When Tang Yue realized the meaning of her uncle's words and snapped out of her stunned state, she immediately filled her lungs with air, apparently to yell at him. I interrupted her right away. Not because I didn't want to hear the family squabble—though that's part of it—but because we had limited time to discuss the further development of the situation and its consequences.
"Let's move away from family matters and get to the content of the previous high officials' conversation," Rubbing the bridge of my nose, I gestured for Tang Yue to drop the budding drama, and she listened. After all, she has some insight and understands what's truly important right now.
"Mu Bai, how confident are you that Zhu Men's and Lo Mian's people won't crack your poison in these five hours?" Tan Zhong also got serious and cut to the chase.
"Almost completely confident. I'm allowing a small margin of error in case one of them is a High-level poison element mage with a huge backlog of practical experiments and deriving new poison formulas instead of using known or hereditary ones. Not even in five hours—even if we gave them several months, I doubt they'd succeed in detoxifying the subject with their hands," I stated confidently. If there's one thing I'm fully confident in, it's Teacher Gu Daiyu's skills and poisons.
"Hm, if it's as you say, then we have nothing to worry about. I can confirm there's no expert of the level you described among them. Once the facts are on our side, Zhu Men won't be able to complicate things for us," Tan Zhong sighed in relief.
"Don't celebrate too soon. I think it's obvious to everyone here who organized this poisoning outbreak. Of course, I need to personally see the infected to say for sure, but I'm already almost certain it's not a monster's doing, but a human's. And I'm worried his employer will ask this poison element mage to continue the attacks to create public resonance. Then Zhu Men might ignore logical arguments and take extreme measures to calm the public," I poured a bucket of cold water on the relaxed Magical Court chairman.
"Hm, then what do we do?" He asked me. Apparently, the man decided to fully rely on my judgment in this matter. Well, suits me fine—no need to argue with him to push through the plan I want.
"Right now, send Mr. Wu Pin Jin to patrol the city, along with any off-duty operatives. That way, even if the unknown poison element mage wants to act, he won't be able to do it big-time, meaning it'll take him a lot of time to create enough noise. Our opponents think the Serpent needs at least a month to molt—that's our advantage. As long as we get past this three-day mark without letting too many people die from this poison, we'll win," I laid out my simple but effective plan. Now both we and Lo Mian understood it was a race against time, but our opponent believed his window for active action was much longer than it actually was. That's our main edge.
"Alright, I'll trust you and implement your plan. Pin Jin, you heard him—take all available people and go patrol the city. Focus mainly on areas with large crowds," Nodding to me, Tan Zhong immediately started giving orders. His deputy just nodded respectfully to both of us and left to carry them out. Now we just had to wait five hours to plan the next steps.
Finally, after five hours, everyone who had left the meeting hall returned, including Lo Gain in female form. When Tan Zhong saw him un-de-spelled, the last tension left him, making him noticeably more relaxed. Apparently, the man had some lingering doubts about my skills. Heh, I'd be cautious too about believing the skills of a gigolo latched onto my niece. Can't blame the guy.
"I hereby declare that the skills of the poison expert Mu Bai, invited by the Tang family, are deemed satisfactory and superior to our experts', so he may be allowed to examine the poisoned. If direct evidence of the Serpent's innocence is provided during the investigation, all charges against the monster will be dropped, and the execution case closed. Otherwise, if no substantial results are achieved within four days, Mu Bai will be removed, and we'll return to the Serpent as the prime suspect and execution target. Any objections to this decision?" Zhu Men read this speech in a dry clerical tone, as if from a script. Apparently, this meeting wasn't particularly interesting to him now. At least for the time being. But four days? If we avoid critical incidents and hold that deadline, it'll be perfect.
There were no objections from the officials present. At least none public. Lo Mian's displeased face spoke for itself, but without additional arguments for catching and executing the Serpent, he had nothing to say. Now he needed to discredit us to overturn the decision already made—and that process isn't instant.
I, along with the joyful Tang Yue after the announced decision, headed to the hospital to check on the poisoned unfortunates. The trip didn't take much time, and with written permission plus the niece of the Magical Court chairman, no one caused us problems, and we entered the quarantine block. According to the doctors' explanations, some medical staff who frequently interacted with the poisoned started showing similar symptoms, then fell into comas altogether. Great, so this stuff is contagious too?
Not neglecting safety, I cast "Purification" of the second Initial level of the poison element on us, then, maintaining the spell constantly, moved with the girl to check the patients and investigate what they were actually poisoned with. Surely not real Totem Serpent poison?
Two hours—that's how long it took me to determine exactly what the unknown poison element mage had used on them. And yes, now I'm 100% sure it's not the monster's doing, but a human's. At first glance, you wouldn't tell, but poisons not blindly copied from monsters, but modified—or even fully synthesized from scratch by humans—have a characteristic flair of magical energy.
It's barely perceptible, but if you know where to look, it's not hard to spot. Of course, true experts can mask it skillfully, but our unknown apparently wasn't one. Though my bar for "true expert" is set ridiculously high—even I don't count myself in that category yet. In this league, I only recognize Gu Daiyu.
Having shed her oppressive talent and boosted her control, she can do things with poison that sometimes seem impossible. So the fact that the unknown managed to minimize this characteristic flair speaks to his exceptional skill and experience. Even with my own abilities, I didn't notice it right away.
Anyway, about the poison's composition. It turned out to be a modified version of real Totem Serpent poison. I didn't even believe it at first—where would the culprit get a sample? But then I remembered that although Hangzhou's guardian rarely helped the city lately due to no total threats, he still fed himself and mainly hunted on his own. Collecting a few drops of poison from his hunting grounds was possible, especially if you knew what to look for.
The serpent's poison was modified to minimize lethality as much as possible, plus self-reproduction using the poisoned person's magical energy. That's why only some medical workers got sick—they were the ones handling the affected mages. It couldn't self-reproduce in ordinary people.
Also, judging by its energy saturation, I can say the unknown poison element mage is at most High-level cultivation, as he couldn't replicate the Serpent's poison energy saturation. Even if he reduced its deadliness, at the same saturation, the self-reproduction effect would work much better. Though that's not conclusive—the Serpent is weakened now, and such an assumption could be intentional to match his current state.
But the culprit apparently didn't have weakened Serpent poison, so he guessed at the energy saturation and, predictably, erred—just a little. Well, these initial proofs, plus providing Zhu Men with a real Serpent poison sample for comparison, should clear most suspicions from him. Why not all? Well, it's direct but weak evidence. It won't fully satisfy the senator, as it's "scientific gibberish" he doesn't understand himself.
We need more. Like catching that poison element mage. And Wu Pin Jin will help me a lot with that.