A Proper Student, I Only Eat Nine Potions Every Day

A Proper Student, I Only Eat Nine Potions Every Day

Author: Taoist Master Guigu

Synopsis:

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Evan transmigrated into a student who sold blood to test drugs, and obtained a talent panel.

[Power of the Nine Dragons: You can simultaneously reverse the side effects of nine drugs.]

Sage University: The latest sleeping pill, calling for students who can pull all-nighters.

You consumed [Unfinished Hibernation Potion]: Cognition impaired, unable to wake up for five days.

Reversed effect: You can enter dreams to study within five days.

Red King Laboratory: Experimental growth potion, side effects at your own risk.

You consumed [Stage Two D-Virus]: Muscle hyperplasia, blood coagulation.

Reversed effect: Constitution +0.3, increased physical ductility.

Healing Church: Seeking orphans with high drug resistance.

You consumed [???]: Skin ulceration, visceral melting, mental mutation.

Reversed effect: ??? Bloodline +2%, you feel an extra eye has grown.

Esoteric Order Cult Master: I am the Plague Apostle, my body carries 666 plagues, I will...

Evan swallowed him in one gulp: Go talk to the 1,000 potions in my stomach.

[You reversed the side effects of the 'Heart of Plague', you acquired the Status: Cancer of Immortality, you are undying and indestructible.]

Years later, when Evan accommodated all the toxicity and curses of this world and ascended to the divine throne, he heard the common folk chant his titles.

Great Father, Plague Lord, Sin Sage, Black Sun Savior, Master of Evil, Lord of Unity...

The first step of transcendence: Potions plus steroids.

Chapter 1: Disastrous Opening

"Why does life slumber?"

"Because tonight, I shall join the hunt..."

Evan mumbled instinctively in a daze.

He opened his eyes, his eyeballs aching with dryness, eye mucus gluing his eyelashes together, and it took a lot of effort to pull them apart.

The tongue of the kerosene lamp flame was reduced to a bean-sized speck of light, swaying feebly inside the glass chimney.

The dim yellow light barely illuminated the four walls, which were plastered with old newspapers.

Some corners had already curled up, revealing the moldy gray plaster underneath.

A fragment of the "Bolton Evening Post" hung crookedly above the head of the bed.

Only the bottom half of the front page headline remained: "...gas explosion..." The following words were swallowed by stains.

The gray old curtains were drawn tightly shut, and the starry mold spots on the fabric looked like some clumsy printed pattern.

A wisp of damp, cold November chill seeped through the cracks of the window frame.

The night outside was not quiet.

In the distance came the intermittent groans of homeless people and the barking of stray dogs.

Further away, a howl of gang members erupted from some alley, mixed with the crisp sound of shattering glass bottles, followed by a round of rough laughter.

"Where is this?"

As Evan tried to stand, a violent dizziness exploded from the back of his head.

He had to collapse back into the chair, his back emitting a dry creak as it hit the chair back.

He was very tired.

That kind of tiredness wasn't something a sleep could fix.

His bones were aching, his muscles were soft, and even his breathing carried a sense of barely maintained urgency, every rise and fall of his chest consuming his remaining strength.

"Even if I took off seven times a night, I wouldn't be this drained..."

Evan murmured hoarsely and lowered his head.

A pair of forearms, so thin that the contours of the ulna were visible, were exposed in the dim light of the kerosene lamp.

The skin was pale to the point of transparency, densely covered with dark red spots, some of which had merged into patches, their edges presenting an ominous copper-red hue.

There were also a few needle holes in the bend of the elbows, with the surrounding skin bruised.

Memories rushed in like a tide.

"Shit! Transmigrated straight into secondary syphilis?"

This is a parallel world similar to the era before the First World War.

The year is 1910 of the New Calendar.

The United States of the New Continent has taken root on this land for over a century, currently in a dazzling period of ascent.

Every few days, the newspapers publish news of some new invention.

Electricity, internal combustion engines, automobiles, wireless telegraphy—new things are sprouting from the mud like mushrooms after rain.

The prelude to the tail end of western expansion has already sounded.

Steam and electricity intersect above the rooftops of the factories.

Science and ignorance remain inextricably intertwined on both sides of the same street.

Steel mills, textile mills, and canning factories spread out at an astonishing speed; capital, like a starving giant beast, swallows coal and human blood and spits out gold.

The New Continent teems with vibrant vitality, all things competing for growth.

Meanwhile, the various countries of the Old Continent harbor a pent-up, malignant fury, baring their teeth at one another while waiting for some fuse to be lit.

Iwen Ludwig Arkham is nineteen years old this year and a student.

Thirty years ago, his grandparents' generation moved the entire family from that folk-custom-abiding Arkham Town in Essex County to Bolton City.

As for why they left, his family never mentioned it, and Iwen never got the chance to ask.

Relying on the meager survivor's pension left behind after his grandparents died in the line of duty, his parents bought this cheap apartment in the southern part of the city.

It has two and a half rooms with peeling wallpaper, no electricity, and water pipes that easily freeze and crack in the winter.

Yet it at least has a door that can be locked and a private washroom of their own.

This spared them from having to cram into the same tenement building in the Dock District with the Irish immigrants who spoke no English and were prone to throwing punches at the drop of a hat.

Dozens of people shared a single toilet, and the hallway was forever reeking of boiled cabbage and cheap gin.

Six months ago, everything changed.

His parents suddenly committed suicide on their way home after working overtime.

There was no suicide note, no warning signs, and no reasonable explanation.

The police called it "impulsive behavior caused by a mental breakdown," and after the case file was archived, no one ever inquired further.

Iwen went to the Police Department twice to ask about it; the second time, the officer on duty didn't even raise his head, merely tapping the desktop with a pencil.

"Kid, go on home, and don't bring trouble upon yourself."

A life that had previously been just barely manageable collapsed overnight.

His meager savings were only enough to last Iwen half a year.

He lived every day meticulously calculating expenses; breakfast consisted of a two-cent cup of black coffee and hard bread left over from the day before.

Lunch was frequently skipped, and dinner was a five-cent bowl of mixed bean soup—if he was lucky, he could occasionally fish a small piece of fatty meat out of the broth.

Two months ago, backed by a sufficiently stellar report card, Iwen tested into Bolton City's renowned private institute of higher learning, Sage University.

He fulfilled his parents' dying wish.

Yet the tuition fee alone was a full one hundred and twenty dollars per semester!

One hundred and twenty dollars.

That is the wages of a skilled worker with a university diploma working hard without food or drink for two full months.

Consequently, Iwen sold his blood for the first time in his life.

Two hundred milliliters in exchange for two dollars.

The blood-drawing location was a small clinic near the Dock District hanging a sign that read "Medical Research Institute."

The lime powder on the walls was flaking off in powdery drops, the rubber tubes had turned yellow and stiff, and black dirt was wedged underneath the nurse's fingernails.

He lay on a narrow bed spread with oilcloth, watching his own blood flow through the tube into a brown glass bottle, silently calculating in his heart how many days of mixed bean soup those two dollars would buy.

The money was still not enough.

Through the introduction of a friend, Iwen took on two drug-testing jobs.

The rules were simple: take the medicine on time every day for seven consecutive days, record his bodily reactions, and collect ten dollars after the seven days.

No one told him what he was taking; the contract merely read "clinical observation of nutritional supplements," written using Latin abbreviations he could barely understand.

Ten dollars.

That figure made Iwen's heart skip a beat.

A dock loader working himself to exhaustion for an entire week would only earn about that much.

Afterward, through the student affairs office of Sage University, he signed a financial aid agreement for impoverished students.

The clauses were written densely, but the core content was singular: cooperate with the experimental projects of a designated professor at Sage University, and his annual tuition would be reduced from one hundred and twenty dollars to forty dollars.

Forty dollars.

He gritted his teeth and managed to scrape together the tuition for the first semester.

And so, Evan finally stepped through the gates of the academic institution he had dreamed of, becoming a fresh student in the chemistry department.

His plan was clear: study chemistry as an undergraduate to build a foundation, then apply to Medical School.

By the day of his graduation, he would pull on a clean white coat and open a clinic in some respectable neighborhood.

At the entrance would hang a brass plaque engraved with "Dr. Evan L. Arkham, M.D."

"And what was the price?" Evan let out a bitter laugh, his lips dry and cracked, the smile pulling painfully at the corners of his mouth.

Frequent blood-selling had left his body as frail as a repeatedly used filter paper.

The unclean needles in that filthy clinic had saddled him with syphilis.

All sorts of trial drugs of dubious origin had churned his internal organs into a paste.

Dizzy and nauseated every day with zero appetite, his limbs were so limp that even unscrewing a bottle cap made him pant for ages.

Three days ago during physical education class, Evan had tripped while running, tearing open his shirt cuff.

The shocking red blotches on his forearm had been exposed to everyone's view.

The sports field had grown quiet for about two seconds.

Then came the whispered murmurs, followed by thinly veiled sneers, and then someone shouted something out loud, triggering a burst of uproarious laughter.

Evan hadn't caught the exact content of that sentence, but he had seen the expression on every single face.

That was an expression he knew very well, the kind people wore when they spotted a rat in the sewer.

He had returned to his apartment, sat in this chair, and the more he thought the angrier he grew, the angrier he grew the colder he felt, and then some string inside him that had been stretched too tight simply snapped.

The previous tenant had just checked out like that.

What a disastrous start.