The whole family circled around Qiao Lian with joy no one else could understand. After brushing past life and death and sheer helplessness, the baby actually came out safe and sound.
"It's a girl, a little princess!"
"Yikes, all wrinkly and not cute at all."
"Let me see. She's pretty already. Takes after her mom, real fine features."
Wu You'ai didn't get it. The kid looked ugly to her, yet the doctor and the grandmother were both calling her beautiful. Wait, where was Jing Shu? If the baby arrived safely, the one they should thank most was Jing Shu.
"Grandma, where's Jing Shu?"
The doctor held the baby upside down and tapped her soles until she cried, then handed her over. Grandma Jing and Jing Pan beamed at the little face. Only when they heard the question did they realize she was gone.
Qiao Lian's mother murmured from the corner, "I saw her run outside."
"This went smoothly thanks to Jing Shu. I told you my granddaughter would find a way. Maybe she went to the restroom," Grandma Jing said.
"I'll go look." Wu You'ai ran off, while Jing Pan began telling the doctor what had just happened.
"She massaged and guided the breathing while talking Qiao Lian through it. My niece works with the Medicinal Herb Association in Wu City. She knows a lot. We're all proud of her."
Jing Shu clutched her exploding head. A constant rumble pounded her skull, like twin helicopters chopping the air right by her ears. It felt like her eardrums were going to burst.
Guiding the baby with suggestion while also cueing Qiao Lian's breathing had already triggered the roar. She'd held out until the delivery, then bolted.
She gulped air and thumped her temples, but nothing helped. In the pitch-black rain, the ruined street and makeshift clinic seemed to sway.
"It's got to be backlash from overusing the Cube Space," she told herself. Life came first. She drank a whole drop of Spirit Spring. The so-called cure-all did nothing.
Panic nibbled at her. She'd never expected overusing an ability to feel this awful. She'd only added one more target to her illusion, right? She could control plenty of animals, but one adult and one baby pushed her past the limit. Was it because humans were higher lifeforms, or was there some rule she didn't know?
So much for dreaming of using illusion to control a crowd in America. Try that and she'd probably die on the spot from backlash.
It was like how any animal could enter the space, but living humans couldn't.
Cold rain hammered her face. The roaring in her ears made her want to scream. Just when she felt herself cracking, a pair of hands grabbed her shoulders. She turned and saw Wu You'ai's worried face.
"Jing Shu Shu Shu Shu…"
She could clearly see her lips moving, but in her ears there was only echo and thunder.
"Am I going deaf?"
She shook her head hard, stuck a finger in each ear, pulled it out again, then guessed Wu You'ai was asking something like what was wrong by reading her lips.
"I'm feeling a little unwell. Let's go back to the RV and get some sleep,"
Wu You'ai spoke again, but Jing Shu couldn't read it and didn't care to try. Veins began to pop out of her skin, the price of squeezing herself under control. She didn't know how long she could keep from snapping. So this was what constant high-frequency noise felt like.
She staggered back. Wu You'ai held her up. Thankfully the RV wasn't far. Ten minutes later, they reached it. Jing Shu waved her away. Wu You'ai had been talking the whole way, and when she realized there was no response, she pointed at the phone, then at herself. Call me if you need anything.
Jing Shu gave a crooked smile and nodded. Before she left, Wu You'ai heard, "Tell Grandma I've caught a cold. I'll sleep it off in two days. I've got medicine."
Wu You'ai nodded and slipped out.
At last the giant RV held only Jing Shu. She stripped off the rain gear and everything else, slid into the tub, and switched the Cube to first and second forms. A full check showed nothing wrong inside. She exhaled a little. The Cube Space was still packed with supplies. She feared the day it vanished, so she never kept everything inside.
By the third drop of Spirit Spring, her stomach growled, but the buzzing in her ears didn't fade. She started demolishing food from the space.
Spirit Spring worked on illnesses. If she was just getting hungry, that meant it wasn't working, which meant this really was overuse. She'd just have to wait it out.
After a bath, she lay on the bed, twitchy and raw while the harsh droning chewed her eardrums. She felt like she'd go crazy if she didn't distract herself. Fine, practice the cube.
She pulled out the cube and started. Without noticing, hours slid by. Then she jolted. Wait, she wasn't forgetting to practice anymore. She hadn't truly trained in months, always spacing out, even when she wrote reminders on her palm. Every time she tried, some little thing interrupted her and she dropped it.
Now that fog was gone. She was back to how she used to be. Under the grinding pressure of the noise, she focused even harder, and a few hours sharpened her technique.
Then she noticed something else. The roaring had eased. She checked her phone. It was already after six in the evening.
"As the ringing eases, my mind's drifting. Maybe this is the real way to level up this tier of the Cube Space." A hunch took shape. She wrote it down and set an alarm.
That night, Grandma Jing brought old hen soup and a spread of dishes. When she heard about the "cold," she added red date ginger tea. Jing Pan sent Jing Shu's favorites, stir-fried intestines and pork trotter soup. Jing Shu ate like a queen, then felt like she'd forgotten something, right up until the alarm buzzed.
"Knew it, I forgot again. Looks like I'll have to switch on self-torture mode if I want to level the Cube faster. Is the Cube training my illusion like this on purpose?"
This time she didn't push it. She kept the suggestion on the newborn and on the mother for only a few dozen seconds. Sure enough, the skull-splitting pain returned fast. She hurried back to the RV and grabbed the cube to practice.
Curiosity gnawed at her. After she leveled up, what new ability would the Cube reveal?