The sound of hasty steps, a harsh whistle, a muffled whimper, and all kinds of cries for help were heard throughout the hospital emergency center.

"Mr. Chairman, we found Dr. Bennett!" a man in a black suit breathlessly reported to Carl Miller, the chairman of the board for a leading financial group.

"What about our people?" replied Carl, eagerly grasping his subordinate's arm as he demanded further updates. His hold was so strong the man could not help but wince.

“Everything’s in place,” the man replied.

Hearing the answers he needed, Carl relaxed his hold slightly. Before he could figure out whether he should be surprised or feel guilty, Dr. Victoria Bennett, the best surgeon of the twenty-seventh century, walked in.

Carl saw that Victoria was wearing her trademark white coat, but he also noticed her sparkling, glamorous, four-inch high-heeled shoes and knew exactly which social gathering she had been pulled from.

She walked past him to see her patient, Sonya, who used to be Carl’s fiancée, but then married another man to help her family. That man was currently in the recovery room.

The assistant doctor spoke up, "Dr. Bennett, this is Sonya, 23 years old, 5’4”, 121 lbs., no history of smoking or alcoholism, no known allergies, and no major surgery within the last year. The sustained injury was in the heart. The bullet traveled through her clothing and accessories and entered the right atrium. The accessories slowed down the speed of the bullet and prevented it from penetrating further through the body."

While listening to the assistant doctor brief her on the patient's injury, Victoria was already putting on her surgical scrubs.

"Only in the right atrium? You couldn’t have fixed that yourself?" Victoria replied with a careless tone, which was quite different from her usual dedicated work attitude.

The assistant doctor awkwardly rubbed his chin and said, "Sorry, doctor, the bullet is too close to the aortic arch. None of the surgeons on shift dared to touch it, so they asked us to call you back in."

Victoria looked at one of the attending doctors nearby with an inquisitive expression, but he didn't say anything and tried to avoid her gaze. Feeling very intimidated, the assistant swallowed and said, "The chairman specifically asked for you to do the operation, and no one could overrule him."

Victoria sneered and strode into the operating room, where five assistants were ready. There was a lack of equipment and surgical instruments, but this wasn’t too much of a problem.

Everyone knew that Mary carries all the medical equipment, because she is the only one who has seven medical space carriers in the world. 

When Victoria focused her mind on the equipment she needed, the digital medical space device attached to the inner side of her wrist instantly sent out a cold green light. At once, there were all kinds of surgical instruments and consumables where the light had reached.

No fewer than ten million people had been selected to integrate with the medical space over many years, and only seven had survived.

Using the extensive equipment store, most of the operation went smoothly. For Victoria, the repair to this degree of injury was as simple as chopping vegetables. However, when Sonya’s condition was stable and they were nearing the end of the procedure, a bloody scalpel suddenly pierced Victoria’s heart.

She looked in disbelief at the assistant doctor who had reported Sonya’s condition to her earlier, who had been working with her for five years.

She gasped out one word. "Why?"

The assistant doctor said, "The Chairman has ordered that Ms. Sonya can't leave alive."

Victoria was speechless and was beginning to feel faint. Before she lost consciousness, she heard the assistant’s final words to her. "She can't live. I need to kill her."

These disturbing words were the last thing Victoria heard before she died. There was a dark irony in the fact that was a master surgeon, and she had died under her own scalpel. She had always thought that death was the end, like the lights just going out, so she would never have expected that there was an even bigger surprise waiting for her.

***

The strong sense of weightlessness made the unconscious Victoria wake up suddenly from the darkness.

When she opened her eyes, she could see the blue sky. A bizarre idea popped up in her mind. Is this hell? At least the environment is doing better here. There was no blue sky in the twenty-seventh century.

However, this ridiculous thought was gone in a flash. Victoria soon realized that she was falling rapidly, and her face hurt from the cold wind in her ear. She was totally powerless to resist her descent.

"Ahhhhh!" she screamed out, just as she fell to the ground with a bang.

But she questioned if she was really on the ground.

Why is this ground so soft? That landing didn’t hurt at all—it’s just sticky, she thought.

She opened her eyes slowly and saw a terrible sight. If she hadn't been a surgeon for many years and had friends working in forensics, she would have been scared to death.

What she saw seemed to be a statue of a man completely covered in blood. Not only that, but his open eyes were red and looking at her. He looked like a dead man who had been skinned.

Victoria tentatively reached out to touch the palm of the figure’s hand. It was sticky, so she quickly pulled back, even though she was not surprised to see the blood covering his hands.

Her mind spun for a moment, and she realized that she must have fallen into the figure’s arms. Feeling a chill, she pulled away from him and left. But as she tried, she felt the man holding onto her waist.

Wait, he’s alive? she wondered in shock.

"Hold me!" he said in a low, hoarse voice.

Victoria felt a cold sweat on her body from the utter shock of her predicament.

She was stiff and didn't dare to move. But the bloody man, seemingly dissatisfied with her reaction, tightened his hold, digging into the flesh on her waist.

"Ahhh!” he gurgled, “Wait! Don’t let me go.” Victoria felt a wave of nausea as her hands hooked around the bloody man's neck. But the body was still stiff, so she was only able to pull him a short distance.

The bloody man's breathing was short, and he seemed to be trying his best to bear the pain. With Victoria's palm resting on his skin, his breathing settled gradually.

However, this alone didn’t satisfy his body's desire.

"Hold on tight,” he said.

Victoria looked at him blankly and thought, Is this bloody man trying to get some kind of thrill? He’s a body of sticky blood, who wants me to hold him! Ewww!

When Victoria didn't respond to his request, the bloody man squeezed her waist even tighter.

Using all the strength he had, he pinched the soft part of her waist, which made her throw her arms up in pain.

"That’s enough! Let go!” she exclaimed.

Feeling the hold on her waist relax, Victoria propped herself up and shifted to a less awkward position. Slipping her arms around the bloody man's neck, she cradled his head and hugged him tightly.

The bloody man's body shook for a while. He hadn’t expected that the woman who had fallen from the sky would really be bold enough to hug him like this.

With his chin pressed into her neck, the bloody man noticed a scent like the cool breath of mint leaves and the sweet smell of gardenia. His lips glided over the delicate skin of her neck, building up a warm feeling in his heart, as if the flesh under his mouth was not a person’s skin at all, but a delicious soft candy, which made him want to taste more.

After a few moments, he could no longer suppress the impulse to open his mouth. He opened his thin lips to try to gently suck Victoria's neck. But he didn’t have the strength, and all he could do was to stick out his tongue and lick her neck.

However, with this kind of intimate embrace, the stiffness of the bloody man's body began to gradually ease, and his pain also slowly faded.

Just when he felt that he could move his body a little, he suddenly felt a slight stabbing pain in his neck.

After the pain passed, there was an overwhelming dizziness. In his hazy awareness, the bloody man heard Victoria's words. "You were going to bite me, weren’t you? But luckily, I’m smart enough not to let you. It doesn’t matter if you’re a human or a ghost or whatever; you need to back off. I have no time for you."

When he finally slumped motionless back to the ground, Victoria stood up and breathed a sigh of relief. She bent down to adjust him into a slightly more comfortable position and to remove the tranquilizer injector that she had summoned from the medical space and plunged into his neck.

Fortunately, the tranquilizer had worked on this monster who seemed to want to eat her.

She couldn’t figure out what was wrong with the bloody man. A scan using medical space equipment gave no hints and didn’t indicate any specific injuries. So why was his whole body one big bloody mass? Could it be some kind of zombie infection that’s contagious through biting?

At the thought of all this, Victoria couldn't help shivering in disgust. She quickly ran away from the prone bloody figure.

**

A half-hour later, two strong men dressed in black came looking for the bloody man, bringing clean clothes and a handkerchief with them. They were shocked to see that he was unconscious. 

"Our Lord!" cried one of them, Arthur, as they both rushed to over to him. He started reaching out his hand toward the bloody man’s face to check for signs of breathing.

However, before he could get close enough to check for sure, Arthur felt a tight pressure on his other wrist. He looked down to see that the bloody man was gripping his arm.

"My Lord! How can you move? How are you doing this?" Kurt, the other man in black, quickly reached out to help him.

The bloody man waved his hand and refused the help of his bodyguards. He sat up and crossed his legs as a layer of white fog appeared on his body. The two dark guards stepped back quickly as the white fog attached to the bloody body’s surface. A few moments later, the bloodstains on the body began to condense into ice. After the body froze into an icy mass, the bloody ice began to split off in chunks, one by one, revealing normal skin underneath.

After waiting for his whole body to clear the ice, the man took the handkerchief from Kurt's hand and wiped away the final shards of broken ice left on his face.

The action finally revealed his beautiful face, which looked as if it had been carved by an angel. The blood-red color in his eyes had also disappeared, and his normal eyes were dark and alluring.

"Don’t fuss! Nothing is wrong with me!" exclaimed the man, who now looked his true self again. He was Charles Archibald, a king of the Archibald Dynasty.

"Lord, how can you move?” Kurt asked. He was confused because normally, the attack of the blood curse began at midnight and ended at noon. But he realized it didn't seem to be the right time to worry or ask. 

He has a point, though. How can I move? Charles thought as he recalled the bold woman who fell from the sky into his arms. He didn't understand why he had been able to move when he met her. At first, he could only move his fingers. But when she held him in her arms, he had felt some of his strength beginning to return. The feeling of pain had also greatly diminished.

Who is she? How is she able to alleviate the effects of the blood curse? He had to know.

"A woman fell into my arms, and she was the one who knocked me out. We need to find her!" he exclaimed with a commanding expression. But he was concerned he wouldn’t see the woman again anytime soon.

**

After running to what felt like a safe distance, Victoria slowed her pace and began to think about all the details of her entanglement with the bloody man. But the more she reviewed the information running through her mind, the more confused she became.

How did I end up here?