Herbal Examination

"I have to say, I'm impressed," Lu Mingyou said with a smile. "Young Master Rui really does have a good eye for people."

Wang Rui gave a lazy grunt.

It had already been two weeks since he and Huo Yuqing had arrived at Emerald Elixir Hall.

Over those two weeks, Huo Yuqing studied herbal knowledge under Lu Mingyou during the day and cultivated diligently in the small upstairs room at night. Somehow, she had not fallen behind in either.

Wang Rui gave her a relatively advanced meditation technique better suited for spiritual-type Soul Masters. Last week, Huo Yuqing had steadily raised her Soul Power to Rank Fourteen.

At the same time, the girl had also become proficient in the basic herbal knowledge Lu Mingyou had taught her.

One had to know that there were more than a thousand types of medicinal herbs commonly used even in the most basic stages of pill refinement alone.

Yet in just these short two weeks, Huo Yuqing had learned to identify those herbs and acquired a preliminary grasp of how to process them.

At the moment, the girl was carefully handling a pile of herbs on the second floor of Emerald Elixir Hall.

The huge heap of herbs on the wooden table was a messy jumble. Every plant was wilted, looking like yellowing bok choy left in the field. There were countless varieties mixed together without any organization, including some pretty but useless weeds.

A chubby White Sand Hamster had just dumped all of it out of the special storage space in its cheek pouches.

Hamster-type Soul Beasts all liked collecting things. While living in Star Dou Forest, this White Sand Hamster had picked and stored every unusual plant it encountered in its cheek pouches. Its instincts told it which plants were edible, and it ate those directly; the inedible ones, it kept... but one could hardly expect the little brain of a mere forty-thousand-year-old creature to be clever enough to carefully sort and properly preserve different herbs.

This White Sand Hamster had practically emptied out the entire fortune it had accumulated over the years, hoping to trade it for a Singing Sand Pill that would benefit the cultivation of earth-type Soul Beasts.

Although it had brought a great number of herbs, their medicinal effects had all deteriorated to some degree—especially several precious herbs that had not been properly stored and had suffered an extreme loss of potency.

Lu Mingyou was so infuriated that she unceremoniously chased the fat hamster off to a construction site east of Jade City to build houses.

The poor little rat would have to haul bricks at the construction site for two years before it could earn that pill.

To be fair, Lu Mingyou was partly taking out her anger on it, but the White Sand Hamster was quite happy about it. After all, two years was nothing to a Soul Beast.

Huo Yuqing identified the herbs in poor condition. Those that required no special treatment were placed into their corresponding boxes for proper storage, while those requiring special handling were put into the appropriate Soul Tools or processed by hand.

This preliminary processing of herbs was somewhat similar to the preparation of traditional Chinese medicine. It was all about using special methods to stimulate the herbs' medicinal properties, remove impurities, or make their active components easier to extract during pill refinement.

For instance, fire-element herbs had to be thoroughly dried to preserve their fire-aspect spiritual energy; if the spiritual energy was needed from the roots and stems, the flowers and leaves were cut off for easier storage; herbs containing water poison had to be briefly soaked in a special medicinal solution first... In short, the methods were numerous and complicated, and each case had to be analyzed individually.

These herbs contained the spiritual energy of heaven and earth, so Soul Power was needed throughout the processing—although Soul Tools saved a great deal of effort in this step, many herbs still required manual treatment.

Sigh. Whenever he thought about these complicated and troublesome methods, Wang Rui truly craved the herb-refining techniques of Heavenly Flames from next door. With a single swish, herbs could be turned into medicinal liquid. It could not have been more convenient.

It was not as though he had never tried it himself, but no matter how precisely he controlled things with Spiritual Power, extracting with flames alone only left a little charred residue from most herbs.

If he could not figure it out, then so be it.

After all, this was an essential difference between worlds.

At the moment, Aunt Rat was darting around on the tabletop, dragging over the tools Huo Yuqing needed, making Wang Rui's mouth twitch.

Ratatouille is right beside me.jpg

Jiang Nannan had also been reduced to an assistant. Huo Yuqing was even more skilled than she was at processing herbs. Her junior brother had suddenly caught up with her in his studies, but she did not feel jealous—after all, it was difficult for anyone to feel envy upon seeing a genius of this caliber.

Huo Yuqing sorted all the herbs and carried out their simple preliminary processing in one smooth, flowing sequence. She did not hesitate in the slightest, and even Lu Mingyou, who had immersed herself in this field for over a century, could not help praising her from the bottom of her heart.

"Sigh, who wouldn't like a child who is both so hardworking and so talented? At any rate, I like her immensely," the woman said with a hand over her lips as she laughed.

Hearing her praise Huo Yuqing, Wang Rui also felt a trace of pride.

In truth, Wang Rui had always felt that the applications of various herbs in the original Douluo work were far too crude. Healing-type abilities were even cruder.

Most healing abilities seemed like video-game healers to Wang Rui: a flash of green light, and health was restored. In essence, they simply crudely stuffed vitality into the injured person's body, repairing wounds and promoting healing—or the Soul Master circulated their own Soul Power to heal themselves.

It was only because Douluo Soul Masters had Soul Power and naturally robust bodies. If this were done to an ordinary person, improperly force-feeding them vitality might very well cause a huge tumor to grow.

Well, most ordinary people could not afford to hire healing-type Soul Masters anyway.

Traditional healing-type Soul Masters also generally did not like treating ordinary people, because the illnesses of ordinary people and the poisons found in injuries suffered by Soul Masters were not the same thing at all.

When he first had the Emerald Swan Bi Ji step forward to build Jade City, he had also intended to study medicine and cultivate healers and pharmacists in a more scientific manner.

Over several thousand years, Jade City had accumulated a vast amount of knowledge.

The countless cases gathered from free clinics had built up medical expertise. Whether treating humans or beasts, they had developed an exceptionally scientific and comprehensive system.

And Jade City's research into pill refinement... was actually rather shamelessly overpowered.

With so many Soul Beasts in the forest, who had not eaten some heavenly treasures? You described the effects, and I described the medicinal properties—the experience piled up in no time.

Moreover, many plant-type Soul Beasts were medicinal herbs when their cultivation was low. Naturally, they understood how to make the most of their own energy. Although asking plant-type Soul Beasts to describe how to maximize their own medicinal effects sounded particularly hellish... it was actually fairly normal.

Plant-type Soul Beasts differed from other Soul Beasts.

No matter how long ordinary animals without Soul Beast bloodlines lived, they would never cultivate into Soul Beasts.

Ordinary plants, however, had a chance of becoming Soul Beasts, though not all plants could become Soul Beasts.

Take Blue Silver Grass, for example. Ordinary Blue Silver Grass could indeed grow into Blue Silver Grass Soul Beasts and eventually become Blue Silver Emperors. But without a special opportunity, even if it grew in the ground for a hundred years, it would not become a Soul Beast.

If plants became Soul Beasts simply upon reaching a certain age, there would have been no ordinary trees left in the deepest core region of Star Dou Forest long ago.

Yet even now, Wang Rui did not understand what exactly the opportunity was for ordinary plants to evolve into plant-type Soul Beasts.

He had once planted the seeds of a certain Hundred-Thousand-Year plant-type Soul Beast in an area with exceptionally rich spiritual energy, but not every seed had grown into a plant-type Soul Beast... After experiment after experiment, it still came down to probability.

And to this day, there was no way to increase the chances of ordinary plants transforming into plant-type Soul Beasts.

Otherwise, Wang Rui would have long since found a way to make humans cultivate Blue Silver Grass. In a hundred years, they could harvest a huge batch of century-old soul rings. Then, if they found a way to stimulate their growth appropriately, even thousand-year soul rings would not be impossible. What a bargain.

Ahem, that was off topic.

In any case, the earliest knowledge had accumulated bit by bit like this. One prescription after another was tested, then gradually refined to perfection over the long years...

This was Jade City's legacy.

The huge pile of herbs before Huo Yuqing had dwindled further and further. At the moment, she was processing the last Red Crystal Viper Berry.

The girl deftly plucked the several scarlet, crystal-like berries from the plant and sealed them inside a box made of cold jade. Then she tore off the leaves that had already begun to wilt and soaked them in clean water. Finally, she placed the stem in a Soul Tool, dried and ground it into powder, then carefully stored it away.

"Phew." She let out a long breath. "Finished!"

Huo Yuqing looked exhausted, but a satisfied smile shone in her eyes.

"Not bad. Two hours and ten minutes, and you processed a total of one hundred and seven medicinal herbs. You've passed the first stage of training. As for study time, you've already broken the record." Lu Mingyou smiled and stroked her hair. "You're my disciple, so you count as half a member of the sect. This is your reward. There's a pill inside. Take it tonight when you cultivate."

She handed Huo Yuqing a pendant-type storage Soul Tool engraved with the emblem of the Golden Tree.

Inside was precisely a Heavenly Water Pill.

"Thank you, Teacher!" Huo Yuqing happily accepted the pendant and immediately put it around her neck.

"Hehe, congratulations, Junior Brother!" Jiang Nannan rubbed Huo Yuqing's head. "You're about to enter the next stage of training. Senior Sister still has some notes for you to read!"

"Nannan, are you there?" A voice suddenly called from downstairs.

"Huh? Mom, why are you here?" Jiang Nannan recognized the speaker and hurried downstairs to greet her.

Lu Mingyou watched her eldest disciple skip downstairs and shook her head helplessly.

The three of them went downstairs together.

A graceful middle-aged woman stood on the first floor. Jiang Nannan leaned close beside her, and at a glance, anyone could see the blood relation between mother and daughter.

Huo Yuqing blinked. She had not expected Jiang Nannan's mother to be the woman who ran the soul beast "bathing" business in the commercial district.

"Greetings, Madam Lu." Jiang's mother respectfully bowed to the woman who had saved her life.

"Mom, why did you suddenly come looking for me? Is something wrong?" Jiang Nannan asked.

"Rouge isn't doing very well. I'm a little worried. Nannan, how about you go home and take a look?" Jiang's mother said, obvious worry written across her face.

Today it's Man Duanduan_(:з"∠)_

Come to think of it, Rui Rui doesn't really have much left to cultivate. Right now, he mainly does research and management. His growth arc is mostly about raising Huo Lolita(?)

There's actually quite a lot that can be written about medicine and healthcare. The original work was really crude about it.