Fear of food

Chapter 91 Guide to Eating High-Quality Wild Foods
"So, does the flag raiser simply raise themselves up as the flag?"

After collecting all three little red flowers, the three flowers gathered at the top, and he ascended directly?

Chen Qi looked at the dark-skinned young man fluttering in the wind at the top of the flagpole and felt a strange feeling in his heart.

However, the burly young man who was his comrade-in-arms remained calm upon seeing this scene and said, "It's alright, he won't die. We'll go and rescue him after the crowd disperses."

Chen Qi nodded, then suddenly remembered something and turned back into the classroom.

His expression changed instantly, because he suddenly realized that he could no longer sense the hidden high-grade wild food in the classroom!
"How could such high-grade wild food suddenly disappear? It seems to have disappeared right after the school bell rang..."

At that moment, Chen Qi was busy pressing down the flatbread to feed him and didn't notice this change.

"Could it be that the high-grade wild food was on someone's person and was taken out with them?"

After a moment's thought, Chen Qi quickly identified the most suspicious person as Lin Ning!
There were seven people in the classroom besides him before. Now the bald young man and Big Pancake are with him. Gan Shui, Coffee, and Chasing Wind came with him. He hadn't sensed any high-grade wild food on them before.

And the dark-skinned youth was hanging on the flagpole.

So after eliminating all possibilities, the most suspicious person left is the little girl Lin Ning.

"We must find a way to get the high-grade wild food from her!"

This is not only to resolve the current anomaly, but also so that he can continue to improve his abilities in the future.

Chen Qi wasn't sure if that vague feeling he had just experienced counted as him discovering that high-grade wild food.

If you count, he won't find any other high-quality wild food if he doesn't eat it.

The sturdy young man then spoke up, "While I am very grateful to you for saving me, I am still very curious about your identity."

Chen Qi didn't answer him directly, but instead asked, "Are you an official?"

The sturdy young man nodded: "You can call me Fried Skewers."

"Do you recognize chili peppers and gummy candies?"

Chen Qi had some doubts about the official status of the chili peppers and gummy candies, unsure whether they were "fake officials" or "real officials" that had been tainted.

Therefore, I have some doubts about the fried skewers that claim to be official and use the same phone as the chili peppers.

"You've seen them?" Fried Skewers perked up. "They were my comrades-in-arms, but they went missing while exploring Jinghai Medical College."

Chen Qi was taken aback: "Weren't you and the guy on the flagpole the ones who went missing?"

Fried Skewers blushed slightly: "The first to go missing were Chili and Soft Candy. After that, Ramen, the guy on the flagpole, and a few other comrades, went into Jinghai Medical College to rescue Chili and Soft Candy."

"As a result, Ramen and I got trapped, but the other teammates must have escaped."

Chen Qi looked enlightened. So the chili peppers and soft candy were among the first batch of officials who disappeared at Jinghai Medical College, and the fried skewers and ramen in front of him were the second batch.

It seems that Chili and Gummy have already been controlled by the Nightmare Clan, which is why they cooperated with the Nightmare Clan to lure him to Jingquan School.

Chen Qi thought for a moment, then took out Chili's phone and asked, "Can you unlock it?"

"This is... Chili's phone?" Fried Skewers quickly took it. "Where did you get it from?"

“Her body is in the lobby downstairs,” Chen Qi explained. “But don’t worry, she should be able to come back to life.”

"Have they already been taken over by the Nightmare Clan?" Fried Skewers shook his head and sighed. "If you calculate the time, it's indeed about right. The two of them disappeared on September 3rd, and Ramen and I were trapped on September 6th."

"Actually, Ramen and I couldn't hold on much longer either, but for some reason, we suddenly regained consciousness for a while in the early hours of yesterday morning and broke free from the control of the Nightmare Clan, which interrupted the parasitic process."

"Yesterday morning?" Chen Qi knew it must be his doing.

When he sneaked into the medical school early yesterday morning, he awakened the humanity in the two men and led them to resist the parasite's control.

"So you're not currently being parasitized?" Chen Qi asked.

"Hmm, probably not. Yesterday, we were fully conscious and our will to resist was at its peak. We killed the Nightmare Eaters that were in the early stages of parasitism in our bodies. The Nightmare Clan probably didn't have time to parasitize any new Nightmare Eaters in our bodies."

The fried skewers' tone carried a hint of pride, as if he believed that his ability to break free from the control of the Nightmare Clan was entirely due to his iron will.

As he spoke, he actually unlocked Chili's phone.

“This is a cell phone we use during operations. I can unlock it with a special password, but what do you want to know?” Fried Skewers asked.

"I want to see the chat history."

Chen Qi didn't explain much and reached out his hand towards the fried skewers.

After hesitating for a moment, the fried skewer seller handed the phone to Chen Qi.

Chili's WeChat chat history was very clean, suggesting she had a habit of regularly cleaning it up. This made a familiar profile picture stand out among the few messages.

"As expected, they're directly connected to coffee."

Chen Qi opened their chat window and saw only a photo and a message from Coffee.

The photo showed several wax apples, and the message contained only two words: "hemorrhoids".

This also resolved another question in Chen Qi's mind: why was Chili able to pass the test of the strange food when they first met?

Chen Qi also saw a document on the chili phone: "Investigation Report on Polluted Areas in Jinghai City".

He transferred the file directly to his phone via Bluetooth. Afterwards, instead of returning Chili's phone to Zha Chuan, he kept it in his pocket and asked with some confusion, "Da Bing, when were you infected?"

Big Pancake shook his head blankly. If he hadn't vomited a lot of black substance after eating wild food, he wouldn't have known he was infected.

Chen Qi estimated that it happened sometime yesterday, but he wasn't sure if Dabing had only been infected or had already been parasitized.

However, now is not the time to study these things in detail. At least after eating wild food, Da Bing will not be affected for a while.

Big Pancake suddenly asked, "Biscuit, have you seen my dog?"

Chen Qi was taken aback: "No, when did it get lost?"

Big Pancake scratched his head: "I just can't remember."

Chen Qi reassured them, "It should be alright, we'll talk about it once we get out. The most important thing now is to wake up our teammates and get out of here. You guys hide in the empty classroom next door for now, make sure no one sees you, and come out to help me after the bell rings..."

Chen Qi briefly explained his plan, stating that he intended to wait until after class had started and everyone had returned to the classroom before taking any action.

There are people below, including the head of the teaching department and those teachers whose abilities are unclear; they will definitely stop him.

Dabing and Zhachuan both cooperated and hid in the classroom next door, while Chen Qi sat directly in classroom 302 and quietly waited for the students to return to class.

Bored, he opened the "Jinghai City Pollution Area Investigation Report" he had just received from Chili's phone and quickly browsed through it.

This report documents the exploration and summary of various polluted areas in Jinghai City by an official team of pica eaters, including those who consume chili peppers, gummy candies, and fried skewers.

One thing is true: they are indeed a scout team tasked with finding the source of pollution in Jinghai City.

The official strategy is to first find the source and then concentrate efforts on solving the pollution problem at its source.

Their team will conduct an initial exploration of the contaminated area before assigning it a rating.

To Chen Qi's surprise, their rating criteria did not prioritize the degree of danger or the number of parasites, but rather based on the anomalies.

Different levels of pollution can produce different abnormal phenomena.

Based on these phenomena, the level of pollution sources in a region can be deduced.

What the authorities are really concerned about is the level of pollution sources, in order to find the real source of pollution.

S-level contaminated zone: A zone capable of constructing realistic illusions and establishing rules for those illusions. Zones rated at this level are likely sources of contamination.

Class A Contaminated Zone: Capable of constructing realistic illusions

Grade B contaminated zone: It can distort some perceptions and has an extremely strong ability to hide (it comes with "ignore" and "reasonable" perception modifications, making everyone subconsciously ignore or think that the abnormality of the zone is reasonable, and often makes it difficult to detect the abnormality of the zone).
Level C contaminated zone: Can distort some perceptions

Level D contaminated zone: guarded by multiple territory-level parasites.

Level E contaminated zone: guarded by at least one Territory-level parasite.

Looking at the six-level classification standard, Chen Qi quickly categorized the polluted areas he had visited into different levels in his mind.

"In that case, it's possible that Jingquan School is at level B or C, with level B being more likely, since the official team had previously overlooked this area."

"Jingyi Affiliated Hospital is a Class D hospital? If you include Dr. Zhao, Brother Sun, and others, there are indeed several field-level guardians. Of course, this is a bit of a stretch; it could also be a Class E hospital."

"But was Jinghai Medical rated S-level? Not A-level?"

According to the information, rule-based illusions are quite domineering. The entire illusion is built on a set of rules, and violating certain rules can have very serious consequences.

The illusion Chen Qi experienced was more like a normal, real illusion from a Class A contaminated zone.

These kinds of illusions are usually built based on the local scene. For example, if the contaminated area is a hospital, then the illusion will usually be set in a hospital.

Furthermore, the parasites within the contaminated area will become NPCs in the illusion, and the events that occur in the illusion will directly affect reality.

The information did not record how to break the illusion; it only stated that one could leave the illusion by moving away from the area affected by the illusion.

In Chen Qi's view, such a grading standard can actually be viewed from a completely different perspective.

"The so-called source of pollution, to me, is wild food. This grading standard is more about the self-protection capabilities of wild food of different grades..."

Chen Qi now understands that whether it's an illusion or a cognitive distortion, it's nothing more than a higher-level wild food form defending itself.

High-grade wild foods of A rank or above are so rare that you don't even have the right to see them, let alone eat them, unless you break the illusion they create.

Even Grade B and Grade C wild foods require overcoming cognitive distortions to be able to eat them.

"But does this cognitive distortion not work for me?"

Chen Qi discovered the problem... His teammates were all affected by cognitive distortion, but he was the only one who wasn't.

He had previously doubted that there was something wrong with his perception, but after sorting things out, he realized that if his perception could be distorted, he would have been obediently manipulated long ago.
Then why would the Nightmare Clan bother with him?
"Since it can't affect me, it affects the people around me, and then uses the differences in perception between me and the people around me to exert psychological suggestion on me, making me doubt myself?"

This did cause him some trouble at one point, but now his goal is clear.

"Next, all I need to do is find the high-quality wild food on Lin Ning, and then I can start eating it right away!"

"This so-called 'Jinghai City Pollution Area Investigation Report' feels more like a 'High-End Wild Food Consumption Guide' to me."

Just then, the school bell he had been waiting for finally rang.

(End of this chapter)