After gathering the Psionic Power crystals, Zion's agents began examining the guides' bodies.
Why had perfectly normal people suddenly gone mad?
People went mad all the time. A few more hardly mattered. But why could these people still chant incantations after losing their minds?
Plenty of fools worshipped Evil Gods and knew how to chant. But when other people chanted, it was mere self-hypnosis. How could these guides chant and bring the dead back to life?
There were many more questions like those—too many to fit on a single sheet of paper.
Anshir, who knew biology, stayed behind to care for the wounded and study the bodies. Electricity Snake and Du Ling set out again to search the long-abandoned city for a supposed "method of treating Psionic Infection."
But the city was enormous. After a full day, they had searched less than a fifth of it.
Searching the whole city would take at least another five days.
That was within Zion's original plan. They had brought enough food and water to feed twenty people for ten days. With only seven left, they could stretch it to a month if they were careful.
A month should be more than enough.
The days that followed were fairly quiet. Some tended their wounds, some searched, and some conducted research. Everyone had their own work.
Pan Long needed no time to recover, had no idea what to search for, and knew nothing about biology or Psionic Power medicine. So he devoted himself to cultivation.
Each morning, he got up, ate breakfast, then found an open patch of ground where he could lie in the sun and practice the Nine-Turn Mysterious Art, refining the Earthly Baleful Force within him.
Apart from eating and sleeping, he spent nearly all his time cultivating.
Big Horn, who was