Chapter 2997: Green Trees Shade the Long Summer Days (42)

Zatanna still came. The very first second she saw Shiler in his current form, she shrieked, and in the second and third seconds, she leaped back more than ten meters.

"It's me." Shiler wanted to reach out to push up his glasses, but unfortunately, he had no hands now. He had to bend the tip of his tail over, nudge his glasses, and say, "I know you're very curious about how I became like this, but don't be curious for now... can you come a bit closer?"

"I..." Zatanna pursed her lips tightly. She said, "I swear I have no prejudice against snakes, but I really..."

"Fine, then just stand there." Shiler didn't want to force her; after all, if one day she turned into broccoli, Shiler definitely wouldn't want to get close to her either.

"Have you heard of the witch Circe?" Shiler asked.

Actually, he didn't need Zatanna to introduce Circe's background, because this witch was a fairly well-known villain, appearing mainly in Wonder Woman comics.

Her backstory had been changed several times, but no matter which version, it was relatively complex. To simplify and make a long story short, she was one-fifth of the former source of magical power, the God of Witchcraft, and Wonder Woman Diana was another fifth.

Then she thought, if the God of Witchcraft and Diana both died, then all the power would belong to her. She then plotted a series of conspiracies just to kill them both, though of course, she failed in the end.

For some reason, Circe detested men. She would use witchcraft to turn men into animals and then wantonly mock and insult them.

As for that short-statured Edgar, Shiler also had some impression of him. This guy was also a Wonder Woman villain, codenamed Doctor Psycho, possessing the ability to control others' minds and read thoughts. However, he wasn't as strong as Professor X; he needed to make physical contact with others to control them or read their minds.

Because Edgar suffered from dwarfism, had an ugly appearance, and was short, he was never popular with girls and was also ostracized by classmates, so he had a strong hatred for women and constantly targeted Wonder Woman.

These two, one hating men and one hating women, it was unknown how they colluded together.

Moreover, their enemy should be Diana; how did they end up in Cat Getan?

Shiler recalled what Brand said, that Circe and the others seemed to be looking for a girl, which reminded Shiler of Circe's plan in the original comics.

The God of Witchcraft had divided his power into five parts and sent them into the bodies of five girls. Wonder Woman and the witch Circe were two of them. Could it be that Circe was looking for the other three?

Shiler remembered that in the original plot, those three weren't ordinary people either, and it seemed there were no Gothamites among them. How could she have found her way here?

However, after all, the plot of this universe had been changed so much; it wasn't impossible that the butterfly effect led to the power being passed on to people different from those in the original work.

"Circe?" Zatanna thought carefully and then said, "The name sounds familiar, but it's also been a while. I remember she wasn't a magician, right?"

"She calls herself a witch and uses witchcraft power. I'm not clear on what the difference is between the two."

"The difference is huge. Witchcraft power doesn't require paying copyright fees. In a sense, it counts as a kind of free magical power. However, they don't see it that way themselves; they feel that witchcraft is superior to magic, being more ancient and more primordial."

Zatanna looked Shiler over and then said, "She put a curse on you? It wouldn't be a beast-transformation curse, would it? That would be a bit troublesome."

"How so?"

"Witchcraft is an independent power system, and the source of witchcraft power... in short, we can't break this kind of curse by finding the source of the power; we can only find a way through the person who cast the curse."

Shiler immediately thought that Circe had a fatal weakness, also derived from Greek mythology. Legend had it that consuming the magical herb "Moly" could protect one from Circe's poison. The comics also borrowed this setting; Moly could make Circe's witchcraft ineffective.

But the problem was, no one knew exactly which plant this mysterious herb was. Moly wasn't the scientific name of any existing plant, and now on Earth, there were very few plants that hadn't been discovered by humans.

There was only one chance to strike at Circe. If the wrong plant was chosen, then one would never be able to catch her again.

Zatanna had obviously heard of this rumor too, but she also didn't know which plant this mysterious herb specifically was. According to her, there was no plant directly called Moly among magical plants either.

To be safe, Shiler called Pamela over.

Pamela was stunned when she saw Shiler in this form.

"Professor, you... you finally decided to physically spray venom on your students?"

Shiler rolled his eyes again. Turning into a black snake still had its benefits, which was that rolling his eyes would be very obvious.

Pamela wasn't afraid of this. She walked up and poked Shiler's snake body, then directly picked Shiler up and looked at him carefully before her eyes.

"Professor, open your mouth, let me see if you have venom glands."

Shiler was actually quite curious about this point too, but he still said, "Let me bite you once and you'll know."

"Then I'll immediately turn into the flavor of broccoli."

"Better not."

Shiler opened his mouth. Pamela took a flashlight and looked inside, then said, "Congratulations, Professor, you are a venomous snake, but according to biological common sense, it shouldn't be highly toxic."

"It seems I can't bite those students who don't hand in their papers to death. What a pity."

Pamela put Shiler down. Shiler coiled back onto the back of the chair and talked to her about the topic of the legendary magical herb.

Unexpectedly, professionals are different. Pamela really had some insights. She said, "In the Mediterranean region, Moly generally refers to wild garlic, scientific name *Allium moly*, a plant of the Amaryllidaceae family, but I feel that is not the case."

"As everyone knows, the witch Circe uses a type of poison to turn sailors into livestock, and Zeus's son Hermes bestows upon Odysseus a plant with white flowers and black roots, enabling him to be immune to this poison. But wild garlic flowers are yellow, so this point does not fit."

"Mythological legends may not be true, but they must be adapted from folk stories. If viewed from a realistic perspective, that is, the situation most likely to be encountered by folk, I believe the main ingredient of the witch Circe's poison is Datura, which causes memory loss and hallucinations."

"In the accounts of anticholinergic drug poisoning victims, there are many cases of surrounding objects or people turning into animals. This is a manifestation of delirium based on poisoning. The poison most likely to cause this manifestation at the time was Datura."

"And to neutralize the toxicity of Datura, wild garlic cannot do it. However, there is a plant that fits the description of white flowers and black roots and can also be used as an antidote for Datura, and that is the snowdrop."

"Galantamine, which can be extracted from snowdrops, is an acetylcholinesterase inhibitor, specifically used to combat anticholinergic drugs. It can neutralize the toxicity of Datura and can also alleviate the symptoms of Alzheimer's disease."

The last point Pamela mentioned caught Shiler's attention. He actually didn't care much about how to deal with Circe, but he still remembered that Cobblepot's mother had a high risk of Alzheimer's disease.

Currently, human medicine cannot yet clarify the specific principles of Alzheimer's disease, but one hypothesis is the cholinergic hypothesis, which is also the basic theory upon which most Alzheimer's drugs are currently based. And galantamine is precisely the special ingredient aimed at inhibiting acetylcholinesterase, which can now be synthesized artificially and produced on a large scale.

However, the vast majority of drugs produced cannot be called special drugs, and the alleviating effects are relatively limited. It can only be said that before humans thoroughly clarify the principles of Alzheimer's disease, it is impossible to produce special drugs.

"These are all things from textbooks. Tell me your opinion." Shiler pushed his glasses with the tip of his tail again.

"Standing from the perspective of the Green, I personally think the probability of this so-called magical herb being a snowdrop is greater. Besides the appearance being relatively similar, it also has a common name called 'milk flower,' which further confirms the 'flower like milk' mentioned by Hermes. It is also called the primrose, implying purity and rebirth, and is also superior in terms of mysticism concepts."

"I'm talking about the Alzheimer's disease part."

"That." Pamela thought for a while and then said, "From a magical perspective, Alzheimer's disease belongs to a comprehensive syndrome of power disorder caused by the decline of human soul power, and the mystical attributes of rebirth possessed by snowdrops can weaken the speed of this decline."

"Can't it be cured?"

"That depends on how it's utilized." Pamela said, "The efficiency of ordinary people in utilizing this kind of power is extremely low. They might pick all the snowdrops in the world clean, and the rebirth power obtained wouldn't be enough to complete the souls of one or two people."

"And you?"

"I don't mainly do experiments in this area..."

"I know, you're just busy researching hitting cabbages."

"No, the area I'm researching is empowerment."

"Empowering cabbages with the ability to hit people?"

Pamela directly grabbed Shiler and shook him hard, then said, "Don't interrupt me! Professor!"

Shiler was shaken until he was a bit dizzy, so he had to say, "Fine, go ahead. It's just that I'm anxious for Cobblepot; his mother's situation really can't be dragged on any longer."

"Empowerment is simpler than extraction. After all, I have the power of the Green. I only need to attach power to plants to observe various magical changes. But extraction is extracting various mystical attributes from the plant itself, which didn't have much power to begin with. This involves alchemy, which is really too difficult."

Pamela paused for a moment and then said, "It's not that I haven't tried refining medicine myself before, but I couldn't proceed after reaching the whitening stage. This thing not only requires power but also mastery of primordial elements."

"The four stages of alchemy are black, white, yellow, and red. Black represents earth, white represents water. Both of these are related to plants, so I can still manage. Yellow represents air; plants needing air exchange can barely be explained. But the final rubification stage must use fire, which is completely the weak point of plant power."

Pamela muttered a bunch of technical terms. Zatanna leaned over curiously and said, "You've tried alchemy? You actually managed to reach the second-to-last step. When I was doing whitening back then, I caused a big explosion, so I gave up."

Pamela seemed to remember something and said, "Isn't Constantine quite good at this?"

"Him? He's good at a bit of everything, but what he's best at is magic arrays. He doesn't seem to have gone further in alchemy either."

"Then with current alchemy technology, can a drug to cure Alzheimer's disease be extracted from plants?" Shiler asked.

"Perhaps, but it must be very troublesome, and a lot of resources would need to be invested, and success isn't guaranteed." Pamela sighed long and said, "Even if successful, it would be a one-time drug and cannot be mass-produced, meaning there's no return at all. I guess no one would be willing to invest."

"Perhaps someone would be willing. Give me your phone."

Pamela put her phone on the table. Shiler quickly crawled onto the table and kept poking the screen with the tip of his tail, seemingly sending a text message to someone.

Soon, Cobblepot rushed through the door with an anxious face. He looked around and then said, "Where is Professor Shiler? He said there might be a new drug that could cure Alzheimer's disease, and my mother just happens to... where is he?"

"Cough, cough." Shiler coughed twice.

Cobblepot looked at the black snake on the table in shock.

"Professor!... You wouldn't be so angry at those students that you wanted to turn into a snake and bite them to death, would you?" ===== CHAPTER 2998 =====