“By the way, XÄ«, why did you suddenly disappear a couple of days ago?”
“You still remembered I was gone? I didn’t expect the Young Master to care about me that much. Having a princess isn’t enough… fickle men are really bad, you know!”
“That’s not what I meant…”
Lin Nuo felt that today XÄ«’s words carried a subtle, indescribable strangeness beneath the surface.
“The Apothecary said Young Master seemed poisoned when he went out.”
“Hm, it should be just a minor injury.”
Lin Nuo nodded.
“Is that so?”
XÄ« walked over to the bookshelf and picked up some washed grapes, using her slender jade-like fingers to peel the skin off a grape.
Her fluttering eyelashes locked onto him as she asked, “I also know simple Healing Magic. Do you want me to check the Young Master’s body?”
“That won’t be necessary. The Apothecary said they’ll identify the toxin type by tomorrow.”
“There are poisons that even the Apothecary here can’t detect.”
“…Hm?”
“Many complex curses can’t be detected by ordinary Apothecaries. For example, I know of a poison mixed with a curse, a deadly toxin called the Blood Leech Curse.”
“Hmm.”
Lin Nuo nodded again.
“I’ve heard that those poisoned by it have a black aura inside their bodies. Early in the poisoning, their whole body feels scorching hot, even smoking, but later on, they feel icy cold as if frozen.”
“…Hmm.”
Lin Nuo slowly nodded, sensing a faint familiarity.
“The black aura has a corrosive effect. This poison absorbs all the host’s vitality and grows infinitely stronger. Records mention many demigods who were slowly killed by the Blood Leech Curse.”
“…What?!”
Lin Nuo stopped nodding.
XÄ« continued recalling: “Since the Blood Leech Curse is so rare, there’s no antidote anywhere in the Salidor Continent. If you’re hit by it, death is the only outcome.”
After a long silence of ten seconds—
“Holy shit!”
“No way!”
Lin Nuo suddenly jolted upright from his stiff posture, mouth agape.
The Fatty Bird, startled, flew off, and the grape XÄ« had just fed him nearly dropped to the ground.
‘…Black aura?!’
‘…Whole body chills!!’
Lin Nuo hadn’t thought much when XÄ« mentioned the Blood Leech Curse, treating the similarity to his symptoms as coincidence.
But now…
It matched his symptoms exactly!
He recalled the black aura overflowing from inside him, how his blood felt like it was being corroded, turning into a pitch-black shade emitting a deathly aura.
The freezing cold feeling was indescribable.
Lin Nuo was certain the poison in his body was definitely from that crazy old man beside Parkes.
Amidina had also mentioned that madman’s magic seemed cursed by the Evil God, advising him to take care of his health recently.
That meant the poison he carried was definitely no ordinary toxin.
Since the Apothecary hadn’t immediately detected it, Lin Nuo hadn’t thought too much.
After all, worrying in advance is like signing up for a bad time…
Besides, if someone wanted to kill him, there’d be no need to use such a powerful poison.
But still…
Bringing a toxin strong enough to kill a demigod, and using it on a mere newbie like him?
If this were some other novel, it’d be like Xiao Yan getting killed by the Soul Emperor’s ultimate move before even leaving Wutan City.
And he wasn’t even the protagonist like Xiao Yan!
Does that make sense?
Though Lin Nuo noticed the two overlapping magic arrays inside him could convert tiny bits of the black aura into magic power for himself, that was really only a minuscule amount…
If it’s the kind of poison that kills demigods…
How could he possibly resist?
“Don’t worry too much.”
“I checked the Young Master’s body. Judging by your complexion, it seems like it’s an incomplete Blood Leech Curse, without the ability to increase through the host’s vitality.”
XÄ« gently waved her hand in front of his dazed face.
“If a life mage skilled in healing magic helps Young Master first to adjust his body, then uses multiple magic arrays to gradually purify the Blood Leech Curse bit by bit, it should be fine.”
“But for this poison, simple purification magic is useless. You might need several strong magic arrays layered together.”
“I remember the Blood Leech Curse comes from the Evil God. It takes at least thirty to fifty years to refine. Setting aside the corrosive black aura, the essence of its power is so refined that absorbing it might even help supplement Young Master’s magic power.”
“Uh, there’s no need to emphasize it takes decades to make. Just think of it as your way of comforting me.”
Lin Nuo glanced at his own hands.
The keywords “magic array” and “healing” happened to correspond to two abilities related to the Goddess of Light from his magic book.
The image of the black aura inside being suppressed by a white light appeared again in his mind.
His tightly strained nerves relaxed somewhat inexplicably.
That meant hope wasn’t completely lost.
And indeed, as he thought, there might be a chance to try converting that black aura?
Then…
“Ah~! Young Master, your tongue!”
“Hm?”
Having received too much information at once, Lin Nuo’s mind grew a little fuzzy.
When he came back to his senses, he realized he had unintentionally eaten the grape Xī had carefully fed him, then subconsciously sucked on her finger lightly…
“Eh!? Cough cough…”
“Accident, accident!”
Lin Nuo tried to ease the awkwardness with a dry cough.
But instead of easing it, Xī hugged her fair, soft fingers—like cherries—and looked at him with a resentful expression, as if annoyed that Young Master had dirtied them with his lips…
Seeing the young girl in front of him on the verge of tears from being sucked on, Lin Nuo was at a loss for words.
He wanted to comfort her but didn’t know how, so he ended up stuffing the sweet treats Amidina had given him yesterday that he hadn’t had time to eat into XÄ«’s hands.
“Eh?”
When Lin Nuo went to the bathroom to grab a towel and wipe XÄ«’s hands, he vaguely sensed something was off.
Come to think of it…
XÄ« said she already checked me while I was asleep.
It’s not strange that she knows magic…
But how did she suddenly see so much?!
“She’s fast… I was about to ask, but she vanished in a flash…”
Coming out again, Lin Nuo looked at the empty room and shrugged.
He couldn’t figure it out…
‘Got scared just because she got her finger sucked on? At worst, I’ll just get her to suck it back…’
Looking carefully, he noticed his bed and everything had obviously been tidied up and rearranged by XÄ« when she came over.
“Fatty Bird, did you notice?”
“XÄ« seems to move this mirror every time she comes over.”
Lin Nuo’s gaze shifted to the bedside table, where a sparkling glass mirror faced him.
His expression instantly turned strange.
“Trying to put the mirror in a fixed position… does she have OCD?”
“Chirp chirp?”
“And this mirror looks kind of familiar…”
“Chirp chirp…”
He picked up the vanity mirror to take a closer look.
Fatty Bird shook its head, signaling it didn’t notice anything special.
Lin Nuo, thinking he was just overanalyzing a young girl’s vanity item, didn’t pay it much mind.
But—
On the tabletop, the mirror that the girl’s delicate hand had moved to perfectly reflect most of the room, where someone usually slept soundly at night, suddenly shimmered with a faint magical glow in the instant Lin Nuo absentmindedly glanced back…