Era-Of-Disaster

Chapter 198: Mixed Poison

Not many people reacted quickly to the theft of the Tranquil Grass, and when the majority learned about it, the incident had already ended. Most of them just gossiped about the incident afterward, and knew that more than ten people had died, thirty plus people had their legs chopped off, and a few others had escaped. All the injured people didn’t speak much, but from bits and pieces of conversations that leaked, many people learned of Bai Yi’s terrible name. The Bai Yi who normally seemed so kind and gentle actually had such a cruel side to him.

…

“Bai Yi, the first batch of potions made from Tranquil Grass are ready, but we need people to test their effects.” After a few days, Nancy came to talk to Bai Yi. This was indeed a problem; any research into new medicines couldn’t be separated from testing, but apparently, this wasn’t just any normal kind of testing. If the experiments didn’t go well, the results for the test subjects would either be turning into LV2.1 defective products or death.

“Why do you think I didn’t kill them? Didn’t they think they couldn’t get any Tranquil Grass? Now’s their chance,” Bai Yi said coldly.

Nancy looked at Bai Yi. So he meant that the reason why he had left them alive in the first place was to use them as experimental subjects? This was indeed the best solution, but Nancy was still somewhat shocked. Bai Yi had seemingly changed a lot.

“Wait!” Nancy stopped Bai Yi, who was preparing to head out.

“What is it?”

“You are going to coerce those people now?”

“Since I dare to do this, I must also be willing to take on the responsibility.”

“That’s true, but I think that you shouldn’t go. It isn’t good for your image. You must know there are quite a lot of people saying that your inner-self is actually that of a very cruel person.”

“Doesn’t matter!” Bai Yi said apathetically.

Nancy couldn’t help but shake her head. The more familiar she became with Bai Yi, the more she understood that his reputation arose purely out of necessity, and it was not that Bai Yi truly cared about what others thought of him. In his bones, Bai Yi’s style was actually more like ‘I’ll do what I want’, it was just that this wasn’t easily seen under normal situations. “I’ll go with Romain. Relax, I’ll handle this matter well.”

Bai Yi looked at Nancy and nodded after a while. Although Bai Yi didn’t care how the world looked at him, he wouldn’t be so obstinate when there was a better solution available.

After passing this matter on to Nancy to handle, news started spreading outside very quickly. Those people who had initially planned to steal the Tranquil Grass were willing to make up for their wrongdoings with meritorious deeds and had volunteered to become the testers for the first batch of Tranquil Grass medicine. One must know, this medicine, that was named Tranquil Medicament1, had just been successfully developed, and nobody knew the effects of it. Regardless, the first batch of testers would always face the most danger.

Ha… making up for their wrongdoings with meritorious deeds!

Bai Yi only commented softly in his heart after hearing this news and didn’t care about it. As for whether these people were truly willing or not, Bai Yi would obviously not bother with that either.

After that issue was settled for the moment, Bai Yi went to visit Woolf and the squad again. The parasites grew very quickly, and within two days they had started to breed in their hosts’ bellies and absorb the nutrients in their bodies. So far, there had already been 173 people who had been positively tested for parasites. Right now, people’s faces would instantly change when they saw water, and nobody even dared to approach the edges of any bodies of water anymore. When Bai Yi drew near to the medical center, dull grunts came out of it from time to time—these were the sounds of people bearing with the pain.

The parasites wouldn’t kill the host immediately, but they were extremely damaging to the body itself and incredibly unbearable to the infected person.

Bai Yi stood outside the treatment center and gave a sigh, before turning around and heading toward the doctor’s section. Since the parasites involved and affected too many things, Lucretia had taken charge of this place in the end, as it would be more efficient for an ex-doctor to look for a solution. When Bai Yi entered, he saw Lucretia looking through a bunch of diagnosis forms, trying to analyze them and deduce the patterns behind them. Lucretia now looked messy and tired; she had apparently really poured her heart and soul into finding a solution and hadn’t gotten much rest over this period of time.

“When did you arrive!?” Lucretia suddenly discovered Bai Yi in the room after she had finished comparing the diagnosis forms.

“When you were looking at the forms.”

“Ah, I’m really sorry that I didn’t notice you. Want something to drink?” Lucretia offered. She had really begun to feel more and more that she was back in a hospital.

“No need. Did you discover anything?”

Lucretia sighed and shook her head. “Tried some of the medicines I developed, but there were all ineffective. To put it badly, they are all living in anguish every day; but luckily, those parasites won’t take their lives immediately. Even so, everybody knows that the longer we drag this out for, the more troublesome it will become, and most importantly, it’s extremely damaging to their bodies.”

Lucretia thought that Bai Yi was worried about Woolf, and added, “Oh, right; Woolf is in pretty good condition even though he didn’t take any medicine, and he is also in the best shape among everyone here.”

“He didn’t take any medicine?”

“He’s a member of your team, after all, so we didn’t recklessly test medicines on him. His condition is quite good too, so of course, he didn’t need medication anyway.”

“Wait, don’t tell me there’s something special about Woolf?”

“Special? I don’t know about that; actually, we are analyzing Woolf’s situation as well. Why is his condition so much better than the rest even though he didn’t take any medication? At first, I thought it was because he’s a LV2, but there are quite a few other LV2s among those infected as well, and they aren’t in good condition. It’s only Woolf that has few parasites in his body, and their growth speed is a lot slower than in the others. I took a blood sample from him and sent it for testing, but the results aren’t back yet,” Lucretia explained.

Searching for a solution through looking at the differences between the various patients was a basic technique.

“Do you want to take a look at the new testing laboratory that we just built?” Lucretia asked.

Bai Yi looked at Lucretia’s haggard face. “Actually, I think it’s better if you get some rest.”

Lucretia laughed. “Nah, I just look tired. You should have felt it as well; after entering LV2, our bodies are already incomparable to a normal person’s.”

A girl suddenly barged in from the outside.“Teacher, teacher!”

“B—Bai Yi, sir!” After this girl barged in hurriedly, she immediately discovered Bai Yi inside the room and stuttered. She couldn’t help but be nervous because she knew slightly more than other people due to her position. This man had chopped off the legs of more than half of the people who stole the Tranquil Grass!

Lucretia introduced her, saying, “This is my student, Aphra. Don’t frighten her.”

Bai Yi could only give a helpless gesture; he didn’t even do anything! After nodding to the girl, he stepped back. After this female student named Aphra calmed her mind, she started speaking again.

“Teacher, the results are done: there are poisonous compounds inside Woolf’s blood! This kind of poison is very mild, and we still haven’t even determined what kind of poison it is yet. Other than that, we made a blood serum from Woolf’s blood and did a test with it; the eggs of the parasites experienced inhibited growth in this serum. It’s just that the concentration of this kind of poison is very low, so it’s unable to effectively kill the parasites.” Aphra held the results and reported everything seriously.

“Poison?” Lucretia was somewhat surprised. She was still quite familiar with Woolf; he didn’t seem to have fused with any genes from poisonous lifeforms?

“Bai Yi, do you know anything?”

“The type of poison can’t be determined?”

Aphra immediately answered Bai Yi’s question seriously, “En, it looks like a mixed type of poison. Well, I said that it’s a mixed type of poison, but the rest of them keep insisting that it’s a new of type of mutated poison and that I judged it wrong.”

“Mixed type… ah!” Bai Yi immediately had a realization.

“Bai Yi, did you think of something?” Lucretia immediately looked at him with joy.

“I thought of something. Actually, a short while ago, we ate something, and in that something, there were contained eight types of extremely poisonous components,” Bai Yi said.

“Eating extreme poisons?”

“It had extreme poisons, but it wasn’t for the sake of eating extreme poisons; rather, they were for the sake of balancing the taste.”

“Balancing the taste?” Lucretia and Aphra grew more confused the more they listened.

“Actually, we discovered a type of food ingredient that should be very useful, but it had a very strong taste, so we had to suppress it. However, normal preparation methods were basically ineffective in doing so, so in the end, we combined various special preparation ingredients and poisonous ingredients to suppress the taste. Of course, rationally complementing the ingredients with each other, in addition to our own poison resistance, meant it was still edible even though it was poisonous; it was just that we couldn’t eat too much of it. I think the mixed poison that Aphra was talking about might be this,” Bai Yi explained.

“Wow, there’s actually a kind of food like this, it must be very precious, huh?” Lucretia patted Bai Yi’s shoulder, giving him a look that said, ‘you better tell me’.

“Really…” Bai Yi started laughing as well. He had initially wanted to keep it a secret for themselves, but he couldn’t do so now, especially after seeing how serious and invested Lucretia was in this.

“Hundred Flavor Extreme Poison Sushi—the main taste is that of the Great Stink Bomb Fruit, which has an explosive impact upon your senses. With the Deep Swamp Rice as the main ingredient, the sushi was made in combination with 21 other ingredients. Eight of those ingredients contained strong poisons, and four of those ingredients were special preparation ingredients, all meticulously combined together into a complete recipe,” Bai Yi explained and added on one last sentence casually.

“It can increase the strength of the absolute life field!”

Lucretia immediately stared with her eyes wide open in shock. The absolute life field, only those who entered LV2 knew what kind of feeling it created. It could be said that the movement and manipulation of energy, and control of matter, were all done through the absolute life field. The strength of the absolute life field implied the quantity of matter and energy that one could control at any given point in time—an individual’s load-bearing ability… Anyway, it was just very important.

“Thank you!” Lucretia couldn’t help but thank him.

Lucretia instructed Aphra strictly, “Aphra, don’t tell anybody else.”

“Yes, I definitely won’t spread it around.” Aphra covered her mouth. Although she didn’t know too much about LV2, she still knew quite a bit as Lucretia’s student. In the Devil Isles now, the relationship between a teacher and student wasn’t like that of modern schools, but rather like the master and disciple relationship back in olden times; it was a very intimate relationship.

“Anyway, we have to test if it’s really these poisonous compounds that are effective,” Lucretia said to Bai Yi.

“En!” Bai Yi nodded.

***

Translator’s Notes:

1. Somehow this author likes to give english names to his things, so Tranquil Medicament is exactly what the author used to refer to the medicine made from the Tranquil Grass.