Star Hunter.

Chapter 277 Common Sense, My God

Title:

Neo said that for him, this was his workplace, and he wasn't lying.

Neo is a Black Viper, or as he puts it, a native Black Viper who has been with the organization since he can remember. However, he doesn't know what kind of organization the Black Viper is or how many important figures of the Empire it contains. His only concern is his own research.

Neo doesn't have fixed research projects; he acts entirely out of interest. Once he's interested in a problem, he'll immerse himself in it wholeheartedly. Like this time. He wanted to find a drug to combat cyborgs. After trying many different methods, Neo finally focused on a plant—a type of mutant that couldn't be found on many planets and wasn't documented there. He discovered it by chance.

Neo had actually used both of the plant toxins that Xilin used to deal with the cyborgs, but neither met Neo's ideal target. The plant Neo was looking for bore fruit year-round, with its fruit displaying a vibrant mix of red, black, and yellow, and emitting an intoxicatingly sweet aroma that attracted nearby birds and beasts.

When these birds and beasts eat the fruit, they immediately become paralyzed and die quickly, their corpses becoming fertilizer for the plant. The plant's roots secrete special substances that alter the soil composition, allowing microorganisms to thrive in the surrounding environment. The presence of these microorganisms accelerates the decomposition of dead animals, creating a mutually beneficial survival relationship. However, for other animals, this is a double kill.

"I named this plant 'Tricolor Bean,' but Tricolor Beans are hard to find. So far, I've only found two. One has already used up all the beans, and the other, due to a chance event, was discovered by those rock-intelligence bio-soldiers before I could even pick the fruit." Neo was still a little frustrated when he talked about it. He was so close; his hand was less than ten centimeters away from the Tricolor Bean. What a pity.

Because Neo attributed the incident to a low-probability event, he didn't feel much remorse for his own mistakes.

As for Neo's so-called low-probability event, it was actually just a bird dropping. That bird dropping fell from the sky at the crucial moment and landed on the leaves of a tree next to Neo, attracting the attention of the bio-soldiers not far away.

So, nothing is absolute. Even if Neo had planned the whole operation perfectly, he wouldn't have expected a bird dropping at the crucial moment. For a bio-soldier with highly developed vision and hearing, that "splat" was loud enough.

Xilin thought for a moment. The toxin in the fruit Neo mentioned had similar effects to the two he had, but it was clear that the tricolor bean was much more potent.

"Where is the fruit you mentioned?" Xilin asked. If they could get their hands on the three-colored beans, they could easily deal with even a squad of bio-soldiers.

Neo thought for a moment, "It's a bit far. I ran for 113 hours before I met you."

So, if they were to walk, it might take half a day to get there. Xilin looked at the sky; it was almost night, and it wasn't a good time to move around. The temperature outside was quite low at night, and the lower the ambient temperature, the more noticeable the human body's heat source would be. To those ferocious beasts, it would be like having a bunch of red-hot targets swaying around them.

Xilin and the gray cat can change body temperature, but Neo can't.

"Gurgle—"

Neo rubbed his stomach. "My poor stomach is starting to rumble. Do you have any food?"

Xilin pulled a fruit from a corner and tossed it to Neo, "Have this as a snack."

"Ugh, this tastes awful!" Neo looked at the fruit in his hand and said with disgust, as he hated overly sweet food.

"If you don't eat, you'll go hungry."

"...Okay, replenishing energy is the most important thing. In fact, this fruit is very nutritious and high in sugar." These words seemed to be Neo talking to himself, allowing him to better accept the fruit in front of him.

Watching Neo gnaw on the fruit, his face contorted as if he were eating poison, taking tiny bites and pausing to mentally prepare himself before continuing, Xilin sighed. How could there be someone like this here? Are the Black Vipers all freaks, besides robots?

Soon.

  

"Oh dear!" Neo suddenly exclaimed.

"What's wrong?" Xilin and Gray Cat looked over.

Neo rolled around on the haystack, clutching his stomach, and then said with difficulty, "I... feel unwell, my heart is racing, I have abdominal pain, and... a strong urge to defecate!"

In other words, it's diarrhea.

Xilin covered his face: I really believed your nonsense!

So, to prevent Neo from relieving himself on the spot and polluting the cave, Xilin quickly dragged the guy to a relatively safe place a little further away from the cave.

Fifteen minutes later, Xilin dragged a completely exhausted Neo back into the cave after resolving the problem.

"Based on the consistency, shape, color, and odor of the excrement, I have ruled out parasites, indigestion, biliary obstruction, and intestinal harmful bacteria infection. There is a 7242% probability that it is caused by gastrointestinal dysfunction. In other words, the culprit may be your fruit."

Xilin: "..." He really wanted to kick this guy out.

Before nightfall, to ensure the plan could proceed smoothly the next day, Xilin went to find some nuts. While searching for nuts, both Xilin and the gray cat took care of their own food. Xilin ate a small wild animal, raw. He certainly wouldn't bring that raw food back to the cave for that sensitive-stomach idiot; that would just be asking for trouble.

However, Neo did indeed know this area very well, and he even had a base of operations somewhere. The Black Viper's bases here were all very safe, with excellent defensive facilities to protect them from the ferocious beasts and bio-soldiers. Moreover, Xilin wanted to get some equipment from Neo. If it weren't for this, Xilin would have already knocked that guy unconscious and left him there.

The planet's magnetic field is rather peculiar, and the Black Viper's presence in the area has created an interfering magnetic field, increasing the instability of warp objects. Therefore, even though the Yuan family's identity ring is quite special, Xilin has been using it sparingly. He always carries his bow and crossbow and gun with him. He doesn't store food in his ring either.

After all, Neo is quite adaptable to nuts. After eating the nuts that Shirin brought back, his strength quickly recovered and his mental state improved a lot. He no longer spoke in a half-dead tone like he did after having diarrhea.

Night had fallen. Xilin blocked the cave entrance, disguised and concealed the area around it, and then lay down to rest.

Peering through the small crack carved into the cave, all around was pitch black, with a sky ablaze with starlight. But this land beneath the starlight was filled with murderous intent in the night. Pairs of bloodthirsty eyes lurked in the shadows, waiting for their prey. Nocturnal animals, having rested during the day, were now alert, baring their fangs and claws as they fought in the darkness. One could also hear heavy footsteps and strange roars of beasts.

Xilin withdrew his gaze, and by the faint starlight shining down from the cave ceiling, he saw Neo lying casually asleep on the haystack and the gray cat curled up in a circle. The two had one thing in common: their ears were twitching.

Neo said he could detect danger by the twitching of his ears, but the danger he referred to was limited to strangers, ferocious beasts, and bio-soldiers. When Cilin held a knife to Neo's neck while he was asleep, Neo didn't react much. This was probably because he had already categorized Cilin as someone he knew and deemed him harmless. As for how he made that assessment, Cilin had no idea.

The next day, Neo, who had a good night's sleep, seemed to have plenty of energy early in the morning and actually started doing aerobics in the cave.

"Conserve your energy. I won't help you if you get chased by bio-soldiers or ferocious beasts again," Xilin said.

"Don't worry, I understand."

Xilin looked at him suspiciously, wondering if this guy's so-called "understanding" meant the same thing as what he himself had said.

Clean up the cave and make sure it's well-concealed. Even if we don't know if we'll come back when we go around, we definitely need to keep this backup base in place and not let anyone else find it and take it over.

Although Neo sometimes acted foolishly, he was indeed quite experienced in surviving here. On their way to the place Neo mentioned, both Xilin and Neo avoided the bio-soldiers and ferocious beasts. However, while passing through an area, Xilin encountered three already dead bio-soldiers.

The three bio-soldiers hadn't been dead for long, so when Xilin found them, there were only a few small beasts around them feeding. Upon seeing Xilin and Neo, the beasts growled threateningly a few times and then scattered, probably knowing that the people in front of them were not to be trifled with.

Three bio-engineered soldiers were shot in the head, all in the same spot, with a bullet hole between their eyebrows. However, this was clearly not the immediate cause of death; there were other bullet holes visible on their backs. These bullet holes were likely the true cause of their deaths, and they were subsequently subjected to detailed autopsies. The person performing the autopsies was highly skilled and experienced.

"Hua Li?" Neo asked.

"Who are you talking about?" Xilin looked at Neo.

"Based on this situation, there is a 98.68% chance that it was Hua Li who did it. However, she usually doesn't bother killing bio-soldiers. She prefers to analyze the cause of death. These three bio-soldiers were probably killed by someone and then dissected by Hua Li," Neo said.

"Is Hua Li, whom you mentioned, also a member of Black Viper?"

"Of course, we grew up together, but I didn't know she was here too. I didn't come with her." Neo seemed used to this situation. "Hua Li's dissection skills are top-notch. She only needs a small scalpel to dissect a person in a minute, and she can completely separate each muscle and even the meridians..."

Neo spoke of the strange woman with anatomical fetishes, while a bizarre thought arose in Sirin's mind: could the Black Viper really be nothing more than a constant stream of freaks besides those robots?

"Get out of here quickly, large carrion beasts will be here soon." Xilin twisted Neo, who was still observing the stripped-off bio-soldier meridians.

Today's operation went relatively smoothly; they didn't encounter many bio-soldiers or ferocious beasts, at least not along the route Neo pointed out. This made Xilin suspect that someone might have taken care of some of them, which explained their ease. Also, who killed those three bio-soldiers? Were they from Black Viper, or were they brought here for testing like Xilin and Bai Ye?

Half a day later, Xilin finally arrived at the place where Neo had mentioned the tricolor beans grew.

The tricolor bean was somewhat different from what Xilin had imagined. There was only one plant here, and it wasn't very tall, about the same height as the shrubs not far away. But what was special was that a circular blank area with a radius of about ten meters was formed around this plant. There was no grass, no other small plants, only this one tricolor bean.

Xilin also noticed the ground around the plant, which had a loose, soft layer, like a layer of fine sand, but this "sand" was relatively sticky and damp. This was due to the mutualistic symbiotic relationship between the plant and the tricolor bean; their colonies were crowded together, creating this scene.

Xilin was about to test the microorganisms with his finger when Neo slapped him back in shock: "Are you looking for death? These microorganisms are poisonous!" Xilin thought to himself: Of course I know they're poisonous. But because of his own constitution, Xilin wasn't afraid of them at all.

Seeing that Neo was about to launch into another lecture and theoretical analysis, Xilin straightened the brightly colored tricolor beans and said, "Hurry up and get down to business, or we won't have a chance when the bio-soldiers and ferocious beasts come."

After weighing the pros and cons, Neo decisively abandoned his lecturing and went to deal with the tricolor beans.

The gray cat perched on a tree branch, keeping watch. A ferocious beast was walking by in the distance, but it wouldn't pass through here; this area was relatively safe.

Neo pulled a pair of gloves from the inside pocket of his tattered clothes, then took out a thin plastic bag and put the tricolor beans into it one by one. There were twelve tricolor beans in total on this plant, and Neo carefully packed them up like precious treasures.

While Neo was handling the tricolor beans, Sirin touched the ground colony with his finger and, when Neo wasn't looking, also touched the tricolor bean plant. After touching it, he began to analyze the colony and the plant, learning a great deal about the plant and the ground colony.

The toxins contained in this plant are indeed more potent than the two toxins that Xilin obtained before. The toxins that work on the bio-soldiers are mainly concentrated in the fruit, and the toxins extracted from the fruit should be very effective.

As planned, after finding the tricolor bean fruit, the two would go to Neo's temporary "work location." After spending another half a day, Sirin finally arrived at Neo's place.

It looks like a giant tree growing on a cliff.

Big tree?

Yes.

But this big tree only serves as a "door". Neo opens a part of the tree and then performs an identity check. The trunk of the tree opens up, forming an 18-meter-high door.

"Someone has been here," Neo said, frowning.

After entering the large tree, the door closed again, but sunlight could still shine in, though the view inside was obscured from the outside. There was also an emergency light source, and the surrounding area was constructed of special materials, so the outside wouldn't detect any heat. Therefore, thermal weapons or electrical equipment could be used here.

The elevator inside the tree took Xilin, Grey Cat, and Neo underground, or more precisely, inside the cliff, where the Black Viper had built a workshop.

While inside the elevator, Neo pulls up an image that shows the people who entered during the time Neo was away.

There was a man and a woman. The man looked about the same age as Xilin, with dark skin, a small braid, and a strong physique, looking like a ferocious beast. However, the man's condition was not good, as he swayed uncontrollably when standing.

As for the girl, she was only thirteen or fourteen years old, with a pretty and charming appearance, but the footage showed that she was crying non-stop, even hiccuping from crying. Her crying seemed to irritate the man, and he yelled at her several times, but she couldn't stop crying.

"Your friend?" Xilin asked Neo, pointing at the girl.

"I guess so. What a nuisance. Wasn't she supposed to be pretty fast? How did she manage to get caught? Her low IQ is just pathetic."

Xilin felt it was better not to dwell on the issue of "IQ".

As the elevator approached, Neo jumped behind Sirin. According to his calculations, hiding behind Sirin in this situation would be 513 times safer.

Xilin took out a dagger and prepared his gun. He didn't know the other party's intentions, so it was better to be careful.

The elevator doors opened, revealing a large hall. There was no one in the hall, but there was an empty cup, and Xilin could smell an unfamiliar scent.

Xilin nudged Neo, his gaze sweeping toward a closed room at the back of the hall.

"Right there?" Neo said silently.

Xilin nodded.

Knowing that the stranger was inside the room, Neo was no longer afraid, since this was his territory. After setting something on the light screen that popped up on the wall, he locked the door.

Neo went into his lab, carefully placed the tricolor beans, then jumped out and rolled around on the sofa in the hall. "Finally back! Ahahahaha!"

Xilin: "..." You forgot there's someone in the room, a hostage or someone you know.

Neo happily began to introduce the place to Sirin with obvious pride, and even took out some food he had made himself. Although Sirin felt that the taste was not very good, Neo and the gray cat ate with great relish.

Perhaps because the people in the living room were being too unrestrained, the people hiding in the room finally couldn't hold back any longer.

There was a walkie-talkie in the room and living room. Just as Xilin and the other two were eating, the walkie-talkie rang, and a broken, tearful voice came through, "Neo...uh...there's...uh...there's a bad guy...uh."

The constant hiccups and sobbing that accompanied every sentence were exhausting even for Xilin. Neo, clearly not a compassionate person, wiped his mouth, pulled up the room's security camera footage, and looking at the man pointing a gun at the hiccuping little girl, said, "Who told you to bring him in?"

"Ugh—he said he'd kill me if I didn't bring him...uh..."

Neo looked at the person on the screen: "Feeling nauseous, feverish, arrhythmic, muscle spasms, and retinal hemorrhage, you're poisoned, aren't you? Actually, I suggest that if you want to eat those ferocious beasts, it's best to cook them thoroughly, and they must be fully cooked, because most of the ferocious beasts living here contain accumulated toxins in their bodies, and high temperatures will decompose these toxins, that's common sense."

Common sense my ass!

Xilin and everyone else in the room had the same thought at the same time: they really wanted to strangle this bastard who talks without any sense of responsibility!

Living here, you certainly don't have to worry about heat or energy, but outside, it's easy to get yourself killed. Clearly, the person inside knows he's been poisoned, but he can't find the medicine after arriving here. He can't enter the rooms where the medicine is kept or Neo's laboratory; only this bedroom is accessible.

Although this person acted rather fiercely, he didn't actually intend to kill the little girl. Would someone with truly malicious intent give a little girl a pillow so she could lean against it comfortably while crying without hurting her back? It seems that the guy was also annoyed and at a loss because of the girl's incessant crying, and even felt guilty.

Logically speaking, under normal circumstances, that person wouldn't show it so obviously, but now he's in a bad state. Although he's tried his best to control himself, there are still a few places where his thoughts are revealed.

Looking at the man inside who had no intention of killing and only wanted to use the little girl to threaten him, Xilin said, "You're here for the test too, right? Come out. We're all in the same boat. You don't want to hurt that girl either. Besides, if you don't get treatment, you'll die in half an hour at most."

"It's 27 minutes and 46 seconds," Neo corrected.

Xilin glanced at him sideways, while Neo pouted, completely oblivious to his own stubbornness.

Finally, the man agreed with Xilin, removed the gun from the girl, and threw it aside. He was now experiencing breathing difficulties, insufficient blood supply to his brain, and blurred vision. Muscle spasms forced him to sit against the wall like the girl; the act of raising the gun to point at her had already taken a lot of his strength.

Xilin indicated to Neo that he could unlock the room.

The room's lock was released, and Neo carefully opened the door, immediately stepping aside to avoid being accidentally injured in the ensuing struggle. Although the other person looked to be in dire straits, Neo sensed that he still had the ability to fight back desperately.

After the door was opened, the girl sat there crying, hiccuping repeatedly.

Seeing that there was no fighting going on, Neo peeked out from outside and said to the girl, "Shou, come here quickly!"

"Uh... my legs, uh, my legs are numb... uh."

Neo: "..."

Xilin glanced at the person lying there, who seemed to be losing consciousness, and shouted to Neo, "Bring the medicine!"

Neo disappeared for a while, and when he reappeared, he threw the medicine over from outside the door.

"I don't know if it will work, since I don't know what kind of ferocious beast meat he ate that caused the poisoning. However, this medicine has a wide range of applications, so let's try it first. If it doesn't work, we'll just throw him out."

Xilin, the person lying on the ground: "..."

Xilin sighed: "It's all up to you now."

As he spoke, Xilin opened the medicine bottle, revealing the injection needle on it, and injected the medicine into the person.

The man didn't resist or refuse, but Xilin knew that if Xilin had really intended to kill him, this man would have fought back desperately—it was a conditioned reflex. If Xilin's guess was correct, this man was from the military.

After the injection, the person closed their eyes, their body temperature still rising. Neo, outside the door, had already begun using this person as a test subject, recording data and testing the drug's effects from time to time.

"Huh?" Neo looked at the display on the instrument in his hand. "It's really effective. Although the body temperature is still a bit high, the heart rate has gradually stabilized, and the physiological indicators are starting to recover rapidly."

Half an hour later.

A little girl named Ashou sat on the living room sofa, drinking juice, her eyes red and swollen. Although she had stopped crying, she still hiccuped every now and then, but it was gradually subsiding.

Meanwhile, the man who had recovered was eating heartily from the food on his plate. Beside him lay an agreement, one that Neo had made him sign.

This man's name was Gu Xin. He didn't know if he was one of the people Xilin had mentioned who had come to participate in the test. He had just finished his mission that day and was too exhausted to go back to his dormitory to rest, but when he opened his eyes again, he found himself in this messed-up place. He had nothing on him except a gun and a dagger. Gu Xin was still completely clueless about what had happened.

Neo, claiming to be his savior, asked Gu Xin to help him find some plants for research, and Gu Xin agreed. Since it was relatively safe here, he figured he might as well help this lunatic find the plants before figuring out the whole story.

Xilin drew a map of the surrounding area and pointed to a spot they had passed through, asking Gu Xin, "You killed those three low-level bio-soldiers, didn't you?"

Gu Xin nodded. "It's me."

"You killed them, each with two shots, one to the head and one to a vital spot. My question is, how did you know their vital spots?" Xilin was indeed very puzzled by this. Gu Xin obviously didn't use his method. When Xilin killed the low-level bio-soldiers, he killed them with a single shot.

Gu Xin thought for a moment and decided to tell the truth. "At first, I shot them directly in the head, but I found that it didn't have much effect. Only one out of ten died immediately after being shot in the head. Later, I observed that after those bio-soldiers were shot in the head, their core area would issue a survival command, allowing them to continue to move. And this core area is their vital organ."

"I see," Xilin nodded.

"By the way, what exactly is this place?" Gu Xin asked. Neo had talked too much earlier and hadn't mentioned the questions he wanted to know when signing the agreement. All Ashou did was cry and hiccup, so Gu Xin decided to ask Xilin instead.

"This is Black Viper territory." With that, Xilin left behind a shocked Gu Xin and went with Neo to the lab to extract the toxin.