Yi Yun's Doubts

Over the past two days, Yi Yun had been engrossed in martial training. Sometimes, because both his hands were injured, he had to wrap them in bandages.

Yi Yun often sneaked out in the middle of the night. Once or twice would have been nothing, but after a while, Jiang Xiaorou naturally discovered it.

"Yun'er, what have you been doing these days? Also, what happened to your hands?"

After Yi Yun's mother passed away, Jiang Xiaorou had taken on the role of his mother. She had cared for Yi Yun ever since, looking after him in every possible way.

If Yi Yun made a mistake, Jiang Xiaorou would not scold him. She would simply stare at him with those dark, shining eyes until he admitted his mistake himself.

Today was no different.

Yi Yun had initially planned to say that he had scraped his hands while gathering herbs, but when he met Jiang Xiaorou's serious gaze, he found himself unable to speak. After hesitating for a moment, Yi Yun told her the truth. "Sister Xiaorou, I went out in the middle of the night to practice martial arts. The injuries on my hands were also caused by practicing."

Jiang Xiaorou froze for a moment. Martial arts?

"Yun'er, who taught you martial arts?"

"I learned it secretly," Yi Yun said bluntly.

Jiang Xiaorou's expression changed. Stealing the tribe's martial arts could get him beaten to death if he was caught. Besides, how could learning martial arts be so easy? Even if one could not regularly eat good medicine and meat, one at least had to eat one's fill. Yi Yun drank thin gruel and ate wild vegetables every day. How could he possibly have the strength to practice?

This could cost him his life.

"Sister Xiaorou, do you believe me?"

Yi Yun took Jiang Xiaorou's hand and looked seriously into her eyes.

Jiang Xiaorou froze, then subconsciously nodded.

"Mm. If you believe me, then don't ask. Sister Xiaorou, I will let you live a good life in the future!"

Yi Yun spoke with utmost seriousness. Jiang Xiaorou was the first person he had met after arriving in this otherworld, and so far, the only one who had truly cared about him with her life.

He had always kept this kindness in his heart. He would not only change his own fate, but Jiang Xiaorou's fate as well.

Jiang Xiaorou stared blankly at Yi Yun. She suddenly had a feeling—the little brother had grown up.

He was no longer the little child he had once been. She could no longer dismiss his words as childish nonsense. He had truly made this his goal and was striving toward it with all seriousness...

After eating coarse tea and plain food every day, Yi Yun slowly got used to it. Or rather, even if he was not used to it, he had to be.

The coarse-grain porridge tasted terrible. Moreover, after Yi Yun's appetite had greatly increased, the thin porridge was digested completely almost as soon as it entered his stomach. Without the herbs from Lian Clan Medicine Mountain to sustain him, Yi Yun could forget about breaking through to the Qi Long Realm. He would be lucky merely not to starve to death.

However, although medicinal herbs could replenish the body's nutrients and energy, medicine was still not truly food. And when it came to the taste of those herbs, eating them straight was even worse than coarse-grain porridge.

Day after day, this continued. For a food lover like Yi Yun, his mouth was practically going to grow feathers from blandness. It was truly torture.

The only thing that could count as an improvement to their lives now was Sister Xiaorou's pickled vegetables.

It was rather tragic when he thought about it. Yi Yun had not lived an affluent life on Earth, but at least he had vegetables and meat. Now that he had come to this otherworld, he had not even tasted a shred of meat. Even pickled vegetables counted as fine cuisine.

That said, Sister Xiaorou's pickled vegetables really were delicious. To her family, pickled vegetables were a relatively extravagant food, because there were no salt mines in the village. The salt they ate had likewise been bought from the large tribes.

Most of the salt had to be supplied to the Warrior Reserve Camp, where it was used to cure meat. Only a tiny amount reached ordinary households, and it was generally used to boil wild-vegetable soup. Pickling vegetables was naturally an extravagant way to use it.

Several more days passed, and the herbs on Lian Clan Medicine Mountain had almost been picked clean. Even Yi Yun, despite having the Purple Crystal to guide him, could no longer find any decent medicinal herbs. In order to hand in the herbs, the villagers had even dug up the seedlings.

"The mountain has been harvested like this without any consideration for future sustainable gathering. It seems the Lian Clan has already decided to fight with its back to the river. They may even abandon the place where the Lian Clan has lived for generations. All their hopes are now pinned on Lian Chengyu. But even if Lian Chengyu passes the Tai'a Divine Kingdom's warrior selection, only a small portion of people, including the members of the Warrior Reserve Camp, will benefit. These ordinary people may well be abandoned by them..."

Yi Yun sighed inwardly. This was the law of survival in the Great Wilderness. Resources were limited. The strong seized more resources, while the weak were weeded out.

As the mountain's value dwindled, the higher-ups of the Lian Clan stopped paying attention to it. All their energy was focused on refining the desolate bones.

The desolate bones were the true matter of utmost importance. For them, the Lian Clan had gone all in, placing every hope they had inside them.

Lian Chengyu was also staking his life on this. His ambition, his aspirations, his everything—all of it had been placed on them!

Refining the desolate bones would take at least sixty days!

Yet on the tenth day of the refining, something happened.

Several villagers responsible for refining the desolate bones fell ill. At first, they merely coughed and developed fevers. Soon, they began vomiting and having diarrhea, while rashes appeared on their skin and their spirits grew listless. From the looks of it, they seemed to have contracted Typhoid Fever.

In these small tribes of the Great Wilderness, ordinary warriors were generally fine. Their physiques were strong, and so was their resistance. But for the poor, once they fell ill, there was no such thing as a minor illness.

Their bodies were weak and their resistance poor. Moreover, the tribe's only physician served the tribal higher-ups. The medical conditions of the poor were truly wretched. Even minor ailments such as colds could easily turn fatal.

When Yi Yun heard the news, he found it strange.

Typhoid Fever sounded like a common cold, but it was actually a bacterial infectious disease. Yi Yun did not know whether the Typhoid Fever of this otherworld was the same as the one on Earth, but with so many people falling ill at once, it was certain that this was an infectious disease.

What Yi Yun could not understand, however, was that infectious diseases were generally spread through water or air. These villagers refining the desolate bones stayed around the great cauldron every day, and the temperature there was extremely high!

With the sustained high temperature and extreme dryness, ordinary pathogens would find it difficult to survive. If an infectious disease had truly broken out in the village, it should have spread among other people first. Why had these particular people refining the desolate bones fallen ill?

Could it be a pathogen that spread more easily in dry conditions?

At this thought, Yi Yun's expression darkened slightly. Perhaps these villagers were not simply sick!

Four or five people had fallen ill at once. The members of the Lian Clan, especially those likewise responsible for refining the desolate bones, began to panic.

They were here. Who knew when they might contract this strange illness as well?

Being alive might be painful, but no one wanted to die.

Fortunately, the Lian Clan's higher-ups did not ignore the matter this time. The clan leader stepped forward to calm everyone and gave each sick villager a bright red pill.

The pill was the size of a longan, red as if dripping blood. According to the clan leader, it had been refined from some extremely precious medicinal herbs, and each pill was worth a fortune.

The clan leader instructed the patients to swallow the pills with warm water. After that, the medicine would cure them immediately. Indeed, after the critically ill clan members took the pills, they began improving on the very first day. They woke from a night of sleep full of vigor, and by the evening of the second day, they were no different from ordinary people.

By the third day, the patients were even more vigorous than dragons and tigers. They seemed to be in better shape than before they had fallen ill.

That was not all. The clan leader also gave each sick clan member a palm-sized piece of cured meat. It was meat, after all! To villagers who had not seen meat for several months, this was absolutely a tremendous blessing.

The poor people treasured that piece of cured meat dearly. They ate only a little at each meal, and sometimes gave it to their children or wives.

The news that the Lian Clan was handing out pills and cured meat to its sick clan members quickly spread.

The suffering people were all grateful for the tribe's kindness, and they worked even harder at refining the desolate bones. Some even wished they could fall ill once themselves. That way, they too could receive the pill that made them glow with vigor, as well as a piece of cured meat.

When this news reached Yi Yun, he merely frowned slightly.

A single pill could cure an illness immediately and make someone radiant with vitality?

Although Yi Yun did not know much about medicine, he knew that certain drugs whose effects were astonishingly good after consumption, and which stimulated a person's spirit, all had powerful side effects.

Stimulants, narcotics, and the many banned drugs that stimulated human potential were examples.

The higher-ups of the Lian Clan were even proclaiming how precious the herbs used to make their pills were. Yi Yun did not believe that for a moment.

When had the Lian Clan become so generous? Besides, even if they wanted to be generous, they had to possess such precious herbs first. In Yi Yun's view, the Lian Clan's higher-ups were also desperately poor. They were no better off than the poor of the Lian Clan—just two fools laughing at each other from opposite sides of a wall. Their limited resources had all been used on Lian Chengyu. How could they possibly distribute medicinal herbs to the poor?

Another day passed. The Lian Clan handed out some Medicinal Dregs. These dregs were what Lian Chengyu had left over after cleansing his body. They were boiled into medicine and used to cleanse the bodies of those refining the desolate bones. Supposedly, this could strengthen their constitutions. Those who received the dregs were naturally overwhelmed with gratitude.