Lin Fan's steps grew slower the further he advanced.
Towards the end, he moved half a step at a time, afraid to make any sound.
"No matter what demon, ghost, or poisonous plant you are, this is the 21st century, and it's not your time to run wild!"
Lin Fan muttered to himself, trying to bolster his courage.
"You'd better behave yourself, or I'll blow up the entire mountain!"
Despite his tough talk, Lin Fan's heart was pounding wildly.
Blasting the mountain was a future problem. If there was something terrifying inside the cave, it could very well claim his life in an instant.
Thus, Lin Fan inched forward, trembling with fear.
A long while later.
Lin Fan finally approached the cave entrance.
His gaze fell on a depression in the ground, where the light had flashed earlier.
This depression was covered with soil and gravel. If one didn't look closely, they wouldn't see a weed-like plant growing within.
*Whoosh~*
A sound suddenly came from inside the cave, like some colossal beast exhaling a forceful breath.
Lin Fan's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately held his breath.
His keen eyes clearly saw a mass of sinister purple gas rolling towards him.
It surged directly at him along the low cave passage!
*Whoosh~*
A gust of wind blew.
A faint floral scent caused him to quickly cover his nose.
"Damn it, what exactly is in there?"
Hearing the commotion in the cave, Lin Fan dared not linger. He quickly crouched down and began searching in the depression.
Soon, another gust of wind blew.
Lin Fan maintained his breath-hold, thinking, "It seems those bold students have angered whatever is inside!"
He dug out the soil and gravel from the depression and felt something soft yet resilient.
"Got it!"
Lin Fan rejoiced, shaking the dirt off his hands. Indeed, he held a plant's root stem between his fingers.
Anyone familiar with traditional Chinese medicine knows that for any potent poison, its antidote is always found nearby.
With a slight tug, Lin Fan uprooted the plant.
Although the plant was covered in dirt, its pearly white, lustrous nature was still evident.
It was clearly something valuable, likely an antidote.
However, such a good thing wouldn't fetch any money later.
Lin Fan clasped his hands together in a prayer towards the cave before turning and running back.
*Whoosh~*
A mass of purple gas, invisible to ordinary people, suddenly erupted, chasing after Lin Fan and spraying onto his back.
"Doctor, what are you doing?"
Professor Fu had been watching from a distance.
He found the whole scene increasingly bizarre and unnerving.
First, the young man cautiously approached the cave, then squatted to rummage in the ground, and finally ran back as if he had seen a ghost.
He looked less like a doctor and more like a shaman.
"Stop asking questions. Whether your students can be saved depends on whether I guessed correctly."
Lin Fan grabbed the bottle of mineral water from Professor Fu's hand and began rinsing the plant.
"Doctor, what are you doing?"
"Can this grass detoxify?"
Professor Fu stared at the plant in Lin Fan's hand, filled with doubt. "This looks like ordinary weed!"
Lin Fan had no desire to explain.
After rinsing the plant, he quickly moved to where he had been grinding the medicine earlier and crushed the plant.
Then, he put the crushed plant into the mineral water bottle.
"What are you holding?"
Professor Fu, with his scholarly demeanor, his old eyes brimming with curiosity.
"You wouldn't understand even if I told you. It's an old folk remedy."
Lin Fan said, shaking the mineral water bottle vigorously.
His gaze kept darting back towards the cave.
Fortunately, after he left, the cave had quieted down, and no more poisonous gas was emitted.
"Alright."
Lin Fan walked to the side of the three most severely affected students.
If their chests weren't rising and falling, they would have looked like corpses, and not just any corpses, but those with particularly gruesome deaths, suitable for a horror film.
Lin Fan helped one of the students sit up, then pried open his mouth and poured two or three mouthfuls of the potion down his throat.
Like this, Lin Fan administered the potion, two or three mouthfuls at a time, to all the students.
After Lin Fan finished, Professor Fu leaned in and asked, "Doctor, will the liquid you gave them be effective?"
"If this can't save them, then they can only await death."
Lin Fan spoke, then suddenly remembered that if he had brought the Scarlet Blood Lingzhi, it would have definitely worked as an antidote.
But he had no idea these students would get poisoned.
There wouldn't be enough time to go back and retrieve it.
So, for now, he could only try this desperate measure.
"Ah?"
Professor Fu was extremely flustered, like a grasshopper on a hot pan.
Lin Fan, however, remained calm, observing the condition of the last two students.
He clearly saw the purple gas in their blood slowly dissipating.
"It's working!"
Lin Fan clenched his fist to himself.
Time ticked by.
Professor Fu grew increasingly anxious, pacing back and forth among the students, asking, "How are they?"
"Doctor, is what you gave them actually effective?"
In less than ten minutes, Professor Fu asked the same question over a dozen times.
Lin Fan initially grunted a few times, but soon stopped responding altogether.
"Teacher, I feel much better."
The two students with milder poisoning, their bluish-black complexions gradually receding, struggled to stand up.
"Good!"
Professor Fu's eyes widened in disbelief as he rushed to them.
He examined their complexions closely, exclaiming excitedly, "Your faces are normal! You're truly better! Wonderful!"
At his advanced age, with white hair, he was usually steady and reserved in his role as an educator.
Yet now, he was as excited as a child, gesticulating wildly.
He looked back at Lin Fan and shouted, "Doctor, it really worked!"
Lin Fan simply nodded, remaining silent.
Although he had only had a fifty percent chance of success, he didn't care about the lives of these people, so he didn't show much reaction.
"Xiao Hao, you're awake too."
Professor Fu saw that one of the students lying on the ground let out a groan and then opened his eyes.
He went to support Xiao Hao's head and asked, "How do you feel?"
"Teacher, I'm still alive?"
Xiao Hao's current appearance was so ghastly he could have gone straight into a horror film without makeup.
His lips were dark blue, as if he had just eaten mulberries.
"Of course you're alive! Someone saved you!"
Professor Fu glanced at Lin Fan, his eyes full of gratitude.
Following that, the remaining two students, who had been most severely poisoned, also woke up.
"It's alright, I'll take you home."
Professor Fu's eyes welled up with tears, his heart filled with mixed emotions.
It wasn't that he feared the students' demise and the responsibility he would bear.
It was the fear that talents painstakingly nurtured by the nation would be lost in this unnamed mountain due to a moment of recklessness.
Lin Fan ignored their tearful reunion. He went to the nearby woods and broke off some branches.
When he returned, all the students were drinking water greedily.