227: Chapter 222 Is it evil or demon?

Cao Xiao finished critiquing everyone's pearls one by one. When they were all eagerly waiting for him to pay, he said, "Don't be in a hurry. I've started a jewelry company and we're currently short on pearls. Uh, let me finish speaking first..."

The others thought Cao Xiao was trying to go back on his word and confiscate their pearls. Boss Hu's family looked very disappointed, and the bodyguards were full of disdain, though they all remained silent and didn't say a word.

Cao Xiao rolled his eyes and continued speechlessly, "What's with those expressions! I didn't say I wouldn't pay. How about this: check online yourselves to estimate a rough price, and I'll buy them from you at a thirty percent premium. These are rare natural pearls, and I have a use for the misshapen ones too, so I'll buy them all. Leave the pearls with me for now while you quickly estimate the prices. First, I'll pay you the money from the bet just now. Two hundred thousand for Boss Hu, two hundred thousand each for Xiao Zhen and Xiao Zhu, and one hundred thousand for everyone else."

Duan Hong and the others didn't care much. They didn't understand the jewelry market and were too lazy to estimate prices, so they just stuffed all their pearls into Cao Xiao's hands and looked at him silently as if to say, 'you handle it.'

"Mr. Cao, I don't know the market either. If it weren't for you, we wouldn't have gotten these pearls, and we already received a large bonus from you. Just give us whatever you think is fair."

Boss Hu was a bit hesitant. These things belonged to the other man in the first place, and having already gained an advantage and a two-hundred-thousand-yuan reward, it was hard to name a price. So he followed suit and handed all his pearls to Cao Xiao as well.

"Mr. Cao, we'll give you all of ours for free, but can we keep these two as souvenirs?" The Hu sisters whispered and discussed for a moment, each grabbing the largest misshapen pearl and a perfect-grade pearl before handing the rest to Cao Xiao.

"No!" Cao Xiao felt some gratification seeing them do this. Regardless of what they were thinking, they had left a deep impression on him, making him realize their unusual magnanimity, but he still refused without a second thought.

"Then... alright. Here you go." There was a look of disappointment and reluctance in the sisters' eyes, but they resolutely handed them over to Cao Xiao.

Seeing that they had misunderstood before he finished speaking, Cao Xiao quickly explained, "I didn't mean it like that. I'll definitely pay you. I'm taking these two pearls back first, and once I have them made into jewelry, I'll mail them back to you."

"I won't calculate the rest of yours in detail; six hundred thousand each is more than enough."

The bodyguards expressed that they didn't mind.

"Boss Hu, yours will be a total of one million after the premium. Does that sound good?"

Boss Hu was quite excited and felt grateful toward Cao Xiao. As a native of Liang Lake, an area known for pearls, he had gambled on mussels before and understood the market prices. Even if these pearls were fought over at an auction, they would fetch five or six hundred thousand at most. He knew his batch was slightly inferior to the others, yet Cao Xiao was giving him a million all at once. Even with a thirty percent premium, it shouldn't be that much. He understood that Cao Xiao didn't want to calculate precisely and was afraid he'd think him biased, so he added several hundred thousand on top of the others' amounts to make it a round number. In just this short time, he had obtained a huge sum of 1.2 million. Combined with the advance payment Cao Xiao gave him, it was enough to buy two more similar painted pleasure boats. His net worth had tripled; how could he not be incredibly excited? His previous nonsensical worries had long since vanished. Now, even if Cao Xiao told him his true purpose, he would be willing to take a risk; with Cao Xiao's generosity, he certainly wouldn't be treated poorly.

"Xiao Zhen has the most jewelry-grade ones, nine in total. I won't value them one by one either; let's say one hundred thousand per pearl. Including the other six craft-grade ones, I'll give you a total of 1.2 million."

"Xiao Zhu has seven jewelry-grade and six craft-grade pearls. Including the best one, let's call it one million, for a total of two million."

"I said before that I'd give you pearls, and I'm a man of my word. In a while, I'll open the rest and pick the best one for Xiao Zhen. Don't refuse; these things are a drop in the bucket for me. Just consider it a meeting gift."

The sisters never expected such a huge sum of money to fall into their laps. In an instant, they had upgraded from ordinary college students to standard 'fair-skinned, rich, and beautiful' women. The massive contrast sent their minds drifting, and they even forgot to refuse.

"Brother Duan, you guys harvest all the remaining ones, put them in a mussel shell and give them to me, then throw away the extra shells. Boss Hu, this mussel meat is too old and looks like a mess; it's unappetizing. Don't bother with it, just dump it all! I'm going to rest for a bit. Call me when it's time to eat."

After making the arrangements, Cao Xiao didn't wait for their agreement. He picked up a mussel shell to hold the pearls, went into the cabin, and lay down on a long sofa with his eyes closed to nap.

The rest was a pretense; his mind had already entered the industrial mother machine to begin studying that negative energy that could affect people's spirits. They were currently in the center of the lake, and a crisis could descend at any moment. So, the first priority was to try and eliminate it. Cao Xiao believed the only effective way was to generate positive energy to see if it could wear it down. This wasn't difficult; he randomly selected a misshapen pearl and placed it in a dense positive energy environment to observe the changes.

To his delight, the results were optimistic. Against this unknown negative energy, the positive energy from the Eight Extremes Yin-Devouring Array was still effective, and it dissolved and annihilated it even faster than it did Yin Qi. In the blink of an eye, it was gone, replaced by another unknown new energy. However, it wasn't Yuan Energy; the particles of this new energy were completely different from Yuan Energy particles, the arrangement between particles was also entirely different, and its density was less than one percent of Yuan Energy.

Having tasted the benefits of Yuan Energy, he naturally hoped this new energy would also have miraculous effects. In his space, there were creatures captured from the underground world of Qian Province last time. Cao Xiao used this new energy to conduct biological experiments. Unfortunately, there was no reference material for that negative energy, and the industrial mother machine couldn't simulate its generation. Even though he had swept up all the pearl mussels from the lake bottom, the negative energy collected and converted into new energy wasn't enough for large-scale biological experiments. Therefore, to save resources, he could only conduct single-sequence experiments, which were much slower, and the choice of experimental subjects had to be precise. This wasn't difficult; there were rats in the space that were physiologically similar to humans, though they were as large as bobcats and clearly wouldn't be energy-efficient. But he had no other choice now and could only make do; if it didn't work, he'd have to wait until they returned to shore.

Having selected the experimental subject, he no longer hesitated. To see the results faster, he ignored whether the rat lived or died and enveloped it in the new energy from the start, then slowly waited for the rat to absorb it. To his surprise, the process was incredibly long and the absorption efficiency was very low. It wasn't until two hours after he had finished dinner that the rat finally finished absorbing it, but the rat's physical organs hadn't changed in the slightest; it was still in its previous state. The energy had clearly been absorbed, and normally, any energy should have some interference effect on matter, but the result disappointed him.

He couldn't figure out what was going on and didn't have the patience to continue. However, this result proved that this energy couldn't cause harm to the human body in a short period. Consequently, he decided to experience it for himself; as long as the amount was small, even if it was harmful, it wouldn't be too serious.

Making up his mind, he immediately took a small portion of energy and stored it inside a pearl. He drilled a small hole in it, threaded it with a small string, and then the pearl appeared in his hand. He casually hung it around his neck and tucked it into his collar. He didn't expect to feel anything in a short time, so he ignored it. It was getting late, so he ordered the bodyguards to take turns on night watch, instructing them to be careful and wake him immediately if they found anything wrong. He himself lay on a cot and played games for a while, and before long, he quietly drifted off to sleep.

...

The moon hung high in the sky, the night air was as cool as water, and the lake surface was calm without a ripple. No voices came from the pleasure boat; only the colored lights arranged along the hull's contour continued to flicker. Everything seemed incredibly tranquil.

But at that moment, it was as if some existence had suddenly awakened in the darkness. Though there was no wind, the wide lake surface in the central area was suddenly and eerily filled with ripples. Countless fish were seen competing to leap out of the water, including the large fish usually hidden deep at the bottom. They rose and fell incessantly, as if desperate to escape, yet they didn't head toward the surrounding shores but instead chose the waterless air. It was truly bizarre.

Li Quanshuo and Niu Zhen, who were on night watch at the bow, discovered the anomaly immediately. But just as they were about to run into the cabin to report, both felt a sudden, violent dizziness in their heads. Before they could make any reaction, they lost consciousness, their bodies falling uncontrollably to the ground.

At the same time, the others who were sound asleep in the cabin actually opened their eyes in unison. If anyone had seen them, they would have noticed their faces were expressionless and their gaze had lost focus. What was even more chilling was that everyone, including the fallen Li Quanshuo and Niu Zhen, stood up like walking corpses and moved toward the bow in unison.

But there was one exception. Not only did he not lose consciousness like the others, but he also let out a piercing cry and suddenly woke from his dream. His hands subconsciously clutched his chest, his upper body jerked up, and he opened his eyes with a face full of pain.

This person was, of course, Cao Xiao. He had been sleeping very soundly when he suddenly felt dizzy, followed by the sensation of something exploding on his chest. Waking in pain, he opened his eyes only to see the bizarre scene before him.

"Eh? It's still dark outside. Why are you all up?" Ignoring the pain in his chest, he looked at their backs and asked curiously.

But no one answered him, and no one turned around. They continued to move their feet in a very uncoordinated manner.

"Something's wrong! Something happened!"

Seeing their strange walking postures and the fact that no one turned to answer him, it was completely irrational. He also saw that except for Li Quanshuo and Niu Zhen, everyone else was only wearing underwear. The Hu sisters' graceful figures were quite a sight, but even if everyone was uninhibited, they wouldn't hold a naked assembly in the middle of the night. If he didn't realize something was wrong now, his IQ would be the problem.

"The pearl on my chest exploded and woke me up from the pain. I put the Eight Extremes Yin-Devouring Array disk by my bed before sleeping, which might be why I was spared. I feel dizzy now, much more intense than when I touched the pearls this afternoon, but not enough to make me faint. In other words, what's causing this is that negative energy that scatters the spirit, and it's very dense. If I leave the array disk for a certain distance, I might not be able to withstand it and will become like them. The consequence would be... disappearing!"

In a flash, he analyzed the cause and his current situation. Even with his temperament, he felt a deep sense of fear, regretting his arrogance and underestimating the severity of the problem, nearly losing his life by acting rashly. But after the fear came boundless rage. No matter what kind of terrifying existence was behind this attempt to take his life, now that it had shown itself, it would have to endure his relentless retaliation.

"The priority now is to save people. Positive energy can solve this. If not, I'll just tie them all up, then lock onto the source of the negative energy and give it a thunderous blow. Whether it's evil or a demon, a creature or an energy body, or even an environmental magnetic field, I have ways to deal with it. I wouldn't even hesitate to destroy Liang Lake!"

He acted as soon as he thought of it, but when he started, he suddenly changed his mind. Holding the array disk, he got out of bed and rushed behind everyone. Using his hand like a blade, he struck each person on the neck. The existence releasing that negative energy seemed to be able to control people's actions through something like hypnosis, but it couldn't move objects directly out of thin air. A hand chop to the neck would cause a brief interruption in the carotid artery, leading to insufficient blood supply to the brain and fainting. The cranial nerves would also be disrupted, the brain would no longer control body movement, and that conscious control would naturally become ineffective. Moreover, striking the carotid artery would damage the cranial nerves; until they recovered, the consciousness would enter a subconscious state and wouldn't be controlled again in the short term. This way, he could use all his methods without reservation.

After pulling Niu Zhen back from the bow railing and knocking him out, he couldn't help but feel a lingering fear and relief. "Good thing I woke up in time. If it were a bit later, someone might have fallen overboard and disappeared. But now that there are no more worries, it's time to let loose and kill it!"

A minute later, Cao Xiao suddenly sneered, "Hmph! Found you!"

To his surprise, the source of the negative energy was exactly ten meters above the lake bottom and a hundred meters away from the boat. He hadn't found it despite searching carefully several times before, but now there was something different there. A circular tunnel about one meter in diameter appeared out of thin air, constantly spewing negative energy while also absorbing lake water. Looking through that tunnel, he found it wasn't a scene from the lake at all; all he could see was a stretch of sand that extended for ten kilometers with no end in sight, as if it were another world entirely.