Ch. 256: Is This a Smokehouse?

Lily glanced his way again, and Mo Fei added, "With supply this short, whatever you grow will sell without any trouble. It could save a lot of people, too."

Lily shook her head.

"There isn't much room. I can't grow that much. By the time it's ready to pick, it'll be too late." She looked at him. "If I grow a lot, people will come asking where it came from."

"Isn't that the point? That's how a business gets built."

Lily said nothing.

Watching her, Mo Fei caught himself. Almost forgot. Flora said she has a feud with the Development Bureau and some of the high and mighty. Making a big splash probably isn't what she wants.

"Fine, forget I said anything."

His gaze moved past her shoulder. The shop was crammed with bottles, jars, and crates, and a few half-finished herb packets still lay open on the table.

"Still stocking up? When does the shop actually open?"

"Next week."

"About time. I'll come by and support you when it does."

Lily nodded and turned to go back inside.

Mo Fei started toward the workshop when a flash of inspiration hit him. Wait. The herb pack the Witch Coven paid me with had Lungclear Herb in it... Don't they have a whole herb cultivation area at their base?

Then he shook his head. No good. Outsiders can't get in there. I'll have to wait for Corone to contact me through the cloth doll and ask then whether she'll let me go gather some.

He pushed open the workshop door. Toby was sorting scrap parts, and Mira was bent over the desk, writing.

"Toby, you're still going to the church tomorrow, right?"

Toby looked up. "Y-yes, Mr. Mo Fei."

"What about you, Mira?"

"I'll be here tomorrow." Mira slid out the top sheet from the pile. "Oh, Mr. Mo Fei, I've finished a first version of the law. Please take a look."

Mo Fei took it. The page was packed with writing, with several lines of small notes squeezed in along the margins.

"Not bad. Have you tried it?"

"I-I tested it on the current inscription plate. But the drum version you mentioned, I haven't tried yet."

Mo Fei slapped his forehead. "Right, I almost forgot. Sorry, sorry. I'll get the drum done tonight."

Mira blinked. "O-okay!"

After Toby and Mira clocked out, Mo Fei stayed behind to work overtime.

It took some doing, but a smooth-surfaced drum finally took shape, along with the mechanism for feeding the paper and spraying the developing reagent.

"Phew. This way Mira can test it once she's finished the engraving tomorrow."

He set the drum on Mira's seat and pressed the finished specs underneath it.

He had barely stretched when a soft tap sounded at the window.

A black cat slipped in through the gap, laid the bundle of herbs it carried on the workbench in front of him, sat down, and looked up at him.

"Did you... find all the ingredients the curse-breaking potion was missing?"

The black cat nodded and nudged the herbs toward him.

Mo Fei sighed. "Sis... I just finished working overtime."

Even so, he set about brewing it.

But after only a few turns in the pot, it began to darken again, bit by bit.

Boom!

Black smoke burst out, and when it cleared, only a puddle of charred sludge remained.

【Transmutation of “Curse-Breaking Potion” failed. Proficiency +1. Current proficiency: 7/666.】

Man and cat stared at the sludge, then looked at each other.

"...Don't look at me like that. You're the one who gave me the recipe."

Phoebe's tail drooped.

Looking at the remaining herbs, Mo Fei suddenly thought of something. "Hey, you can find all of these. Do you know where I can find Lungclear Herb?"

Phoebe raised her head and nodded.

"Really? Where?"

"Meow, meow-meow, meow-meow-meow."

Mo Fei pressed a hand to his forehead. "I forgot you can't talk right now... Ugh. Looks like I have to break your curse first."

---

The next morning, Mira arrived at the workshop.

Mo Fei pointed to the sheet of rough paper under the drum. "Please engrave the inscription on the drum. The rest of the specs are written on the paper."

Mira picked up the drum. "I-I'll start right away!"

Before long, Penny arrived with Chamber staff and delivered the rat poison to the workshop.

"Rat poison. Please check it over." She added a mark on the manifest. "The Young Lady also left a message: 'If you want more after this, buy it from the Chamber.'"

Mo Fei packed the rat poison into his delivery box and headed for the Brotherhood's base.

---

At the base, Barney was handing out assignments to the guys.

Mo Fei hauled out the rat poison and set it down in front of him.

"Rat poison. This batch is free again. Take it and use it where people on the street can see. Think of it as advertising for the Chamber. After this, if you want more, you'll have to buy it from the Chamber yourselves."

Barney glanced at it. "Fine."
Then he called over his men and had them hand it out.

"One more thing." Mo Fei lowered his voice. "Have the guys keep an eye out for Chimimi's carts and see where they head."

Barney looked up at him. "What are you planning?"

"I'm going to take down the organization behind them, starting by finding the place where they make the monsters."

Mo Fei paused, and his voice dropped even lower. "I don't want any more of those monsters being made."

Hearing that, Barney clenched his fists. After a few seconds of silence, he answered, "Fine. I'll have the guys watch."

Mo Fei was about to turn and leave when a cough sounded nearby.

He glanced over and saw a row of straw mats laid out there, with several of the guys lying on them. Some were coughing nonstop; others had gone ashen.

"Did these guys catch it? Why not send them to the treatment station?"

"They can't keep up over there. This was the only place to lay them down for now."

They're so swamped they've run out of room? I wonder how Guy's doing... The treatment station isn't far from here. I'll swing by on my way back.

---

Barely two streets from the Brotherhood's base, a column of thick smoke suddenly rose ahead, billowing straight up.

People on the road stopped one after another. A few were already heading over.

That smoke... is something on fire?

Mo Fei followed the crowd over.

"Here we go again. Those Enflame Church people. The smoke's choking," someone muttered, covering his nose.
"Seems like they've been putting on this show every weekend lately," another replied.

The smoke was rising from a lot fenced in with wooden boards, and quite a crowd had already gathered at the entrance. Painted on the boards was an upright flame with a horizontal line pressed beneath it.

The Enflame Church? Are they burning something in there? But they never made it this bad before.

He couldn't squeeze through the front, so he found a gap in the wooden wall off to the side and peered in.

In the middle of the lot sat a huge pile of smoldering brushwood. A few people in ochre-red tabards kept adding damp grass to it, and the smoke rolled upward in waves. A line of people waited in front of the pile, taking turns stepping into the thick smoke to stand there. The smoke swallowed them whole, yet they kept their eyes shut, with no sign of shying away.

Beside the fire, a person whose tabard was longer than the others', with an extra straight line down the front, shouted toward the people inside: "The fire burns away the foulness clinging to your bodies! Step in and let the flames carry off your impurity!"

What is this? Smoking meat? With smoke that thick, is it really okay?

Someone behind him said in a low voice, "They say people who get smoked won't catch the plague."

Another man kept rising onto his toes to see inside. "My other half's been coughing for days... Tell me, if I bring them here to get smoked, would it do any good?"

"Better than waiting at home doing nothing. The treatment stations can't take anyone in now."

The smoke thinned a little. The person in front walked out, and the next one stepped in.

That one was thin and slightly hunched, wearing a loose robe washed pale from age, an ochre-red armband tied around one arm. He stood still in the smoke and closed his eyes.

Mo Fei made out the face.

Toby!?