Pat gingerly took a sealed test tube from the cabinet and pulled out the cork, handing it to Oser.
“These are the Omega pheromones that were specially cultivated using Your Highness’s pheromones. Please smell them.”
Oser placed the test tube under his nose and inhaled gently. A faint, almost imperceptible fragrance lingered at the tip of his nose.
Pat asked nervously: “How do they smell?”
“It’s a very faint fragrance.”
“You can actually smell it?”
Oser nodded.
Pat’s confidence increased: “Then I’m relieved. I can’t smell these pheromones at all, and I’ve given them to other Alphas in the hospital, but they couldn’t smell anything either.”
“Is this what Ling Yi will smell like from now on?”
“Yes, if nothing goes wrong. Are you satisfied with the scent?”
Oser feigned calmness: “It’s not bad.”
Seeing that Oser actually liked it but was pretending to be indifferent, Pat was so angry that he could vomit blood.
But the other party was His Highness Oser, so he could only hold it in.
“These tailor-made pheromones are 100% compatible with you. For you, there should be no better scent than this. Since they aren’t natural pheromones, the scent may be a little weaker…..but this is the best I can do.”
Oser sniffed it again, as if savoring it slowly. This was the first time in his life he had smelled Omega pheromones.
So this was what Omega pheromones smelled like.
“Your Highness, after a successful operation, you can hold him and smell him to your heart’s content. There’s no need to be so reluctant to part with it.”
He reached out to grab the vial, but Oser showed no signs of relinquishing it, so he retracted his hand and pretended to scratch the back of his head.
“Then Your Highness can keep it as a souvenir. Anyway, you won’t need it in the future.”
Oser put the vial in his breast pocket and warned again: “If you mess this up…..”
“I’ll be the next one to undergo transformation, right?” Pat had already made mental preparations. “Don’t worry, you’ve even kidnapped Junior Lan Ze. With two chief surgeons from the Royal Medical College in charge, we’ll definitely give you a fragrant, lively Omega.”
When he turned around, Nan Ting had been standing behind him for an unknown period of time.
“Doctor Pat, Ling Yi’s physical examination has been completed. All indicators meet the surgical criteria. You can start prepping for the operation.”
The two walked side by side to the operating room. Pat kept taking deep breaths and slapping his face to keep himself clear-headed.
This may be the most difficult operation he had ever performed in his life, and also an operation that concerned his own life.
Nan Ting asked quietly: “Doctor Pat, I only know Doctor Lan Ze as the chief surgeon of our hospital. When did we get another one?”
“……Nan Ting, you’ve really turned bad. Not only have you learned to eavesdrop, you’ve also learned to ridicule people.”
“But seriously, when I saw Doctor Lan Ze in the preparation room this morning, it was like taking a reassurance pill.”
It was rare for Nan Ting to be so enamored of someone.
“Doctor Lan Ze is so handsome and amazing. I wish all the doctors in the medical college could be like him.”
Pat muttered jealously: “You won’t think that way once you see him cut up a living person with your own eyes. That guy only thinks about medicine. To him, human beings are no different from frogs. You’re at most a frog who can start an IV drip.”
“So what kind of frog are you, Doctor Pat?”
“How rude! I’m his senior, would he dare to treat me as a frog?”
Ling Yi had a rare restful sleep, and looked well. He even had the energy to greet the doctor who was about to cut open his gland.
“I want to see His Highness Oser once more before I go in.”
“I’m here.” Oser came from the other direction with Tang De.
Ling Yi stared at him for at least half a minute.
Pat asked curiously: “What are you looking at?”
It didn’t seem like he was entrusting his funeral affairs to him, but this couldn’t just be eye contact, right?
“I want to remember this face. That way, if anything happens to me, I’ll know who to come back and settle the score with in my next life.”
Oser said with a grave expression: “That’s inauspicious. Spit.”
Ling Yi thought Oser was joking, but unexpectedly, Tang De mouthed the same words to him from behind Oser.
Ling Yi: “I thought people only said that when teasing children.”
Tang De kindly advised: “Just spit. His Highness believes in this kind of thing.”
Ling Yi had no choice but to pei, pei, pei three times. “Will that do? You’re a royal aristocrat, how can you believe in such folk superstitions?”
Oser maintained a straight face: “Don’t speak nonsense next time.”
Cold anesthetic was injected into his body, and the second to last words Ling Yi heard before he lost consciousness came from Lan Ze.
“The back of your neck is very beautiful.”
“You said the same thing last time,” Ling Yi said in a daze.
Lan Ze revealed a rare smile under his mask.
“You never expected that it would be me again.”
Those were the last words Ling Yi heard before he passed out.
. . . . . .
Xi Lei was allowed to stay with Xi En for half an hour inside the intensive care unit.
He sat on the edge of the hospital bed with his head in his hands. The electrocardiograph beeped at a steady pace, each sound torturing his conscience.
After sitting like this for a long time, he suddenly slapped his head in pain.
“Dad, I’m sorry. I couldn’t protect Xi Lan or Ling Yi. When you wake up, you’ll definitely want to beat me to death. I’m so useless. I can’t face you……”
In the meantime, Oser remained outside the operating room. Although he appeared as calm and composed as ever, Tang De swore that this was definitely the least calm he had ever seen His Highness.
When Ling Yi gave birth to a child one day, His Highness Oser wouldn’t even be this uneasy outside the delivery room.
He didn’t dare share the same space as the extremely emotionally unstable Oser, for fear that the other party would suddenly release pheromones.
“Your Highness, I’ll go check the security around the perimeter and make every effort to ensure the smooth progress of the operation. I won’t allow any suspicious individuals to get close!”
After Tang De found an excuse to slip away, Oser’s mask of calmness dropped by half.
He paced back and forth outside the operation room, and even lit a cigarette to calm himself down.
Nan Ting hurried out, and just as Oser was about to question her, she spotted the half-smoked cigarette in his hand.
“Your Highness! This is a hospital! How can you smoke in the hallway? This is outrageous!”
Nan Ting snatched Oser’s cigarette and put it out, then rushed off without waiting for Oser to speak.
Oser didn’t receive any answers, and was even scolded by a nurse.
He swallowed his frustration and waited for Nan Ting to jog back. When he saw the blood bags in her arms, he got a bad feeling.
He tried to follow Nan Ting through the door of the operation room, but she pushed him out roughly.
“Your Highness Oser, you can’t enter the operating room. Please wait outside!”
Oser was extremely anxious. At the critical moment, he remembered the pheromones Pat had given him and took them out, putting them under his nose to sniff carefully. Little by little, he calmed down.
Every minute felt like an eternity outside the operating room, and those inside it weren’t much better off.
Nan Ting changed the blood bag while keeping a close eye on the numbers on the instruments.
“Abnormal heart rate…..abnormal blood pressure……”
Lan Ze’s voice was as tranquil as ice water.
“Scalpel.”
Another nurse promptly handed him a scalpel.
“Wipe.”
The nurse who wiped his sweat was also sweating profusely due to nerves.
Lan Ze stared at the display screen, moving his hands mechanically.
Bright red blood quickly filled the wound, blurring the screen.
“Suction.”
As old blood was drawn out, new blood flowed in. How much blood could one person stand to lose?
Nan Ting suddenly raised her voice: “Heart rate is too low…… heart rate has stopped!”
The instruments sounded frantic alarms.
“Point five milliliters of epinephrine.”
“It’s not working!”
“One milliliter of epinephrine.”
“Heart rate is recovering…..thirty, thirty-five, forty…..”
“The last step requires your cooperation. Are you ready, Doctor Pat?”
When he didn’t receive a reply, Lan Ze looked up to see Doctor Pat holding his hands up motionlessly, as if in shock from the sudden incident just now.
Nan Ting also noticed that something was wrong: “Doctor Pat. Doctor Pat?”
Pat seemed to be in a different space, unable to see, hear, or move.
His mind was blank, and he didn’t know where or who he was.
Fear gripped his mind. If anything happened to this innocent young man, it would be his fault.
He would have survived being under Lu Hulun’s hands, only to die under Pat’s own.
He would be a sinner to the nation. Even if Oser didn’t come after him, the fury of the common people would be enough to burn him to ashes.
“Pat!”
Pat awoke from his daze and looked into Lan Ze’s eyes, which were as sharp as a scalpel.
Lan Ze stared straight at him: “Calm down. I need your help.”
Pat suddenly snapped back into focus, as if splashed with ice water. He put all of his thoughts behind him and gave a solemn nod.
“Got it.”
“I’ll count down to one, and we’ll lift together. Three, two, one…..”
. . . . . .
The door to the operating room was finally pushed open before Oser could burn two holes into it.
“The operation was successful,” Lan Ze said lightly, the first one to walk out of the room.
Oser heaved a sigh of relief.
“‘Successful’ only means that vital signs were stable at the conclusion of the operation. He will need to remain in the recovery chamber for a full seven days, and will be observed for a month after leaving it to ensure that his hormone levels are normal and there is no rejection reaction. Only then will the procedure be considered complete.”
He finished the explanation expressionlessly. He’d thought that Oser would be impatient after the long wait, but all he got from him was a “thank you for your hard work.”
“It wasn’t hard. I don’t get many opportunities to perform this kind of surgery. The process was very challenging, but I enjoyed it very much.”
Lan Ze was only focused on himself, and was completely unaware of Oser’s increasingly ugly expression.
“If Your Highness wants another Alpha to undergo secondary gender reassignment, I would be happy to help. Next time, I’ll be more experienced and more wuwuwuwu—-”
Pat rushed up behind him and covered his mouth.
“Apologies, Your Highness. Junior Brother Lan Ze is an excellent doctor, but he’s not well-versed in dealing with people.”
Fortunately, Oser only sent him a glare before his attention was immediately diverted to Ling Yi.
Lan Ze pulled Pat’s hand away in disgust: “Doctor Pat didn’t wash his hands after leaving the operating room.”
“I was too busy saving you to wash my hands.”
Pat excitedly threw an arm around Lan Ze’s shoulders, as if they were close friends who had known each other for many years.
“You saved me once in the operating room, and I saved you once now, so we’re even.”
“I don’t think there’s anything wrong with what I just said. This operation was highly uncertain. His Highness Oser should select several more Alpha specimens suitable for transformation in order to ensure survival rates.”
“Trust me, if you want to ensure survival rates, spend more time in surgery and use your mouth less. That way, you can live a long life.”
The more Pat thought about it, the more frightened he was. He became nervous due to fear, and nagged more due to his nerves.
“When his heart stopped beating, I completely froze up. In that moment, I even decided where my burial site should be. If it wasn’t for you, I would have been finished today.”
“Me dying wouldn’t be a problem, but I would have harmed Ling Yi, a good man. I really regret researching this for His Highness…..”
Lan Ze took exception to this.
“It is precisely because of these so-called moral constraints that medicine is unable to develop rapidly.”
Pat said sincerely: “I also want to apologize for misunderstanding you in the past. I always thought that in your eyes, there is no difference between humans and frogs, but when you snapped me out of it today, I clearly felt that you needed me as a human being. You awakened not only my sanity, but also my dignity!”
Lan Ze looked at him from head to toe, and then did it again.
Pat’s hair stood up under his gaze: “What? Am I wrong?”
Lan Ze turned his head and said: “That’s not necessarily the case. Perhaps you’re a frog who can hold a scalpel.”
“…..Please act like a human being!”
. . . . . . .
“You’re saying that the murderer who killed Dawa is now in the basement of the Royal Medical College?”
At the Prime Minister’s office, Lu Hulun received a secret report from the medical college.
“Yes, Prime Minister. His Highness Oser has sent people to guard every entrance and exit. It is very likely that the person’s family has also been placed inside.”
Lu Hulun scoffed coldly: “My grandson truly lacks patience. This is not surprising at all.”
He coughed uncontrollably several times.
“Send Night Crow. Don’t leave any of them alive, whether it’s Ling Yi or his family!”
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Neon Dragonfly Translations 