“What?!”
“Wait,” Wang Daoda hurried over, elbowing his way in. “Are you saying she ate the fruit of a Chinese fairy grass?”
Wang Daoda ran over to inspect Hu Lu’s vomit under the tree. It consisted of purplish-black substances already corroded by stomach acid, and the larger chunks clearly looked like pulp.
Hu Lu had indeed eaten wild fruit, though it wasn’t certain whether it was the one Wei Heng had mentioned.
Zhao Jie asked curiously, “What does fairy grass look like?”
Most of them had grown up in cities since childhood and weren’t very familiar with these plants. However, hearing Wei Heng say that it was highly toxic and that they lacked medicine, wouldn’t that make things extremely serious?
Wang Daoda’s expression looked very tense. “Fairy grass fruits are poisonous. Ingesting them by mistake causes symptoms of diarrhea, and in severe cases, it can lead to death by respiratory difficulty.”
“Yet her most severe symptom is only vomiting.” Wang Daoda’s words were clearly meant to question him. “How can you be sure it’s fairy grass?”
“Can’t you see her occasional difficulty in breathing?” Wei Heng retorted.
If it were merely simple vomiting without lethargy, resting and taking a breather might improve things considerably. However, Hu Lu’s complexion was growing increasingly worse, and when sitting down, she instinctively tilted her neck backward, which was clearly a behavior that only appeared when experiencing breathing difficulties.
Yet most people would simply attribute this kind of dry, constricted, wheezing, and short-winded sensation in the throat and trachea to feeling unwell from excessive vomiting.
He figured that the fairy grass they had encountered along the way must have been mistakenly eaten by Hu Lu.
Zhao Jie let out an anxious exclamation of “Oh dear!” and said to Hu Lu, “Did you go eating things at random? There’s no medicine here, and the emergency kit’s supplies were all used up on Chen Nan. If you really got poisoned from eating random things, dragging it out too long could put your life in danger.”
Everyone couldn’t help growing nervous as well. Hu Lu lowered her head under their intense gazes and whispered, “I thought it was ground pomegranate.”
As expected.
Wei Heng said, “Ground pomegranate fruit does indeed look similar to fairy grass fruit.”
Yet upon careful inspection, it was impossible not to tell them apart. The reason Hu Lu ate it by mistake must have been because she was extremely hungry.
However, he had roughly familiarized himself with the backgrounds of the guests participating in this show. If Hu Lu truly possessed a certain degree of outdoor survival experience as Zhang Tongtong claimed, she shouldn’t have been ignorant of such basic common sense.
“Ah?” Everyone evidently hadn’t expected that Hu Lu really had gotten poisoned from eating random things. “Then what should we do now?”
“Yeah, we don’t have any medicine left either.”
“This is so serious, should we ask the production team for help?”
“The production team’s rules are right there. Unless you press the survival button to quit the program’s recording, they won’t provide the guests with medical rescue.”
Yet Hu Lu was unwilling to quit, claiming only that she was fine and it wasn’t that serious.
Zhao Jie asked Wang Daoda again, “Then is there any way to treat this? Herbal medicine or something, do you have a way?”
Wang Daoda looked around in all directions. In truth, he hadn’t carefully read through those medical books at home either, and he didn’t recognize many herbal plants. How to treat Hu Lu’s symptoms left him completely at a loss for a moment.
“You need to take this seriously. What if you delay someone’s treatment? Poisoning is so severe,” Zhao Champion said bluntly, without paying attention to his tone of voice. It sounded rather like a reproach.
Suffering such a massive loss of face in front of so many people, Wang Daoda’s complexion inevitably turned awkward.
Zhou Youlan turned back to ask Wei Heng, “Do you have any ideas?”
The others all looked at Wei Heng simultaneously. That’s right, since Wei Heng spoke with such confident authority, what solution did he have?
Dropping a single instruction to induce vomiting first, Wei Heng walked back to the spot where he had been resting earlier and rummaged through the bushes.
Chen Nan let out a cynical, cold snort. “Putting on an act. I refuse to believe he can cure it.”
Li Rongsheng couldn’t help pressing her lips together in speechlessness.
A short while later, Wei Heng plucked a plant from the greenery. He figured Hu Lu shouldn’t have ingested very much; otherwise, the symptom of breathing difficulty alone would not have allowed her to walk this far. As long as she had consumed a small amount, once the residue in her stomach was completely vomited out and she took the medicine, it shouldn’t cause any major issues.
“Brother Wei, what is this?” Zhang Tongtong picked it up to inspect it. “Is it medicine, or what?”
“Yellow rattan,” Wei Heng said. “Boil it into a soup and drink it, it might provide some relief.”
“Might?” Wang Daoda said. “You aren’t even sure yourself. What if she gets even worse after taking it? Will you take responsibility?”
Wei Heng sat back down on the stone in the shady spot. “Then you do it.”
[Exactly.]
[If Daoda is unconvinced, he should write a song to diss him.]
[Hu Lu is really… She wouldn’t eat the food shared with her earlier, but when she got hungry she ate wild fruit and ended up poisoning herself.]
[Our Brother Wei didn’t offend anyone. When it’s time to help, he helps; when it’s time to work, he never slacks off; when there’s food, he never hoards it privately. What more do you want?]
Wang Daoda was choked back by his retort. Though somewhat reluctant to be publicly exposed by Wei Heng, had Wei Heng not spoken up, he wouldn’t even have remembered that yellow rattan indeed possessed detoxifying effects.
Zhao Champion hurriedly directed everyone to gather firewood and start a fire. “Don’t dawdle, try it first and see. Conditions won’t get any worse than they are right now anyway.”
Their schedule was delayed, meaning they would apparently have to pitch camp here tonight.
Old Ghost was truly losing his patience. “A bunch of losers, making a fuss over this or that all day long. At the rate they’re walking, when on earth are they ever going to reach the finish line?”
“Boss, why do we have to work together with them anyway? Let’s just go on our own.”
Wang Ren stared intently at the slender silhouette amid the crowd. “Not yet.”
“Boss, we aren’t just here for the prize money, and we don’t need the cameras either.”
Their objective extended far beyond the show’s hundred-million-dollar prize; they had other purposes on this trip. Had it not been for the fact that this program’s location happened to be set at the border between two countries, they wouldn’t have come at all.
Furthermore, they could entirely ditch the cameras and travel independently, as long as they reached the finish line first.
Wang Ren turned his gaze to cast a cold, sharp glare at him, prompting Old Ghost to swallow any further words. He signaled Ah Hu to speak.
Ah Hu was habitually taciturn and never interfered with Wang Ren’s decisions, doing whatever Wang Ren told him to do. However, for the past few days, a question had been lingering in his heart for a long time.
“Was it for him?”
“Don’t you think he is very likeable?” Wang Ren countered instead.
Ah Hu’s expression shifted slightly. It wasn’t that he couldn’t tell; Wang Ren rarely displayed such intense interest toward anyone.
Moreover, this kind of interest contained both appreciation and a determination to conquer.
Turning his gaze back toward Wei Heng, Ah Hu’s eyes clearly held a few more shades of jealousy and hatred.
Since they were staying to pitch camp, everyone had to build shelters for the night and secure evening provisions.
The female members stayed behind to look after Hu Lu, Zhao Champion led several people to build shelters on the spot, and the rest went out to search for food.
Stumbling upon a tree laden with black pumpkin fruit, Wei Heng casually plucked some.
Seeing Wei Heng pick them, the others followed suit and picked them too.
They had all figured out that anything Wei Heng picked generally turned out to be non-toxic.
Zhang Tongtong took a bite first; the flavor carried a blend of bitterness and sweetness, though the sweetness managed to override that hint of bitterness. It was juicy with thick pulp, making it actually quite delicious.
“Brother Wei, what kind of fruit is this?”
Zhou Youlan had originally intended to keep his distance, but he also came to a halt at this moment, listening with a cocked ear.
“Black pumpkin fruit, also called centipede fruit.”
The fruit was flat like a pumpkin with grooves across its surface, and its leaves were slender and longer than sawteeth, resembling the legs of a centipede, which was why it was also called centipede fruit.
So it was called centipede fruit. Sorting through the thoroughly ripe, black fruits in front of him, Zhou Youlan picked several as well and tossed them into his pack.
Zhang Tongtong asked again, “Then eating a bit more of this won’t poison us, right?”
Wei Heng had mentioned that some things could be eaten but not in large quantities, as eating too much would cause poisoning. Meanwhile, other items were edible on the outside but toxic inside, or vice versa, and consuming them would still result in poisoning.
“Mm.”
Eating as if devouring meat, Zhang Tongtong wiped a freshly picked fruit against his clothes and took a massive bite.
With his mouth stuffed completely full, his words came out muffled: “I’m seeing so many plants and fruits for the first time. Brother Wei, how do you know so much about this?”
“Seeing things often enough, you naturally understand.”
During his years on military campaigns, he had broadened his knowledge considerably by following his father, brothers, and various uncles and elders within the army.
“Br-Brother Wei,” Zhang Tongtong suddenly cried out in terror. Shaking at the lips, he grabbed Wei Heng’s arm and ducked behind him. “Behind Brother Zhou, so big, a snake, snake, such a huge one…”