Flower of God

"God's Flower"

Deep in the rainforest.

"Vroom...! Vroom!" The roar of an old engine echoed through the trees.

A camper van was struggling to climb a muddy slope.

BOOM!!

With one final "growl" from the engine, the van successfully crested the hill and continued its slow crawl northward along a path that could hardly be called a road.

Inside the vehicle.

"Fuck!"

Leon, who was driving, slammed the steering wheel in frustration.

"I'm sorry... Mr. Leon." Seeing this, the elderly professor sitting in the passenger seat spoke up quickly. "It cost me nearly all my savings to get my students and myself here. I'm truly sorry that I could only afford to pay you such a small amount for protection."

?

Hearing this, Leon waved his right hand dismissively. "It has nothing to do with you. It's just... eh... never mind."

"That's good, that's good." The professor finally breathed a sigh of relief.

In truth, the reason for Leon's irritation had nothing to do with the professor, but it was directly related to money.

Through the professor, Quill Sears, and his four students in the back, Leon had learned that the High Heel Club was a gathering place for mercenaries, hitmen, and smugglers—hardly a secret in Luojia.

Furthermore, the foul-mouthed female bartender had spilled everything about the rebels preparing to attack Luojia and the outbreak of disease. After all, that information wasn't worth much—at most, the price of two drinks.

But...

210!

210 dollars!

Honestly, knowing all this now, Leon wanted to slap himself.

For this graduation exam, the company had provided each person with three thousand in operational funds to use at their discretion.

Yet, being swindled out of two hundred at the Romanee-Conti left Leon feeling incredibly guilty. No matter how rich the company was, it was still the company's money...

On top of that, being pegged as a rookie by that bartender at a single glance had even caused Leon to doubt himself.

Fortunately, he had a strong mental constitution and quickly digested these emotions. He learned his lesson: if he encountered such a situation again, he would definitely negotiate the price "properly" without hesitation.

Quill Sears and his group were originally professors and students from the history department at Cambridge University. The reason they risked coming to Africa was to search for the so-called "God's Flower."

Based on a diary written by a Portuguese captain, Sears had concluded that a plant capable of curing all diseases existed within the Congo.

The diary detailed how the captain and his crew, sailing a warship named Glorious Resurgence under the orders of King Manuel I, escorted a group of explorers into the Congo rainforest to map the terrain, mark resources, and identify viable routes to facilitate future colonial development.

It seemed like a mundane account, but the reason Professor Sears was willing to spend his life savings to come here was because of two passages the Portuguese captain had written:

"God be praised, if we hadn't been desperate enough to eat those red flowers raw, half of us would have died of smallpox!"

And:

"Those flowers are truly miraculous, a gift from God! To think we all walked out of the rainforest in perfect health? It's unthinkable! It's a pity we used them all up. If only we could have picked a few to take back and cultivate... but that will have to wait for next time. I hope we can find that ancient city again."

Smallpox was the very disease that had ravaged humanity for thousands of years since the dawn of recorded history.

Between the 16th and 19th centuries alone, at least 500 million people in Europe had died from smallpox—and that was only the recorded count; the actual number was certainly higher.

The fact that the flowers could cure smallpox and allow the captain and his crew to emerge from the primeval rainforest unscathed proved that the red blossoms possessed immense medical and research value.

Unfortunately, the Glorious Resurgence was pursued by the British Navy while retreating from Africa. The final entry in the diary read:

"Ha! Cunning, treacherous English! We risked our lives to cross the wilderness, why should we 'gift' the maps we drew to you? I would rather destroy them! If we do not return on time, it means we have perished in a foreign land, unable to fight for the Empire again...

May Your Majesty see the glory of the Empire restored soon!"

Sears speculated that the captain and the entire crew of the Glorious Resurgence were most likely captured by the British Navy and executed after negotiations failed.

Although the Portuguese Empire was the first global empire and the longest-lasting colonial power, the end of the 15th century was a dark period for them.

With internal royal strife and external threats from powerful rivals like England, the Netherlands, and Spain—not to mention the countless pirates spawned by the Age of Discovery—there were far too many factors that could have led to the permanent disappearance of the Glorious Resurgence.

As for where Sears had acquired the diary, he had bought it five years ago while visiting Amsterdam in the Netherlands, at a privately owned gift shop.

The shop contained numerous diaries and letters from sailors and captains dating from the 13th to the 19th centuries. However, since they weren't famous works of art and hadn't been carefully preserved, they were essentially scraps from the bottom of the antique trade.

As a history professor, Sears couldn't resist the "temptation" and spent nearly 1,000 pounds to buy over a dozen volumes.

After returning home to read, decipher, and attempt to restore the damaged sections, he discovered the history of the Glorious Resurgence. Through other documents and data, he successfully reconstructed the crew's base of operations before they ventured into the rainforest: Luojia.

However, when Sears reported his findings to the university, hoping to secure funding to search for the "God's Flower" for the benefit of humanity, the response he received was, "Are you joking?"

No one, and no institution, believed that investing money would yield any return.

The very existence of the "God's Flower" was questioned, and more importantly, Sears had only deduced the crew's path before they entered the rainforest; he knew nothing of their subsequent journey.

Sending people to explore the 2 million square kilometers of the Congo rainforest to find a flower?

Was he kidding?

Facing rejection at every turn, Sears remained convinced of the existence of the "God's Flower" and believed he would be blessed by the Goddess of Fortune. Thus, he sold all his assets and brought his four most prized students onto African soil.

After that...

Obstacles continued to plague this ridiculously amateurish expedition team of teacher and students.

After listening to the accounts from Sears and his students, Leon connected the bizarre phenomena in Lojia Town, which indirectly pointed to the actual existence of "God's Flower," didn't it?

It was just that some links in the process had gone awry, causing a plant capable of curing diseases to transform into a poison.

After reporting the intelligence and his personal conjectures, Leon gladly accepted the reward of 1,000 dollars and led them toward the northern village that served as the initial source of infection.

Just then.

"Mr. Joseph," a girl sitting in the back row asked with great curiosity, "why did you choose to become a mercenary?"

"For the money, of course..."

BOOM!!

However, Leon's follow-up statement was cut short by a sudden explosion.