The Apothecary
You find Yao Fei bent over his workbench strewn with various dried medicinal herbs, a set of weighing scales, mortars and pestles, and the other tools of his trade. The apothecary himself looks more like some sort of fungoid growth on his workstool than a slug-man.
One eyestalk remains focused on you while the other scans the workbench as he shows you the principal medicinal fungi: qingzhi(青芝; "green mushroom") for the liver, chizhi (赤芝; "red mushroom") for the heart, huangzhi (黃芝; "yellow mushroom") for the spleen, baizhi (白芝; "white mushroom") for the lungs, heizhi (黑芝; "black mushroom") for the kidneys, and zizhi (紫芝; "purple mushroom") for the Essence. The shapes are as varied as their coloration, but none even closely resemble the yellow branchlike growths you saw at the cockroach pens.
"In the wild, Yellow Zombie Fungus only affects a particular kind of ant, and in a very specific way. What you describe is inconsistent with that way. In fact, the effects you witnessed were different on the man than those on the roaches. You say the roaches became aggressive, while the man did not. Very strange indeed. Perhaps different physiologies are affected differently, or perhaps there are interactions with other substances, or perhaps sorcery has been employed. Burning the growths was the logical course of action, but it also robbed us of samples that would have allowed further investigation." Yao Fei strokes where a chin would be if he were human before continuing, "If there's anyone who can help us obtain samples, that would be Sikeo of the Explorer's Guild."
How do you wish to proceed?
