“What happened to you?” Bai Qingqing walked to Shuu’s side and noticed a shallow cut on his shoulders. She guessed he had grazed his shoulder against the tree when he was trying to rescue her.
The black wolf looked up at Bai Qingqing, gentleness in his eyes. The wolf on the ground rapidly extended his body and transformed into the strong and robust body of a young male. Without the cover from his fur, the wound on his shoulder was now clear at a glance—there was an unnatural purplish-black color on his bloody wound.
Bai Qingqing reached out to touch the wound, but Shuu grabbed her hand to stop her from doing so.
“Don’t touch… there’s poison…” Shuu panted with his mouth open. Yet, it seemed as though no matter how much air he took in it wasn’t enough. His face had turned purplish by now.
Parker was stunned.
Bai Qingqing held Shuu’s hand tightly, tears slipping down her cheeks like a string of broken beads. “What should we do? We’ll send you to the doctor’s.”
Shuu shook his head in a nearly imperceptible manner, a blissful smile appearing on his purplish-green face at seeing Bai Qingqing shed tears for him. “It’s… too late… the poison has already spread throughout my body… even if I get the antidote…”
“Antidote?” Bai Qingqing’s eyes lit up. She clasped Shuu’s hand tightly and said, “Where’s the antidote? We’ll go look for it right now!”
“White flower… only… the ape king has it…” Shuu’s entire body had turned somewhat greenish, and he was having an increasingly difficult time breathing.
Bai Qingqing hurriedly said to Parker, “Quick, find the ape king!”
“Okay!” Parker was prepared to leave when Muir offered to go instead. “I’ll go.”
With that, he transformed into an eagle and flew away.
With his eyes fixed on Bai Qingqing’s face, Shuu’s gaze lingered upon her. Very slowly, he raised a hand to wipe away the tears on her face. “I… am really lucky… to have you shed tears for me…”
Upon hearing this, Bai Qingqing’s tears fell even more relentlessly now. She pursed her lips and tried her best to hold it in, her chin crumpling as a result of how hard she was trying. Still, she couldn’t hold back the muffled sobs from escaping her mouth.
Curtis came back reeking of the stench of blood as he went to stand beside Bai Qingqing with an expressionless face.
“You will surely get well!” The teary Bai Qingqing said in a choked voice as she shook her head.
Her vision—blurred by her tears—fell upon Shuu’s purplish skin; it seemed as though the blood wasn’t circulating well in his body.
White flowers could neutralize the poison?
The image of that huge tree in the ape castle flashed in Bai Qingqing’s mind, causing her to abruptly raise her head. “The upas tree!”
“It’s that tree, right?” Bai Qingqing asked with great urgency.
No wonder she had found that tree familiar-looking—in the park near where she used to live there was a 20-year-old upas tree. Although the upas tree—also known as the “silencing tree”—was endangered, it was highly poisonous.
Once the sap of the upas tree was dabbed on a wound, it would cause a person’s heart to go numb and his blood to coagulate, or even cause him to die from suffocation.
It was also said on the info plaque that only the red bamboo grass that grew near the upas tree could neutralize the poison. There were pretty white flowers growing on the red bamboo grass.
Shuu let out a sigh and said with a smile, “Remember not to touch it in the future… Although… females won’t be able to damage the tree bark… I’m still worried.”
“Got it.” Bai Qingqing wiped away her tears haphazardly and carefully massaged Shuu’s body in an attempt to help his blood circulate, despite not knowing if this was of any use.
Bai Qingqing roughly recalled that the upas tree’s poison took around 20 minutes to two hours to kick in. For the poison to have kicked in so quickly in Shuu’s case, it was no doubt due to his vigorous exercise.
If Shuu had asked for help early on, he wouldn’t have ended up in this state.
Muir came back with some grass in his mouth and also some stone tools to grind the medicine.
Bai Qingqing snatched the red bamboo grass and stone tools from Muir and quickly crushed the medicine, before applying it on the wound on Shuu’s shoulder.
“It’s Rosa… she wants to kill you,” Shuu said as he gazed at Bai Qingqing’s face.