The Great Fire Therapy

The Pals lay scattered across the base, sprawled out in every direction.

Some wore gloomy expressions, others were bedridden entirely, and all of them had status debuffs floating above their heads—things like "Cold," "Binge Eating," "Fracture," and "Stomach Ulcer."

A few others lay on top of a campfire, seemingly having passed away some time ago.

In the vast base, only Qiwanwang was walking through the fields, watering can in hand.

"Why is Qiwanwang the only Pal working… wait, what the hell? Qiwanwang's down too???"

Zhong Yi hadn't even finished his sentence when Qiwanwang suddenly furrowed its brow, a "Cold" debuff appearing above its head out of nowhere. It turned and sprinted toward the hot spring.

"Senior Brother Zhong, your crow's-mouth spiritual root keeps getting more ridiculous by the day…"

Zhou Qiaoling muttered under her breath.

"That's not right… Could this really be a plague? It shouldn't be…"

Zhong Yi stroked his chin, beginning to analyze the situation.

"Qiwanwan… wake up! Qiwanwan!!"

Zhou Qiaoling walked over to the straw mats where the Pals slept and nudged Qiwanwan, who had a "Fracture" debuff floating above its head.

The latter rubbed its bleary eyes, struggled to lift its head and look at Zhou Qiaoling, letting out a pitiful "squeak squeak" cry.

"Who would've thought… Junior Sister Qiaoling actually has a soft spot for little animals…"

Zhong Yi nodded in approval.

"Help me craft some Pal Spheres, would you? I'm in a hurry… Huh?"

No sooner had Zhou Qiaoling spoken than the "Fracture" above Qiwanwan's head instantly flickered into "Depression," and the Pal rolled its eyes back and passed out cold.

"…"

Zhong Yi took a deep breath and slapped himself across the face.

"Senior Brother Zhong! Senior Brother Zhong!!"

Zhou Qiaoling's eyes lit up, as if she'd discovered something incredible. She excitedly waved at Zhong Yi.

"See—no more Fracture when you pat it! You try it too?"

"Is it possible that Depression is way worse than Fracture???"

Zhong Yi's mouth twitched violently.

Members of the poaching syndicate could drop medicine and supplies when defeated, and Zhong Yi happened to have stocked up some. Judging by the prices, it was clear that "Cold" was a low-tier affliction, "Fracture" was mid-tier, and "Depression" was the highest-tier one.

"So… because Junior Sister Qiaoling said that one sentence, poor Qiwanwan got scared into a worse condition?"

A flash of insight struck Zhong Yi, and he roughly located the root of the problem.

He scanned the surroundings. Besides the HP bar and saturation bar, there was another energy meter called "Sanity."

"Sanity?"

Zhong Yi raised an eyebrow.

The term was hardly unfamiliar to the cultivators. Back in that nightmare of a realm, The Ghost Town, sanity was the linchpin of the entire illusion environment.

"In The Ghost Town, players' sanity dropped from fear, causing hallucinations to kick in… Here, Pals' sanity drops from overwork, which triggers various afflictions?"

Zhong Yi's thoughts cleared like a fog lifting, and he instantly found the culprit.

Now he looked at the various facilities in the base with fresh eyes.

The hot spring wasn't just a decoration—it was a key facility for restoring Pals' sanity. Beds worked the same way, and the higher-tier the bed, the more sanity it restored during sleep.

Food also had different sanity-restoring effects. Higher-tier foods restored more sanity, and some even came with extra buffs like slowing sanity drain or increasing work speed.

The Pals had been fed wild berries this whole time—they restored zero sanity and each one barely filled any saturation at all.

"So that's how it is… I never expected there to be so much depth to base building. Junior Brother Lu really outdid himself!"

Zhong Yi found the whole thing more and more fascinating, to the point where even the lava area he hadn't fully explored yet suddenly lost its appeal.

With sanity added to the equation, Pals were no longer just simple work tools. There was genuine technique to building a functioning base.

To get the base back up and running, Zhong Yi pulled out the medicines from his inventory and fed them to the Pals. Unfortunately, his drop rate was limited—there were still a few Pals whose conditions he couldn't treat.

"Junior Sister Qiaoling, would you mind making a trip? Go to the merchant in the small village and buy me some medicine for treating 'Fracture.' It shouldn't be too expensive."

Zhong Yi said to Zhou Qiaoling.

"Not expensive still costs money! How could that be permitted!?"

Zhou Qiaoling immediately protested.

"But these Pals need treatment… this Blazing Bull over here has the 'Serious' trait, you know."

Zhong Yi reminded her.

"Hmm… what if we let them sit by the campfire? Would that heal their injuries?"

Zhou Qiaoling racked her brain desperately, trying to talk Zhong Yi out of spending money.

"Why do you say that?"

Zhong Yi stifled a laugh, inwardly amazed at how alike the siblings were.

Just moments ago, Zhou Yue had confessed in the sect telepathy channel that he was the one who started the campfires, thinking the Pals could warm themselves by it to cure their colds.

"Because… look!"

Zhou Qiaoling pointed at a Mischief Cat and a Cat Vampire Bat lying on the campfire, speaking with utter seriousness.

To avoid wasting money, Zhou Qiaoling's half-brain was racing at full speed, her intelligence level now at an all-time peak.

"The Pals warming themselves on the fire—they don't have any afflictions!"

"Those two have clearly been dead for a while!!!"

Zhong Yi's eyes bulged as he shot back.

Based on his deductions, those two Pals had likely been on their way back to sleep when they accidentally stepped through a line of campfires and got burned to death—poor , unlucky bastards.

Of course, that kind of death wasn't a true death. It was a near-death critical state, and simply putting them back into the Pal Terminal would revive them after a moment.

"Fine, let's resurrect them first… Wait a second!!"

Just as Zhong Yi opened the Pal Terminal to revive the two Pals, his pupils shrank sharply.

Across the entire base, only those two Pals that had been burned to death had no affliction tags above their heads!

Was it possible their sanity hadn't dropped to the threshold for sickness yet?

Zhong Yi thought it was unlikely. Those two had been placed in the Pal Terminal very early on.

"Every Pal in the base is sick, but only the dead ones aren't… What does that tell us?"

A subtle smirk tugged at the corner of Zhong Yi's mouth, and he couldn't help muttering to himself.

Zhou Qiaoling chimed in from the side: "It means better to live as a corpse than to die in agony."

"…Keep talking, that's hilarious."

Zhong Yi shot Zhou Qiaoling a deadpan glare, then stared at the campfire with burning intensity.

"It means—"

"Death resets all abnormal statuses."

In Lu Ze's previous life, in the earliest version of Palworld, that was indeed how it worked. After this mechanic was established, medicine lost all its value, so the designers later removed that feature in subsequent updates—even after death and revival, negative status debuffs would persist.

However, when Lu Ze built the illusion environment, he went with the original, early-game setting. After all, given the current system task, the more players leaned into questionable tactics, the better the outcome would be.

"So that means…"

Zhou Qiaoling's breathing grew rapid, and her eyes sparkled.

When it came to devious, underhanded tricks, she caught on with terrifying speed.

She turned around to look at those few bedridden Pals, glanced at her own lips, and licked them.

"If only we could bring them back from the dead..."

"Then we'd save on the medicine costs?"