Could it be that Blaine had been single for too long, that he could find beauty even in aliens? Or was it because he missed Gali so much that he was projecting these feelings?
"Wait, something's wrong."
Blaine suddenly jolted awake, as if he had discovered something critical. Cold sweat instantly broke out across his scalp.
He immediately used his mental power to probe his own body. After a thorough scan, he detected something abnormal.
At some point, Blaine's Self-healing Ability had activated. But when he examined himself, there were no visible injuries. His body was clearly in a normal state—so why had his self-healing begun working again?
Following the traces of the Self-healing Ability, Blaine finally found the source. The moment he saw it, he understood.
It was poison. A slow-acting poison.
Back when Blaine was still a Bounty Hunter, he had taken a detoxification pill. Combined with his Self-healing Ability, he had long since become immune to all poisons.
Yet now he had discovered that he was being chronically poisoned. How could that not frighten him?
Blaine sealed off his sensory coverage throughout his body and looked at the two beauties again. Sure enough, the strange sensations from before did not return. That meant the problem lay with them.
During his interaction with them, Blaine had only seen their appearances and had never touched them.
He immediately ruled out poisoning through sight—let alone the idea that these two women could do such a thing through vision alone. Even Tianzun couldn't manage that.
"Damn it. You really live up to your name, Grandmaster,"
"This is even better than playing chess."
When Blaine reopened his senses, the fragrance from the two women once again drifted into his nose. At that moment, everything became clear. The poison had been transmitted through smell.
In other words, Blaine had been poisoned from the very beginning, and he hadn't noticed at all.
This kind of poison was likely affecting his mind, nearly causing him to lose control.
He had to admit—it was terrifyingly effective. Not only could it bypass a body that was already immune to poison, it targeted the spirit directly. It even deceived the soul pendant, which was already extremely powerful.
That was probably why the soul pendant had judged the reaction to be a normal physiological response and had not protected Blaine's mind.
In short, the poison worked because it was slow, seeping into Blaine's body bit by bit. It numbed the senses and guided his reactions naturally, making it impossible to be identified as poison.
Fortunately, Blaine possessed the Self-healing Ability. Whether it was injury or abnormal physiological response, it corrected everything and restored him to normal. Without it, Blaine couldn't imagine what might have happened.
Fortunately, he blocked his senses in time, accelerated his Self-healing Ability, and activated the soul pendant, which completely purged the toxin.
Once Blaine fully understood the situation, he looked at the two women again. There was no longer any abnormal reaction. They were attractive, yes—but upon closer inspection, it felt… ordinary.
'Oh, that's it, that's all,'
'Not even as good as Pepper Potts.'
'I knew it,'
'I'm a decent man who never takes advantage,'
'We've lived as humans for two lifetimes—this kind of thing isn't worth obsessing over.'
Thinking this way, Blaine actually felt a sense of accomplishment. Since becoming a Bounty Hunter, all he had thought about was money, and these emotions and desires had almost been emptied out.
"So, how about it,"
"Two beauties, I'll trade you for one of those cores."
"Guaranteed profit, no loss."
Grandmaster thought Blaine was still under the influence of the poison and continued to play along.
"No,"
"I don't need to worry about that,"
"I'll find it myself,"
"But there's something else you should pay attention to."
Blaine's words sounded calm, but in his heart he had already cursed Grandmaster's ancestors eighteen generations back.
Earlier, Blaine had wondered why his mind-reading ability only picked up fragmented thoughts instead of a continuous stream. He had blamed it on interference from the magnetic field, but now everything made sense.
Especially the thoughts he had just read from Grandmaster—they made Blaine furious. He had nearly lost control and fled on the spot.
Those two so-called beauties were vixens in their true form—literal vixens. Grandmaster's so-called "daughter stars" were indeed daughters, but every single one of them was a female vixen.
A vixen was the embodiment of charm. It wasn't a weapon, nor a technological illusion. It was a genuine mental illusion that directly affected the mind.
"Damn, vixens really exist in this world,"
"Good thing I've got strong self-control,"
"Almost ended up being robbed."
After all, Sakaar already had mantis creatures, stone men, and beings with three legs and six arms. The existence of vixens in the Marvel universe wasn't that hard to accept. Once he learned the truth, Blaine felt a lingering fear—but thankfully, he had noticed in time.
Blaine was a normal man and naturally attracted to women, but that didn't mean he was interested in humans mixed with animals. That was crossing a line.
Grandmaster was an old fox. Everything he said was half true and half false. Not only had he deceived Blaine, he had even managed to evade his mind-reading ability.
'Well, it's not entirely his fault.'
'My resistance was too low.'
Blaine muttered to himself.
Thinking about it carefully, Grandmaster's move was indeed brilliant. It was poison, but calling it an aphrodisiac might be more accurate—or rather, something that stimulated Blaine's sensitive nerves, increased dopamine secretion, and triggered hormonal responses.
Instead of calling Grandmaster despicable, it made more sense to admit his own defenses were lacking. After all, his eyes lit up whenever he saw a beautiful woman.
It seemed Blaine would need to be much more cautious in the future. This wasn't even off Earth yet—who knew how strange things could get in the Marvel universe?
When you live in dangerous waters, how can you avoid getting cut? Walk by the river often enough, and your shoes are bound to get wet.
So when Grandmaster tempted him again just now, Blaine didn't show much anger. He brushed it aside, skipped the topic entirely, and moved straight to something else.
The first tenth-level star core was no longer something he could rely on Grandmaster for—but the second one truly depended on him.
After speaking, without waiting for Grandmaster to press further about the star core, Blaine simply took out the mysterious metal key in his hand.
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