The item that caught his eye was a gourd.
Not metaphorically. An actual gourd — small, jade-green, listed under Immortal Grade in a shop category Jude had browsed past a dozen times without buying anything from.
SYSTEM SHOP — ITEM DETAILS
Qing-Tian Gourd (Immortal Grade) Price: 90,000 AP
Every thirty seconds, the gourd flashes. If empty at the moment of flash, it refills automatically to capacity. Once filled, one sip may be taken.
Default fill: coconut wine. Each sip restores one-third of current maximum HP.
Note: Do not complain about fate. Live simply.
He purchased it. The gourd materialized in his palm — cool, slightly luminescent, the jade surface catching what little light the hospital corridor offered. Too conspicuous.
"Can you disguise it?"
The glow vanished before he finished the sentence, the surface settling into an ordinary dull blue, the kind of thing you'd see hanging from a farmer's belt in a painting. No light, no shimmer, nothing to look at twice.
Jude gave it an approving look. The system didn't do that. The gourd did.
He'd heard the principle before — treasures have spirits; divine objects conceal themselves. Apparently it was true in practice as well as theory.
He uncorked it. A clean, faintly sweet fragrance drifted out — nothing like the sharp alcohol smell he'd always associated with drinking, which he'd successfully avoided for his entire life on the basis that he disliked being drunk and disliked the smell. This was something else. He turned it over in his mind.
Even monkeys drink this stuff, he thought. And that's just the default version. Thirty-year-aged would probably make you ascend on the spot.
The gourd was a different class of item from the Horn of Abundance — less a tool than a self-contained system. The Horn had been excellent for ordinary people, restoring a fixed amount per second, reliable and consistent. Against non-human combatants with health pools measured in orders of magnitude above baseline, it eventually ran out of relevance. The gourd's percentage-based restoration scaled with whoever was drinking it, which made it theoretically useful against anything.
One-third per sip was, however, a fraction he intended to improve.
SYSTEM SHOP — GOURD LOADOUT
Lamb Stew (Superior Grade) Price: 10,000 AP
Each sip: immediately restores 20% max HP, then 5% per second for 5 seconds. Total: 45% HP.
Note: Wine and mutton offered sincerely; flowers and red ribbons as a token of respect.
Better than coconut wine. He purchased it and felt the gourd's weight shift slightly as the contents changed — the fragrance deepened, warmer and richer, something that actually smelled worth drinking.
He kept going.
Jade Pool Lotus Seeds (Superior Grade) Price: 10,000 AP
Steeped in the gourd's wine: each sip restores an additional 6% HP (1% instant, 1% per second for 5 seconds).
Note: Twelve jade towers, nine mysterious chambers; a pool of still water on the left, emerald water on the right.
Boshan Incense Burner (Superior Grade) Price: 10,000 AP
After drinking from the gourd: grants 15% damage reduction for 29 seconds.
Note: A censer of incense for long life; several scrolls for safe passage.
The incense burner was small enough to pocket — a miniature antique thing, ornate and dense with detail. It didn't need to be lit; it didn't need to burn anything. As long as he carried it and the gourd was empty, the damage reduction would activate on the next drink. Thirty-second flash cycle, twenty-nine seconds of protection: effectively permanent coverage in a sustained fight, with a one-second gap to remind him he wasn't invincible.
He ran the math on the full loadout. Coconut wine base plus lamb stew plus lotus seeds: 51% HP per sip, with 15% damage reduction following each one. His asset points were nearly gone, but the setup was solid. He wouldn't need to buy another healing item before leaving this universe.
Now, he thought, looking around the dim corridor at the rows of injured people, the delivery problem.
"Is there a more hygienic way to do this than passing the gourd around?"
The gourd answered by doing something he hadn't asked it to do. A thread of luminous liquid arced silently from the mouth, gathered itself into a small floating sphere mid-air, and drifted across the corridor into the open mouth of an injured man sitting against the wall.
The man blinked. Swallowed reflexively. His expression went through several stages — confusion, pleasure, something approaching wonder — as the taste registered and the healing began working its way through him. By the time he shook himself back to awareness, the burns on his forearm had closed and the color had returned to his face. He looked around the corridor for the source, found nothing, and sat very still for a moment as if waiting to see if it would happen again.
Jude was already three rooms away.
The hospital's darkness was working in his favor. With master-level stealth and no functioning overhead lighting, he moved through the building like a gap in the air, the gourd sending its quiet deliveries ahead of him. Outside of a combat scenario he hadn't yet tested the thirty-second cycle under pressure — but in a hospital corridor, thirty seconds between doses was more than enough time to cover the room and move on.
Barry stays as-is, he reminded himself, pausing outside the ward. The Speed Force integration needs to run its course without interference. Waking him early is a variable I don't want to introduce. He moved past.
Less than an hour for the whole hospital. Most of the injured were minor — lacerations, bruising, shock, the ordinary damage of being near an explosion without being near enough to die from it. He treated the serious cases, confirmed the rest were stable, and slipped out through a service entrance. Three more hospitals before dawn.
Then the filing offices, he thought, pulling his collar up against the post-storm air. False documents don't plant themselves.
By the following morning, Central City's news cycle had reorganized itself around a single story.
"Based on police investigation and reporter follow-up, last night's fire and explosion were caused by a critical malfunction in the particle accelerator experiment. Dr. Harrison Wells's failure to account for weather conditions led to an erroneous order to continue the experiment. The accelerator suffered a catastrophic explosion; the resulting shockwave damaged the surrounding Star Labs facility, the assembled media, and numerous members of the public who had gathered for the press conference.
"The city government has announced the temporary closure of Star Labs pending full investigation."
Harrison Wells — who had been unavailable for comment since the explosion — was expected to address the public later in the week.
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