The old man drew a long breath and exclaimed, "Wonderful, wonderful! I never thought that after all the men in our Old Jiang Family, none of us could measure up to you, Siqin—a heroine in your own right. Yue, I said before that you were the greatest contributor to this battle between the two worlds. But now, it seems that your claim to that honor is up for debate."
Jiang Yue smiled. "Without Mom, where would my achievements be? Of course she deserves the credit."
Xu Siqin said, "It may take a year or two, or even three to five years, for this drug to take effect and cause a real change in their genes. For Surface Humans, this will be a difficult stretch they'll have to endure. And..."
She trailed off, her expression darkening.
"No matter how we dress up this plan, it still costs us good karma."
San Gou didn't think much of it. "Auntie, the Underground Race is so overbearing. Surely no response is too much when we're dealing with them. How could this cost us good karma?"
The others remained silent, their expressions grave.
San Gou didn't understand, but they all did.
Xu Siqin sighed softly. "San Gou, I'm not talking about the Underground Race. I mean the Surface Humans. Do you know how many Surface Humans will lose their lives so these drugs can be distributed throughout the Underground World? How many people will have to die to fill the gap?"
San Gou stared at her, then suddenly understood.
He stammered, "How many?"
"Possibly as many as tens of millions, or even hundreds of millions..."
Compared to the total Surface Human population, tens or even hundreds of millions might not seem like much. But that was only the number needed to make up the shortfall