Before Feng Hao's robotic arm could catch Lin Banxia's wrist, the mixture had spilled out. The pale golden liquid drew arcs in the air and landed on the group of runaway bugs - the "Devouring bugs" that Gu Qiqi had just released, their black bodies wrapped in venom, gnawing at the psychic circuits of the Iron Eagle Guard mecha, and wherever it passed, the metal was eroded into honeycomb-like holes.
"You're crazy!" Feng Hao's roar got stuck in his throat.
A strange scene occurred. Instead of being corroded by the venom as expected, the mixture was like a thin layer of ice enclosing the insect. The dark venom rolled in the pale golden liquid, making a sizzling sound. At first it seemed like a desperate fight, but in the blink of an eye, the ink flowed along the lines of the liquid, gradually taking on a pale purple hue, and the ferocity of the insect gradually faded, becoming like obsidian with a golden edge.
"Om --"
The wrapped bugs suddenly flapped their wings, sending out countless tiny light spots. The specks landed on the scars of the mecha wreckage, where pale green sprouts emerged from the rusted areas, and the sprouts grew around the lines, and the psychic energy flowed again at the breaks, and even the scrapped gun barrels made a faint hum.
Lin Banxia crouched down and touched the repaired line with her fingertips. There was still the venom of the insect there, but it no longer burned the hand. Instead, it had a warm, moist feeling like the symbiotic liquid left by mother. "I knew it..." She muttered to herself, and the mixture in the bottle suddenly boiled, and a few drops flew out automatically and merged with the insect wings on the ground, forming a pill that was half black and half gold.
Gu Qiqi stood still and didn't notice the poison pill in her hand dropping to the ground. Her family had been killing people with poison for generations, and she was exiled because of the idea of "saving people with poison" - the elders said that was blasphemy, and the mission of poison was destruction. But at this moment, the bugs she regarded as "weapons" were like a swarm of docile bees circling around Lin Banxia's fingertips, and the ink-black venom became the remedy.
"It can't be..." Gu Qiqi's voice trembled, and the family imprint on the back of his hand suddenly became hot. It was the punishment left by the elder with the "heart-eating Gu", but now it was covered by the light of the gu bug, and the heat gradually disappeared. "My gu only kills people, they..."
Lin Banxia picked up the poison pill on the ground, stuffed it into her hand, and handed over his own medicine bottle: "Try to make medicine with it." The mixture in the bottle shook, reflecting Gu Qiqi's shocked face. "My mother said poison is untamed medicine, like psychic and mechanical, not that they can't be together, but that no one has taught them how to get along."
Gu Qiqi took the medicine bottle hesitantly. Just as her fingertips touched the bottle, the mixture climbed up her wrist and resonated with the poison pill in her palm. The dark poison pill cracked a crack, and the pale golden liquid crept in, where tiny spiritual grass immediately grew, and on the grass leaf crawled a tiny insect, gnawing at the ill energy in the pill pill.
The two crouched beside the wreckage of the mecha, neither of them spoke again. Gu Qiqi released the Yi Gu - which she had secretly raised and was regarded as a waste by the family - the Yi Gu and the poison Pill merged in the symbiotic liquid, the ink and pale gold spun like a Tai Chi diagram, and finally turned into a healing green light that enveloped the entire wreckage area.
Feng Hao's mechanical arm suddenly gave a comfortable tremor. He looked at the two busy men in the green light. Lin Banxia was using her fingertips to guide the bug to repair the spiritual vein nodes, while Gu Qiqi was controlling the poison pill to neutralize the excessive spiritual energy. There was an inexplicable tacit understanding between their movements. The band lit up on his wrist, casting a corner of the Chaos Protocol, and the patterns on it were gradually overlapping with the light patterns of the symbiotic liquid.
A thunderous roar came from afar, and the talisman paper of the Clearsky Pavilion was approaching. But Lin Banxia just moved closer to Gu Qiqi. The green light of the mixture and the poison pill grew stronger, and even the scent of the talisman in the air was purified into warm spiritual energy.
Gu Qiqi looked at his palm, where he had once only dared to hold the poison poison, but now held the half-black, half-gold symbiotic liquid, in which the ink-black poison and the pale gold medicine were like friends who had been apart for a long time, weaving a new life together.
She suddenly smiled, the first genuine smile since she was exiled.
"One more time." " Gu Qiqi said to Lin Banxia, with a lightness in his voice that he didn't even notice, "This time, I'll control the amount of poison pills."
The mixture mingled with the poison again, and green light shot up into the sky, even the trees of the Living weapon forest tilted in that direction, as if paying tribute to the girls who broke prejudice.
In the green light, Gu Qiqi's Yigu was dragging tiny fragments of the circuit towards the fracture of the mecha wreckage. Those bugs, once ridiculed by their families as "useless", are now the most dexterous artisans, their black tentacles precisely avoiding psychic nodes as if performing a precise surgery. Lin Banxia applied the freshly mixed liquid to the nodes. The pale golden liquid met the venom of the bug and produced a string of tiny golden sparks that fell to the ground and turned into a piece of moss that could heal wounds.
"The spiritual veins here are a bit jumbled." Lin Banxia suddenly pressed down on a loose armor plate. The lines beneath were emitting black smoke - burned by the talisman paper from the Qingxiao Pavilion just now. "Stronger neutralizing power is needed."
Gu Qiqi didn't say a word; he just pulled out a black insect from his sleeve. That was the "King of Devouring Spirits", who had crushed the veins of three elders during the family trials and was the only "weapon" she had taken with her when she was exiled. The tip of her finger tapped on the king's head, and the king gently rubbed against her nails, his dark eyes reflecting Lin Banxia's medicine bottle.
"It recognizes you." Lin Banxia laughed and poured the mixture into the palm of his hand. "Try to let it absorb the ill energy of the spirit vein."
Gu Qiqi took a deep breath and placed the King of Gu in Lin Banxia's palm. Instead of biting as usual, the Devouring Spirit King rolled up the mixture and turned into the broken part of the spirit vein. The black smoke was immediately sucked into its stomach, and the body of the King gradually turned from black to purple, and finally showed a warm jade-like color. When it came out again, the spirit vein at the fracture was flowing smoothly as if it had never been injured.
"Turns out..." Gu Qiqi suddenly covered his mouth and tears fell. She thought of her sister who had been executed by the family, who had tried to save a child with the Spirit Devouring King but was burned to death as a traitor on the altar. Would everything have been different if there had been this mixture then?
Lin Banxia handed her a handkerchief while staring blankly at the wreckage of the mecha. In the repaired circuit, there was a pre-age psychic formula, exactly the same as the "symbiotic equation" in Mother's notes. It turns out that what my mother studied back then was never just medicine, but the law of symbiosis between poison and medicine, spirit and machine.
"Here's the bottle for you." Lin Banxia poured half a bottle of the mixture into Gu Qiqi's poison jar. "Your insect is better at finding the lesion than my spirit grass. We..."
Her words were interrupted by the sound of hurried footsteps. Feng Hao ran over with Qin Tieluo and Chen Mohen. Feng Hao's mechanical arm was still smoking, burned from the "purification Talisman" that had just blocked the thunder. Qin Tieluo's iron block remains had another hole, and Chen Mohen had only two talisman papers left.
"The talisman array of Qingxiao Pavilion is coming down!" Feng Hao's voice was panting, but when he saw the restoration status of the mecha wreckage, he suddenly froze, "This is..."
The symbiotic liquid in the green light suddenly flew up and automatically wrapped around Feng Hao's mechanical arm. The smoke from the burn dissipated instantly, the blue-purple psychic energy stabilized again, and even the scratches on the metal surface smoothed out in the pale gold light. Feng Hao lowered his head and looked at the band of light wrapped around his arm, where there was both the scent of Lin Banxia's mixture and the venom pattern of the insect, two things that should have been incompatible now seemed like twin brothers.
"Symbiotic liquid." Lin Banxia explained that Gu Qiqi had tacitly released the gu bug to repair Qin Tieluo's iron lumps, "can repair both the spirit vein and the machine at the same time, and can..."
Before she could finish her words, Chen Mohen suddenly pointed to the sky. The clouds of the Qingxiao Pavilion's talisman array were pressing down, the edges of the "purification array" composed of runes were glowing red, and wherever it passed, the spiritual energy of the forest was dissipating. The thunderous dust flashed at the eye of the array, and the voice pierced through the clouds: "The demons colluded with the sorcerer, and today we will surely purify you together!"
Gu Qiqi's face turned pale in an instant, and he subconsciously wanted to retrieve the insect. Lin Banxia held her hand and stuffed the newly refined half-black half-golden pill into her palm: "Don't be afraid. This time we'll try poison poison... Draw talismans."
Chen Mohen's eyes lit up and he immediately spread the last two pieces of talisman paper on the wreckage of the mecha. Lin Banxia's symbiotic liquid and Gu Qiqi's venom flowed on the paper, the ink-colored venom drew the formation, the pale golden liquid outlined the formation eye, and finally formed a "symbiotic talisman". In the talisman pattern, the psychic lines interwove with the tentacles of the insect, like a yin-yang fish.
"Go!" Chen Mohen waved his hand, and the talisman paper flew towards the talisman array.
The thunderous dust immediately drew towards the talisman paper, but froze at the moment of contact. The symbiotic talisman was not purified. Instead, like a seed, it took root and sprouted in the talisman array. The ink-black venom pattern and the pale gold psychic pattern spread rapidly, turning the red light of the "purification array" into a warm green light - the runes used for destruction became the medium of healing.
Thunderous roars burst through the clouds, but could not hide the "click" sound from within the array - it was the restored psychic nodes cheering.
Gu Qiqi watched his insect dancing in the green light and suddenly understood what Lin Banxia was saying. Poison and medicine are never opposed, just like she and her family, not betrayal and being betrayed, but choosing different paths.
Lin Banxia touched her shoulder and they smiled at each other. Beneath their feet, the core of the mecha wreckage suddenly lit up, revealing what was hidden inside - the second fragment of the Chaos Protocol, wrapped together by the symbiotic liquid and the light of the poison, like an egg waiting to hatch.