rpbooks Chapter 176 Only magic can defeat magic, and only a question bank can overwhelm a top student.
Chapter 176 Only magic can defeat magic, and only a question bank can overwhelm a top student.
Inside Renxin Pharmacy, the smell of butter in the air was engaged in a tug-of-war with the strange, earthy odor from the ground.
"Hold him down." Wang Minyu was holding a large, rough porcelain bowl that he had found at a flea market. Inside the bowl was freshly scalded "earthworm brains" coated with chili oil and minced garlic.
The boy named Zhao Xiaobei was incredibly strong at that moment, and he let out a low growl like a wild beast guarding its food.
His pupil-less eyes were fixed on a book titled "Five Years of College Entrance Examination and Three Years of Simulation" on the corner of the table, as he desperately tried to break free from Guan Shan's grip and gnaw on the book.
The black veins on his neck resembled living vines, bulging and spreading towards his face, even vaguely forming some kind of complex geometric pattern.
With one hand on the boy's shoulder and the other protecting the hot pot stove on the table, Guan Shan grinned and said, "Boss, is this kid a crocodile? His bite force is at least two hundred pounds! If I had been slower, he would have chewed the corner off this solid wood table."
The boy's mother slumped in a chair beside him, clutching the torn pencil case tightly in her hand. Her face was deathly pale, and her lips trembled as she tried to speak, but no sound came out.
"If you're hungry, you have to eat. How can you get full by eating paper?" Wang Minyu picked up a crystal-clear slice of tuber with his chopsticks, still dripping with red oil. It was a specialty he brought back from three thousand meters underground.
Professor Yan said that in order to survive in the extremely harsh underground environment, this tuber has evolved an extremely high density of neurotransmitters and biological pheromones.
Simply put, the "biological data" contained in this piece of potato is more extensive than all the textbooks this child has memorized since childhood.
"Open your mouth." Wang Minyu said in a flat tone, showing no patience whatsoever in coaxing a child.
Zhao Xiaobei ignored him completely and continued to twist and turn wildly.
"If you won't listen to reason, you'll have to suffer the consequences." Wang Minyu freed one hand and skillfully dislocated the boy's jaw—the movement was so fast that even Guan Shan, who was standing next to him, didn't see it clearly.
His jaw was dislocated, forcing his mouth to open.
The scalding hot "earthworm brain" was shoved in, and then the jaw was snapped back into place with a "snap".
"swallow."
Wang Minyu lightly pressed the Lianquan acupoint on his Adam's apple.
Zhao Xiaobei's throat bobbed; it was a physiological swallowing reflex.
The boy, who had been struggling frantically just a second ago, suddenly froze.
The moment that tuber slid into the stomach was not digestion in the conventional sense.
The high concentration of biopheromones exploded instantly, rushing straight to the brain through the bloodstream.
For the "gluttonous knowledge fungus" parasitizing his body, this was not just food, but a sudden flood of information.
It's like an old computer that can only process documents being suddenly crammed with a 4K high-definition AAA game.
The black patterns on Zhao Xiaobei's body began to tremble violently, and the ink that had originally wanted to invade the whites of his eyes seemed to have encountered bleach, quickly retreating towards the area below his neck.
"ah--!"
The boy let out a roar that was no longer like that of a wild beast, but a long howl of human pain.
He suddenly released his grip, and the exercise book, which had been crumpled and deformed, fell to the ground.
He clutched his head with both hands, slid off the chair, and curled up on the floor, convulsing violently.
"Son! What's wrong with you!" the woman screamed and tried to rush forward, but Su Qing coldly stopped her.
"Don't move." Su Qing pushed up her glasses, her tablet displaying Zhao Xiaobei's EEG. "He's 'rebooting.' If you touch him now, you'll get Parkinson's from the overloaded bio-currents."
The woman froze in place, tears streaming down her face. "Dr. Wang, what happened? Is his condition worse?"
"He's full." Wang Minyu sat back down in front of the hot pot and cooked another piece of mutton for himself. "The thing inside your son is a glutton. Since it likes to devour information, I'll feed it some tough and smelly 'hard bones.' The neural circuits in this piece of 'earth dragon brain' will keep it busy analyzing for three to five days."
Zhao Xiaobei, lying on the ground, stopped convulsing, and his breathing became heavy and steady.
Those terrifying black vein patterns completely retracted beneath the clothes, and the previously dull and frantic eyes slowly regained focus.
But he didn't immediately regain consciousness; instead, he began muttering to himself.
"Underground... in a humid and warm environment... the direction of mycelial flow is... the square root of three..."
"Gaia's breathing rate...is not a sine wave...it's..."
The voice was muffled and unclear; it was no longer reciting formulas from textbooks, but rather some obscure and difficult-to-understand knowledge of underground ecology.
"It's done." Pierre poked his head out from the kitchen, holding a soup ladle. "Looks like this 'earthworm brain' really can overwhelm this thing. Boss, I tripled the amount of soup base, you'll have to pay extra later."
Wang Minyu waved his hand, signaling Guan Shan to help the person to the recliner next to him.
Zhao Xiaobei looked like he had just finished a marathon, his whole body drenched in cold sweat, staring blankly at the ceiling.
"Mom..." His voice was as weak as a kitten's.
That one word, "Mom," completely broke the woman beside her, who rushed over, hugged her son, and burst into tears.
"Stop crying, it's giving me a headache." Wang Minyu put down his chopsticks, the stainless steel teacup making a crisp sound as it hit the table. "The person has been saved, but only temporarily. This child is a 'receiver,' and as long as the transmitter is still there, he could relapse at any time."
The woman wiped away her tears, her eyes filled with terror: "Emission source? What emission source? You mean the school?"
"Not entirely." Wang Minyu looked at the projected map on the wall. The red dot for the First Experimental Middle School was still flashing, but the frequency seemed to have decreased slightly. "I'd like to ask, before this child fell ill, did he go to any special places on campus? Or... did he see any special people?"
The woman paused for a moment, trying hard to recall: "No...nothing special. It's just that last week, the head of the grade talked to him, saying that he had dropped to second place in the grade in the mock exam, and made him go to the 'meditation room' to reflect for an afternoon. That's how it went after he came back."
"A meditation room?" Wang Minyu keenly grasped the meaning of this word.
"Yes, that's a newly built counseling room at the school. They say it's very high-tech, and you can study in absolute silence inside." The woman said, then seemed to remember something. "Oh, by the way, when Xiao Bei came back, he was clutching a pen the whole time and wouldn't let go of it. Later I saw that the pen was out of ink, so I threw it away."
"What does that pen look like?"
"It's just a regular black ballpoint pen, but... the barrel feels a bit soft and is still warm to the touch."
Wang Minyu and Su Qing exchanged a glance.
Soft and warm.
That's not a pen; it's clearly a disguised mushroom stem.
"It seems the school's 'valves' aren't just leaking, they're practically operating on a wholesale basis." Wang Minyu stood up, pulled out a pre-printed bill from under the counter, and slapped it in front of the woman.
"A total of 28,000. This includes the cost of the specially prepared medicinal cuisine, compensation for emotional distress, and the depreciation of the rosewood table (which was actually made of composite board) that your son almost chewed up."
The woman didn't even look at the bill, her hands trembling as she pulled out her phone: "I'll transfer it! I'll pay any price as long as it can save my son! Dr. Wang, what's next? Does he still have to go to school tomorrow?"
"Go to school?" Wang Minyu said as if he had heard a joke. "Big sister, haven't you figured out the situation yet? Your son is now 'information-sensitive.' If you let him stay in that pressure cooker full of anxiety fungi any longer, next time he won't be eating paper, he might be eating his deskmate's arm."
"Then...then should I take leave?" The woman hesitated. "But the midterms are next month..."
"Guan Shan, see the guest out." Wang Minyu was too lazy to waste any more words.
"No, no, no!" the woman panicked. "I won't let him go! I'll get him sick leave! A month's leave!"
Wang Minyu's expression softened slightly. He tossed a bottle of vitamin pills (the label torn off) from the drawer: "Take one a day when you get back. Also, no reading or doing homework for the next three days. Give him a phone, let him play games, watch short videos, let him indulge in whatever decadent behavior is allowed. This is called 'fighting poison with poison,' using junk information to wash away the high-density anxiety data."
The woman took the bottle of "miracle drug," thanked him profusely, and left with her son.
The shop returned to quiet.
Only the soup in the copper pot was still bubbling away.
"Boss, this...this...are you really going to let him play video games?" Guan Shan scratched his head, feeling that this doctor's order was a bit unorthodox.
"What do you know?" Su Qing explained without turning her head as she cleaned up the data junk on her computer. "For Zhao Xiaobei right now, the mindless laughter in those short videos and the instant feedback in games are the best 'diluents.' What that fungus needs is a highly structured, repressive chain of logic; chaos and entertainment are its natural enemies."
Wang Minyu walked to the door and watched the black sedan disappear into the night.
"Zero, have you figured it out yet?"
A crackling sound of electricity came from the speaker, followed by a emotionless, mechanical voice: "Sample analysis complete. The bacterial strain in Zhao Xiaobei's body has a 30% similarity in gene sequence to the 'mother organism' underground, but it has undergone artificial gene editing. It's more like a... probe."
"Probe?"
"Yes. It's collecting data. It's collecting the brainwave frequencies of thousands of students in this school and then transmitting them back underground." Zero paused for a moment. "That 'meditation room' is a large data upload port."
Wang Minyu looked at the faint outline of the First Experimental Middle School in the night sky.
The place was brightly lit, and even in the dead of night, one could feel a heavy, gray aura hanging over it.
"Looks like we'll have to transfer to this prestigious high school." Wang Minyu pulled out the black button he'd confiscated from Liu Jie from his pocket, tossed it in his hand, and said, "Perfect timing. I have an old acquaintance here who should be happy to be our guide."