After their near-crash experience, the Scholars' Association never regained its former calm, teetering on the brink of Waterloo every day.
The warship pilots watched in terror. If piloting a Scholars' Association warship had once been a reassuring job to take pride in, then now...
The job had mutated.
The once-kindly academics, brimming with scholarly air, had become frenzied and terrifying under the influence of a virus named Ye Buyu.
They were either setting off explosions in the laboratories or flying kites in the sky. No one rolled around on the floor shouting about cucumbers anymore, but a new batch of scholars had taken to squatting on the floor, drawing circles and growing mushrooms.
Every last one was gloomy as hell.
"I have sinned. I'm sorry for being born human."
"I'm not even as good as an amoeba..."
Even more bizarrely, offerings began piling up outside Ye Buyu's door.
A group of disheveled people clutching data would bow reverently three times outside her door while she slept, leave behind inexplicable objects, and depart.
The next day, when Ye Buyu woke up and stepped outside, the first thing she did was pick up the objects on the floor. She tinkered with whatever she could, set aside whatever she couldn't, then strode off nonchalantly.
The members of the warship's bridge crew watched it all and whispered among themselves.
"Don't you think Ye Buyu is terrifying? A few casual strokes from her, and these scholars forget to eat and sleep. The whole warship has lost its former peace and gone completely nuts."
Someone else gave a bitter smile.
"Don't you think these scholars are terrifying, too? They fly around in the sky clutching data all day, roll around on the floor, and throw out a bomb now and then. Anyone who didn't know better