With my agreement, we began heading through the tunnels to reach an opening to the surface. Gong had the spiders create one within the building, that she could then conceal later, after we leave.

As we get closer and closer to the opening, it’s easy to tell that gong is pretty nervous.

Something seems a little strange. I feel like she’s told me everything about the contract, but is there something else I should know about this?

“Hey, Gong?” “Hey, James?”

We both seem to have spoken at the same time.

“Jinx?” I say, hoping to lighten the mood. Though, I quickly realize she has no context on that. Fail.

She swallows, not seeming to catch my attempt at a joke. She speaks, as if what she’s about to say is causing a burden on her.

“James? When we do this, we may need to get rid of anyone who can’t be trusted. Specifically, what you may not know about contracts, is that the intent of a person may automatically cause a breach. This isn’t just a half-assed intent either. It means that the person is fully committed to making the breach. While it is possible, the person could change their mind later, it’s very likely that is not the case. You’ll have a small period of time to decide what to do in the case of an intent breach… don’t hesitate. It will make it worse.”

Her lips purse and she actually touches my hand with hers, looking me in the eye with a soft look.

“It’s going to be difficult, especially considering the type of person you are. But you will need to make the hard choice of actually going through with it. So, we’ll need to work together on who to save and who to not save. Okay?”

That’s a bit of a strange way to word it, but I can understand where she’s coming from. Someone’s truly looking to do harm or betray us, then we will really have no choice.

“Yeah, I can definitely understand that. I’ll do the right thing.”

She still looks apprehensive, but nods back.

“Let me explain what we’ll be doing…

“We’ll be transporting anyone who agrees to be part of our group, to an open cavern underground, so we can be secure when actually healing them.”

She pauses, glancing at my bag of potions and elixirs.

“You can use your alchemical skills to keep them alive before then, on the surface.

“After that point, anyone who accepts the contract in the cavern and then gets healed using your real powers, will be taken to the secondary base where Jenn is, so that we can make sure this remains secret. We’re mainly going to the surface to make them feel safer, heal them normally, and make sure that they are truly willing to come with us.”

She shifts uncomfortably, jostling me a little.

“As you can probably tell from this, that there are two times a person can walk away from this. First, when they agree to come with down us to join our group. They will generally be already healed of any immediate injuries, since I’ll be able to get you enough ingredients to make additional potions, based on what I’ve seen you create earlier. Though, you may already have enough.

“Second, in the cave, we will ask them if they would accept the contract, to join the group. We will notify them of the true ramifications of joining the group and accepting this. If not, then they will be taken away and returned to the surface.

“After that point, there are no excuses. We will already have given away information that our group is hiding something. If someone dreaming after that point with negative intentions, then we can’t help them.

She actually stops in place, putting me down for her next words.

“I didn’t say this before, since I was unsure on how to word it. I’d looked into the demi human curse is a bit more and what cultivators’ reactions are to that. If anyone finds out that our demi human curses have been removed, is very likely that everyone we know will be purged.

“This is the type of thing that they extinguished entire bloodlines for, even for the highest of cultivator bloodlines. Whenever a cultivator was able to successfully remove the Demi human curse, somehow, someway, a random or nearby sect of cultivators would instantly find out and be charged to wipe out the entire region. For a place like this… it would likely be here and the nearest three cities. The Revolving Heavenly Light Sect would likely be the one to do so.   

“I don’t know how your ability was able to bypass that notification, but if it didn’t, we would’ve already been dead.”

This causes me to completely freeze. I scan to confirm her words. Frighteningly, what she says is true.

Why didn’t my scan let me know of this?!

…

Was it because of the way I asked the questions? Was it because I didn’t dive deep enough?

Shit. This is huge. Since what she says is true, this isn’t a joke.

What the hell? When I dive deeper into it, there’s even fucking rules and provisions regarding this. Things that hold the curse in place.

Gong quickly picks me back up as we continue to head towards the opening. She seems to be used to me falling silent. My mind is running wild through the different aspects of the rules for this.

My head is starting to significantly hurt from the obscure items I am looking into. If this wasn’t obscured, but instead hidden knowledge, I likely would be foaming at the mouth right now. It’s a testament to my constant scan usage and new creative scanning style that all I have is a splitting headache.

I have to stop here for now, but there is something that catches my eye before I stop looking into it.

If any in the Demi human group reaches a Nascent Soul or the group opts to take part in and win specific contests in something called secret realms, then the curse will be removed from the race.

What the fuck? If this was a game, this would be that giant red flag, that’s marked as a quest you can’t go anywhere near, because you’ll fucking die.

… Should I let Gong know this?

Yeah. I need to. It’s their journey. This makes this that much more important for them to know.

I relay that information to Gong. She stops in her tracks, yet again. Before long, she continues moving.

Though, not before whispering a thank you and looking ahead.

… Finally, we reached the opening.

 As we walked out from the sloped tunnel entrance, I could see that the spiders had already laid out everyone that was injured in order of severity. Because of this, at the worst, the patients are on a slow decline.

I immediately switch over to the worst patients and begin applying a lesser version of the little Phoenix potion to heal a man with a heavy neck and body wounds. He is also missing an arm.

Unlike what I did with Jenn, I make sure just to seal off the injuries, but not regrow them.

If they actually decide to come with us, then I can use my higher levels of healing to take care of them. Unfortunately, at this point in time, I still have to maintain somewhat of a facade that those ingredients are expensive.

However, that commitment is immediately dashed, as I see a child that is lost both their legs because of the fighting. It’s clear there would be a hard life from there on, if I didn’t help.

I end up using the undiluted little Phoenix potion on him. Looking back at the man with the missing arm, I can’t help but sigh and walk back over to him. He seems to have regained consciousness, so I have him raise his stump up. I pour a bit of the potion directly onto the stump, but not nearly as much I had done for Jenn. Since he’s no longer in a life-threatening scenario, there is no need for extra amounts to sustain his life.

The potion itself replaces and speeds up healing, allowing it to create additional parts and also make the body restore itself naturally as well in a better way. Once again, this only works for non-cultivating demi humans because of the special way Qi interacts with their bodies, using the Qi to generate healing-based effects. The batch I’m using can also be used for non-cultivating regular humans, but will mostly just speed up healing. The infusion of Qi will help them with replacement, though.

This combination of ingredients would not work for cultivators, though. Those would require much more refined processes and ingredients.

Ultimately, I make my way through the entire group and by the time I’ve finished, Jenn has arrived from the tunnels.

My stocks are pretty much empty now.