Chapter 1563: Preparing

The leader took a deep breath and moved on to the other similar-sized pile. He took some more Spark and changed the pile of rock into something else that was white.

It looked crystalline and white, almost like salt. But Ning had done Dust, it wasn't salty at all. Was it still salt?

Finally, the leader moved on to the last pile which was the largest. To convert this one, he snorted a large amount of Spark and placed his hands next to the rock.

Immediately, the rocks turned into some sort of mushy gray substance that sort of looked like wet sand but wasn't sand. Ning had no idea what these substances were.

He took a pinch of the limestone, the white salt-like thing, and finally the mushy gray substance. Once he took those, he moved away and watched what the man did next.

The leader first called the Carver and had him turn the limestone into powder as he hadn't been able to do it at all. Ning had wondered why he hadn't done it from the start, but maybe he simply just wasn't as capable of it.

Once the limestone was turned into powder, the leader took a shovel from the side and began mixing it with the white salt-like powder. The other two took their shovels and began doing the same as well, helping him.

The entire time, they made sure not to have any of the mushy sand-like things mixed with the two.

When they were done mixing it all, the limestone and salt made a mixture that was hard to tell that there were two different substances there.

"What now?" Karina asked once they were done. "How much of this do we use?"

The leader crossed his arms and scratched his chin in thought. "How much did we take out last time? Was it a shovelful? Or more?" he asked.

"It was..." Karina took out a small notebook and read, "2430 grams."

"Huh? Let's take out slightly more this time. Let's do 2600 grams this time then. We need to improve slowly. Can't make too many changes at once. We need to get the ratio correct." The other two nodded.

The man moved the side of the room created a door from the wall on the side and went in. He walked out with a large weight-measuring device and helped Karina take out exactly 2600 grams of the mushy gray stuff.

Ning watched the way the two of them handled the thing, being careful to only touch it using the shovel, and slowly realized that the thing might actually be acidic.

Now that he thought about it, the man hadn't fully placed his hands on the final pile when creating the mushy substance. He had only let his hand hover over it. Was he afraid of touching it?

Ning was sure that this was a material that was too bad for someone to touch with their bare hand.

"Let's get working now!" the leader said and finally began shoveling in the mushy stuff with the white powder mixture. Soon, the entire thing began appearing like dry flour that had some water mixed into it, but not a lot.

As they made it, they turned it into a pyramid-like pile after the three ingredients were fully mixed. Once the pyramid was made, the leader began destroying it, creating a large crater at the center and Ning knew what was going to happen next.

The three people walked to the other side of the room hauled the 3 barrels of juices to the mixture and began pouring them into the empty crater at the center.

The Carver helped with the pouring, creating an arm from the rock using his powers to pour the barrels of juices into the crater.

The first two barrels were some sort of yellowish-orange liquid that mixed into the mixture quite easily. However, when the last barrel was being poured, the three began moving back from the mixture just because of the smell of what was being poured.

Ning was near, so he smelled the horrifyingly pungent and bitter smell of the green liquid that seemed to still have some sort of chunky bits inside of it.

Looking closely, Ning realized that those were leaves, all of which were mushed together to turn the juice. Was this a juice made fully with leaves or were leaves just added to it? Ning didn't know. Whatever it was, he couldn't imagine it being an actual juice that was being sent to the different shops.

Whatever this was, it was what was being smuggled by the General, and maybe other people too.

They immediately began mixing the things together, doing so very quickly.

Ning watched as they worked as fast as they could. Once everything was mixed up, they began spreading the final wet mixture around the plastic mat, quickly leveling everything.

Once everything was flat on the mat, the leader coughed. "Let's get out quickly before we can't breathe!"

The Carver created a door back to the top and they walked out, closing the door to the cellar behind them.

Ning stayed behind, watching the stuff they had left behind. He quickly gathered bits of everything he could use as proof and then simply waited.

After waiting for half an hour or so, Ning began smelling something pungent in the air. It was

a different sort of pungent from the leaf juice from earlier.

He wondered, was this harmful?

He opened up the system interface and clicked through a bunch of stuff before finally landing

on the piece of information that did give him the answer.

It was indeed toxic fumes that would cause severe skin rash as well as nose and throat irritation. That was why the three people had left the room as soon as they could.

They didn't want to kill themselves trapped in such an environment.

"Well, I have no need to stay here as well," Ning thought. "Time to go."

He teleported away, disappearing back to his room. He would wait the night and go meet Redaime the very next morning.