"Damn it, I've been getting random nosebleeds lately. The doctor couldn't find anything wrong either," Eiffel grumbled, tilting her head back as she rinsed her nose with water. 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. Her medical knowledge came from the ever-unreliable internet, and every time she'd searched for "nosebleeds," the results screamed cancer.
Still, her first instinct told her something was wrong with this castle. The materials it was built from probably contained some unknown radiation.
She tossed over a small ball she'd rolled together with diluted Spirit Spring water and hawthorn powder. "Nothing serious. Just take this, an ancestral family remedy. Guaranteed to work."
At the same time, she decided she'd better start drinking more Spirit Spring water every day. The last thing she wanted was to finish a mission and lose her life without realizing it.
After swallowing the pill, Eiffel felt her whole body relax. "Thanks, Mirror. You're such a good person. Your medicine really works! Come on, I'll take you guys to the cafeteria."
Under Eiffel's enthusiastic invitation, the group followed her into the castle's grand dining hall. The food here looked much cleaner and higher quality than what they'd seen on the black market. There were even pre-apocalypse-style beef burgers. But, true to their love of fast food, the Americans here preferred meat-heavy meals, with salads as their token vegetables. The cafeteria had piles of massive chicken breasts.
At first glance, the food seemed perfectly normal, though Eiffel's favorite dish was that odd mix of chopped-up vegetables in a slimy 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 roots and stems, some with tiny potatoes growing out 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.
The castle's food really was top-tier. The dining hall was packed with people, most of them proudly maintaining that signature American physique—over half were overweight.
Jing Shu didn't even lift her chopsticks. The food looked too weird, too disgusting. 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.
"Yeah, this is already the best food in the castle. Oh, right! I should've 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've got either. Still, there are seven to eight hundred thousand homeless people out there, and we've gotta 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 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. Apparently, he'd 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.
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—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. Hao Yunlai had been a bundle of nerves for days. They'd run into slavers several times, and if it hadn't been for Hao Yunlai, their cover might've been blown.
Zhen Nantian was outside handling the logistics with the tank team.
As for Jing Shu's group, things were going smoothly. Xiao Hei and Monk had successfully passed as her assistants.
Days slipped by. 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.
The results were clear. The Luminite seeds sprouted fast but withered 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 herbs.
One day, Eiffel brought a woman wearing a black spacesuit and a sealed helmet to Jing Shu's cultivation room.
"Failed again?" Eiffel asked, looking disappointedly at the piles of shriveled plants. 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 herbs. "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. "Oh right, I forgot to introduce you. This is Dr. B's assistant, Mrs. C."
"Mrs. C, this is the Chinese doctor, Miss Mirror."
Wrapped head to toe in her bulky spacesuit, Mrs. C only gave Jing Shu a curt nod. Her tone was cold, 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."
Eiffel stammered nervously, "Y-yes, but maybe Dr. B could still take a look? Since this is the first successful cultivation, perhaps it has potential?"
"I'll report it to Dr. B," Mrs. C replied coolly, then turned and left without another word.
Jing Shu narrowed her eyes slightly. With a flicker of thought, she sent several small 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. "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."