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Xiao Bai interrupted and said, "Great wisdom, or wisdom. Or great wisdom."
Chapter 151 The outline of the conspiracy gradually emerges
Wang gave Xiaobai a heads-up.
Xiaobai held his head and said, "Why are you hitting me?"
Wang: "I didn't hit you hard. I meant to let you have enough time. Let's talk business here."
Xiaobai pouted: "Okay, let's get down to business."
Wang: "Go smell this feathered lizard man, and then walk around the village to see if there is any place with a similar smell. I mean, besides those who also have feathers."
Xiao Bai: "Do you suspect someone is using magic to do something?"
"I'm not sure yet. Let's use all the investigative methods we can think of first, and then we can summarize the information."
Xiaobai nodded, then jumped a few times to the front of the female lizardman whose body was almost covered with feathers: "Let me smell your scent."
The girl's brother translated it for her and the girl nodded.
So Xiaobai got into her feathers without hesitation and sniffed them. After a few seconds, she pulled her head out and walked away while looking around.
Nini asked quietly, "Is it okay for her to just wander around like this? These lizardmen don't look very hospitable."
Wang: "Don't worry, Xiaobai can transform into an animal and is very adaptable. Except for not being able to dismantle traps, she is a perfect candidate for reconnaissance."
Then he turned to Flint and said, "Try the restoration technique later to rule out the possibility that the restoration technique used by the lizard man is not regular."
The dwarf nodded.
The king turned to the monk again and said, "Where is the first person in the village who showed these symptoms? Call him over."
Monk: "I'll do it right away..."
At this moment, the lizardmen watching nearby suddenly stood up straight and looked in the same direction respectfully.
Wang Ye looked over and saw a hunchbacked lizard man.
Li Guang also stood up like everyone else and said respectfully, "Elder."
Wang: "Well, apart from the bending, the only difference in appearance is the color of the scales. This should be the external sign of aging of the lizardman."
As he said this, he glanced at Li Guang: "And your scales, monk, are still bright in color."
Li Guang: "I haven't started to age yet. The aging of Lizardmen is a very rapid process in your eyes..."
"Li Guang!" the elder said, "You have brought outsiders into the village again."
Li Guang: "This team can help us solve the problem of growing feathers."
"You always have a reason, but apart from the traveler who built the crossbow for us, when have these outsiders not betrayed your trust?"
The Lizardman Monk remained silent.
The elder continued, "When you left the village to pursue the path of a warrior monk, our lives were very peaceful. Although life was tight and other tribes would come to provoke us from time to time, overall, we lived a comfortable life."
Li Guang: “But…”
"You always say that a short life should burn brilliantly, but we don't want to burn. We just want to live this short life here quietly.
"You always say that actively engaging with the outside world can bring about change. I admit that the crossbow is indeed very useful, but the bamboo hat brought by the same outsider is useless."
When Wang heard the elder say this, he said apologetically, "I'm sorry, that's just my uncle satisfying himself."
The elder looked at the mage in surprise: "Who are you from?"
Wang: "Junior nephew, he is actually my teacher as well, and he taught me a lot. But my teacher insisted that I call him Uncle Master, and the title of Teacher is reserved for myself."
Elder: "Oh, that is indeed a distinguished guest. He is the only traveler brought by Li Guang who has had a positive impact on our lives. The other travelers either want to kidnap our girls and sell them to some human merchants with special tastes, or they covet the wealth of our lizardmen."
The king looked around: "Wealth? Are you sure?"
Elder: "Of course we don't have wealth. We even use pebbles from the river as 'money'. So when the strangers brought back by Li Guang saw the situation of the village, they left cursing.
"Even though he has been taught so many lessons, Li Guang still keeps bringing outsiders into the village."
The Lizardman monk argued: "You also admit that outsiders once brought good changes to the village. If they can bring about the first change, they can bring about the second change."
The elder retorted: "If it can bring good changes, it can also bring bad changes. Even the symptom of growing feathers may be caused by the travelers you brought with you. Can you refute it?"
The monk was silent.
Wang interrupted, "We will investigate this symptom. First we want to meet the first person who developed this symptom."
When the elder heard what the king said, he said to Li Guang: "Did you hear that? They are only investigating the symptoms, and they didn't say they would help us solve it. These outsiders like to play with these words. After all, the common language is also their language, and we lizardmen can only be fooled by them."
Wang: "No, I didn't say I won't solve it, I just need to investigate first before solving it..."
"Look at their rhetoric!" The elder was impressed, then glanced at Li Guang, "They are bullying honest lizardmen like you."
Wang (switching to Dragon Language): "Can you please listen to me?"
The effect of dragon language was outstanding. For the first time, the elder stopped chattering and looked at the king in surprise.
King (still speaking Dragon Language): "Of course we have to solve this problem, because the culprit of this problem may be the cult we are looking for. But before solving this problem, we have to investigate and find out how the problem came about. Do you understand?"
The elder nodded: "I understand."
The king switched back to the common language: "Now go find the first person who shows this symptom. I want to question him."
The elder immediately turned around and spoke a few words to the guards behind him in Lizardman language.
The guard left immediately.
At this moment, Li Guang whispered to Wang: "Thank you."
"You're welcome. I just hate fools who don't listen carefully or don't understand what others say." Wang replied.
When the elder heard the king call him a fool, his eyes widened and his skin began to turn red.
Wang pointed at him and asked Li Guang: "This scale turned red, is it a sign of anger?"
Li Guang nodded: "Yes."
Flint rushed in to smooth things over: "Well, elder, please don't bother with our captain. He is more -- academically minded. After all, he is a wizard. Wizards are too smart, and some of them are a little bit stupid."
Wang nodded: "Indeed."
Nini praised: "As expected of a teacher, you have a clear self-awareness."
Wang: "People praised me for being smart, but I didn't want to be overly modest, so I had to answer like this."
Flint pointed at Wang and said to the elder, "See, I was right, wasn't I? So don't bother with him!"
The elder looked at the king, and his congested skin returned to its original color.
"Okay," he said, "Since you really want to solve the problem for us, then my attitude is biased. The main reason is that we have been cheated by outsiders too many times."
The dwarf breathed a sigh of relief, then muttered, "Damn, why am I the one doing this kind of communication work? Find a bard!"
King: "You are Cailin's priest, and you can tap dance, which makes you half a bard. Okay, cast the spell of restoration."
Flint held the holy symbol and began to pray.
The lizard girl had been standing obediently nearby. When she saw the dwarf's holy emblem begin to glow, her eyes widened involuntarily.
Flint pressed his hand, wrapped in light, against the lizard girl's skin.
Yet the feathers remained unchanged.
Flint said firmly: "Yes, the restoration technique is ineffective against this thing."
The king got closer to observe the feather and said, "Strange, this thing is similar in texture to the feather that Nini grew due to Lamashtu's influence in the Fetal Movement Hall. If they are the same thing, the restoration technique should be useful."
At this time, Xiaobai came back with a handful of soil in his hand: "I found that the smell of this soil is very similar to that of this girl."
Wang: "Earth?"
He turned from the lizard girl to Xiaobai, took the soil from Xiaobai's hand, studied it carefully, and then looked confused.
He asked, "Are you sure this soil tastes the same?"
"Yeah." Xiaobai nodded.
Wang continued to ask in detail: "What does it taste like? Describe it."
Xiaobai frowned: "It's... this is so hard to describe."
Wang: "Look for a similar smell. It would be best if it's something similar to what we've smelled before."
Xiaobai hummed for a long time, then suddenly his expression brightened and he said, "It looks like stinky cheese!"
"Stinky cheese?" Wang muttered.
He put the dirt in his hand close to his nose and sniffed it: "Now that you put it that way... Let me ask, is there any job in the Lizardman Village that would smell like stinky cheese?"
Li Guang: "First of all, people in the village don't eat cheese. I've eaten cheese in human society, but I don't think we lizardmen would like the taste. If you ask me what kind of work here would be stained with the smell of stinky cheese, my answer is none."
Xiaobai: "But I smelled something in the village that is ten thousand times worse than stinky cheese. It's over there."
Li Guang looked at the direction Xiao Bai pointed and said, "Oh, you might be talking about Makuta."
Wang: “What is that?”
Li Guang: "There is no corresponding word in the common language, so I can only follow the pronunciation. This is a kind of food made by stuffing sparrows into the stomach of a live alligator, sealing its anus, and hanging it up to pickle."
Wang: "Alligator, sealed anus? Is it that wild? And this is lizard people's food that I haven't seen in the local customs written by my teacher!"
The lizardman elder said, "A long time ago, a great druid who passed by taught us how to eat this food. He said that this would replenish a life element that is difficult to obtain normally. Since we started making and eating this food, the number of people who got sick has decreased significantly.
"So the method of making this food has been passed down by us. We are a short-lived species, and the inheritance is often broken. Other villages also learned this method from us."
Li Guang said loudly: "Look, isn't this also a benefit brought to us by outsiders? So what I did was not wrong!"
Wang Ze touched his chin and muttered, "Seal the anus, pickle... It sounds like fermentation, life elements... I think this should be supplemented with vitamins. Let me ask, do you lizardmen... eat fruit?"
All the Lizardmen present who could understand the common language showed expressions of rejection.
Wang: "I see. So the disease that is cured by this food is sepsis? My answer is..."
Wang described the symptoms of sepsis.
The elder nodded: "That's it."
The king stroked his chin and said, "This druid's knowledge is quite broad. Theoretically, a druid should not have any way to obtain knowledge from other planes."