The Price

"There's actually..."

"There's really this much!"

Mo stood on the ground, both hands braced on his cane.

But he was so excited that his hands trembled, making the cane vibrate along with them. Like a drill, it bored a full five centimeters into the ground, and Mo leaned forward with it, tilting farther and farther.

"This quantity!"

"There really are over ten thousand pieces...!"

"This will be my biggest transaction in nearly three years. Even within the entire family, it'll be nothing to sneeze at!"

"I'll make a name for myself across the interstellar trading market all over again!"

Mo's superior genes had been working to keep his speech under control.

But his pupils kept trembling.

Next, he tried hard to regain his professionalism as a merchant, continually counting the high-entropy alloy.

Mo found it harder and harder to believe.

How could so much high-entropy alloy turn up on Garbage Earth?

And how had it all ended up in Cheng Qi's hands?

This was simply too outrageous!

Despite his many doubts, Mo held to his business principles and asked no questions.

"I'll find a safe way to transport these alloys very soon."

"Once they're shipped out, I'll calculate the price. Don't worry, I deal fairly with everyone. You'll get the standard market price."

"Until then, I need to leave the alloys in your care."

"We're friends by now, after all."

Suppressing his excitement, Mo's eyes flickered. "I'll give you a credit line of five hundred million Credit Points up front. Do you want cash, or would you rather exchange it for goods?"

The alloys' total sale price far exceeded five hundred million, but Mo was certainly being generous.

For now, he had no intention of taking the alloys away, and the transaction had yet to be completed. Yet he was still willing to provide a credit line of five hundred million. In his view, if Cheng Qi had some pressing need, that amount should suffice.

Then Mo heard a familiar request.

Although he found it hard to believe, Cheng Qi still said those words.

-"Failed batches of Black-Market Gene Serum. I don't care about quality, only quantity. I'll take every last one you have!"

Mo could no longer hide his surprise. "What exactly do you want so much serum for? What happened to the serum from before?"

But a moment later.

Mo supplied an answer himself, frowning. "Have you mastered some kind of serum-refining technology?"

Cheng Qi played along, putting on a mysterious air. "Don't tell anyone."

Mo stepped back, looking somewhat dazed.

Then he took two steps forward and stared into Cheng Qi's pupils, which were utterly black.

"Refining Genetic Serum is one of the hardest technologies in the world. I hope you succeed."

Mo shook his head. Human genetic modification might not be the hardest technology, but it was certainly the most complicated.

An amateur refining Genetic Serum was basically the equivalent of an old-era welder building an atomic bomb by hand. Putting it into practice was harder than reaching the heavens, and the chances of success were vanishingly small. Since Cheng Qi had chosen this path, Mo could only describe him with one word: "brave."

Cheng Qi was also studying Mo's pupils. Only by straining his vision to its utmost could he detect the almost imperceptible golden specks drifting deep within them.

The Standard Template Construct's annotation had been explicit: golden specks would gradually appear in the pupils of those poisoned, and they would progressively develop an aversion to light.

Cheng Qi looked Mo over. "Have you been feeling unwell lately, Boss Mo? You can't even put your cane down anymore."

"I've visited a few unusual environments recently. Maybe I caught some kind of virus."

Mo merely shook his head casually. "My family keeps one of the Solar System's foremost physicians on retainer. He'll resolve these little problems soon enough."

Cheng Qi pursed his lips and nodded. "Boss Mo, have you been fond of staying in dark places lately?"

Mo froze and thought it over. He really had been disliking bright light lately.

Even in his Starship's cockpit, he instinctively chose the dimmest lighting. And every night, he felt inexplicably comfortable.

Mo lifted his head. "How did you know?"

Cheng Qi smiled. "With your family's wealth, Boss Mo, you must have a mansion. But whether on the butler's initiative or someone else's orders, the lighting inside has been very dim lately, hasn't it?"

Mo frowned again, thinking back for a moment. "How did you know?"

Cheng Qi continued, "Have the other members of your family also been feeling a little unwell lately? A slight physical weakness, but nothing too obvious?"

Mo frowned. "My family is huge. My father is the second son, and I'm his fourth son. To be honest, my father's branch has always been somewhat marginalized, and I've been sidelined too. So I don't really know how the others are doing."

"But..."

Mo drew a small breath. "My father really has been feeling unwell lately, and the physician who treats our whole family has been very busy."

"Don't count on your physician."

Cheng Qi sighed. "He won't have any concrete advice. He'll probably give you vague reassurances to try to comfort you. The guy likely already knows the truth, but he can't do anything about it. He might even be getting ready to run."

Mo's eyes widened. "Why?"

"Because..."

Cheng Qi looked Mo straight in the eye. "Your entire family has been poisoned with a kind of cellular fluid toxin. And this toxin isn't something human civilization's current medicine can overcome. It can't even make a dent in it."

Cheng Qi paused, then added, "Progressive physical weakness, aversion to light, golden specks appearing in the pupils-those are all symptoms of the poisoning."

"What...?!"

Mo stiffened and swayed, barely managing to stay upright with his cane. "How do you know all this?!"

Cheng Qi said slowly, "This toxin comes from the High-Energy Protein Extract supplied exclusively to your Mo Family."

Mo froze completely, a trace of terror appearing in his eyes.

Then he slowly turned to look at Cheng Qi, his expression growing increasingly shocked.

Was all this true?

Had he discovered a clue in that bottle of drink?

But if it was beyond the limits of human medicine, how had he detected it?

Mo's heart was beating faster and faster. One shock after another left him feeling as though his heart could barely take it.

"You said your father was marginalized, and you were sidelined?"

Cheng Qi raised an eyebrow. "You're damn lucky you met me. This time, I'll help you pull off the whole worthless-young-master comeback: show off, put everyone in their place, smirk so hard your mouth turns into a Nike swoosh, and save the entire family."

Mo said blankly, "I'm not worthless. I'm just a little overlooked. That's hardly enough to make my mouth twist into a Nike swoosh."

"Fine, fine."

Cheng Qi waved a hand, then took out a glass test tube.

Inside it was a single drop of blood that held together without dispersing, like a ruby.

Mo looked at the drop of blood and saw countless tiny crystalline structures glittering within it, mysterious and beautiful.

"This is no ordinary substance."

Mo could barely suppress his professional instincts. He quickly pulled a miniature golden balance from his pocket and began a scan.

Blood from a semi-silicon-based lifeform, packed with gene-completion crystals. In theory, it can repair all defective genes.

No prior transactions on record. Value incalculable.

Mo's eyes went wide. "Where did you get something like this?!"

"Pay a little more attention to your own family."

"Go back and give your family physician a thorough grilling. Make him tell you the truth."

Cheng Qi tilted his head. "Of course, that supposedly foremost physician of yours might also be one of the people behind this."

"As for that cellular fluid toxin..."

"Across the entire Solar System, this drop of blood is probably the only thing that can neutralize it."

"I've already confirmed that this blood is highly concentrated. Even diluted ten thousandfold, it'll retain its effect."

As Cheng Qi spoke, he looked up at Mo and held out the test tube, slowly saying one word. "Here."

"You're... giving it to me?"

Mo's eyes widened to an almost absurd degree. "What's the price?"

Cheng Qi only smiled without speaking, extending the test tube a little farther.

Mo accepted the test tube and gazed at the drop of bright red blood inside. His lips trembled, his expression kept shifting, and he found himself unable to speak.

Cheng Qi shrugged. "I narrowly escaped death and went through all kinds of hardships to find this drop of blood, all to save someone's entire family. Yet that someone suspected me of pocketing his shipping crate... Tsk, tsk. Boss Mo, tell me, doesn't that make him a wolf-hearted, pig-lunged ingrate?"

Mo looked a little dazed. "Don't you mean wolf-hearted and dog-lunged?"

Cheng Qi stared straight at him. "Right. A dog."

"Hiss..."

The corners of Mo's eyes twitched, and he took a small step back.