Lin Yan bent down and gently laid Leorio flat on a patch of dry grass outside the snake cave.
Gon and Kurapika gathered around, their faces taut with worry. Ponzu huddled off to one side, clutching her shoulders with both hands, her eyes vacant. Clearly, she had yet to fully recover from the nightmare they had just endured.
"Leorio... how is he?" Gon's voice trembled. His chest tightened as he stared at Leorio's blackened lips and the unnatural purple tinge to his face.
Kurapika crouched down and held a hand beneath Leorio's nose. His breathing was so faint it was almost imperceptible.
He lifted Leorio's eyelids to check his pupils, which were already beginning to lose focus.
"He's in very bad shape," Kurapika said in a low voice.
"The snake venom has already reached his heart, and..." He frowned, hovering his palm above Leorio's forehead. Though he could see nothing, a bone-chilling cold reached his fingertips, making him instinctively recoil. "This isn't just poison. There's something else... something that makes my skin crawl."
He remembered the "aura" Lin Yan had mentioned back in the Trick Tower.
Now he, too, could vaguely sense that the presence of life within Leorio was being ravenously devoured by another energy, black and full of deathly stillness.
Standing beside them, Lin Yan nodded, unsurprised.
"It's a lingering obsession," Lin Yan explained calmly, choosing a term they could understand. "After Babon, the snake handler, died, her intense resentment didn't fade. Instead, it attached itself to these venomous snakes. When Leorio was bitten, it wasn't just venom that entered his body, but also that resentment, bent on dragging someone else into the grave."
"Resentment?" Gon and Kurapika had never heard of such a supernatural concept, but the sight of Leorio's face contorted in pain made them believe