Chapter 449: Mysterious Drug
The short battle resulted in flesh being cut and blood being spilt. All of it was displayed at the same time on the dozens of surveillance monitors.
The pathfinders who took in the Deification Capsules displayed fighting strength greater than that of normal people. Their speed and strength had already reached the standards of superhumans. Even if their bodies were torn up and covered in blood, they could not sense even a single bit of pain. Instead, they became even crazier.
Meng Chao even saw a pathfinder punching a b.l.o.o.d.y Moon Wolf King’s eye socket through a monitor. The clear palm print actually started burning, and in an instant, the b.l.o.o.d.y Moon Wolf King’s brain was burnt to ashes.
“Was that... a supernatural ability?”
Meng Chao rewinded the video to look at it again just to verify that the pathfinder had indeed created a spirit energy magnetic field to make his spirit energy resonate and deal damage.
Did that mean that the Deification Capsule allowed normal people to gain superhuman strength?
With the help from the Deification Capsule, the pathfinders soon chased the monsters out of the developing land.
The more the humans fought, the more courageous and frenzied they became. They gave off the feeling of great power and being able to take down everything in their path.
However, as the drug flowed through their bodies and squeezed out the potential residing in the deepest parts of their cells, it slowly took away their rationality as well. Soon, there was nothing left.
In the beginning, even the pathfinders with deformed appearances could speak normally. They could also use all sorts of weapons with great familiarity.
But soon, they seemed to no longer be content with using bullets to shoot the monsters’ eyeb.a.l.l.s. They tossed away their guns and pounced on the monsters to start biting them. They ripped apart the monsters’ throats and drank their blood to activate their ancient instincts.
Slowly, they lost their ability of speech, and the light of rationality could no longer be seen in their eyes. They became exactly the same as the monsters that they were fighting.
Perhaps some people noticed that something was off.
But while they were surrounded by monsters, they did not have the time to stop and evaluate their own mental state.
They could only pounce on the monsters time and again or be stuck down by them, bite into them or be bitten, eat them or be eaten!
Everyone went mad. Slowly, most of the people lost their minds.
Some people laughed in a maniacal way that sounded like they were psychiatric patients. Some people’s brains had clearly been torn apart by monsters, but they still continued to throw punches, like they were machines. It was all so that they could reduce the monster’s brains into pulp as well.
Other people dug out the monsters’ warm hearts after they ripped the monsters into two and started wolfing them down. Once they were done, they licked their bloodstained mouths with satisfied expressions.
The girl who had brought out the Deification Capsule was finally able to pick up her capsule from the corner.
But before she could take the pill, she saw the astonishing changes inside and outside the developing land.
The pathfinders’ crazed behavior seemed to have terrified her, and she hesitated, wondering whether she should take the drug.
At that moment, the two-star superhuman who took three Deification Capsules let out an inhuman scream and jumped out of the developing land to begin a new round of slaughter.
This was no longer a battle, but one-sided slaughter.
The other pathfinders also acted like demons under his lead. They got immersed in the pleasure of killing and could not snap themselves out of it.
Just when they had killed almost all of the monsters, something shocking happened again.
Many of the pathfinders were still killing when they suddenly grunted and fell to the ground like puppets with their strings cut.
They started foaming at their mouths, and their limbs twitched violently. Their skin turned as red as steamed prawns. Wisps of white smoke gushed out of their pores. Even sparks came out of some people’s eye sockets and nostrils.
In just a short half a minute, quite a number of people’s bodily fluids completely evaporated and they turned into terrifying dried corpses.
Some people retained undamaged appearances, but their organs and even brains were completely burnt, which left only an empty husk behind.
Others cradled their hearts before they bled to death from their orifices.
The girl, who was the only one who did not take the capsule, widened her eyes when she saw this through the monitors. She screamed and threw the Deification Capsule in her hands far away, as if she was throwing away the eyeball of a viper.
That was the end of the surveillance footage.
It was enough for Meng Chao, Manager Jiang, and the other superhumans to understand the situation.
“Looks like the Deification Capsule is a very powerful but forbidden drug!”
Meng Chao gently opened the metal tube that they had found in the girl’s hand.
He twisted the lid open with light movement, and with a loud shick, cold wisps of steam spilled out. Meng Chao brought out a metal rack from the white steam; there were nine green capsules on it.
He picked one capsule and pushed down a little with his fingertips to test the material of the capsule.
Then, he put it under his nose to take a sniff, but he did not smell any unique scent.
He looked at the capsule closely. It seemed to be filled with a viscous, oil-based liquid. It contained a bewitching light that was scattered all over the capsule.
Meng Chao had never seen a forbidden drug like this.
Speaking of which, the problem with forbidden drugs was the same as the problem with unlicensed pathfinding. Both of them were in the gray area of law and morals.
Logically speaking, all of the gene medicine in Dragon City had to be evaluated by the drug supervision department under the Supernatural Tower before it could enter the market.
The companies developing gene medicine also had to possess the relevant qualifications.
Without a permit, they were illegal workshops that could not be seen in public.
But spirit energy, superhumans, and supernatural abilities were all new ent.i.ties. Even Battle G.o.d Lei Zongchao could not provide an answer as to how they were supposed to bring out the greatest cultivation potential within the human body.
When they faced the threats from zombies, monsters, lost people, the undead, and the even more terrifying Other World extraordinary beings, even if some gene medicine possessed great side effects and caused major complications, as long as it could bring out their potential and increase their strength, countless people would be willing to become lab rats to test them.
“If we die, it’s a stimulant. If we don’t, it’s high-tech.” This was the stance of most Dragon Citizens toward gene medicine.
For example, when Meng Chao and Gu Jianbo researched the Ultimate Style, they had also developed all sorts of gene medicine. Among them, 90% had great side effects and major complications. Only a monster like Meng Chao, who could use contribution points in exchange for healing, could live through their inhuman experiments.
If they insisted on doing everything according to the law and brought all of the gene medicine to the Supernatural Tower to be approved, only to discover that they could not because of side effects, the Ultimate Style would not have developed even after ten years.
Every drug could be poison. This was something Dragon Citizens were aware of since a long time ago.
At the end of the day, Dragon Citizens’ views on life and death were vastly different from decades ago, when they were still Earthlings living in a peaceful world.
Seeking power above their limits and taking risks that could potentially bring death was not something that they could not accept.
Hence, the development and creation of unapproved medicine was something that wouldn’t be investigated until someone reported it, but it was only as long as there were no major complications.
And aside from the national college examination, which placed an emphasis on creating an absolutely fair environment, no one would be so bored as to go and report gene medicine that had not been approved.
On the contrary, everyone hoped that they or their friends could get some useful gene medicine to make a gamble in a life and death situation.
This was especially the case among normal pathfinders who were audacious and ran into the wild to test their luck. They usually brought some gene medicine they bought from the black market or deep web. It was not branded, not produced by factories, and did not have usage instructions. Such medicine was commonly known as the Three Missing Criteria Products.
But it had to be said that even though many of these Three Missing Criteria Products had a lot of problems, when it came to bringing out potential and launching desperate counterattacks, they really had outstanding effects.
After quite a lot of illegal workshops that created Three Missing Criteria Products were reported and raided, their skills were bought by mega corporations. After repeated tests, they reduced the side effects and complications, which would turn them into legal gene medicine.
Meng Chao did not have the habit of poking his nose into something that was not his business when it came to the gene medicine waiting for approval in the market.
But the Deification Capsule was just too bizarre.
First, its activation of the potential in human bodies was terrifying. It actually managed to make normal people gain the power of superhumans in just a short few minutes and allowed one-star and two-star superhumans to gain the possibility of reaching the peak of Earth Realm.
If this technology was popularised, it was highly possible that in a few decades it would change the cultivation system completely. It might even change Dragon City’s civilization.
Second, at the same time it stimulated people’s potential, it also seemed to destroy human rationality and drag people into the pits of insanity.
Third, and most importantly, the price that had to be paid for obtaining supernatural abilities through the Deification Capsule was too great. Dozens of the people who took it died after a short while, and the survivors’ flesh and blood were drained. Their foundations were also badly damaged.
In other words, the Deification Capsule seemed to be able to instantly bring out all of the potential in a human’s body. It turned people into a brilliant firework that would release its full radiance in just a few seconds. Then, they would die and turn to ashes.
Meng Chao did not want to judge whether it was right for pathfinders to take Deification Capsules.
After all, if they did not take them, they would have all died, and their developments to the land would have been leveled.
Now, even though the process was b.l.o.o.d.y and the results tragic, at the very least, there were five survivors and they had killed a number of monsters several times their own number. They had managed to protect their land in the depths of the wild.
But the terrifying forbidden drug could be used to protect their civilization and home as well as damage and destroy it. And based on how twisted the pathfinders became after they took the drug, the possibility of the latter happening was greater.
He had to find the source of the Deification Capsule.
He also wanted to see just who managed to develop such an incredibly dangerous gene medicine.
Meng Chao, Manager Jiang, and the others gathered the pathfinders’ corpses together, cleared up the developing land, repaired some of the automatic multi-turreted cannons and communications systems, then brought the survivors and the corpses back to the forward operating base.
On their way back, Meng Chao, Manager Jiang, and the others discussed this matter and discovered that none of them had ever seen or heard of the Deification Capsule before.
There was a small lab that had everything in Soaring Dragon Construction’s forward operating base.
Before the reinforcements arrived, they sent one Deification Capsule and the samples they gathered from some of the corpses to the lab for examination.
The results of the examination shocked Meng Chao.
According to the report, components similar to Blood Flower spores were found in the Deification Capsule.