Chapter 64: The Tease

Chapter 64: Chapter 64: The Tease

Alexander studied the plan Liam had sent him carefully, then listened to Liam’s explanation for a good while. His resolve had wavered slightly, but he still felt rather torn.

"Our family has only ever manufactured Mechas, we’ve never stepped into any other field. I’m afraid I won’t be able to manage it." Alexander tapped his fingers rhythmically on the tabletop, saying with a frown.

Liam knew he had wavered, so he said cheerfully: "You only need to invest the capital, leave the rest to me. Don’t worry, even if we lose money I’ll try to keep at least a pair of underpants for you."

Alexander glared at him: "What kind of nonsense are you sprouting, you brat? Do you think I need you to keep my underpants for me? Get lost quickly, stop getting in the way of my work!"

Liam giggled and left the study at Alexander’s house, walking over to Elijah’s bedroom. Elijah’s fever had broken, and he was no longer at the point of throwing up at the smell or sight of meat like before. Even so, he still looked lethargic; even with Isabella and Benjamin sitting beside him talking to draw his attention, Elijah still couldn’t pull his spirits together.

Liam didn’t waste a second word, dragging them to the family cinema room to watch a movie. The movie Liam intended to show them was an AI cultivation movie with no romance subplot recommended by Nirvana.

"I had my smart unit simulate this movie based on memory, there are a lot of logical errors because I can’t remember the whole thing, but it’s watchable."

A movie recommended by Nirvana naturally couldn’t be bad, it was merely that the AI technology of that world hadn’t reached the 100% exquisite level it had now. Showing an AI movie like that, it would certainly be cursed by the residents of this world until it couldn’t lift its head.

Sunflower could only fix a few visual and movement errors, unable to simulate it completely.

Even so, the other three still watched absorbedly, occasionally even letting out gasps of admiration seeing people fly up into the air without needing flying cars or Mechas; or seeing humans use ordinary bodies to fight strange beasts a thousand times larger than themselves and still win.

Elijah concentrated on watching the movie, his mood improving along with it. In his head now there were no longer the bloody images from before, replaced instead by a great many ideas flooding into his brain. The door to a new world seemed to open before Elijah’s eyes; he just kept stepping forward, leaving the past behind him.

Looking back later, Elijah only felt that the absurd things from before were like a script.

While Liam was watching the movie with everyone on the Capital planet, information about him was sitting on Mr. Mason’s desk and with that person’s loyal subordinates. These subordinates did not include Theodore Vance.

That person had fallen into a deep sleep; Theodore and the people in the team had taken him to a planet not under the jurisdiction of the Lumina Galaxy. Except in cases of force majeure, everyone restricted their communication.

Mr. Mason looked at Liam’s image on the smart screen with a complex gaze, feeling the urge to reach up and rub his face. The person they had been searching for had been wandering in front of him all this time, yet Mr. Mason had been completely unaware.

He asked the person beside him: "Have you sent word over there?"

The subordinate shook his head: "Just knowing the person is healthy and safe is enough. Since he has fallen into a deep sleep now anyway, sending word over is useless, and there’s even a risk of exposure, making the Omega a target for them."

He turned back to ask Mr. Mason: "Are the test results back yet?"

Mr. Mason nodded: "They used a dosage of fifteen worms a day, they’ve been using them for eight days, the results show the mental sea is gradually recovering. Furthermore, the recovery speed is very fast."

Saying this he frowned again: "We wasted half these insects serving the research, yet we’ve hit a dead end. Besides the familiar compounds, our people discovered two more strange compounds, but when separating these two compounds to use individually they have absolutely no effect."

They had even caught live Grass Worms, but discovered in horror that live Grass Worms actually contained a very large amount of radioactive toxin. When imitating the Martinez family by cooking the Grass Worms, they discovered it wasn’t easy at all.

The Grass Worms processed by the Martinez family not only retained all the compounds inside but also eliminated the radioactive toxin down to only 0.01%, while they couldn’t succeed no matter how they did it. If they didn’t lose all the substances inside, then there was still toxin left over. They also gave up entirely on collecting Grass Worms themselves.

Grass Worms were present in a great many places, but how to process them to become useful was something only the Martinez family knew.

Hearing Mr. Mason’s report, that Alpha sighed: "Let it go, it’s their family’s trade secret anyway. Grass Worms aren’t expensive, we can just buy from them. They taste good anyway."

Mr. Mason shot a glance over: "... Your focus is on the last sentence, isn’t it?"

That Alpha shrugged, not refuting it. Mr. Mason clicked his tongue, sending a message to Liam, asking: [An unconscious person cannot be aware of their surroundings, nor can they perform basic operations like swallowing food; is there any way to feed them Grass Worms?]

Liam was packing his things getting ready to return home; receiving this message he fell into deep thought for a long time.

According to what Daniel had said before, his eldest brother had only become a simpleton, not completely lost consciousness, so the unconscious person Mr. Mason cared about so much could only be that person.

Liam thought for a long time, finally rousing Nirvana helplessly, pointing the message out to it. Nirvana finished reading it blankly, let out a long yawn, only then answering:

[Host, the name Grass Worm is precisely the name of its main component. Cryomollis is not a single compound but a complex made up of sixteen different compounds; to analyze it you need an ultra-quantum decomposition instrument. And this thing hasn’t been invented in your world yet.]

It opened its data screen, waving its claws searching for a long time, finally finding a temporary method: Ultrasonic liquefaction. This method allowed extracting the compounds inside the worm in liquid form, but it also had limitations. That was it would vaporize a portion of the Cryomollis, reducing the healing effect on the mental sea by at least half.

Furthermore, if one didn’t know how to control the dosage, the Cryomollis could very likely undergo a structural change, becoming a new type of toxin.

Liam looked at the component analysis table Nirvana projected for him, his eyes not leaving the line: [Radioactive toxin: 2 Sv]. He asked Nirvana blankly:

"I swallowed 2 Sv of radioactive toxin into my body... Why am I still alive and kicking?"

Nirvana rolled its eyes: [Do you think you’re still an ordinary human? The Lumina Galaxy has gone through a history even longer than the Milky Way, humans developed antibodies to radioactive toxins long ago. If it were a person in the Lumina Galaxy suffering from a genetic defect, swallowing 2 Sv of radiation at most they’d only have stomach pain and diarrhea for a few days.]

It scanned Liam’s body, subsequently analyzing the parameters for Liam to see. Then it concluded:

[For a person with a normal genetic system like the host, a toxic reaction only occurs when you eat three or more live Grass Worms.

If you eat them slowly, for example eating one a day, resting a few days then eating again, your body will generate antibodies to eliminate this toxin itself. Eating two at once you will feel a little unwell, still within a bearable threshold.

Eating three to four at once, your body will fall into a state of severe poisoning but can still be saved, only suffering moderate damage to the gland and mental sea.

But if you eat five at once you will immediately get acute radiation syndrome (vomiting blood, localized paralysis-level damage to the mental sea); eating six to seven you will drop dead right on the spot without a doubt.]

Liam shuddered, secretly feeling lucky that Benjamin and Isabella had stopped him in time. At the same time he also deeply reflected on himself. From now on he wouldn’t put anything untested for safety into his mouth anymore.

But alongside that, he also had a doubt: "Ordinary radioactive toxins cannot be eliminated by cooking like boiling silkworms. So why did the toxin level drop to only 0.2 mSv after I boiled the Grass Worms?"

[The Grass Worm’s toxin is located in the venom gland in the form of a thin black vein connecting near its head and tail. When you processed the Grass Worms, you removed its head and tail, simultaneously pulling this vein out as well. That is the reason the toxin dropped so significantly.]

Liam let out an ’oh’ of understanding, sighing with emotion: "I suppose no scientist could think of this, could they? Who knew this seemingly ordinary cooking habit would accidentally eliminate a radioactive toxin as large as 2 Sv."

Nirvana laughed out loud: [Exactly. There are many cases where scientists go crazy because they can’t culture a fungus, while a housewife accidentally leaves a box of cakes in the kitchen cupboard, and cultures a dozen of the fungi they need.]

Liam ducked into the soul space; one person and one cat carried out analysis and experiments for a whole month before producing a relatively accurate method and dosage.

It was called relatively because they could only control the Cryomollis not to turn into a toxin, but had no way to increase its effect. Even compared to the initial quality Nirvana provided it was one-third worse.

But something is better than nothing; for the sake of the baby, Liam had tried as hard as he could.

Being in the soul space for a month, only about forty-five minutes had passed outside. Everyone was busy with their own work, so nobody noticed Liam had been sitting blankly on the bed for forty-five minutes straight.

He sent his experimental analysis compiled into an e-book over three hundred pages long to Mr. Mason, giving careful instructions that it must be tested on star-beasts first before being used on humans.

Finally he emphasized: [This thing is stolen goods, do not reveal that I gave it to you, otherwise both you and I are finished.]

Nirvana sighed with emotion: [Host, you’re getting more and more skilled at lying, pretty soon I won’t even know which of your words are true anymore.]

Liam glared at it: "If it weren’t for your appearance I would have lived a normal life, would I need to develop such a habitual lying trait? Don’t you know that when telling one lie, you need countless other lies to cover it up afterward? Living in constant fear of being discovered by others, it’s fucking exhausting!"

Nirvana: "Damn it! Are you being reasonable at all? Thanks to who did you exchange for so many good things? Thanks to who do you know the uses and harms of the Grass Worm, and from that made how much profit? Thanks to who can you currently leave the planet to the two Robots with peace of mind, sitting leisurely on the Capital planet building affection with your family? Having an all-powerful system like me and you still complain, or let’s just fucking cancel the contract!"

Liam said indifferently: "Great. Cancel it right now."

Nirvana: "..."

The fur on Nirvana’s body stood on end, it began spewing out a string of "flowery" words. It rambled its sulking words for half an hour; when turning around it saw Liam looking at it with a smile, infinite indulgence in his eyes. Nirvana was dazed for a moment, subsequently letting out a "meow" and jumping up:

"So you deliberately said that to tease me?! You meanie!"