"Hello, my name is... Yu Manman."
"Yu Manman..." Ed King looked at the girl in front of him, his lips slightly pursed. "Do you know Lai?"
"He’s my fourth dad." Yu Manman understood immediately.
The man in front of her was the senior that the fourth dad had mentioned.
Ed nodded, "I heard that you discovered a toxin, a toxin that can turn the Original Species into the Fallen Species?"
"Yes." Yu Manman nodded.
"Show me the test report," Ed said.
"Here you go!" Yu Manman immediately handed over the test data she had just compiled.
Ed glanced at it and said, "Did Lai teach you medicine?"
Yu Manman nodded, "Yes, my fourth dad taught me!"
Ed gave her a serious look, "Not bad!"
Such a talented girl, and she belongs to Lai’s family, truly...
If only this girl were from my own family, how wonderful it would be?
"So did you study medicine at the school in Zone 19?" If he could steal her away as his student, that would be ideal.
If he could teach Lai’s daughter and become Yu Manman’s mentor, then he could consider himself as having bested Lai, right?
Yu Manman shook her head, "I didn’t study medicine at Jiuzhou University."
Ed’s expression cracked slightly, "You didn’t study medicine?"
Such a promising talent not studying medicine?
Was Lai out of his mind? Just letting her decide as she likes?
Ed really wanted to pound his chest and question Lai thoroughly.
"That’s right, but I do research in medicine in my spare time."
Listening to Yu Manman’s words, Ed’s expression finally eased a bit.
Thank goodness...
"If you encounter any issues in the future, feel free to come to me."
"I know!" Yu Manman said crisply, "My fourth dad told me the same thing. He said if there’s anything I don’t understand, I should visit you!"
Ed snorted, "After all these years, I thought he’d forgotten about me!"
If he hadn’t forgotten me, then why hasn’t he reached out all these years? Does he not even consider me a friend?
Ed gritted his teeth silently and shifted his attention back to the test report. The further he read, the graver Ed’s expression became...
This toxin is not simple.
"Manman, I heard you encountered this toxin, and you’re the one who recognized the peculiarities of that Fallen Species?"
"Yes!" Yu Manman recounted the conversation she had with Ackman to Ed.
When Ed heard that Lai had been affected by this toxin for years, his expression changed once more!
"You mean Lai has been poisoned for over a decade? And now it’s mutated?" Ed’s expression was extremely serious, unable to imagine all that Lai had gone through!
Yu Manman pursed her lips, "My fourth dad has been researching on his own for years, but he hasn’t resolved the poison in his body."
"Researching solo?" Ed said coldly, "Does he think he’s a genius and doesn’t need anyone’s help?"
How capable of him!
"Not exactly... My fourth dad probably just doesn’t want others involved, or to implicate anyone else," Yu Manman explained. "After being poisoned, he sometimes loses control and likely doesn’t want to accidentally hurt anyone."
"Loses control?" Ed was so angered that he stomped his foot, "In such a state, stubbornly holding on, truly characteristic of him!"
Still worried about implicating others, huh? Fine! In his eyes, does he not count as a friend? Isn’t he just the so-called ’others’?
Yu Manman looked at Professor Ed, sensing that he was indeed very concerned about her fourth dad.
Ed calmed himself, "I’ll definitely take care of this."
"Manman, give me your fourth dad’s contact information later!"
Damn that cold and unfeeling Lai. Though they occasionally sparred back in the day, they were quite familiar, yet he didn’t even leave his contact information! What, now I have to reach out proactively?
"Now let’s talk about that toxin!" Ed said, "This toxin is not simple. It’s the first time I’ve encountered such a bizarre toxin. We must find the root cause! If this toxin spreads, it will undoubtedly cause great panic!"
Yu Manman nodded, "The toxin should have been destroyed in that fire. We weren’t sure if there were any remaining, but judging by the current situation, someone surely knows the Burles family was researching this stuff."
"I think it’s worth asking my fourth dad. He surely knows quite a lot, might even know some clues?" Yu Manman only knew so much, plus it happened so many years ago.
"We’ll be in contact with your dad about that." They nodded.
Then they turned to Ed, "Professor Ed, do you have any leads now? Do you have confidence in neutralizing this toxin?"
"Well... I’m not confident yet, further research is required," Ed replied after some thought.
"Um..." Yu Manman raised her hand, speaking slowly, "This toxin is quite similar to the one my fourth dad was affected by many years ago. He has an antidote, which might help in researching an antidote for this toxin."
The toxin Lai was affected by years ago and the one found in the blood of the current Fallen Species are very similar, so the antidote should be almost the same.
"However, don’t get your hopes up too high. Once affected by this toxin, if the antidote isn’t pre-injected or taken within ten minutes of exposure, both Original Species and Beastmen will enter a deranged state, similar to the Fallen Species..."
Once turned into a Fallen Species, there’s no chance of recovery.
Even if the toxin is neutralized, the damage it does to the body is irreversible.
Ed frowned, "Then... how long is the antidote effective after injection?"
"It’s roughly three years, but it’s not completely effective; individuals with weaker constitutions still have a risk of infection."
This toxin can be considered a kind of virus.
Even after the antidote is injected and the body forms antibodies, it doesn’t guarantee full immunity. If infected with this type of toxin, there’s a certain probability the antibodies will fail.
And because the toxin in Lai’s body mutates in short cycles, it undergoes certain variations periodically, making it difficult to find a pattern, so developing an antidote is extremely challenging. Typically, the research pace lags behind the mutation rate.
"This hasn’t been tested on a large scale, so the exact effectiveness still needs verification."
The toxin is insidiously dangerous. Once those toxins were developed and studied, Lai destroyed them. Lai wouldn’t conduct tests on humans with these toxins, so only some experiments were done on mice. After the experiments, those mice were all destroyed, even burning their bodies into ashes carefully.