Chapter 230
Chapter 230
Qin Ying sat cross-legged in front of her desk with no regard for posture, blow-drying her hair.
Han Lie was busy trying to soothe his Sand Lizard.
The Sand Lizard had a patch of red scales on its forehead. In the Box World, it was large enough to carry passengers and haul cargo, but outside the Box, it was only the size of a gecko.
Qin Ying’s home contained a Dragon Bone, a Thunderbird, a Huodou, and Han Lie the Qilin.
To the Sand Lizard, that chaotic medley of scents was like a hellscape crawling with demons.
The Thunderbird was especially terrifying. Jinbao the Thunderbird had kept the Blackstone Tribe under lockdown for two years. Even a whiff of the Thunderbird’s avian scent was enough to scare the Sand Lizard into wetting itself.
It lay belly-up on Qin Ying’s desk, all four feet in the air. Heart aching for his mount, Han Lie massaged its stomach as a form of first aid.
It took a long while for the little lizard to recover. Then it hid its oversized body behind Han Lie.
Han Lie said, “Supreme Deity, I’ll go to the backyard and fetch it some fresh fodder.”
The Sand Lizard had followed him through the desert, gnawing on camelthorn roots for days. Some juicy, fresh grass ought to cheer it up.
Qin Ying’s hair was only half dry, and a towel lay draped across her shoulders. Hearing him, she said, “This is going to be way too much trouble for you.”
At Han Lie’s current size, going downstairs from the second floor was practically the same as scaling half a mountain.
After some thought, Qin Ying brought over the Zheng Serum. “How about making yourself a little bigger first?”
The Zheng Serum she had obtained from the underground dogfighting arena could restore people or animals from the World in the Box to their normal size.
Even the scales on Han Lie’s body had lost some of their dark luster. Qin Ying planned to let him recuperate for a couple of days before sending him back into the Box.
By then, the Sand People should have found a suitable place to relocate, and Han Lie could return to help them.
Qin Ying hesitated between applying the serum topically and injecting a tiny dose directly.
After thinking it over, she opened the Box.
“Di Shang, go in and catch a sand rat.”
Qin Ying’s plan was simple enough: catch a desert sand rat and test the injection on it. However, Di Shang remained completely unresponsive around her wrist.
She stared blankly for a few seconds, then said in exasperation, “Hurry up. Once the experiment’s done, we’ll go out and buy you some gold.”
Only then did Di Shang lazily extrude a metallic tendril from her wrist.
Whenever Qin Ying had interfered with things inside the Box before, she had used either chopsticks or Barbecue Tongs. Now that she had Di Shang, she finally possessed an all-purpose tool that was suitably impressive as well.
Han Lie climbed up the carvings on the wooden Box, intending to help.
However, the instant he looked inside, his head began to buzz incessantly.
To Qin Ying, the nighttime view of the dunes seemed perfectly ordinary. To Han Lie, however, it resembled a painting made from countless blinding fragments of light and shadow.
Just one glance left him feeling as if he were on the verge of a photosensitive seizure.
He staggered as he jumped down from the rim of the Box, and only felt better after shaking his head several times.
Only a portion of Di Shang entered the Box. Once inside, it split apart into strands as fine as spider silk, rustling as they slipped across the sand.
Without much effort, it caught a tiny sand rat.
In the Chixia Region, sand rats were one of the Sand People Tribe’s sources of meat and were notorious for their terrifying reproductive rate.
When Di Shang’s silver threads carried the creature out of the Box, it was only the size of an ant’s leg.
The instant it emerged from the Box, it nearly died of fright.
While it was still alive, Qin Ying pried open the Zheng Serum. Han Lie hugged a sewing needle, dabbed the tiniest trace of serum onto its tip, and stabbed it into the sand rat’s body.
In the blink of an eye, all the gray fur on the sand rat’s body stood on end, turning it into a ball of fluff.
Its body swelled as though air were being pumped beneath its skin.
Amid squeals of agony, a gray-furred rat as long as Qin Ying’s arm appeared on the desktop.
Sand rats did not look all that different from ordinary rats. Qin Ying instinctively leaned back.
The sand rat’s tail twitched faintly. Just as Qin Ying thought the experiment had failed, its eyes suddenly snapped open and it darted off the desk.
It was all Qin Ying could do to choke back a scream. She immediately cried, “Di Shang!”
At that moment, she was even more nervous than if she had seen a corpse come back to life. Di Shang sensed her emotions and, for once, did not try to haggle.
A long, slender metal whip shot out and snatched the gerbil out of the air.
The gerbil let out piercing squeals. Qin Ying watched as the tuft of gray fur at the center of its head began to fall out.
A sharp horn like a Zheng’s was growing in its place.
Qin Ying sighed regretfully. “Direct injection isn’t viable.”
The Zheng Gene contained in the serum would rewrite a creature’s genes once injected.
No sooner had she spoken than the gerbil suspended in midair by Di Shang developed a shortened snout and sharpened teeth. A horn the size of a grain of rice was faintly emerging from its head.
The gerbil also became extremely aggressive.
But… that was as far as it got. Its piercing squeals abruptly stopped.
Its bloodshot eyes burst with a wet pop, and even its tiny brain was reduced to pulp.
Qin Ying shook her head. She found a garbage bag and stuffed the carcass inside, planning to have Wangcai burn it to ash later.
She was about to say something to Han Lie when she turned and found him sniffing the Zheng Serum.
“Supreme Deity, I’ve been meaning to tell you. This serum carries the same scent as that substance, though it’s extremely faint now.”
He raised a hand and pointed beside him, where Qin Ying had placed the Marrow Fluid she’d tricked out of the River God.
“Are you sure?” Startled, Qin Ying quickly removed the wooden stopper from the vial of Marrow Fluid.
The pale yellow liquid sloshed inside the vial, but Qin Ying couldn’t smell anything.
Han Lie, however, tilted back his horned head and sniffed with his eyes closed for a moment before answering with certainty, “I’m sure.”
Each Monstrous Beast had its own way of distinguishing scents. Those with particularly acute senses could detect an enemy from two provinces away and track them down to fight.
After his Monstrous Beast Transformation, Han Lie had inherited some of the Qilin’s traits, making him exceptionally sensitive to these scents.
He had sensed something when Qin Ying first placed the items inside the Box, but only now had he found a chance to mention it.
The Marrow Fluid. The laboratory that produced the Zheng Serum…
After considering it for a moment, Qin Ying suddenly sneered.
Perhaps the two had come from the same source all along.
Shiye, or rather, the people known as Shiye, had never stopped conducting their experiments.
The experiment at the underground dogfighting ring was likely just one branch of their operation.
Having finally grasped a thread of evidence amid the fog, Qin Ying was delighted.
She disinfected the needle that had pierced the gerbil, then discarded it in the garbage bag along with the carcass.
While she was at it, she sprayed Di Shang with disinfecting alcohol as well.
She called Han Lie over, carefully tilted the vial of Zheng Serum, and poured three or four drops onto his body.
The pale blue liquid flowed between Han Lie’s scales and was rapidly absorbed.
Seeming to sense something, his tiny figure leaped from the desk.
He spun once in midair, then landed nimbly and soundlessly, already transformed into a massive figure.
The silver-blue mane atop his head had grown much longer, hanging damply down the back of his head.
Fine black scales lined the edges of his cheeks, resembling natural contouring that made his features look even more chiseled.
Before Han Lie himself realized what was happening, his thick, lion-like tail seemed to develop a mind of its own. It swayed its way over to Qin Ying.
Furtively, it curled around her ankle, the fluffy silver-blue tuft at its tip brushing against her skin and making it itch.
“Supreme Deity.” Han Lie bent down to speak to Qin Ying.
The moment he realized what his tail was doing, he panicked and forcibly yanked it back.
“I-I’ll dispose of it.”
He snatched the garbage bag containing the gerbil’s carcass from Qin Ying and clumsily turned to leave.
The instant he did, a hand caught him by the tail.
Like a cat whose fur had suddenly stood on end, his entire body jolted.
Qin Ying sighed helplessly. “Change back into your human form and put on some clothes before you go.”