A genius's guide

Chen Yu woke Reiko up.

Reiko woke groggily and saw Chen Yu's grim expression. Her heart jolted...

"I... idol... what happened?" Reiko asked haltingly.

"Look at what you're holding." Chen Yu pointed at it.

"This is..." Reiko peered down, but it was too dark to see clearly. Then she felt it with her hands. Apart from one soggy patch, the rest felt a little like...

"Aah!!!" (ﾉ ○ Д ○)ﾉ

Reiko went pale with fright and stammered at Chen Yu, "I... I'm going to die~~"

"You'd better pray you're all right. Judging by its shape, it's no different from before I gave it to you, except for a few tooth marks. Haah..." Chen Yu sighed as he spoke.

Reiko fell quiet too.

"What are you still doing here? Aren't you going to deal with it? You're such a handful!" Seeing Reiko still standing there blankly, Chen Yu shouted at her.

Reiko practically leaped into the air in fright, then ran outside to deal with the remaining toxins.

"Aren't you going to help her?" Tsukasa asked, puzzled.

"Of course I am. I'll prepare the medicine first, then give her an acupuncture treatment." Chen Yu walked over to the medicine shelves and began preparing the medicine, then took out a bone needle.

"When are you going to find me a few blacksmiths to make some silver needles?" Chen Yu stared at Tsukasa with dead-fish eyes.

"R-right away..." Tsukasa awkwardly turned his head aside.

"Anyway, I'm not worrying about anything else. Whatever comes up can wait until tomorrow. Go back and get some rest." Chen Yu waved him off and continued his work.

Even as a genius doctor who had studied medicine for so many years, he had only barely memorized over ten thousand Chinese medicinal herbs. Why barely? Because he had not had much time to work with them, so his impressions remained shallow.

Only through repeated exposure would those impressions deepen and the memories become firmly rooted.

When he had prepared medicine for Senku before, he had also discussed Chinese herbal medicine with him. But Senku had only heard of most of it. If he truly tried to memorize the knowledge of over ten thousand medicinal ingredients, their preparation methods, and their compatibility in prescriptions, his research would have to stop. That was something he was unwilling to do.

Senku and Chen Yu had studied things together as children. Senku had even wanted to test medicine on him, but Chen Yu discovered conflicts between the medicinal properties, which made Senku more cautious too.

Chen Yu had also blown up the laboratory a few times, but he had escaped unscathed every time.

That had made Senku look at Chen Yu with extreme hostility.

Later, Senku and Chen Yu gradually got used to working together. They could essentially tell what the other would do next with a single glance.

The reason they had failed to catch each other's eye this time was probably that Chen Yu had just been revived and was busy looking around at the world thirty-seven hundred years later.

Back on this side, Reiko returned after dealing with the problem and drank a bowl of Chen Yu's herbal decoction. He then treated her with a few more needles, and she drifted groggily off to sleep.

Once it was over, Chen Yu went to sleep too.

Meanwhile, Senku was still talking about his past...

"Really? Chen Yu was that amazing before?" Suika asked curiously.

"Yeah. That guy's brain worked incredibly well, like a human computer. He also had excellent control over the strength in his hands. I asked him about it, and he said he'd practiced specifically so he wouldn't need a scale when measuring out herbs. Eventually, he could tell exactly how many grams he'd picked up with one light grab, without the slightest error," Senku said confidently.

"A human calculator?" Kohaku asked, puzzled.

"Yeah. Ask him a few questions, and as long as he'd studied the subject, he could answer within a second. He had plenty of ideas too. Back then, I think he developed an extremely deadly poison. Just a tiny bit could kill someone. In the end, he said it was too dangerous and he didn't want it released into the world, so he disposed of it. After all these years, it should have disappeared by now, right?" As Senku spoke, he remembered how Chen Yu had toyed with the poison in his hands after developing it, scaring him half to death.

"An extremely deadly poison..." Hearing that, Ruri sank into her memories.

"Come to think of it, there's a Forbidden Zone here. Nothing lives there. When people first found it, they were frightened by the terrible scene and chose not to settle there," Ruri said after thinking it over.

"The Forbidden Zone? Ah... now that you mention it, I think there was something like that. But we only move around nearby these days, so we don't know whether the stories about it are true. Some people wanted to go, but the village elders did everything they could to stop them. Later, I learned that the elders had gone through the same thing, with their own elders warning them against it. Afterward, they avoided mentioning it whenever possible, until no one knew about the Forbidden Zone anymore."

Kohaku thought back. She seemed to have overheard something about it by accident before, and she had wanted to go too, but her father had stopped her. When he could not win her over afterward, he had frightened her into abandoning the idea. By the time she learned more, she had grown up and no longer planned to go. After all, Ruri was ill.

"You'd better stay away. Nobody knows how he disposed of it. If that's what happened there, that stuff was most likely responsible. Still, I never imagined it would remain effective after all these years." Senku waved a hand as he advised them.

"Senku, you spent so much time with Chen Yu, and even you don't know?" Chrome asked curiously.

"He said it was enough for him alone to know. The more people knew, the more dangerous that stuff would be. I don't know how he developed it either." Senku shook his head helplessly.

"Senku, you could make medicine to cure Ruri's illness, but you still don't know how Chen Yu did it?" Chrome asked.

"The two of us each specialized in a different field, more or less. I focused on scientific research, while he focused on Chinese herbal medicine. We both dabbled in the other's field, but neither could surpass the other. Naturally, I stuck to what I did best. When it came to medicine, I left it to him," Senku said, spreading his hands.

"Why was that? Didn't you say Chen Yu was really amazing too?" Suika raised her hand and asked.

"He said no one was taking an interest in the things from his homeland, so he would become the one to lead the way. And then he did it." Having said that, Senku recalled the time Chen Yu had invited him to one of his lectures.

Chen Yu had stood up there under thousands of eyes, drawing attention from countries around the world. He had made everyone remember him. Even those who had not heard of him later would find results such as "How can the latest pharmacology help us?" and "How do the hidden medicinal properties of well-known Chinese herbs such as ginseng benefit the human body?" whenever they searched for related questions. Most of the results were his books and his answers to relevant questions.

His achievements made every public statement he gave attract tremendous attention. When he discovered new Chinese medicinal herbs, it caused a major sensation. His discovery of toxicity in certain herbs also sent the prices of those herbs plummeting.

He had successfully become a guide.

"Then, with both Senku and Chen Yu on our side, we'll win in the end, right?" Kohaku asked excitedly.

Senku looked at everyone, thought of Chen Yu and Gen, and nodded. "We will."

(This is my own setting. If Senku really could memorize the medicinal properties and appearances of over ten thousand herbs, then he'd be seriously awesome. After all, you're familiar with wheat, right? I found that wheat tips are also used in Chinese herbal medicine. I don't know whether that's true, but I think I found it in a book on Chinese herbal medicine.

If you really want to make Senku that amazing, then it should be fine for me to add some traditional crafts from my homeland, right?

The strongest combat duo? The smartest duo? A logistics Medical Team? The strongest crafting trio?

Hmm? Are we still going on about this? If you say he knows a little, that's fine. But if you say Senku's characterization falls apart just because he doesn't know about a medicine the protagonist makes, I haven't seen any scenes where Senku seems to use Chinese herbal medicine. I've only watched as far as the chase in America.)

(The stats are picking back up. I'll see how things look tomorrow before deciding whether to post extra updates. Still, it's pretty amazing. Yesterday, I'd just said the weather would be bad today and that it would snow, and this time it actually did. Hehe.)