Traveling Together
"Small amounts of contaminants quickly lose their activity after leaving their host. They're only contaminating under specific conditions," the man said, then added pointedly, "They won't affect you."
Xu Huo took out a petri dish. "Then you don't mind if I take a little?"
The man was at a loss for words. He soon raised a hand, inviting Xu Huo to help himself.
Few players used poison in the game. For one thing, players had plenty of defensive measures, making it difficult to poison them. For another, poison was inherently unpredictable. Unless you carried the corresponding Antidote, you might not even know when things went wrong.
But poison and contaminants could sometimes produce unexpected results. And if they worked, the cost was minimal, so they still appealed to a small number of people.
Some people couldn't resist the temptation. Whenever they encountered the man, they'd try to get a little of his contaminant, whether for research or for use. Sooner or later, they planned to use it on someone else.
Some had even lost their lives because of it.
That was why the man neither stopped Xu Huo nor tried to dissuade him.
Xu Huo took a bit of the fungal growth and placed it in the petri dish. Just as the man had said, it quickly withered once separated from its host. In another dish containing culture medium, however, the fungal growth remained alive.
With no suitable test materials on hand, Xu Huo injected the Antidote made from King Fungus into the dish. The King Fungus solution worked, and the fungal growth quickly withered. On the surface, it looked dead.
But the greatest danger of fungal contaminants like this was how easily they could come back from the dead. They might appear dead, but given the right