronic Brain’ modification itself, the technology is still purely experimental. It’s only been tested on large animals, like pigs, and the results have not been promising."

"As for the Soul... you need to be at the Extraordinary Tier for it to have any practical use. To think entirely with one’s Soul, you would have to have started your Cultivation in the related Immortal Spirit Series. Otherwise, it’s only possible at the Extraordinary High-tier, or perhaps even the peak of that tier. Xiange has only just had her Awakening. The power of her Soul is negligible."

At this, the physician sighed. "Miss Li’s condition is extremely rare. There are no similar cases on record anywhere in the world. The closest comparison is Alzheimer’s, but Miss Li is far too young for that... We believe it must be some kind of spontaneous, freak mutation."

Lin Yuanming sank into his chair, raising a hand to cover his face.

’No precedent... How could he not understand what that meant? It meant there was no cure. No one had any experience with this!’

Medicine isn’t omnipotent. When faced with a completely new, never-before-seen disease, even modern medicine—which had advanced to the point of nearly resurrecting the dead—was not infallible. For something as tricky as a degenerative brain disease, no one could claim to have all the answers.

’Besides, even if they could cure the disease, what if her memories were damaged? What if her ability to think was impaired? What then?’

One physician shook his head. A second said there was nothing he could do. In just over two weeks, Lin Yuanming took Li Xiaoxin all over the country, from Jiangnan and beyond. He visited several internationally renowned neurology clinics, but the answer was always the same.

"I’m very sorry..."

"We can’t make any guarantees..."

"As of now, it appears to be incurable."

Even the top neurology hospital in the European Federation, the one with the most confidence, only dared to say, "As long as your wife cooperates with treatment, we can alleviate her symptoms. This would give her several months of lucidity to put her affairs in order. I’m afraid that’s the best we can do."

Not even Extraordinary Power could distinguish the diseased brain tissue from healthy tissue. It couldn’t pinpoint which nerves were obstructing memory retrieval and storage, or what was causing the malfunction. This wasn’t a problem that healing Magic could solve. ’And even if it could be forcibly cured, would a person who had lost all their memories still be the same person?’

The most valuable part of a human life isn’t the physical body, but the memories and wisdom it contains. Even a Soul, if it’s a blank slate, is no different from a jellyfish.

「Finally, they returned to Zhengguo.」

He walked into the hospital room in a daze. Gazing at his wife’s face as she slept peacefully, Lin Yuanming couldn’t help but reminisce about the day they first met, and all the little moments since.

They had met as teenagers, more than a decade ago. He remembered their awkward conversations, hiding their relationship from their parents, promising to go to the same university, to face the world together, to spend the rest of their lives together... They had promised to face life and death as one, but neither of them ever imagined they would confront such a devastating turn of events before they had even lived a third of their lives.

Li Xiaoxin felt something warm drip onto the back of her hand and opened her eyes. She saw a strange man at her bedside, crying silently. His hair was shot through with white, and on his finger, he wore a ring identical to her own.

"Who are you? Why are you sitting by my bed?"

In this situation, she should have screamed in fear. She had a vague feeling she’d been through this before. This time, however, an inexplicable sense of gentleness washed over her. She comforted the man softly, "There, there. Don’t be sad. Don’t cry."

But hearing her words only made his tears fall faster. He hadn’t felt this heartbroken even on the days she had threatened to call the police, terrified of the stranger by her bed.