After dinner, Quincy came to the cabin for his hypnosis session. He looked a little excited, even a bit eager.
"Ronan Kendrick, when I’m being hypnotized, will my mind stay conscious?"
"Of course."
Quincy was surprised. "I thought I’d be completely unconscious."
"If you were completely unconscious, you’d just be a puppet. But after the hypnosis, you’ll lose all memory of the session," Evelyn Ford said, handing Quincy a glass of water to help him relax.
"Ronan Kendrick, you’re not a psychologist, so how do you know how to do this? Is this your superpower too?" As he spoke, his eyes lit up.
Ronan Kendrick ignored him, sitting to the side and toying with an exquisite dagger in his hand.
Once Quincy was ready, Ronan Kendrick walked over to him. The moment their eyes met, Ronan Kendrick raised his hand and snapped his fingers three times. Quincy’s eyes gradually went dull and vacant. In less than ten seconds, he entered a hypnotic state.
Evelyn Ford took out her phone and started recording.
"What’s your name?"
"Quincy."
"What university did you attend?"
"Corinth Medical University."
"What is the formula for the special medicine?"
After confirming that Quincy was fully susceptible to hypnosis, Ronan Kendrick got down to business.
"The formula is..." He spoke for nearly half a minute without the slightest hesitation.
"The equation is..."
When he finished, Evelyn Ford and Ronan Kendrick exchanged a look.
"Quincy, what’s the most embarrassing thing that’s ever happened to you?" Before ending the hypnosis, Evelyn Ford flashed a wicked grin and asked the question she was most curious about.
"In my second year of high school, I was the most popular guy on campus. During the morning exercises, I face-planted in front of the entire school. My shoe flew off, I knocked out a front tooth, and my mouth was full of blood."
Evelyn Ford hadn’t expected his embarrassing moment to be so tragic. She suddenly felt a pang of sympathy for Quincy.
’Still, I’m not so sure about the "most popular guy on campus" part,’ she thought.
Ronan Kendrick snickered from the side, then snapped his fingers. Quincy slowly woke up.
Evelyn Ford held the transcribed formula in her hand, watching him with a wide smile.
"Evelyn Ford, what’s with that look?" He shook his head and nearly stumbled as he stood up.
"My head’s a little dizzy. How long was I under? Why do I feel so weak?"
"Only about a minute."
Quincy didn’t believe her. "A minute? I probably couldn’t even enter a hypnotic state in a minute. No, wait... I remember seeing Ronan Kendrick’s eyes, and then I started to feel dizzy. After that, I don’t know anything."
Quincy moved closer to Ronan Kendrick, staring into his eyes for a long time. "Why am I not getting dizzy this time? Weird."
"So, where’s the formula?"
Evelyn Ford showed it to him. Quincy was dumbfounded. "I said all this? I can’t believe I remembered so many ingredients. I’m amazing."
"It’s not that *you* remembered it. Your brain remembered it, but you forgot. Hypnosis just makes you say what your brain already knows," Evelyn Ford corrected him.
"Isn’t that the same thing? Anyway, this formula... it’s not going to be easy to produce. First, we need equipment, and some chemicals. We have nothing to our name right now. Where are we going to get all this?"
As he spoke, he looked at Ronan Kendrick. "Don’t tell me you guys have this stuff."
"You don’t need to worry about that. Go back and get some sleep. Work hard tomorrow. Try to dig out five square meters of dirt."
Evelyn Ford then stuffed a handful of candy into his hand. "Thanks for your hard work."
Quincy laughed in exasperation. "You two are so heartless. You use me and then toss me aside, like a one-night stand."
Ronan Kendrick’s face darkened. He hauled Quincy out of the cabin, and with a SLAM, the door shut.
"He’s so noisy," Ronan Kendrick said, pinching the bridge of his nose in exasperation.
Evelyn Ford smiled and pulled him down to sit on the bed. "I took a look. This formula is difficult, but we’re not short on medicinal ingredients in the space, and we have time to do the research."
"Mm."
"By the way, with your hypnosis, is it your eyes that do it, or the finger snaps?" Evelyn Ford was very curious.
"The eyes are for visual hypnosis. The snap is the command that tells the other person’s brain it’s time to be hypnotized."
Evelyn Ford blinked. "It’s that simple? Are you sure you’re not just making things up?"
Ronan Kendrick took Evelyn Ford’s hand and gave it a gentle squeeze. "It really is that simple. If you want to learn, I can teach you."
"Okay."
The next day, everyone continued excavating the caves. Ronan Kendrick went out for a while. Besides checking on the situation outside, he also had to bring back the wooden barrels he had placed out there three days prior.
Evelyn Ford took a stroll around the chicken coop. Zoe had given every chicken a name.
"This one’s Little Red, this one’s Little Yellow..."
Wendy couldn’t help but laugh. "Miss Ford, the names Zoe came up with at first weren’t like this. I helped her change them. Originally, she was calling this one ’Dad,’ this one ’Mom,’ this one ’Auntie’..."
"Good thing you changed them. Zoe’s a real master of logic. She’s been corrupted by Quincy." Evelyn Ford poked Zoe’s chubby little cheek.
’Another sharp little cookie.’
Ever since getting the formula, Evelyn Ford had been busy. During the day, she worked with everyone else. At night, she entered her space to conduct experiments while Ronan Kendrick tended to the vegetable garden, occasionally even delivering baby animals in the livestock area.
The chickens, ducks, and rabbits were starting to multiply uncontrollably. The Snow Rabbits were large to begin with, and now there were several hundred of them, with their burrows dotting the landscape everywhere.
The argali sheep and takins were natural enemies. They fought often, and at one point, it got so bad that three of the argali had their horns broken.
The most docile animals inside were the Mammoths. Perhaps because they were so powerful and imposing, no other animals dared to approach them. As a result, their area was comparatively quiet and clean.
The space was now like an oversized farm where the animals could freely unleash their natural instincts, fully displaying their wild natures.
If Ronan Kendrick didn’t know how to tame beasts, Evelyn Ford would have worried that the animals might break through the boundaries and burst out of the space.
In the blink of an eye, another half-month passed. The cabbages in the vegetable patch had formed heads, and the little chicks had all grown up.
During this time, there was no change in the condition of the others who were in a coma. Several small caves had been excavated, and in another half-month, everyone would be able to move in.
"They kind of look like the cave dwellings in the Northwest Region, but we don’t have the skill for that. Ours aren’t as nice."
"As long as they’re livable. We’re pretty much bona fide cavemen now."
"Haha... cavemen? Why don’t you just say you’re one of the Hemudu people?"
"The Hemudu people lived in thatched huts."
"We don’t even have thatched huts."
...
The soil excavated from the caves was perfect for planting vegetables and grains. Once the living caves were dug out, the walls had to be smoothed. They also needed to line the walls with torches to bake the earth, drying out all the moisture so it wouldn’t be unpleasant to live inside.
"Hundreds of years from now, if Azure stabilizes and becomes prosperous again, and if this cave is still here, maybe archaeologists will come to investigate this place."
Hearing Miles Vaughn’s words, Quincy’s eyes lit up.
"That’s possible! In that case, I’ve got to carve my name inside my cave so that future generations will remember what I was called."