Chapter 205: Chapter 172: Highly Poisonous Ghost Orchid
Since there were no traffic lights and the roads were completely deserted in the dead of night, the car drove exceptionally wildly. Suddenly, with a sharp turn, the water cup in Huai Yu’s hand was flung away, and her whole body slammed hard against the railing. With a loud BANG, her elbow hit the metal, bringing tears to her eyes. It hurt so much!
Uncle Zaozi struggled mightily just to grab the clothes of Xue Bao, who was on the outermost edge. But as the fabric pulled tight, the bloodstain on the boy’s stomach expanded by another ring. The sixteen-year-old boy let out a muffled groan and fainted outright.
Once Uncle Zaozi winced through the pain and recovered his senses, he checked Xue Bao’s body. Finding him still breathing, he finally let out a sigh of relief. Looking up, he saw that Huai Yu looked like she was about to cry, so he hurriedly comforted her.
"Don’t worry too much. With your Ginseng Tea keeping him alive, he can definitely hold on until we reach the hospital."
Huai Yu had just been in terrible pain, but Uncle Zaozi’s words actually made her feel sad. That ginseng was mutated; it couldn’t nourish the body at all. Zhou Qian had chugged two large pots of it without showing any changes. She hadn’t forced the ginseng tea down their throats because she thought it would work; it was purely a desperate gamble.
The solar streetlights were sparse and dim, but the bright red cross of the hospital was finally visible! Thrilled, Huai Yu reached out and patted Fen Da’s freezing cheek.
"Hang in there just a little longer, we’re almost at the hospital!"
As she withdrew her hand, for some reason, she thought she saw Fen Da’s stomach bulge slightly, but the shape vanished in a flash.
"Huh?" she wondered.
Curious, Huai Yu reached out and felt his stomach, but through his jacket, she couldn’t detect anything. She was just about to lift his shirt for a closer look when the car made another sharp turn. She quickly grabbed onto him and braced her woven basket into the corner of the truck bed, preventing Big Pup and Second Pup from being flung out.
The next moment, the vehicle slowed down. Ahead, the hospital’s lights illuminated the pitch-black night. As the car parked at the hospital entrance, the driver and his partner swiftly opened the doors and removed the tailgate. In the dead of night, the driver flashed her a grin.
"Seventeen minutes. Your points weren’t spent in vain."
At the hospital entrance, a group of people had already rushed over. "We just got a call saying an exploration team’s car was bringing in some wounded. Is that you?"
Uncle Zaozi froze for a moment before realizing what had happened. "Yes, yes, yes, Captain Zhao must have made the call—that’s us, that’s us! Hurry, this kid looks like he’s about to stop breathing!"
He was referring to Fen Da, whose body was growing colder by the second. He and the two team members carefully lifted the patients out of the car. Hearing the rapid CLATTER of the flatbed gurneys rolling over the broken pavement in the night, the surge of adrenaline that had fueled his body suddenly drained away. His legs gave out, and he sat right down on the ground.
The driver and his partner helped load the remaining three patients onto the gurneys before getting back into their car and waving goodbye.
"We’ve still got jobs waiting for us over there, so we’re heading back first," the driver said, looking at Huai Yu. "Remember! We are the Hundred Zhao Subsidy Exploration Company! Captain Chen’s car is at our place."
Huai Yu nodded and waved vigorously. "Thank you!"
Turning around, she bolted toward the hospital—because the nurse ahead was already shouting for payment!
Panting, she ran to the cashier’s window. The nurse on duty wasn’t familiar with her and said coldly, "Four people. The emergency rooms are all full, so they might even need to be put in the medical pods... Do you have enough points? If you don’t and you default on the hospital bill, your base Contribution Value will be affected."
Huai Yu didn’t even have any of that stuff!
But she had already spent a thousand points, so she could only grit her teeth and ask, "How much do I need to pay?"
The nurse eyed her. "Why don’t you... Never mind, just pay two thousand for now. I reckon 5,000 points won’t be enough, but you can wait until they wake up to settle the rest."
In this day and age, relationships and kinship didn’t matter much. As long as someone was willing to pay, the hospital made sure to deduct the points immediately. After a crisp BEEP, Huai Yu stared at her brand-new point balance—which was still a long way from her fifteen thousand goal—and felt her heart grow even heavier.
Meanwhile, inside the emergency room.
The medical staff who had placed Fen Da into the biological scanner stared at the fluctuating data and images on the screen, utterly bewildered.
"What... is going on here?"
On the general gray outline of the human body displayed on the screen, thin, thread-like red lines were slowly receding downward, inch by inch, from the patient’s temples, cheeks, neck, and chest cavity. They then converged in the stomach. Thousands upon thousands of thread-like tentacles were probing around inside, as if searching for something...
[Toxin Analysis: Highly Poisonous Ghost Orchid]
But...
"Is this analysis correct?"
"Draw a tube of blood and run an expedited test. There’s definitely something wrong with the toxin."
"The Ghost Orchid Fungus erodes straight to the brain, and without our heavy-duty Expelling Agent, it’s impossible to control! How could it actively gather from all over the body straight into the stomach?"
"You can’t say that for sure. If a Wood Ability mutates in the direction of activation and control, it might be able to suppress it..."
"That’s still just suppression! It’s the same principle as our Expelling Agent. You either have to continuously use the Superpower or continuously inject the Expelling Agent!"
"This is clearly abnormal. There are no Expelling Agent components in his body, yet the mutated cell activity has multiplied exponentially. Most importantly, the Ghost Orchid Fungus—is this even the fucking Ghost Orchid Fungus?!"
"Is the blood drawn yet? Hurry up and send it for testing!"
The group of doctors erupted into an argument. However, amidst the bickering, the fine red threads in the scan seemed to have found something and began moving back up from the upper part of the stomach.
"We can’t wait anymore!" someone suddenly yelled. "Where’s the biological stent? Load it into the machine and start it up! Open his stomach right now—"
"Wait a little longer! What if it’s a new mutated fungus..."
"If we wait any longer, the patient will die! The Ghost Orchid Fungus can condense its spores into threads and particles, travel through the entire body, and bore straight into the brain! Right now, they just happen to be clumped up in the stomach. Hurry!"
A doctor quickly loaded the biological extension stent into the robotic arm. As the scalpel extended, it swiftly located the upper section of the stomach. On the screen, the sharp blade appeared as nothing more than a golden shadow. It pressed gently against the flesh and sliced down. The golden blade instantly sank into the gray body and made a downward incision.
With another doctor adjusting the angle on the control console, the overhead view on the monitor showed the orange-haired boy lying there completely naked, his body ghastly pale without a trace of color.
And in his abdomen, along with the gushing bright red blood, a clump of red, seaweed-like mutated fungus was exposed to everyone’s view.
The doctors were stunned. It took a long moment before someone murmured in awe:
"What a perfectly intact Highly Poisonous Ghost Orchid!"
Even the Imperial City Research Institute probably didn’t have a specimen this perfectly preserved!
"Hurry! Where’s the biological simulation box?! Open it up and get them in there—"