"Yumen?" Candle Dragon was taken aback, "What are those Hunters gathering in Yumen for?"

"I'm not really sure…" Ya Qiaoxi shook her head, "It seems they discovered some treasure in an uncharted area… but the problem is no one has a precise idea of what this treasure actually is. Some say it's a few chests of gold left behind by a wealthy person in the wasteland, others claim it's a powerful piece of Deceitful Equipment… hic… and then, there are more outrageous ones, saying it's some kind of Taishui meat, just one bite and you could live a hundred years… hic… I still think, out of all these, gold sounds the most plausible."

Taishui meat?

Sun Hang thought to himself, having already devoured the unnatural Taishui, what on earth could this Taishui meat be?

Could it be a similar mysterious creature to Taishui?

But thinking further, if it's truly a kindred mysterious creature to Taishui, then humans merging with it, from a certain perspective, could indeed live exceptionally long—a severed limb could be healed in minutes, and even if an organ went bad, they could simply remove it and weave a new one with fungal threads…

The problem is, to perfectly merge Taishui's meme, one either needs Sun Hang's devouring power from the Taotie, or like Song Yarong and others, inherit Taishui's meme from Sun Hang as "sub-generation infected".

What nonsense is "just take a bite"? 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝒆𝒘𝙚𝓫𝙣𝙤𝒗𝙚𝓵.𝙘𝙤𝙢

If an ordinary person really took a bite of Taishui, there's a ninety percent chance of instant death, less than ten percent of turning into a mysterious skeleton or creature, and to become a stable infected with Taishui's meme, the probability goes way behind the decimal point with a very long string of zeroes.

As for infected individuals consuming Taishui, its meme would first fight against the original host meme within them—like a virus invading a body against the body's immune system, the immediate victim certainly would be the infected individual's body serving as the battleground.

If both sides are evenly matched, the agony for the infected could be immense, with a fever over forty degrees being among the better outcomes. Other possibilities include total tissue dissolution, a rampant proliferation of tumor-like growths reminiscent of cancer cells, limb deformities, a complete collapse of bodily endocrine and circulatory systems, multi-organ failure… Sun Hang had seen many bizarre "specimens" at the Celestial City Mysterious Creature Research Institute; these "specimens" came from humans turned into battlefields of two colliding mysterious creature memes.

Without the Taotie's devouring ability, forcibly merging an exotic meme is an incredibly dangerous situation for the infected.

While infected individuals aren't easily reinfected, if some fool swallows a chunk of Taishui meat, their own "meme immune system" couldn't withstand such reckless behavior.

Of course, aside from evenly matched cases, there are two other scenarios.

One is that the internal meme is much stronger than the foreign meme, in which case the foreign meme would be eradicated or assimilated in a very short time, possibly slightly enhancing the infected's strength, though more often nothing happens.

The second scenario is where the foreign meme is much stronger than the internal one, leading to a fate for the infected worse than that of an ordinary person—at least in the infection process, ordinary people don't exhibit "resistance", but the feeble "resistance behavior" from the weaker internal meme in the infected could trigger a stress response from the foreign meme, thus greatly accelerating the infection process.

In the second scenario, trying for a more potent foreign meme to replace the infected's original one, like a "blood transfusion" to change the infected's ability, has precisely zero success probability.

Not zero point zero zero zero zero something, just zero.

In both practice and theory, its probability is zero.

Unless the person's original meme is from the Taotie.

Before Sun Hang's appearance, such acts were unanimously regarded by scholars in the field of mysterious creatures as no different from suicide.

Oh, there is a slight difference.

This way still has a chance to birth mysterious skeletons or creatures, which is more troublesome than the harmless "self-disposal method" of suicide.

After talking for a few sentences, Ya Qiaoxi had almost finished an entire bottle of Fen Jiu, yet her state was not much different from earlier, alternating between tipsy and sober.

"What a shame… hic… if only I knew you'd bring me some Xinghua Village…" Ya Qiaoxi tilted her head back, pouring the last drops of the bottle into her mouth, "I should've bought some snacks on my way back… Fen Jiu just isn't the same without peanuts and oil-fried meat."

"I ordered some food delivery for you," Candle Dragon said considerately, "Half a pound of sliced lamb, half a pound of peanuts…Dragon City's prices seem to have gone up quite a bit since the last time I was here."

"That's it for bar snacks? Aren't you drinking too?" Ya Qiaoxi grabbed Candle Dragon's sleeve.

"I'm planning to visit a few other friends," Candle Dragon gently pulled away from her fingers, "I'll take my leave for today. If you have any news, feel free to contact me… we should be staying in Dragon City for a while."

"A concert is coming up soon, not staying to watch?"

"Compared to rock, I'm more interested in blues and jazz," Candle Dragon smiled.

"Tch, boring man." Ya Qiaoxi stood up with the empty bottle, wobbling toward the inner room, "I'm gonna take a nap first, don't see me out."