"Damn it, I have been getting random nosebleeds lately. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong either," Eiffel grumbled, tilting her head back until she was staring at the glowing ceiling. She rinsed her nose with cold water at a nearby sink, the red liquid swirling down the drain. It took her a while to stop the bleeding. "Maybe it's just too dry inside the castle. A few of my colleagues have nosebleeds from time to time too. Jing, aren't you a Chinese doctor? Can you take a look and tell me what's going on?"
Jing Shu stayed silent for a moment. Like hell she knew the exact cause. Her medical knowledge came from the ever-unreliable internet, and every time she had searched for "nosebleeds" in the past, the results screamed cancer. Still, her first instinct told her something was fundamentally wrong with this castle. The materials it was built from probably contained some unknown radiation.
She reached into her pocket and tossed over a small ball she had rolled together with diluted Spirit Spring water and hawthorn powder. "Nothing serious. Just take this; it's an ancestral family remedy. Guaranteed to work."
At the same time, she decided she had better start drinking more Spirit Spring water every day. The last thing she wanted was to finish a mission and lose her life to invisible toxins without realizing it.
After swallowing the pill, Eiffel felt her whole body relax, the tension leaving her shoulders. "Thanks, Jing. You're such a good person. Your medicine really works! Come on, I will take you guys to the cafeteria."
Under Eiffel's enthusiastic invitation, the group followed her into the castle's grand dining hall. The air was filled with the smell of grease and grilled meat. The food here looked much cleaner and higher quality than what they had seen on the black market. There were even pre-apocalypse-style beef burgers with thick patties.
But, true to their love of fast food, the Americans here preferred meat-heavy meals, with small side salads as their token vegetables. The cafeteria had piles of massive, seasoned chicken breasts stacked high on metal trays.
At first glance, the food seemed perfectly normal, though Eiffel's favorite dish was that odd mix of chopped-up vegetables submerged in a slimy, translucent dressing. The problem was, those vegetables were the same mutated, bizarre crops Jing Shu had seen growing at the plantation earlier.
Eiffel loaded up two full trays of salad. The sight of those twisted roots and stems—some with tiny potatoes growing out of the sides of other potatoes—made Jing Shu's stomach twist. Still, Xiao Hei and Monk didn't care at all; each grabbed a big bowl of meat and started eating happily, their forks clattering against the plastic.
The castle's food really was top-tier compared to the world outside. The dining hall was packed with people, most of them proudly maintaining that signature American physique; over half were visibly overweight, their faces flushed with the warmth of the hall.
Jing Shu didn't even lift her chopsticks. The food looked too weird and too disgusting to her eyes. She couldn't bring herself to eat any of it.
"Eiffel, do you guys always eat what you grow yourselves? What about the lab food you research?" she asked, watching the researcher dig in.
"Yeah, this is already the best food in the castle. Oh, right! I should have shown you the new vegetables the research department's been working on. They're packed with hormones and catalysts, grow like crazy, but taste awful. No one knows what kind of side effects they have got either. Still, there are seven to eight hundred thousand homeless people out there, and we have got to feed them. As long as it doesn't kill anyone, it's fine."
Eiffel shrugged, chewing enthusiastically on her mutant salad. "Oh, and that glowing stuff? Dr. B named it Luminite. It's got special effects too. Crops grown under Luminite light boost our immunity and resistance. That's why lots of people like sunbathing under it. Honestly, ever since I started eating these vegetables, I've felt stronger. Look at my muscles!"
She raised a fist, proudly flexing the new, hard bulges on her arms.
Was it really that amazing? Jing Shu wasn't so sure. But this Dr. B intrigued her. Everyone in the castle seemed to worship the guy as a savior. Apparently, he had invented this self-glowing, self-heating material called Luminite that solved the biggest survival issue in the apocalypse. Austin Castle was planning to trade massive quantities of stored food for other supplies across different zones using this advantage.
The whole place radiated ambition. Everyone inside the castle was trying to earn more food, and even the farm owners outside had started cultivating land again. From any angle, Austin Castle looked like a city on the rise; it was the only one that still lived as if the apocalypse had never happened.
Meanwhile, Yang Yang and Hao Yunlai were having a rough time completing their side missions in the lower districts. Hao Yunlai had been a bundle of nerves for days. They had run into slavers several times, and if it hadn't been for Hao Yunlai's intuition, their cover might have been blown by the patrols. Zhen Nantan was outside handling the logistics with the tank team, staying mobile.
As for Jing Shu's group, things were going smoothly. Xiao Hei and Monk had successfully passed as her assistants without drawing suspicion.
Days slipped by in the laboratory. To test the effects of Luminite, Jing Shu divided Eiffel's gifted seeds into three batches. One batch went under Luminite light, one under regular electric light in a dark room, and the last inside her Spirit Spring field within the Cube Space.
The results were clear. The Luminite seeds sprouted fast but withered into black husks soon after. The ones in the dark room grew slowly, stunted, and eventually stopped altogether. Only the ones in the Spirit Spring field survived normally, though even they grew slower than her other established herbs.
One day, Eiffel brought a woman wearing a heavy black spacesuit and a sealed helmet to Jing Shu's cultivation room. The suit hissed slightly with each movement.
"Failed again?" Eiffel asked, looking disappointedly at the piles of shriveled plants on the table. When she glanced at Jing Shu, her eyes flickered with guilt and a hint of pity.
Jing Shu reached under her thick bulletproof coat and took out several pots of lush, green herbs she had prepared. "The ones under Luminite all failed, but I managed to cultivate these using a secret method."
"Oh my god, you did it! Jing, you're amazing! You've made a breakthrough! Can this be mass-produced?" Eiffel was practically jumping with excitement, her hands fluttering. "Oh right, I forgot to introduce you. This is Dr. B's assistant, Mrs. C."
Wrapped head to toe in her bulky spacesuit, Mrs. C only gave Jing Shu a curt nod, the light reflecting off her visor. Her tone was cold and full of authority. "We only care about herbs that can be mass-produced. If it can't be scaled up, it's meaningless. Dr. B is already developing a new research plan."
"I'll report it to Dr. B," Mrs. C replied coolly. She turned on her heel and left without another word, her boots thudding on the floor.
Jing Shu narrowed her eyes slightly as she watched her go. With a flicker of thought, she sent several small, silent snakes to shadow the woman. At the same time, she asked casually, "Aren't they dressed a little too heavy? Why would anyone wear a spacesuit in this heat? And a helmet too? Is the air here not safe to breathe?"
She conveniently ignored the fact that she herself was sweating buckets inside her own bulletproof winter coat and padded pants.
Eiffel laughed, the sound a bit forced. "You don't know? Their work environment with Dr. B is extremely dangerous. They're exposed to biochemical radiation every day while extracting useful materials. That's why they always dress like that."