Dragon Bone and Ancient Book

"So, you dragged me in just so you wouldn't have to feel the pressure alone?"

I hate people who apologize after the fact.

They left all the grunt work to those two, who ran around so busily and with such enthusiasm that Luo Qiusheng briefly wondered if he was being too kind, never once suspecting they might actually be masochists.

He had heard rumors back when he first enrolled: the Alchemy Department often dealt with the Equipment Department, and everyone in the Equipment Department was a lunatic.

Perhaps the only standard for verification is practice.

They certainly lived by that, achieving a perfect unity of knowledge and action.

"Tsk tsk~ such exquisite lines, such curvature, ah~"

"Oh ho ho~ I could die happy after seeing this."

Luo Qiusheng watched them stroke their chins while holding his freshly drawn blueprints and the already-crafted semi-finished Qinggui Zhusui.

"A gadget to store the Spirit Word [Time Zero]?"

Anything that stores time usually involves the power of rules... I wonder if I can bring it with me next time I cross over to the Douluo Continent.

It came with its own bipolar forbidden zone—it was absolutely explosive!

After accepting the thanks of the Alchemy Department members, Luo Qiusheng walked out and ran into an acquaintance. "Renata?"

Zero turned her head at the sound. She remained expressionless, but only Luo Qiusheng knew she was forcing herself to stay calm.

"Renata Yevgenyevna Chicherin, that is your name, isn't it?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." Zero turned to leave immediately, but Luo Qiusheng called out to her.

"You wouldn't want people to know you're called Renata, would you? Then come with me."

Zero, who had been about to leave, paused for a moment before eventually catching up to Luo Qiusheng.

She glanced around, and after confirming several times that no one was there, she spoke from a meter behind him: "Where did you hear that name?"

Principal Angers had promised not to expose her easily. She was Zero now; no one knew her past, and even her files had been arranged by the principal. Unless...

He was also someone who had escaped from that place!

"I know what you're looking for. I can help you, but you have to help me too. I need dragon bones. You know, the abilities of the first-generation Dragon Tribe—I need that power."

The Vacuum Queen could afford to lay her cards on the table. As long as he didn't expose the secret of the Dual-World Gate, what did it matter if she knew he had a dragon's skeleton inside him?

After all, in Luo Qiusheng's view, Zero, having escaped from Black Swan Bay, was better in some respects than the natives of Kassel.

"You... know about Black Swan Bay?"

"Yes. Not only do I know, I know you were sold to the Siberian Black Swan Bay human experimentation base, became a test subject for Dr. Herzog, and suffered inhuman torture for years."

"And it was only destroyed because of Bondarev's betrayal, right?"

Zero remained silent the whole way. That had happened so many years ago; even she remembered some details vaguely. Yet the person before her spoke as if he had experienced it all firsthand, answering every point accurately.

After a few more words, Luo Qiusheng bid Zero farewell. He couldn't read any useful information from her facial expressions.

In Dorm 304, as evening approached, Luo Qiusheng walked along with several books in his arms, reading as he went.

Qilan was thrilled to see Luo Qiusheng return and pulled six or seven boxes of chocolate from his bottom bunk.

"Luo Qiusheng! Hey, stop reading for a second. So many female students from our year came to give you chocolate today."

Luo Qiusheng continued to read his alchemy book with relish, shutting out everything else.

"Hey? Are you listening?" Qilan blocked the alchemy book with the most exquisitely wrapped box of chocolates.

"If you don't want to eat them, can I have them?" Qilan blinked.

Luo Qiusheng was deep into his reading and was in no mood to be interrupted. "Can't you just refuse them?"

"Ah? Refuse them?" Qilan's hand holding the chocolate paused. "But..."

"No 'buts.' Take them to Lu Mingfei and tell him they were delivered to the wrong room—that they were actually meant for him."

Luo Qiusheng set the alchemy book aside and began reading a book on pharmacology instead.

The development and mining of the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well required a store of knowledge, and his own understanding of pharmacology was still too limited.

Dugu Bo's poison was mostly neutralized, but there was still Dugu Yan, whose body wasn't as severely eroded by her own toxins. Her follow-up treatment couldn't be the same as Dugu Bo's; she was still young, and her future achievements might not necessarily stop at the Title Douluo level.

Driven by a desire for perfection, Luo Qiusheng didn't finish the book until just before dawn. The records of herbs and plants were quite extensive, though the complex components were numerous.

"The Compendium of Materia Medica is still the most authoritative, but... why are the characters on this one ancient?"

The simple, obscure seal script on the pages fell into Luo Qiusheng's eyes, stroke by stroke. The text carried a faint, bitter scent of herbs, and the yellowed, brittle edges of the pages showed signs of wear, clearly indicating it was an ancient volume passed down through countless years.

This herbal classic wasn't a standard book from the Kassel library; it was a rare copy he had found deep within Dugu Bo's herb garden during his last trip to the Douluo Continent. It recorded all the poisonous herbs and spiritual medicines in the world, which happened to perfectly match the cultivation methods of the Ice and Fire Yin-Yang Well.

Qilan had long been curled up on the sofa with a pile of chocolates, listlessly unwrapping them. The rich, sweet scent filled the air, forming a sharp contrast to the cold, medicinal fragrance of the pages.

He chewed on a piece of dark chocolate and mumbled, "What do you mean, old characters? Aren't all the books in Kassel written in the common Dragon Tribe language or modern Chinese?"

Luo Qiusheng traced the raised seal script with his fingertips and explained faintly, "Ancient Chinese characters. They share the same origin as the Chinese used here, but the writing style is vastly different. It's a gap of several thousand years."

His heart skipped a beat, and he stopped turning the pages.

A table of contents in the book had caught his eye.

"Ice and fire-type medicinal herbs?"

He had realized it back when he was detoxifying Dugu Bo; the poison had long since seeped into Dugu Bo's marrow. Decades of this had damaged his foundation, and his cultivation had been dragged down by the toxins.

"So that's how it is. No wonder you're always clutching those strange books." Qilan stuffed the last piece of chocolate into his mouth and pointed at the mountain of gift boxes on the table. "Speaking of which, are you really going to give them all to Lu Mingfei? Many girls specifically picked out top-tier handmade chocolates, even with diamond chips embedded in the packaging. You're really not keeping any?"

Luo Qiusheng didn't even lift his eyelids, casually flipping to a page detailing the Green Phosphorus Purple Mist Grass. "In the Dragon Tribe world, romantic entanglements are nothing but burdens, and over in Douluo, it's even more a case of the weak being prey to the strong. Distracting oneself with these trivialities is a complete waste of time. Lu Mingfei has a soft heart; these will serve as a nice memento for him."

Qilan curled his lip, picked up a box overflowing with chocolates, and stood up. "Fine, I'll go deliver them to him now. I reckon that guy will go absolutely crazy with joy when he sees this many chocolates. Oh right, I saw a notice on the bulletin board this afternoon—there's another big event at the academy soon."