Chapter 85 Speculations sparked by the One-Inch Lotus
They fought and walked all the way until they reached the bottle tree near noon the next day. The real bottle tree was far more shocking than the drawing, with its huge body and gorgeous flowers, it was unique in the desert.
Tengchong was the first to rush forward. He used a knife to cut a hole in the tree trunk. Water gushed out and Tengchong drank it directly.
Yun Xiang immediately thought of the boys in his class in his past life. Every time they came back from playing basketball, they would drink from the tap, impatiently sticking their heads in to rinse, splashing water everywhere. The girls were particularly disgusted. Thinking about it now, it was really funny.
After drinking, Tengchong sat down under a tree to rest.
"Get out of the way!" You Hao pushed Tengchong, and Tengchong raised his hands and moved away. You Hao drank a lot of water, then sat down next to Tengchong and stopped making trouble.
Then the members of the manufacturing club lined up, taking turns, and chatting away. People who didn't know the truth thought they cared about trees, but in fact they were just lazy, fond of joining in the fun, and liked to follow the trend.
The people in the talisman-making society were quite polite. They opened three holes and filled the kettle with water before drinking.
Everyone was resting and storing water, and just as they were finishing up, something unexpected happened. It started in Tengchong, where they suddenly felt pain in their backs. They thought it was an insect bite, so they thought they'd apply some medicine, but the pain only got worse, like something was stuck in their skin, causing them to feel swollen and itchy.
Tengchong sensed something was wrong and hurried to find Jin Jiamin. Jin Jiamin uncovered his back and discovered a vine growing from beneath the skin at his lumbar spine. The vine had grown to four inches, each inch long with a leaf resembling a lotus leaf and visible green to the naked eye. From the veins between the leaves grew another one-inch stem, which in turn grew leaves, and from the leaf stem grew stems... Soon, his back was completely covered.
Jin Jiamin hurriedly took out a golden needle to seal his blood vessels and slow down the growth of the vine. He then asked Chu Xu to use the supernatural fire to roast the knife, then cut open the skin on his lumbar spine and first pulled out the roots of the vine along with the seeds. The roots of the vine immediately withered and stopped growing, but it was not dead. Jin Jiamin began to pull it out bit by bit.
Before he could finish, You Hao and Bie Nao cried out. Their condition was similar to Teng Chong's, though not as severe. Xie Yu grabbed You Hao, while Bie Nao was taken aside by Chu Xu. They had spent so much time with Jin Jianen, and through osmosis, they had learned a few tricks of emergency wound care. They didn't know how to use acupuncture needles, but they could pull out vines.
At this point, regardless of being rough or not, Xie Yu had another fire-type psychic heat up the knife and began pulling it out. Because there were no golden needles, the vines grew very fast, and You Hao's back was cut several times before he could pick them all out.
Don't make a fuss. He was the least injured, but not much better than him. The reason was that Chu Xu's hands were not as nimble as Xie Yu's. Regardless, temporarily escaping the threat was a good thing. Tengchong was also dealt with here. Jin Jiaren gave each of the three of them a suppressant pill and stopped.
"How is it? Is it okay?" Zeng Li asked anxiously.
"It's nothing serious. Try to stay as still as possible and get more sun. Once the mission is over, take a Jade Purity Pill (which can remove impurities from the body) and you'll be fine."
"You don't have any?"
"The reason why Yuqing Pill is a high-level pill is not because of its production, but because the materials are hard to find." Jin Jiamin wiped the sweat off his forehead, feeling a little depressed. He obviously liked law and liked solving cases, so why did he go further and further on the path of a pharmacist?
"Where can I find the materials? What on earth is this thing?"
"The One-Inch Lotus is a parasitic vine that resembles a lotus. As long as there's water, it can take root. It has a very strong reproductive capacity, and its growth method is very unique, basically backwards. It takes root first, then produces seeds. When the seeds grow, the growth rate accelerates, and then it blooms, consumes the host, and turns back into a One-Inch Vine."
"Although the Inch Lotus is evil, it is inseparable from the characteristics of a plant and basically does not attack humans or mutated animals. Unless there are two possibilities, one is that it is controlled by a wood-type mutant, and the other is that it mutates again." Yun Xiang personally prefers the former, because the plant's current mutation has not yet reached the level of attacking humans.
Xie Yu and Yun Xiang had the same idea, "Someone must have brought this thing to Lianjiao Star."
"Ah—what will be the consequences?" Tengchong finally came to his senses.
"It parasitizes the human body, sucking water from the blood to grow. After its stems and leaves spread all over the body, it invades the brain, blooms there, and eventually controls the person."
"Damn, so cruel, who is so ruthless? The key is where did this thing come from?" Tengchong jumped up, he was too unlucky.
"The one-inch lotus grows on the falling star."
"Falling star? That falling star?" Zeng Li confirmed again.
"Well, the one-inch lotus there almost takes up half the planet. I heard someone is raising them there specifically."
"Wow, what the hell do those bastards want to do?"
Falling Star is a notoriously chaotic place. There are vendettas, pirates, fugitives, awakened people who are both good and evil, people with superpowers who want to dominate the world, and DUO people whose superpowers have been abolished... Of course, the majority are ordinary people who have been abandoned.
This was the only gray area outside the jurisdiction of the Enforcement Agency, a place the Imperial J-Team couldn't enter. Everyone was terrified, less by fear than by disgust. This disgust was like the dislike good students have for bad ones: a form of social discrimination, not an evaluation based on actual interaction.
This inherent concept is difficult to change, and most people do not think it is wrong, so it is easy to generalize.
"Could it be the work of the 'Five Coins' mercenary group?" Zeng Li's guess was also well-founded. First of all, the 'Five Coins' mercenary group was in Falling Star. Secondly, the blueprint was given by Qian Zedong, and the route was also provided by him, but he did not mention any dangers that would be encountered.
"This speculation is biased," Xie Yu was the first to object. "Although the Five Coins' base is on the Falling Star and their reputation isn't great, we've never heard of them hurting anyone. On the contrary, they've always been saving people, including us who were buried in the yellow sand yesterday.
On Falling Star, the One Inch Lotus can capture anyone from high-level awakened beings and psychics to ordinary children. Anyone can pull one out. And there always has to be a motive for harming someone. What is the motive of the Five Coins Mercenary Group?
They have privileges, bases, money, and American SEs, and they're all determined to be the epitome of singles. As for their enemies, given their current military strength, I'm afraid even more of them consider them their enemies. What do you think they're trying to achieve by doing this?" Xie Yu's words made Zeng Li feel ashamed. He had made the mistake of preconceived ideas and apologized to Xie Yu sincerely.
"From your analysis, it seems someone is deliberately framing Wuqian. After all, a tall tree attracts the wind."
"How do you explain the problem with the drawings?"
"Maybe it's just a coincidence," Yun Xiang speculated. "The vines are buried under the sand, and without water they can't take root. If the seniors had changed their way of drinking water, not getting their clothes wet or leaving the soaked sand, they wouldn't have had a chance to take advantage.
So we can’t confirm how long the vines stayed in the sand; it could be a day, half a month, or even longer.”
(End of this chapter)
Continue read on readnovelmtl.com