Chapter 5146 — Continued Recruitment
The Blossom Guardian · Page 1 of 2
"Wonderful! Wonderful! I'm a Gold Core expert now—let's see who can stand in my way, wahahaha!" The despair and dejection of before were swept away in an instant, and Xue Jianming turned cocky and full of swagger. Even the way he looked at Dr. Glasses and Brother Dafeng was no longer as reverent as it had been; instead, a certain condescension began to creep in.
After all, in terms of sheer strength, those two did not even have the most rudimentary Foundation Establishment cultivation, while he was now a lofty early-stage Gold Core expert. There was simply no comparison between them—strength determined who had the right to speak. Add to that his lifelong arrogance and conceit, and now that his old self had resurfaced, his condescension came naturally.
Bing Wushuang's manner was much as before—expressionless, watching coldly from the sidelines.
Seeing Xue Jianming's arrogant, supercilious air, Dr. Glasses suddenly laughed and shook his head again and again. "Don't celebrate too early. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Why don't you take a good look at your dantian first?"
"My dantian?" Xue Jianming was startled and hastily examined it. He found nothing unusual at first, but on his second check he suddenly discovered a strange wisp of qi wandering aimlessly within his dantian, there and yet not there. The qi was extremely faint; without a careful probe it could not be detected at all. It answered to no control and could not be eradicated. Xue Jianming cried out in alarm, "What the hell is this qi?"
"Poison qi. I'll be straight with you—every improved pill our Center produces carries a dose of poison qi. Ordinarily it just lurks in your dantian and does no harm. But over time it will stir to life, and once it worms its way out of your dantian, it's the end of you." Dr. Glasses chuckled.
"What?" Xue Jianming's face changed drastically. He hurriedly asked, "Then aren't we as good as dead?"
"Don't be so tense. The improved pills from our Center are rare goods you couldn't buy outside even with money—how could we let them go to waste? As long as you do your work well, I will naturally give you the antidote at regular intervals to keep that poison qi in check. If you disobey, well, then you can just fend for yourselves." Dr. Glasses regarded the two of them with utter fearlessness.
The Center was no charity, still less a fool. They too believed in controlling people's hearts, but they never left themselves without a fallback, for the human heart is the most inscrutable and ungovernable thing in all the world. By comparison, control through drugs was far safer and more reliable.
Of course, this method of control was cruder than the drug-brainwashing used by Jing Taiyang and his lot. But its advantage lay in not damaging the brain, leaving no obvious side effects, leaving no traces, and preserving far more of a person's potential.
That was why this method could not be used casually on ordinary people. It was reserved for those who harbored hatred for the Primordial Alliance—give them the pill, then use it to threaten and control them, balancing kindness with severity. Only thus could everything be guaranteed, as with Bing Wushuang and Xue Jianming before him now.
It was like a bucket of cold water poured over his head. Xue Jianming had just been nursing thoughts of kicking down the ladder once he had crossed the river; now he was struck dumb, and for a long while he could not string together a single complete sentence.
"Meticulous in execution, boundless in means—it seems I chose rightly." Bing Wushuang, for his part, was not the least bit concerned. In fact, from the very moment he had taken the pill, he had been prepared for this. If the Center had possessed no means of control at all, he would instead have doubted whether the organization had any future.