Half an hour later, at the summit of Sensui Mountain, in the half-destroyed front courtyard that nobody had bothered repairing.
Several people had returned from the cave.
The body of Sky Master, the former Emperor of Kakin, Goya Hui Guo Rou, had been buried by Netero.
Wing finally learned that President Netero had brought a coffin up the mountain this time. Apparently he'd decided from the beginning to let his old friend rest in peace.
Liam and Shizuku had been taken away by Gel while they were still in Wing's room. When Wing heard they were back, he brought Hart over to check on the situation. He immediately noticed the abnormality on Liam's body next to Shizuku.
"So," Liam folded his arms and frowned, raising his head. "What's the situation now?"
"We're the ones who should be asking you that, right?" Hart clutched his head, eyes wide. "What is that octopus thing on you?!"
Wing activated Gyo and looked at Liam properly.
Eight arms, like ink stains dragged out by a thick brush, wrapped around Liam's body and swayed gently.
The main body of these eight arms floated behind Liam like a dark half-figure. The head had a cracked smile and gray eyes. Suddenly it looked toward Wing. Its eight pitch-black arms quietly changed direction, slowly pointing at him.
Wing felt a chill. Was this thing hostile to him?
But looking at Liam's demeanor, there was no change at all.
Which meant the thing and Liam were independent of each other?
Wing released Gyo. He could still see the eight-armed black shadow on Liam.
He switched quickly, entering Zetsu state.
The moment he activated Zetsu, both Liam's aura and the eight-armed shadow coiled around him disappeared. More precisely, Wing couldn't see them anymore.
"It's a parasitic Nen beast. Currently, it feeds on the aura in your body to ensure its own survival."
Pyon held her laptop with one hand and clicked with the other. Her slender fingers with pink manicure seemed to dance across the keyboard. "It doesn't require much aura. Judging from the change curve of aura in your body, the speed of its consumption can't keep up with your natural recovery rate. By the way, what's your name?"
The bunny girl seemed to find something surprising. She finally looked up from her computer screen to stare at Liam.
"My name is Liam."
"Right, his name is..." Hart nodded, then suddenly froze. "Wait, what's your name?"
Liam glanced at everyone present.
Netero, Rabbit, Snake, Wing, Hart.
It wasn't that Liam particularly trusted these people. He just wasn't afraid of Kakin finding out, and he didn't plan to bear the pseudonym "John Smith" for the rest of his life anyway.
He'd definitely change back to his real name eventually. For example, when he took the exam for his own Hunter License, Liam didn't plan to use a fake name.
These people were all Professional Hunters. Except for Wing and Hart each of them was a real boss in the Hunter Association. No need to use pseudonyms with them.
"I've caused some trouble. It's not convenient to use my real name in a place like Heavens Arena." Liam said with a smile.
Sure enough, Netero and the others didn't pay much attention.
Pyon looked at Liam and the eight-armed black shadow on his body. "The speed at which your aura naturally recovers is faster than many Enhancers. This parasitic Nen beast is harmless to the host. It's a symbiotic type. Normally, the aura absorbed from the host should be kept at a level that doesn't make the host feel constantly tired. For you, it probably feels like there's no burden at all."
"But it still feels weird to have this thing on me," Liam said awkwardly.
"Weird?" Hart raised his hands and shouted excitedly. "It looks like black armor! Like a berserker! So cool!"
"What kind of berserker has eight arms?" Wing patted Hart's head. "You should play fewer video games."
Liam pointed at the black shadow on his body, looking dissatisfied. "Old Man Netero, this whole mess is because of your old friend's stuff. I don't care. You have to find a way to deal with it. Get an Exorcist to solve this!"
Netero stroked his goatee. "Hehehe, it's not easy to find an Exorcist."
"You're the head of the Hunter Association. What's so hard to find?" Liam asked curiously. "Don't tell me an organization as big as the Hunter Association can't recruit a single Exorcist."
"Even if there are Exorcists in the Association, they're hunters first and foremost. Hunters have their own things to hunt. Removing Nen for you isn't part of their job description. What right do I have to order them around?"
"Why do I get the feeling you're just messing with me, old man..."
"Hehehe." Netero looked at him with a smile. "Since it's a symbiotic Nen beast that's harmless to the host, and it has some abilities, are you really willing to get rid of it?"
Liam said, "I'm pretty capable myself. One more ability doesn't help much. One less doesn't hurt."
As he spoke, he glanced back at the armor-like eight-armed berserker figure, which showed no reaction to his words.
When Wing had looked at it earlier, it clearly reacted.
Did this thing have consciousness?
Or was it really the same as the guardian spirit beasts spawned by the Seed Urn in Kakin?
He shouldn't heve Hui Guo Rou bloodline or maybe he did? but he'd ended up with the standard guardian spirit beast of Kakin royalty anyway.
But one characteristic of guardian spirit beasts was that the host couldn't see their own beast at all and couldn't direct the beast's actions whatsoever.
And Liam could see this thing on his body...
Shizuku looked at the bunny girl, who understood what she meant and spread her palms. "If you want me to help analyze its ability, you'll have to pay me."
"You actually charge a fee?" Liam looked shocked.
"It's risky to analyze the core secrets of an unfamiliar Nen beast at the ability level," Pyon said. "If this guy has a counterattack ability, it's very likely to attack me while I'm analyzing it. Who knows what kind of attack it might be? If it's a Manipulation-type counterattack ability, I might not even have any resistance and become controlled by it. Just look at its appearance and you can tell it's not trustworthy..."
Liam was genuinely shocked. Who looked untrustworthy?
"Who knows if I'll fall into its hands and become..."
A snake head stretched out and wrapped around Pyon's head, tying up her mouth as she kept rambling.
Gel calmly interjected, "What websites do you normally browse?"
Hart's head filled with question marks. Wing broke into a cold sweat, making Liam wonder if his Enhancement attributes were fake.
In the end, Pyon agreed to help Liam analyze the ability of the parasitic Nen beast attached to him.
Actually, she was quite curious about it herself.
What was the most important quality for a Hunter? Curiosity about the unknown.
"The time it takes for analysis to produce results is uncertain. It may take several hours," Pyon warned in advance. "Sometimes it takes over twenty-four hours."
Liam asked curiously, "How many people have you analyzed to become this skilled?"
Pyon wiggled her fingers and tapped on the keyboard for a while. Soon green code-like aura swept toward Liam like a net.
Liam leaned over to look.
On the laptop screen, the model of the eight-armed black shadow became clearer.
"Don't worry, I'm not scanning you," Pyon said calmly. "The more convenient and versatile a Nen ability is, the more limitations it must have. My analytical ability is combined with En. Whoever gets scanned will definitely sense that they're being scanned. My ability to analyze the other party is my advantage. The other party's ability to kill me before my analysis completes is their advantage. Do you feel me scanning you?"
"No," Liam said. "So I want you to scan me."
Shizuku looked thoughtful.
She could tell Liam wanted to use the rabbit's ability to analyze the problem with his heart and death energy.
This time Pyon looked at him a bit strangely. He actually took the initiative to request her analytical ability? Was he really that unguarded?
Liam looked sad. "You know, there are always some things that are hard to explain..."
Pyon looked at him, then at Shizuku, and reminded him, "I'm not a doctor. If you have some incurable disease, you'd better go to Cheadle."
Gel said quietly from the side, "Cheadle is world-class in academic research, but in the clinical field, she might not match experts from top universities and first-rate hospitals."
In the Chimera Ant arc in the manga, Netero and others had found a doctor to give emergency treatment to the Ant Queen. They'd found a female doctor from a university, not Cheadle from the Twelve Zodiacs.
There were specializations within specializations. Professional Hunters weren't necessarily the absolute best in their professional fields.
For example, even if there was a Gungi Hunter, they definitely couldn't beat Komugi.
Komugi had sworn since childhood that she'd commit suicide if she lost at gungi.
If that was regarded as some kind of oath and restriction, then Komugi's resolve was even harsher than Kurapika's "the five-finger chain, the middle finger binding chain can only be used on the Phantom Troupe, otherwise I die," and even more brutal...
Gel's words reminded Liam of Cheadle, the Dog member of the Twelve Zodiacs, who indeed looked more like a top student class president type.
But was he here to see a doctor?
Liam's expression went blank.
Over there, Netero waved at Liam. "Alright, it's time for me to fulfill my promise."
Storytelling time?
Liam understood. The old man had promised earlier that if he and Shizuku, mainly Shizuku of course, did him a small favor and cleaned up the abnormal poison on Goya Hui Guo Rou's remains, he'd tell them about Goya's past.
Due to this body's connection to Kakin after his transmigration, Liam had to be cautious about everything related to Hui Guo Rou.
His life was at stake!
Especially the Hui Guo Rou royal family, who spent all day messing around with gods, ghosts, curses, and ritual magic...
Liam followed Netero to the cliff edge.
Pyon followed with her laptop.
Liam looked at her.
"What are you looking at? The analysis isn't finished yet. Of course I have to follow." Pyon said.
"Fine." Liam nodded.
Shizuku followed Liam.
Netero looked at Shizuku.
"What are you looking at? My business is Shizuku's business. Of course she can listen." Liam said.
"Alright." Netero nodded. "To talk about Goya Hui Guo Rou, we have to start from one hundred twenty years ago..."
How old is he? Shizuku was very curious. Liam spread his hands. Who knows?
One hundred twenty years ago, Netero's martial arts hadn't yet fully matured. His martial arts had hit a bottleneck.
He had few opponents in the human world.
That was the bottleneck.
He never met an opponent who could truly challenge him, a strong enemy. For a while, he enjoyed victories that felt as lonely as snow.
Until he met Goya Hui Guo Rou.
If you used a manga metaphor, Netero meeting Goya was like Gon meeting Killua.
However, Netero and Goya each had elements of both Gon and Killua. Neither of them was as straightforward as Gon, and both had some of Killua's devious streaks.
Goya fought with Netero.
"You actually lost?" Liam felt incredulous hearing this.
Netero smiled. "At that time, I wasn't as strong as I became later. I was almost only at my peak..." He was being modest. "One-fifth? Well, maybe less."
"President, are you actually being humble?" Pyon complained.
Netero smiled proudly for a moment, then said with emotion, "Goya bragged all day about comparing himself to Kakin's original True Martial King. It made me regret for many years that I wasn't born in the same era as the True Martial King!"
Shaking his head, Netero continued. "Later, Goya went to the Dark Continent alone, and I went into the mountains to train in isolation. When I saw him again, it was more than ten years later. I hadn't changed much, but he'd aged significantly. He seemed like a different person, and he was poisoned..."
"To find an antidote for him, I recruited two helpers and headed to the Dark Continent together." The old man recalled the past. "With some experience provided by Goya, the three of us reached the Dark Continent successfully. However, it took several years and ultimately... we found nothing."
He stroked his barbed goatee. "I was quite disappointed. I don't know if the other two gained anything."
Poison from the Dark Continent?
Liam and Shizuku exchanged glances.
Even Shizuku didn't know where things sucked into Blinky went. Since there were no examples of inhaled things mixing together, they weren't worried that toxins vacuumed by Blinky would contaminate their belongings or food. Not only that, judging by how freely Shizuku could now retrieve what Blinky swallowed, this strange poison from the Dark Continent could even serve as a trump card.
Against the Ant King, for example.
If that guy couldn't withstand Poor Man's Rose poison, he probably couldn't withstand the strange poison that had infected Goya Hui Guo Rou either.
Liam solemnly patted the back of Shizuku's hand. "Don't forget about this thing. Make sure you can actually pull it out when you need it later."
Liam continued inquiring about Goya Hui Guo Rou, but as expected, Netero only knew about Goya. He didn't know much about the Hui Guo Rou part.
Just like Gon and Killua. The two were so close, but Gon didn't necessarily know anything about the Zoldyck family.
Liam wasn't disappointed. At least he knew that Goya Hui Guo Rou was someone who'd once compared himself in strength to the True Martial King. And he'd obtained a copy of the abnormal poison that could be used as a deadly weapon, plus the so-called parasitic Nen beast that, after Goya's death, had become entangled with him like some kind of occupational hazard...
At that moment, the eight-armed black shadow on Liam became increasingly restless. It seemed unable to endure any longer and launched an uncontrolled attack on Pyon.
One arm shot out like a sharp sword, stabbing toward Pyon's face.
Pyon lifted her laptop.
The shadow's arm got blocked by the computer's back cover. Pyon tilted her head. "You want my blood, right?"
Another arm came at her, but Netero reached out, grabbed it, and threw the whole thing off the cliff.
Liam didn't feel anything at all.
This thing really did look like a guardian spirit beast hatched from a Seed Urn. It fed on his aura and had the instinct to automatically protect its master. Liam couldn't control its attacks, but when others attacked it, it had no effect on Liam whatsoever.
Before the eight-armed black shadow could fly back up from the cliff, Pyon typed on her keyboard.
"Currently, its ability is to absorb the target's aura after consuming the target's blood. The more times it obtains blood, the stronger its ability to absorb aura becomes. It's speculated that at minimum, it can drain away the target's manifested Nen instantly, then drain them into Zetsu, and eventually even drain the target's life force..."
"It's a Nen ability with conditional characteristics," Pyon said, "but it's essentially biased toward Enhancement, so it probably won't be immune to Manipulation-type abilities."
"It's a very dangerous Nen beast, and you seem unable to control its actions." Netero stroked his goatee. "Pyon, are any Exorcists in the Association free recently?"
"Let me check..." Pyon tapped on her keyboard.
"Wait." Liam raised his hand. "There's no need to remove it. I'm fine."