Just as Ashley was about to become utterly infamous, Chloe’s exclusive interview with Amber quelled everyone’s anger.
As the person involved, Amber clarified in the interview that Ashley had indeed intended to use the Undying Potion, but the enemies were too weak and she never got the chance. Out of momentary confusion, she secretly hid the potion away, which was understandable.
Though there were still scattered doubts, the matter was considered settled.
With public opinion calmed, Ashley started rebuilding her reputation from scratch, still taking the bizarre route by collaborating with the museum and the newspaper.
Not only practical cadavers, but all kinds of rare beasts and oddities fell within the collection scope: turtles with glowing algae growing on their backs, fully transparent giant fish, bizarre birds with sickle-like beaks, and more.
The museum’s exhibits grew richer by the day, yet Curator Mavis couldn’t be happier.
The pressure from her family mounted. Her mother constantly told her that worrying over this matter kept her up all night, and her grandfather, who had originally supported her, rushed back from the countryside and changed his tune, indirectly expressing hope that she would sell the museum to treat her legs.
“I didn’t spend my entire life building a cage for my granddaughter. If she gave up her youth and freedom for this museum, I would die with my eyes open!” the old man said.
Mavis’s stress maxed out; she was restless from morning till night.
When she saw the newly exhibited Demon Flower Mantis at the Nocturnal Creature Museum, she suddenly recalled a popular science magazine she had read that mentioned how extracting the horsehair worms parasitizing mutated mantises—worms containing extraordinary power—then inactivating and processing them into artificial tendons, served as the primary medical material for paralysis rehabilitation surgery.
“I don’t have enough money right now. Can I pay you back slowly?”
Faced with the curator’s embarrassed plea, Ashley could only agree.
When processing the Demon Flower Mantis cadaver, the extracted innards were pickled in a clay jar filled with coarse salt.
Every part of a supernatural creature’s body contained some degree of power, and soft tissues and organs were all supernatural materials.
Though it was impossible to purify the supernatural power, processing them into potions and feeding them to ordinary animals allowed for directed mutations.
Even some humans used this beast medicine because singularities were too scarce, and even weak supernatural power could bring significant physical enhancement.
Animals could mutate, and so could humans.
Of course, beast medicine had severe side effects: mild cases led to hormonal imbalances, severe ones to bodily alienation or even loss of humanity.
But if stabilized, one could glimpse the world of the supernatural.
Ashley retrieved the clay jar from Blackfoot Workshop’s warehouse, shoveled aside the coarse salt, and a thick, fishy stench poured out. Wearing gloves, she carefully snipped open the organs and indeed found some horsehair worms. She clamped them out with tweezers and placed them in a pressurized glass jar secured with rotating metal clasps—after all, they qualified as supernatural creatures and were extremely dangerous.
Seated in her wheelchair, Mavis hugged the jar, her eyes sparkling with excitement as she revealed an expectant smile, two deep dimples appearing on her serene, round face.
She calculated in her notebook: her savings over the years, plus self-provided materials, should just barely cover the surgery costs. With this, she wouldn’t have to sell the museum.
Watching from the side, Ashley inwardly sighed at the vast gulf between the mundane and the supernatural. Such a large museum was worth less than a palm-sized piece of supernatural material—others wouldn’t even trade for it.
Flora pushed the wheelchair to the appointed doctor’s clinic.
Flora had quickly advanced from museum janitor to secretary, handling inventory registration and daily operations.
This was her strength; even as a juvenile offender leader, she had done similar work.
Mavis paid her two pounds a week—a decent salary—and outsourced toilet cleaning to a housekeeping company for twice-daily service.
At the clinic, Ashley was surprised to discover that the surgeon for Mavis was none other than Amber’s father, Duke Yabei, a somewhat famous surgeon in Fountain City.
Even more astonishing was that Doctor Duke’s clinic was a house-sized ellipsoidal spiral pupa shell!
This bizarre little building stood out starkly among a row of neat houses.
The pupa’s head and thorax were separated along a natural groove, with the helmet-like head lifted upward and supported by iron frames as an awning. The hardened chest wings served as the reception area, while the rear spiral segments formed tire-shaped medical rooms.
“This was salvaged from the seventh underground great plain layer, the Rot Sea. The seller claimed it was a ‘King Insect’ juvenile molt, but that was hype. Tests showed no supernatural power, so I bought it cheaply.”
Perhaps because he recognized Ashley, Doctor Duke was very chatty and kept talking.
“Amber cried terribly that day. Don’t break her heart again,” the old father said with complex emotions.
Ashley could only offer an embarrassed yet polite smile.
At the entrance, they removed their shoes and socks, stepping onto a tender red soft tissue carpet where their soles sank down to the hard base.
Feeling the fleshy, warm slickness, Ashley shivered all over, pursed her lips, and looked around.
She saw the pupa shell’s interior covered in an inch-thick layer of biological tissue: pink polyps interwoven with plant-root-like natural blood vessels and embedded artificial conduits.
In the complex piping areas, heart-like nodes sat at the centers, fixed by cage-like bone structures, rhythmically pumping to maintain fluid circulation.
The walls were inlaid with large oval convex crystals like insect compound eyes, emitting a soft orange-yellow glow.
All the interior furnishings were assembled from bones polished into regular geometric shapes, tightly arrayed and rising straight up like clustered ribs, with gaps filled by gelatinous biological tissue, exuding an eerie beauty.
“This is my design. Instead of pursuing a sterile operating room, why not maintain an environment like inside a living body? Here, dust, bacteria, cilia… all harmful substances are broken down and absorbed by the ecological padding.”
As Doctor Duke spoke, he unwound the bandage around his right arm.
Ashley’s pupils contracted. As the bandage fell away, patches of inhuman, finely textured gray-white skin—separated and sewn along the edges with dense, needle-like artificial blood vessels onto twisting, writhing flesh—were revealed. Several external skeletal reinforcements propped up the bloated, heavy arm from below for better control.
At the arm’s end was a monstrous hand pieced from over a dozen finger bones and even more irregular palm bone fragments. Each finger bone had more than four joints, wriggling repulsively in the air like an arthropod’s limbs, with flesh extending from the tips and the pale bones ground into various machine-tool-like shapes—a veritable collector’s Swiss Army knife.
“Doesn’t it look eerie? But it’s rational! Not a mad idea, but a product of reason! It just doesn’t match human aesthetics.”
The man turned his head, squeezing out a kind smile. When he opened his mouth, his teeth were all gone, replaced by tiny curled appendages on the upper palate like insect mouthparts.
“Don’t tell Amber, okay?”
Ashley nodded lightly, her expression unchanged, but Flora couldn’t handle it and hid desperately behind her, chills creeping up her spine.
Taking the pressurized glass jar, Doctor Duke examined the wriggling horsehair worms inside, then used tools to measure their supernatural fluctuations and nodded.
“Quality meets medical grade. Just send it to a bio-lab for processing.”
A week later, Mavis underwent the surgery, and it was a great success.
At the Insect House entrance, Ashley and Flora supported her as she stood, feeling an unprecedented sense of support from the ground. Mavis’s mouth gaped in joy as she took trembling steps forward, recalling her childhood learning to walk.
“Your legs have such a nice shape, sis. They’d look great in white thigh-high stockings,” Ashley teased opportunistically.
Unexpectedly, this struck a chord with the curator girl, who headed straight to the store and bought seven or eight different pairs of pantyhose.
As she pulled on the stockings, Mavis frowned slightly at a twinge of pain in her hamstring, attributing it to post-op recovery and paying it no mind.
