As mentioned earlier, this time Lane is going to explore Thomas Moreau's laboratory.

Around 1087, Thomas Moreau was saved by a witcher. He was grateful, but the witcher proposed the "Law of Surprise" as a reward, and the professor had to give his son to the witcher. Thomas vowed to study how to reverse the witcher's mutation process. He felt resentful that he could not be an important person in his son's life, and hoped that one day his son would understand his good intentions as a father.

In 1102, Thomas established a secret laboratory in the Valley of Nine in Toussaint, where he devoted all his efforts to studying mutations, doing a lot of experiments and experiencing many failures. The subjects of the experiments included various creatures (such as giant centipedes) and living humans.

It was not until 1121 that Thomas, confident enough in his experiments, decided to reverse the mutation on his son. He lured the demon hunter's son to his laboratory with a commission with a large bounty. Thomas used a spell to temporarily paralyze his son and began to carry out his own experiments on his son.

Unfortunately, the potion and treatment process developed by Thomas Moreau not only failed to reverse the mutation, but actually enhanced its effect, making his son stronger and more agile. In the end, he gave up everything and was forced to accept the fact that his son had become a witcher. He returned to his wife Lydia and died shortly afterwards.

Thomas Moreau's son is Geron Moreau, a Griffin School witcher who is proficient in the Sign. And yes, Thomas Moreau is a wizard, and he has a son.

Most warlocks use chaos energy, which causes their bodies to be affected by magic energy, resulting in genital defects and ultimately infertility. But there are always exceptions, such as Professor Moreau, who has such a crazy love for his only son.

There are actually quite a few exceptions to this type of warlock. Geralt's mother was a female warlock, and also a senior druid and physician. She passed on her source warlock talent to Geralt, but Geralt eventually gave up the possibility of becoming a warlock and focused on being a demon hunter.

The reason why demon hunters cannot have children is more complicated. Because demon hunters' mutations involve changes at the genetic level, which is an uncontrollable species evolution. Fundamentally, demon hunters are no longer the same species as humans, and there is reproductive isolation.

Theoretically, if there are male and female demon hunters with the same mutations, they can actually raise offspring. Unfortunately, due to the immaturity and uncontrollability of mutations, the direction and degree of mutation of each demon hunter are different. To exaggerate, each demon hunter is an independent human subspecies, which leads to the current result that "demon hunters cannot reproduce." In the final analysis, it is all the fault of Alzu giving up the experiment halfway through.

Professor Moreau, who failed to "save" his only son, eventually died in Beauclair. This year is the year 1263 in the human calendar, and nearly two hundred years have passed.

Lan looked at the green valley in front of him. A river flowed in the middle of the valley. The river was clear and the bottom was visible. The rugged and dilapidated buildings were faintly visible.

From time to time, groups of four or five children would come ashore to play and frolic, but if you looked closely, you could see that they were covered with tiny scales and webbed feet in different colors, most of which were blue and green, with one or two tall black figures occasionally interspersed among them.

From a distance, they seem to be very happy, singing and dancing in groups around their food. However, the types of food they eat would make humans shudder.

"Most of them are water ghosts, and the black ones are drowned ghosts." Geralt explained, "They are all corpse-eating creatures, and are very good at turning people into corpses."

Lann led the exploration team to stand at the top of the valley and look out. He held the crystal bird skull in his left hand and looked down through the gap between the skull's eyes. He did not find any magical fluctuations.

Beside him, a young man dressed as a druid said, "It is right here, Mr. Lannister. Our exploration ends here. We can't do anything else before we deal with these water ghosts."

The young druid nodded to Lan, and after explaining the matter, he stood aside with a sense of being a tool, neither close to nor distant from Lan.

The demon hunter handed Lann a bottle of grease-like substance in an alchemical glass bottle and said:

"This is the sword oil that the demon hunters prepared specifically for monsters. This bottle is the corpse-eating creature sword oil. Apply it to your sword to greatly increase the damage to those water ghosts."

The demon hunter said without even turning his head: "I guess you will be the first one to rush up, so I won't stop you."

Sword was suddenly startled, and nervously looked at the densely packed water ghosts below, then looked at Lan, and cold sweat broke out.

Lan took the bottle of sword oil and tossed it, saying unhappily, "I'm not that reckless."

Geralt did not reply. He did not use Lann's crystal bird skull, but looked with his naked eyes. His cat-like amber pupils shrank slightly, taking in the scene below.

After a while, he turned around and said, "There are at least twenty water ghosts outside, and there are more in the water. They are probably building nests down there. If you want to dive into the underwater portal, you must not only deal with the ones outside, but also find a way to lure out the ones below."

Ask professionals about professional matters. Lann asked Geralt: "What do you usually do in this situation?"

The witcher replied: "I usually just turn around and run away when there are so many of them. These water ghosts are enough to destroy a large village."

Very professional and practical answer.

Sword seemed a little puzzled. In his eyes, a demon hunter who was no more brave than Lann shouldn't say such a thing: "Are they strong?"

Geralt explained: "No, the courage and strength of water ghosts are consistent with their body size, far less than that of adults. But they jump very fast, and many inexperienced soldiers are often killed by their sudden attacks when they are caught off guard. And once they taste blood, they are fearless and strong soldiers can easily die together with them."

"Lan En, I don't recommend that you use soldiers to eliminate these water ghosts. There will be a lot of casualties."

Lan thought for a moment and asked, "I remember that water ghosts are afraid of fire, right?"

Geralt nodded. "Just like your squire is afraid of Calanthe."

"So what's their IQ?"

Geralt shook his head. "As stupid as shoes. Even the Axis Sign doesn't work on them."

"That's easy. We can use bait." Lan said, "Do you think we can use food to fish these stupid monsters out of the water? Like cows, sheep, etc.?"

“I usually don’t do this, because even if I kill all these guys below, the bounty I get might not even be enough for a cow.

But I think you are not the kind of person who cares about such details. I think it is feasible. According to what the druid said, these monsters all came out of the portal, so they should have rarely seen human society. We can try to lure them out."

Lann made the decision: "That's decided!"