Era of Disaster Chapter 166: Chinchilla

Chapter 166: Chinchilla

Bai Yi brought Betsy and Bellamy to the treatment room and pa.s.sed each of them some medicine.

“What is this?”

“Fostsoul!” Bai Yi said.

The two of them were immediately stunned when they heard this. Fostsoul! The outside world had heard much about this famous medicine. It was something concocted from the Dead Soul Flower, and so far, n.o.body had discovered another medicine similar to it. There were indeed quite a few supposed soul nouris.h.i.+ng medicines that had appeared in New Christchurch since its establishment, but they were all proven to be scams soon afterward.

“Deep level sleep is a type of regulation and self-adjustment by the body that will expel whatever is unnecessary, and replenish whatever is. However, if your body doesn’t have the necessary components to replenish itself in the first place, then deep level sleep won’t be very effective. Take this Fostsoul, it will help balance your body and soul with each other,” Bai Yi said.

“Thank you!”

Betsy didn’t reject Bai Yi's instructions because she knew just how precious this medicine was. There were people from New Christchurch that had gone to collect Dead Soul Flowers from Wellington, but there wasn’t a single one who had returned. Just the Cook Straits themselves stopped the majority of them. n.o.body even knew if someone had successfully managed to cross the straits. Those who'd gone by sea were probably all dead, and the sky route was probably just as dangerous. Moreover, even in the world before things like helicopters were hard to acquire, and New Christchurch didn’t have a single helicopter left now anyway.

Actually, Bai Yi had long ago told the people in New Christchurch about his team's encounter with a hundred-meter-long, super huge sized golden sea serpent, but the majority of them thought that he was just joking. How could such a ma.s.sive sea serpent exist? Even if it did exist, Bai Yi’s team couldn’t have possibly survived that encounter, and he was probably just blowing his own trumpet1. Besides, even if it really did exist, they shouldn’t be so unlucky as to encounter it, right? Bai Yi’s warning fell on deaf ears, and it was only after seeing that n.o.body returned from the journey that the remaining people all more or less came to believe him.

“Then we’ll start!” Bai Yi said after the two of them had consumed the medicine.

Once Bai Yi finished talking, he began to use hypnosis on the two of them. By this time, Betsy didn’t have many reservations toward Bai Yi anymore, plus it was already too late for second thoughts at this stage. With their relaxed conditions, Bai Yi very easily hypnotized the two of them into falling asleep. This wasn’t the level of hypnosis achieved by the other Hypnotists in the recovery center; under Bai Yi’s personal hypnosis, the two of them fell into a dreamless deep sleep in the blink of an eye. While under this state, the body would automatically use the various resources and nutrients inside it to readjust the soul.

After Bai Yi hypnotized the two of them, he instructed the people outside to take good care of them and left the treatment room.

After Bai Yi returned, he realized that Vala had also returned to the recovery center. “Is everything prepared?”

Vala nodded. “Everything is prepared, we can go over to that place at any time.”

Bai Yi nodded back. “Then we will leave this place after waiting for a week.” Woolf, Heloise, and Sharpei weren’t in the recovery center anymore. Bai Yi had sent them out long ago to look for a safe and suitable place for them to stay during the Hypersomnia Phase. No matter what, Bai Yi and his team attracted a lot of attention, and it would arouse the suspicions of many if the whole team left at the same time.

“Actually, we can leave right now,” Vala said in puzzlement.

“We can’t now, I just made a deal with somebody. I have to give them treatment for a week first,” Bai Yi said.

“Deal?”

“Actually, I reaped great harvests from my random trip out today.” Bai Yi talked about the deal he had made with Betsy. This had been a win-win deal: Bai Yi had gotten the recipes, while Betsy and Bellamy could nurture their bodies and souls and stabilize themselves. Bai Yi only thought that he had obtained some decent recipes and that he could make some special food if he had the time. But really, neither Bai Yi nor Betsy understood what the implications of these special ingredients truly were.

On the second day, Chinchilla immediately started looking for food after waking up. At the start, Momo randomly gave Chinchilla some food to eat, but it didn’t seem to be satisfied and kept on bothering Momo for more. Momo very quickly figured out that something was wrong. Why was Chinchilla eating so much? Momo would never forget a situation like this.

Binging Stage!

After getting over her shock, Momo immediately picked up and carried Chinchilla, looking for Bai Yi. At this time, he was practicing Tai Ji Fist in the courtyard. Bai Yi’s Tai Ji Fist had gradually come to contain both the form and essence of the art, and when somebody looked at it they couldn't help but be enchanted by some kind of special charm. However, Momo didn’t care about this at the moment.

“Daddy, daddy!” Momo shouted for Bai Yi.

“What is it? Why are you in such a hurry?”

“Chinchilla entered the Binging Stage!” Momo immediately said, her tone anxious.

“What?!” Bai Yi was instantly shocked and dropped everything he was doing to walk over.

Chinchilla had started following Bai Yi’s team over a year ago. At that time, it had just been a newborn baby kitten, and ever since adopting it, Chinchilla had always been a normal house cat. All of them had paid special attention to not letting Chinchilla come into contact with fluids from other lifeforms so as to prevent it from a.s.similating with activated cells. Hence, all of them thought that the offspring of evolved lifeforms didn’t contain activated cells within them.

How did Chinchilla suddenly enter the Binging Stage!?

Bai Yi immediately thought about what had happened over the past few days. If there was anything special that had occurred, it had to involve that bunch of special preparation ingredients yesterday. Other than that, Bai Yi went through all the information he had about activated cells in his head and a realization shot through his mind—Nascent Stage, normal people, animals, and plants that successfully a.s.similated with activated cells... and the offspring of these lifeforms in later stages!

◆Awakening: The activated cells were all in a dormant state to begin with, and awakening had been an extremely simple process for Bai Yi’s team. Awakening only required that the host body be healthy and that the activated cells were provided with sufficient nutrients. However, in the later stages, it would be harder and harder to awaken the activated cells, and the food needed to awaken these cells would become more and more precious.

Although Bai Yi didn’t figure out all the details, he could more or less guess at what had happened.

Chinchilla had inherited the activated cells from its mom from the very start, it was just that the cells were dormant all along and hadn’t been awakened. However, after eating the food prepared from special ingredients yesterday, it absorbed the special nutrients contained within the food and awakened the activated cells within its body.

In New Christchurch, there were also three babies born over the past year. Every baby that'd been born looked just like a normal human baby, and they had specially gone to celebrate these occasions as well. This was because if this pattern continued, they just had to protect future generations properly and their children would be able to return to the human world, even if they themselves couldn’t turn back into humans. However, with Chinchilla as a precedent now, Bai Yi knew that this was impossible. It wasn’t that those babies didn’t have activated cells, it was just that they hadn’t been awakened yet.

Seriously, they had to discover something like this at this time? Bai Yi couldn’t help but press at the center of his eyebrows and thought about everything in his head again.

Bai Yi and his team were going to enter the Hypersomnia Stage, but Chinchilla had just entered the Binging Stage. It was definitely not suitable for Chinchilla to follow them around, so did they have to find somebody to take care of it for them?

Bai Yi shook his head. The people they knew all understood that they valued Chinchilla a lot, and it wasn’t just a normal pet to them. If they asked other people to take care of Chinchilla, that would definitely raise a lot of questions. In addition, Chinchilla wasn’t close to other people at all and was very shy around strangers. Although Chinchilla was just a cat, it was still a member of Bai Yi’s team. Bai Yi didn’t wish for it to be neglected.

Bai Yi suddenly thought of two people... Betsy and Bellamy. Both of them were cat-ladies that had fused with cat genes, Bai Yi just didn’t know if they would agree to it if he wanted to entrust Chinchilla to them. Despite that, they had just gotten acquainted with each other, and would probably think that Bai Yi was merely entrusting them with a cat to look after. They probably wouldn’t question things too much and connect it to how Bai Yi’s team was entering the Hypersomnia Stage.

There was also the matter of what genes Chinchilla should fuse with. Bai Yi thought about a lot of things in an instant.

“Daddy!”

“En, Chinchilla entered the Binging Stage. As for how it happened, I only have a guess as well.” Bai Yi rubbed Momo’s little head and looked at Chinchilla.

“Anyway, let Chinchilla eat its fill first.” Bai Yi brought Momo and Chinchilla toward the kitchen.

He had to inform the other powers in New Christchurch about this matter as well. If future generations had activated cells in them, then their plans for the future also had to be adjusted. There were really too few newborn humans in New Zealand ever since the change, so n.o.body had ever discovered this point. Although the number of animals in the outside world increased incessantly, they had always thought it was because later generations had come into contact with fluids from other evolved lifeforms and a.s.similated with activated cells again.

Bai Yi pa.s.sed this information to the Ministry of Medicine and Ministry of Research first, as they were the ones that had to know about this immediately. After that, Bai Yi informed the other three powers as well. He could never be prejudiced or give preferential treatment when it came to something like this, no matter what he felt personally.

Over the next few days, Bai Yi continued to provide treatment to Betsy and Bellamy while at the same time trying to see if Chinchilla would get along with them. If it was just a matter of looking for somebody to take care of Chinchilla, Bai Yi would definitely be able to do so. However, it wouldn’t do if Chinchilla didn’t like the person he found. Chinchilla was hyperactive, but very shy with strangers, and it had never really been friendly with anybody else so far.

Perhaps it was because they all had cat genes in them, but Chinchilla seemed quite favorable to these ‘similar lifeforms’ that were dozens of times larger than it, even without much interaction.

It was all good if Chinchilla had a favorable impression of them, and Bai Yi finally let out a sigh of relief after seeing this situation. Otherwise, they would have to take Chinchilla around in the Binging Stage while in the Hypersomnia Stage themselves. With Chinchilla’s activity level, they would definitely be unable to take care of it well while dealing with the Hypersomnia Stage.

Watching Bellamy play with Chinchilla, Bai Yi took the opportunity to bring up his request for them to take care of Chinchilla for the time being.

“Take care of Chinchilla for a while?”

“That’s right, we have some matters to attend to, so all of us will be out for a while, and we probably won’t have much time to take care of it. In addition, Chinchilla is very shy around strangers. Other than the few people it's familiar with, it has quite a bit of hostility toward other people. It’s probably so friendly with you guys only because it treats you guys as its ‘fellow species’. If it’s convenient, could you two help take care of it for the time being?” Bai Yi explained.

“Sure, it’s no problem.” Sure enough, Betsy didn’t question it too much. In her eyes, it was just looking after a little cat.

“Also, there’s just one more thing. Chinchilla just entered the Binging Stage yesterday,” Bai Yi said to Betsy. In response to Betsy’s surprised expression, Bai Yi told her his own guess. Fortunately, New Zealand now wasn’t like it had been in the beginning stages, and they weren’t lacking in food. Bai Yi also determined that he would prepare the genes that Chinchilla would fuse with over the next few days.

Translator's Notes: