A day later, the group had returned to the warehouse slash Clan headquarters. It was beginning to fill up, the earlier quiet broken up by new members. Unlike the previous few floors, acquiring the aid and buy-in of the Thorned Lotuses has been simple. It was only now that it was dawning upon Arthur why that might be.
"Those stings are a bastard and a half, aren't they?" Arthur said, staring at the still closing wound on his arm. Not only had it been painful, the wound refused to close quickly. Only his growing resistance against poisons had kept him from curling up and crying like Rick. And even then, it had been a close thing.
"Looks like it," Mel said, trying to hide a smile. Only three of them had managed to get stung, Rick and Yao Jing making up the other two. Yao Jing had ended up literally walking into another nest, and only quick thinking had seen him and the other climber survive by jumping into a nearby river. Even then, Rick was currently curled up in his room, downing pain killers and working through the three stings and Yao Jing wasn't much better with his two.
"So what can we do about it?" Arthur said.
"You could increase your resistance?" Uswah opined, a small smile on her lips.
"You mean get stung voluntarily and work through it." He could feel the way his technique was working on the poisons, flushing them out. Thanks to his recent experiences, he could sense the changes that happened and was working on weaving it through his body on an active level, trying to improve the technique's poison resistance and cleansing. Being able to split his conversation and wield the technique at the same time was making it harder, but he would have just been harvesting stones otherwise anyway.
"If it works...." Uswah said.
"No thank you," he chirped, brightly. He was pretty certain she was kidding, but in either case, no. "Other options?"
"There's an antidote that you can use. It's in a paste, you slap it on the wound." Mel mimed the motion. "I have a couple of applications."
"Then...?" Arthur said, trying not to resent the fact she only mentioned it now.
"It supposedly slows down healing," she said.
"Oh." Another frown, as he considered it. "Then....?"
"Makes it less painful, which is what most people have issues with."
Arthur shook his head. "We'll keep it for backup, if necessary." Flexing his hand, he noted that the wound was finally closing, the black veins gone and the redness faded to just around the wound itself. "It isn't that bad, if you manage to flush the toxins out."
"That's at your level," Mel said, serious now. "The rest of us... it's taking Rick a while."
"He's not actively healing though."
"Too painful."
"So we combine the two?" Arthur frowned, staring at the paste that Mel took out to let him stare at. Charcoal black, the paste looked like a mixture of plant and root matter and dirt and smelled worst. Arthur shifted away, trying to push away thoughts of rotting garbage as he waved for her to put it away. "Fine. I'll... try to get stung at least once a fight, or something. At the end...."
"Ya lah?" Uswah said, surprised.
"Yeah..." Arthur sighed. He really did not want to do it. But, while painful, it wasn't worst than taking a liver shot or two or taking a proper kick to the gnads. In other words, bad and likely to drop him for a bit while he recalibrated to the agony, but he had done it before. Unlike Rick, he'd been hurt. Bad. Broken bones, crushed fingers, torns tendons. Being nearly gutted and gored and stabbed. But the Yin Body allowed him to regain control faster, and having experienced worst before, this was just... bad.
Each new high watermark of agony made everything else after it less. And whether that was a good thing or bad just depended on your perspective.
"So. We headed out again tomorrow or...?" Mel said, tapping the small pouch. They'd all managed to get a half-dozen or so stones, which wasn't much. And the two injured were likely to be back to fighting fit - if still injured - if they wanted to head out. A half-dozen stones wasn't enough other than for a day at best of cultivating.
"Give the stones to them - the injured -, have them get cultivating tomorrow. We'll go out, keep sweeping the local area. Two more days, maybe three, get used to them while we dig deeper and get more stones." Because even with the size of the perimeter, it was still true that there'd be monsters the deeper they went. "Then we cultivate and push in."
A slight hesitation from Mel made Arthur raise an eyebrow.
"I want to spend some time with the Thorned Lotuses," she said.
"Ex. But in a few days?" Arthur said.
"Cultivation time isn't time spent together." She frowned, then smiled. "I could go out with them?"
"Uhhh...." Arthur paused, then wanted to smack himself. That made a lot of sense. In fact, he almost wondered why he didn't do that before. No better way to get an idea of someone in a life or death situation.
Also a good way to get backstabbed. But....
"Can you send a few of them with me? We can split you off and you go with them and we get two newbies. What do you think?"
Pursed lips, then Mel nodded. "Makes sense. They could probably give us some tips too."
"What I was thinking," Arthur said, then looked at Uswah. She shrugged, happy to accept the change and he nodded. "Then I guess we're a go." A pause, then he added. "Have them introduce themselves later today, eh?"
***
"Karen Raj," the woman who strode up to him stuck her hand out, forcing him to shake it. Arthur took it automatically, blinking at the direct and clear gaze in the older woman's face. At least forty years old, with a bob haircut parted in the middle, the Indian lady looked like she'd be better suited for a boardroom than wearing the scale and leather armour that clad her presently.
"Arthur Chua."
"I know." She stepped aside, nodding to the shorter woman behind her. "My daughter. Devi."
He didn't need that second descriptor, since the pair carried much the same bearing, nose and eyes. The only difference being the daughter having a more fashionable hairstyle and red lipstick on.
"Good to meet you. How long have you guys been here?" He gestured around at the fifth floor, trying to gauge their strength. Hard to say, though the casual pressure of their grips told Arthur they had significant points in Body at the least.
"Just about a year and a half so far, I think." Karen smiled grimly. "We're taking it slow. Better to do it right, than rush, right?"
"Heh." Was his reply. Uswah snorted behind while Arthur waved towards the exit. "Shall we just get going?"
"Of course." Karen straightened herself, tested the backpack she was carrying and then swept her gaze over the trio before giving a short, firm nod. "Let's go. We'll talk about what you're doing wrong once we're inside."
"Wrong ah?" Jan said, quiet till now. She had been looking up towards where she'd left Yao Jing but the casual insult had her bristling.
If Karen noticed, she did not seem to care. Striding out of the building, she left the group to rush after, Arthur just shaking his head a little. Well, he did ask for this. Better to learn now at least, rather than later, even if this was going to be fun.