I'm extremely interested in Nen abilities.

Seeing this, Ou Si laughed and said, "Hunters are usually loved by animals. It seems that Zhen Yuanzi has the potential to be a hunter."

Then, as Xiao Di approached, the spotted deer, which had been curious about Jing Yang and his companion, suddenly seemed startled and scattered in all directions.

Ousi was speechless and looked at Xiaodi awkwardly.

Xiao Di didn't feel anything at all. She casually grabbed the SUV with both hands, turned the car around, and looked at it with a puzzled expression.

Jingyang was overjoyed, patted Ao Si on the back, and got into the car first.

--------

Back in the city, after taking Kurapika to a pre-booked hospital ward to recuperate, Oushi left without a word, giving an OK sign.

Jingyang watched Xiaodi's performance in shock.

Yes, even he was somewhat surprised at this moment—when he saw the little droplet materialize into a bulging-eyed fish, from which a black jade Buddha statue was released!

Covered in cracks, with a face identical to that of the True Martial King, Vihugo, it was the one enshrined in the temple of the Black Mist Lion Clan.

“This, you, I…when did you take it…” Jing Yang finally waved his hand and said, “Never mind, I’ve already taken it.”

Chapter 171 Environment

"water……"

Kurapika's throat was dry and hoarse. He slowly opened his eyes, and the white ceiling appeared somewhat blurry.

The "beep, beep, beep" sound in my ears is very rhythmic. Am I in a hospital?

Memories slowly surfaced. Immortal Water Mountain, Crimson Eyes, clues, the patriarch, teleportation with Nen ability, the God-like space, Crimson Eyes, Crimson Eyes, Jingyang…

"You're awake." Someone spoke beside me.

Kurapika rolled his eyes and caught a glimpse of Jingyang and Xiaodi out of the corner of his eye.

Xiao Di was sitting to one side reading a book. After hearing the noise, she looked up for a moment, then quickly looked down and turned a page as if nothing had happened.

Jing Yang sat with his legs crossed, examining something in his palm. It looked like scraps of paper, or maybe... rice husks?

It was Jing Yang who spoke.

“The surgery went smoothly,” Jingyang said to Kurapika. “You’ve now cut off the root of your troubles and become a beautiful girl.”

As he spoke, he pointed to a glass of water next to Kurapika's bed.

Shizuku looked up in surprise and glanced at Kurapika again.

"Don't joke around..." Kurapika sighed and struggled to sit up in bed. He had been lying down for too long and still felt weak.

He sat up against the headboard, then suddenly felt around under the covers and quietly breathed a sigh of relief.

Jingyang couldn't help but burst into laughter.

Kurapika acted as if nothing had happened, grabbed his water glass, and gulped it down in one go.

Jing Yang gripped the rice husk fragments in his hand and suddenly said, "To be frank, in your situation, haven't you ever considered the idea of ​​recruiting beautiful women and spreading the bloodline of the Kuluta tribe?"

"Why do you have to emphasize beautiful women?" Kurapika said with a pale face. "According to your despicable logic, as long as the other person is a woman, that's fine."

“Oh, mine,” Jingyang nodded. That made sense; given Kurapika's personality, he could never accept something that would taint emotions solely for the purpose of procreation.

"Besides, I'm only 14 years old."

"Hmm, a 14-year-old handsome boy who can already be picky about whether his partner is a beautiful woman."

"When have I ever been picky?!"

"Oh, I won't deny that I'm a handsome young man..."

Kurapika's forehead veins throbbed. He took a deep breath, deciding to stop arguing pointlessly with this childish boss.

"So you're still pretty energetic." Jingyang smiled. "Then we can get down to business."

Xiao Di immediately understood, closed the old book she was reading, and conjured a vacuum cleaner. The bulging-eyed fish opened its big mouth and spat out two solution containers, placing them beside Jing Yang.

Two glass jars filled with solution each contain a pair of eyeballs suspended in the air.

Within those four pupils, the undying rage in their dying eyes remained forever—a fiery red, hailed as one of the world's seven most beautiful colors.

Jingyang handed them over to Kurapika.

Kurapika gazed at the two pairs of eyes floating in the solution, a sadness unconsciously welling up in his eyes. "What's the point? Of the true Kurta clan, I'm the only one left. Even if I have children in the future, they'll be half-bloods."

Jing Yang said, "I never expected you to be a racist."

“I wasn’t one when the Kurta clan was still around,” Kurapika said. “But now that I’m the only one left, I think I am.”

He raised his red eyes, which seemed to burn with raging fire. "I must remember everything about the Kurta tribe, including the hatred we bear."

“Let’s be positive. Who said you’re the last Kurta?” Jing Yang clapped his hands, reminding him, “Have you forgotten our organization’s ultimate goal? The dawn of a new day, the light that sweeps away the darkness. The path to redemption lies within it.” He pointed to the two jars on Kurapika’s blanket, “They can come back too, boss. I believe in your potential.”

Kurapika remained silent, raised his hand to materialize a dolphin bookshelf, pulled out the sixth volume, "Resurrection," and sealed the two pairs of fiery red eyes inside the book.

The dolphin bookshelf and the six books dissipated as Nen energy, Kurapika's eye color returned to normal, the amount of Nen energy on his body decreased, and he breathed a sigh of relief, feeling slightly tired.

"The good news is that we have inadvertently gotten a little closer to our ultimate goal."

Jingyang opened his hand, revealing some crushed rice husk fragments in his palm. "The thing you mentioned might be hidden in the stone—immortality rice."

Kurapika was taken aback, recalling what had happened before, and exclaimed in surprise, "This is Nitromme?"

“I’m not sure, because I didn’t eat it. But I guess so.” Jing Yang said, pouring rice husk crumbs onto Kurapika’s blanket, and slowly continued, “But I asked that Ryan, and the lifespan of the Black Mist Lions isn’t much different from that of humans. So the Grand Elder’s ability to live for several hundred years is obviously related to the bowl of rice that True Martial King gave him back then…”

"Wait a minute," Kurapika said, puzzled. "What Ryan? What Elder?"

Xiao Di was also completely confused over there.

She seems to have completely forgotten about those minor characters from the Black Mist Lion series...

“I’ll tell you later.” Jingyang pointed at Xiaodi, then turned to Kurapika and continued, “Let’s start from the beginning and explain slowly.”

So, Jingyang briefly recounted how he and Xiaodi received a call from Oushi using Kurapika's phone late at night, how they followed the signal from the star mark on Kurapika to find the Kamwal Mountains, how they met the Black Mist Lion clan, and the connection between the patriarch and the Black Mist Lions, as well as the story of the Black Mist Lions' Great Elder and the legendary True Martial Emperor Kajin three or four hundred years ago...

After listening, Kurapika fell into deep thought, then asked, "Why did these rice grains wither so quickly after the seal was broken?"

"You've hit the nail on the head!"

Jingyang suddenly slapped the hospital bed, making Kurapika frown.

“Yes, why did they suddenly wither?” Jingyang said. “Because they’ve been stored for too long and oxidize when they come into contact with air? But look at these rice husks, they’re not much different from ordinary rice husks, and they haven’t completely rotted away like oxidized and decayed cultural relics, turning into powder and disappearing with the wind.”

"Rather than saying they've gone bad, it's more accurate to say that after being unsealed, they went from being divine objects that could prolong life to just ordinary rice..." Kurapika said thoughtfully, as he examined the rice husk fragments that Jingyang had dumped, and found some shriveled rice grains among them.

Jingyang said, "That's why. Originally, I thought the four of us—Xiaodi, you, and Aus—would divide these Nitrogens among ourselves, but Aus ultimately didn't want them."

One thing is to avoid strange things of unknown origin, but this thing started to rot as soon as it was taken out, so even if Ousi wanted to take it, he couldn't.

Unless you take it out and immediately pour it into the pot to steam.

The kind with the shell on.

Kurapika immediately connected this to the point and asked, "According to your account, the Black Mist Lion Elder said that the True Martial King Vihugo gave him not raw rice, but steaming hot white rice. And judging from the results, he did indeed experience the life-extending effect of Nitrogenin."

As he pondered, he said, “① Even if this rice looks rotten, it is still edible and effective. ② Because of the different eras, the Nitrogen rice that King Zhenwu Vihugo obtained was edible back then, but now it will only rot uncontrollably and become inedible. ③ Nitrogen rice must rely on a special environment to remain normal before it is cooked, and King Zhenwu Vihugo knows this very well.”

Jing Yang held up three fingers in succession, “①, these shriveled rice grains after rotting would be so shrunken even if cooked, they would probably be inedible. ②, if they couldn't be preserved for a long time, why would Vivigo go to such lengths to seal these Nitrogen rice grains in stone? That possibility can also be ruled out. So that leaves only ③…”

"The God-like Space," Jingyang and Kurapika said in unison.

Kurapika recalled, "In that place, my physical strength, energy, and even my willpower were depleted very quickly and were difficult to recover..."

Even with this kid's resolute will, recalling the more than ten days he spent in the God-character space, he couldn't help but frown.

"Do you think that place might be..." Jing Yang pondered, "...where Vighgo used the word 'God' to replicate and simulate the environment of the Dark Continent?"

If Nitromi could only exist normally in a certain special environment before being cooked, then this so-called special environment must be related to the Dark Continent.

Kurapika nodded and said, "That's the only conclusion we can draw for now."

"Whether I guessed right or not, when we land on the Dark Continent, we can take out these rice plants and see what's going on. The truth will be revealed then," Jing Yang said with a smile.

What he was thinking about was Netero's description of the Dark Continent in the comics.

Before V5 established the inviolable Dark Continent Treaty, adventurers from the human world, eager to travel to the Dark Continent and filled with curiosity and a desire for exploration, were as numerous as the people crossing the river.

Even after V5 concluded the treaty, some people still stubbornly crossed the vast and boundless Dark Sea to explore the boundless continent.

The survival rate is almost zero.

The reason it was agreed upon was because of the exceptional case of Netero, a strong individual who returned alive.

According to Netero, what he pursues is the kind of power that comes from the victory or defeat between individuals. Jingyang interprets it as the kind of spirit that "distinguishes between superiors and inferiors, and decides life and death."

But Netero believed that the kind of power he sought did not exist on the Dark Continent; all that existed there was the extremely harsh nature, nothing more.

Harsh natural environment...

Jingyang recalled how emaciated Kurapika was when he was first rescued, almost on the verge of death, and thought to himself, "Even in the Dark Continent arc of the manga, I didn't see Yang De and the others taking any special personal protective measures... Is the story not at that stage yet?"

If the natural environment of the Dark Continent is truly so harsh that even a Nen user like Kurapika, with a certain level of basic strength, would be tormented to this state after just over ten days, then that makes no sense at all.

"It's a pity that the character 'God' in that 'God' space quickly dissipated, otherwise we would have had to study it carefully," Jing Yang said.

Kurapika said, "There is not enough evidence. Right now, it's all speculation. Whether that space is a simulation of the Dark Continent's environment or not, we'll have to wait and see."

"If that's really the case, it seems that we need to do more preparation beforehand than we expected."

Jingyang couldn't help but sigh, then noticed Kurapika looking strangely behind him. He turned around and immediately frowned.

Little Di had released the cracked black jade Buddha statue at some point and was now observing it curiously.

Kurapika said, "If I heard correctly, you just said that this is a Buddha statue that the Black Mist Lion Clan enshrined in the temple, which was personally carved by the True Martial King Vihugo..."

Jingyang coughed lightly and said, "You don't need to add so many qualifiers. Yes, that's right. Our organization's Doraemon is very aware of the principle of thieves never leaving empty-handed."

Or should I say, Shizuku is indeed a thief who would join the Phantom Troupe in the original timeline?

The ultimate thief's skill, huh!

Regarding this, a few days ago when Jingyang was surprised by Xiaodi's "opportunistic theft," Xiaodi unusually denied Jingyang's statement.

“It’s not stealing.” She corrected Jingyang very seriously at the time. “Only things that are unimportant count as taking something casually.”

Jingyang had only one question mark at the time.