“What exactly is atypical hyperplasia?” Saga asked curiously.
“Follow me to the office first.”
Saying that, the woman ignored the angry questions from the man and walked out the door.
“Seriously, what does that woman think human life is worth!”
Seeing that the woman completely disregarded him, the man cursed under his breath and prepared to leave.
He then glanced at the still confused faces of Saga and Xiao Mo, and spoke sternly, “I advise you to keep your distance from that woman. Once your friend recovers, take her away immediately so she won’t be left half-dead from that woman’s messing around.”
After dropping this angry remark, he left the room.
Saga and Xiao Mo exchanged looks, and after a moment, Xiao Mo said, “I’ll go find that female apothecary. You stay here and watch over Miss Eve.”
“Don’t leave yet! We have to inform Eve’s family that she’s back. They must be worried sick right now.”
Xiao Mo nodded, then used the same method as before to send a message, before quickly dashing out the door in search of the woman.
Following the path, she found the office the apothecary had mentioned.
It was just a small room, about the size of a storage closet, filled with books that looked like they had all been written by the woman herself.
A simple desk stood in the center, cluttered with papers and quills scattered about, some of the pages soaked with ink.
While this slightly messy environment was still tolerable to Xiao Mo, what really made her uncomfortable was the pungent smoke smell—like burning fire—that hit her nose as soon as she opened the door.
She covered her nose and looked toward the woman sitting at the desk, who was simultaneously sucking on a twig and flipping through a book.
Her eyes were drawn to the doorway the moment it opened.
“You actually came?”
The woman snapped the twig in half and tossed it into the trash, then stood to open a window.
“Close the door behind you. If they smell this, I’ll get scolded.”
Xiao Mo obediently shut the door gently and said, “I recognize that twig; it’s tobacco, a potion ingredient, not something you’re supposed to smoke directly.”
“I’ve never heard anyone say it’s only for potion-making.”
“You people, every time you find something useful, you have to associate it with magic and ignore its other uses.”
“…..”
Xiao Mo didn’t want to continue down that path. She wasn’t here to argue about smoking habits.
She got straight to the point: “What did you mean by atypical hyperplasia just now? Is my friend at risk after receiving your treatment?”
“Your friend is only in danger because she didn’t receive my treatment.”
“Have you ever seen anyone treated with healing magic?” the woman suddenly asked.
“Of course, this is Ophelia Magic Academy. Healing magic is definitely something the teachers have used.”
“And those people who were healed? Do you know what happened to them afterward?”
“They… they were all fine!”
Though she said that, the hesitation was obvious enough to catch the woman’s attention.
“You’re lying, aren’t you? You know how some of them ended up.”
“….”
Xiao Mo fell silent because she couldn’t deny it.
Some people who had undergone healing magic recovered completely, but others weren’t so lucky.
They contracted an incurable disease—part of their flesh became abnormal, and this abnormal tissue was called ‘demonic flesh.’
This ‘flesh’ caused unbearable pain, and healing magic had no effect on it whatsoever. Some even tried cutting it out with a knife, but that only hastened death.
Xiao Mo still remembered a friend who developed this disease after receiving treatment from others. Over time, she was tormented by the pain until she was near death, while the apothecary kept trying to cast healing magic on her.
“Magic can accelerate tissue regeneration, but that’s not right. Such abnormal transformations don’t follow the body’s natural laws.”
“What… do you mean?”
“Let me explain. If we liken the body’s self-repair after injury to reciting a few sentences, when tissue starts healing, those sentences begin to be spoken from the start. Once the sentences finish, the repair process truly begins.”
“But magic accelerates the recitation or even skips parts altogether. At this point, abnormal situations can occur—a word might be missed, mispronounced, or changed. What happens then? The tissue repair becomes abnormal growth, called atypical hyperplasia.”
“In short, it’s a patch of flesh growing on your body that doesn’t belong to you. Purification magic has no effect on it because it’s not some kind of impurity—it’s still flesh from your own body.”
“This stuff spreads inside the body, and when that happens, there’s no turning back.”
“This disease is what we usually call ‘cancer.’”
“That’s why I refuse to use healing magic on your friend. Understand, young lady?”
Xiao Mo pretended to ponder the explanation, but in truth, her mind had already drifted away a long time ago.
Atypical hyperplasia, tissue repair… cancer? None of this was anything she had ever heard before.
She even started to suspect the woman was bluffing, but the way she explained things sounded reasonable enough to cause some confusion.
In the end, she could only ask the question that mattered most to her: “So how is my friend now? Is there any chance she could get that… cancer you mentioned?”
“No, don’t worry. If anything happens, come back to me. I’ll take full responsibility.”
Saying that, the woman pulled another twig from her drawer, lit it, took a puff, and exhaled a cloud of white smoke.
“By the way…”
Just as Xiao Mo was about to look for Aurora, the woman spoke again.
“You must have encountered something that caused such severe injuries.”
She tossed an iron tray onto the desk.
Inside the tray were several white fragments resembling nails. Xiao Mo immediately recognized them as the pieces from the claws of that monster.
“I took these out from your friend’s body. They look like animal nails but there’s something odd about them.”
Staring at the fragments, the woman’s expression suddenly sharpened as if she had made a discovery.
“Saltwater, Thousand-Eyed Magic.”
Just as she finished speaking, the water spirit they had seen earlier materialized on the back of her hand. It whispered once, and five layers of blue magic circles appeared in front of the woman’s eyes.
“None of these are tissue from a single person…”
She turned to Xiao Mo, furrowed her brow, and asked, “Did you… encounter cultists?”