“Since half a month ago, I have been having a headache for ten minutes every hour as if something is swallowing my… my energy, yes, energy, so I get tired very easily.”
Halidan said with a pained expression, looking like he was a little scared of talking about this, and he seemed to have been seriously tortured by the pain.
“Prince Hengli, can we make a wager?”
Ding Ning instantly had a clear mind. “It seems that something is wrong in his brain.” He turned his eyes, turned around, and looking at Prince Hengli, said.
“What kind?”
Prince Hengli asked casually and was wondering how he could find the Master of the Divine Burin and ask for his help these days before he left Shenzhou.
“If I can find the cause of Prince Halidan’s disease and cure him, that means I win; if I can’t find it or can’t cure him, that means you win.”
There was great confidence in Ding Ning’s tone.
“Oh, what is the wager?”
Prince Henry became interested and asked.
“If I lose, I will give you an artwork of the Master of the Divine Burin.”
Ding Ning said with an indifferent expression, but Prince Hengli’s eyes glinted, and he said eagerly, “You have the works of the Master of the Divine Burin?”
“Then you don’t have to worry about it. Since I said it, naturally I will keep my promise, and Childe Bai can guarantee it for me.”
Ding Ning squinted at Bai Qing, signaling him to guarantee.
“I guarantee it for him. If he can’t get the work of the Master of the Divine Burin, I will give you my peach.”
Bai Qing smiled bitterly and helplessly and cursed silently, “Hengli, you are an idiot. The Master of the Divine Burin is in front of you, but you can’t recognize him, so how can you still want to ask him for help?”
“Okay, that’s it. If you win, what wager will I have to give you?”
Prince Hengli was not a fool. Seeing that Bai Qing was willing to use the peach he had been longing for to vouch for Ding Ning, he asked vigilantly, although he didn’t think Ding Ning could cure Halidan.
“If I win, you will have to call me Big Brother if you see me later.”
The corner of Ding Ning’s mouth showed something meaningful.
Hengli had a mental struggle. On one hand, he was older than Ding Ning; on the other hand, he could not lower his profile to call a Shenzhou man Big Brother with his identity.
“What? If I lose, I will lose more than a billion yuan worth of a jade carving, but if you lose, you will only need to call me Big Brother. In fact, I will have a big loss, but if you don’t dare to bet, let’s forget it.”
Ding Ning said lightly, but he strongly prodded him with his tone.
“Why don’t I dare? Let’s bet, but I won’t take advantage of you. If you win, I will call you Big Brother if I see you later and also give you 200 million pounds.”
Prince Hengli blushed and said stubbornly.
“Brother Ding, if you can cure me, you will be my benefactor and friend, and I will give you one billion Mi dollars as payment and a diamond card of Dibai Great Hotel. Brother Ding, if you go to Dibai later, I will pay all you spend. This free service will last for a lifetime.”
Halidan was much more generous than Prince Hengli. If he paid, he paid lucrative sums. Not to mention the treatment payment of one billion Mi dollars, only the lifetime free premium card was a guarantee for an ordinary person to live without worrying about food and clothing for generations to come. More importantly, it represented the future King Halidan’s friendship, which could not be measured by money, but this also indirectly showed that Halidan had been seriously tortured by the disease.
Both Bai Qing and Hengli had been shocked, and they also had envy in their eyes. The truth was that there were only five Premium Emperor Diamond Cards, which were studded with expensive diamonds, and each card’s value was more than one million Mi dollars. So far, they had never heard that the Premium Card had been given away. If Ding Ning can cure Halidan, he would be the first person in the world to get this card.
“Don’t talk about the one billion Mi dollars payment. Since you are Childe Bai’s classmate, you are my friend, so talking about money seems not friendly, but you can give me a Premium Card. Prince Halidan, don’t worry, and I won’t stay all the time in Dibai to eat and drink.”
Ding Ning smiled and made a joke to ease the atmosphere.
“Okay, since Prince Halidan has taken out the Premium Card, if I don’t make the wager with you, it seems that I am too mean. Although I am a prince, I am not as rich as Halidan. Apart from the 200 million pounds and the condition that I will call you Big Brother if we meet, I will also owe you one. Is this okay?”
Hengli summoned up his courage to add one more wager.
“Okay, that’s a deal!”
Ding Ning was not afraid that he would repudiate the debt and gave him a high-five oath.
He launched his Absolute Touch again, focused his Perception on Halidan’s brain, and amplified it numerous times to search carefully.
One minute, two minutes…
Time passed bit by bit. Ten minutes later, his superpower was still being quickly consumed, but Ding Ning still couldn’t find any unusual conditions, and his serious face became covered with lots of sweat drops. Hengli wanted to mock him but felt ashamed to open his mouth, but he firmly believed that he had won. Yet, he did not feel happy because Halidan was his very good friend, and he was unwilling to see him suffer from the disease.
“Clang!”
The clock on the wall suddenly struck eight o’clock.
“Ah…”
Halidan hugged his head with his hands and made a painful scream.
Ding Ning’s eyes glinted. He found it and blocked Halidan’s pain nerves with his Meridian Severing Hand, preventing him from moving.
In his Perception, many microbes that were countless times smaller than rice beans came out of his cerebral cortex cells at the o’clock time and then quickly gathered together to become a white insect almost as big as a rice bean, which constantly gnawed at Halidan’s spiritual strength.
Yes, it was the spiritual strength. An ordinary person also had the spiritual strength, but it was extremely weak.
“What is this?” Ding Ning frowned.
No wonder he didn’t find the insect even after magnifying his Perception 10,000 times. Maybe he had found it before, but he ignored it.
These insects usually lived together with the microorganisms in the cells, and they seemed harmless. After all, there were too many types of bacteria and microorganisms that humans didn’t recognize, and their shapes were various. Even if Ding Ning saw them, he would only treat them as normal bacterial microorganisms.
If the clock did not make a sound at the o’clock time and these insects had not come out to make damages, it would have been very hard for him to find them.
Thinking of the situation that he confidently made a wager with Hengli just now, he couldn’t help but feel ashamed and realized that he had become haughty after curing cancer. In the future, he would need to be modest and prudent and should never be arrogant anymore.
The stone man on his chest suddenly became hot, some information entered his brain, and he instantly knew what kind of creature these white insects were.
They were one of the top ten most ferocious insects in ancient times, named Spirit-eating Insect. They liked swallowing all kinds of spiritual auras, especially the Strength of Faith, and were ferocious insects of Jiuli’s Fog Tribe that protected the tribe. When their numbers reached a certain amount, they could form a sun-shading fog.
Ding Ning’s eyes glinted, revealing his thoughtfulness. “The Strength of Faith is the spiritual strength that believers get because of their belief? No wonder they are called Spirit-eating Insects. After all, many gods use the Strength of Faith to increase their magic power. The Spirit-eating Insect is simply a natural enemy of the gods.”
What made him confused was: According to the message from the Stone Man, although the Spirit-eating Insects were terrible, they had no intelligence, only acted by instinct, and did not actively attack human beings. Besides that, they had extremely strict requirements for their living environment.
It had been thousands of years since ancient times, and the spiritual aura of heaven and earth was so thin, so the insect should have been extinct a long time before. Even if there were a few survivors, they should live in the remote forests and mountains where there was the spiritual aura, but how could they appear in Halidan’s brain and devour his Strength of Faith to grow?
Halidan was a devout believer in Yisilan Religion, and there was a reason for the Spirit-eating Insect to attack him, but there were numerous Yisilan believers. Why did the insect only attack him? Ding Ning could not believe that there was no trick in it.
Fortunately, these Spirit-eating Insects were only larvae, who could only consume a small amount of spiritual strength at one time and then needed to rest to digest the absorbed spiritual strength, so they only ate once every hour; otherwise, they would mature in half a month at most. By then, they would devour Halidan’s spiritual strength all the time and drain his spiritual strength in two or three days at most, making him a lunatic.
If he had not come to Shenzhou to treat the disease and found Ding Ning, he might not find any famous doctor who could save him in the world.
At this moment, Ding Ning had quite mixed feelings, including shock, joy, and hesitation. His shock came from the fact that an ancient ferocious insect like the Spirit-eating Insect was still alive in the world; his joy was that perhaps he could find Fog Tribe’s totem by using the Insect as a clue; his hesitation was: Undoubtedly, someone had turned the eggs of the Insect into the Gu and deliberately controlled it, wishing to kill Halidan; this might lead to the dispute over throne in Alianqiu, and he did not want to get involved in such a complicated court struggle.
“Brother Ding, how’s it? Did you find the cause?”
After he lost his pain because of Ding Ning’s poke, Halidan could still feel the loss of his spiritual strength, but he had begun to highly admire Ding Ning, for the ability to relieve his pain was enough to prove Ding Ning’s outstanding medical skills. The truth was that the Chief Royal Doctor of Yingjili Royal Family was helpless when he was ill and only had to see him suffer.
“Found it!”
After moments of mental struggle, Ding Ning finally made his decision: He helped Halidan not only because of his good impression of the crown prince but also because of the clue of the Fog Totem.
“Really? What is the cause?”
Halidan asked in inexplicable surprise.
Bai Qing looked happy, and Prince Hengli was so inexplicably excited that he grabbed Ding Ning’s arm and asked expectantly, “Ding, can you cure him?”
Looking at Prince Hengli’s earnest eyes, Ding Ning could see that he really cared about Halidan, so his impression of him improved a bit again. This guy was a little arrogant in his bones, but he was really good to his friends. Now he looked kind and nodded earnestly. “Yes!”
“Oh, thank God, that’s great.”
Prince Hengli joined his palms before him and thanked God with a pious look.
“Prince Hengli, curing Halidan has nothing to do with God. Don’t forget that we still have a wager. You are not afraid to lose, are you?”
Ding Ning thought he was funny and made a joke.
Prince Hengli shrugged and said with a smile, “As long as Halidan can recover, I feel happy to lose.”
“Hengli, thank you, Bai Qing, thank you, and thank both of you!”
Halidan was a little moved and thanked Hengli and Bai Qing.
Bai Qing said with a smile, “Halidan, you should thank Ding Ning, not us.”
“No, I should thank both of you. Without both of you, I would not have met Brother Ding, and I would not have had the chance to get this d*mn disease cured. Saying thanks to Brother Ding is not enough to express my gratitude. I won’t say any words of rewarding him anymore, but he will be my brother in the future. As long as he needs help, I will do my best to help him.”
Halidan said solemnly, making Bai Qing and Hengli look at Ding Ning with a little envy.
