Chapter 1010: Trap
Mardhan and Ranki are currently sitting in a private room.
There are a bunch of glass containers of different kinds set on the table.
All of them are emitting some kind of frost energy. In one type of container, there is a liquid that is ice blue color and in the second type, there is some kind of pill in the same ice blue color.
There is another container that looked like a lump of slime.
"These are all different kinds of drugs and all of these are suitable for Astral Plane Initiation cultivators. You can test them if you want. Even though there is a fixed dosage that needs to be taken for a considerable amount of time, you can still get the effects even after you take it once.
You can try it if you want to test it."
Mardhan hesitated a bit and Ranki chuckled.
"If you don't even trust the medicine, how are you going to sell it? Even though it is mostly effective on fire elemental beings and I am only a warrior, I can still take one and show you."
With that Ranki took a pill and swallowed it. His whole body is covered in frost energy, but soon the energy was concentrated to one single point and stayed there.
"My cultivation is a bit higher. This pill doesn't work on me for long. But you fulfill both the conditions of the cultivation and elemental affinity, so you would have a better result than this. Do you want to try it now?"
Mardhan took the pill awkwardly and swallowed it.
He instantly felt a cold feeling enveloping his body, after the initial chill, he finally felt the cold feeling concentrating near the spiritual core.
Ranki pulled out a scroll containing an inscription of a frost spell and threw it on Mardhan.
As soon as the attack landed, he used the fire elemental energy to nullify most of the attack, but the freezing effect of the attack was what he anticipated, but to his surprise, it didn't come.
The freezing effect was completely absorbed by the frost energy that was accumulated in the spiritual core. That frost energy expelled acted as some sort of glue and held the foreign ice elemental energy and expelled it. In the process, some of the frost energy was also expelled.
Looking at the effects, Mardhan's eyes brightened.
"This is the perfect product." He muttered to himself.
"I know it is, but there is one bad news for you," Ranki told with a sigh.
"What?"
"I cannot do this business with just you. As you know when we started the liquor business, all I knew is of your identity which I trusted and placed my capital on. But soon I realized that your identity doesn't have any value even within the realm.
But still, I didn't withdraw that capital in the Alcohol business, because that much amount is something I am willing to lose.
That business is still in progress, so we can't see those results which might change my attitude towards you. If you are willing to wait for that long. I am okay with that. But If you don't want to wait, I want more assurance."
"What kind of assurance do you want?"
"An assurance from your brothers. Two of the grand elders or the family head himself. If you can get them to act as your surety then I am okay with that.
I cannot just trust you and throw in money that I might not get back and this recipe is too precious and your social standing and worth are too low for me to entrust you with this. I hope you understand."
Mardhan became silent and didn't even know what to say.
He ground his teeth like a mad dog showing his anger and dissatisfaction with himself and then he looked at the pills and potions on the table.
He cannot let this chance go. This is the biggest chance he would get in his life. With these things the fortune would change, they can fight against their greatest rivals without care about getting affected by the freezing energy.
"To get their assurance, I need to convince them. I cannot just get them to okay with when they couldn't test the drug themselves."
"These things wouldn't have much effect on them. If you want, I can give you the drugs created for Pre-transcendent stage cultivators, they might not have a complete effect on your brothers who are already transcendent stage cultivators and they are not up for sale yet. They are still in research as they couldn't find a way to mass-produce them.
So, I can only give you two of them. A potion and a slime pill."
"No problem. I will give you an answer by evening. Can I take these samples too?" Mardhan said as he pointed at the containers on the table.
"Sure."
With that Mardhan took everything and left.
Ranki got out of the room and went to the inn he was living in. He didn't go into his room directly and went to Sam's room and changed his form.
"Boss, the goods are sent. Are you sure this would work?" Kiran asked Sam.
"If the information that we got about these brothers is true, then it would surely happen. They are already regretting that they didn't trust their brother once who would have brought a shit lot of money if given a chance.
But now I showed them another chance. Let us see if they are dumb enough to trust this or if they would be even dumber to not trust this."
"Not trusting this would be a dumber choice?"
"Of course, they would completely break the trust of this younger brother and we can use him to make something more extreme. Even if this attempt fails, we would play a longer game. A broken man can do things you wouldn't be able to imagine.
So, it would be better if these brothers directly trust him, because if they don't a worst than this, would await them."
While Sam and Kiran are discussing which would be a dumber choice for the brothers, the men in question are currently staying in the same room.
Mardhan is currently looked at the triplets with a nervous expression.
"Brother, I tested the drug myself. This is the perfect drug for us. Now we don't have to fear the frost giants anymore. That freezing effect that troubles us would be a thing of the past. The one weakness the Ash demons have compared to the rest of the demons would be gone."
He said everything so passionately fearing that his brothers would reject him again.
"Are you sure, this is legitimate?"
The family head asked as he looked at Mardhan's ice.
"If only I could take these things with my cultivation, I would have swallowed them all. But I cannot. So, I can only taste these.
Just pick what you want me to eat."
He said and took out all the drugs meant for initiation level cultivators.
"You don't have to do that alright. We would trust you. But we need to test these drugs first." The Grand elder said and picked the pill.
"I will take this first and then you guys follow if I don't have any effect."
"Alright."
The grand elder swallowed the pills. The intense frost energy enveloped his body and he almost felt frozen. But soon he felt the energy concentrating to one point. He didn't feel that cold. In fact, even the surroundings felt warm to him.
"It is working."
The grand elder said as he used another frost spell scroll that Mardhan got from Ranki on himself.
The family head and the remaining grand elder immediately took the remaining, potion and the slime drug and swallowed them.
They also felt the same sensation as the first grand elder and couldn't help but smile.
"Bring him to us tomorrow. We will discuss the business." The family head said and sent Mardhan away.
"It seems like we did right by him this time." The family head said calmly.
"Not him. We did right by the family."
"But to really do right by the family, I think it is inevitable for us to get that recipe of these drugs for ourselves. After all, it is not a good idea for these things to lay in the hands of some external party."
"Rightly said."
As they are discussing plots to get the recipe of the drugs, the family head felt a weird sensation in his body. As he tried to channel his energy to get rid of that weird sensation, he felt that he couldn't move his energy from the spiritual core and the surrounding meridians are frozen.
Another grand elder who took the potion also felt like his blood is turning cold and his skin turned ice blue slowly.
"Brother. What happened to you? What is wrong?"
The last standing grand elder started yelling as he looked at his brother.
His screams were heard all over the city as he rushed to the healer instantly and sent someone to grab his brother who caused all of this all the while panicking about his own safety.