Saving the Shop by Taking a Roundabout Route

Chen Xuan turned his attention to Alchemy.

There were quite a few useful pill formulas in it... things like the Longevity Pill, Spring Rejuvenation Water, and Great Strength Pill. Just hearing the names made their market potential obvious. Take the Great Strength Pill, for example—according to Alchemy, it could instantly increase a person's strength five- or sixfold. If a weightlifter took one, the results would be unimaginable.

But the materials they required came in all kinds of strange varieties.

Nine Heavens Spirit Flower, Moon Guiding Vine, Dragon Blood Grass... none of them had equivalents here at all.

That was perfectly reasonable.

There were clearly differences between the two worlds. It would have been strange if the formulas worked universally.

But that did not mean Alchemy was useless.

It was essentially a specialized field of study. Adapting to local conditions and prescribing the right remedy was its underlying logic. If he encountered medicinal ingredients not recorded in Alchemy, he could simply document them himself.

Chen Xuan rummaged through the tea cabinet, found a packet of Goji Berry, and poured two berries into his mouth.

That was right... the core technique of Alchemy was Tasting a Hundred Herbs!

As long as something was eaten, Liu Shuyue could roughly identify its Five Elements attributes and medicinal effects. That ability now belonged entirely to him, so he should be able to do the same.

The facts proved his guess correct.

"Hmm... three parts blazing yang, one part rending metal. No medicinal properties, no spirituality... medicinal value... lower ninth-grade auxiliary ingredient."

The instant he bit through the Goji Berry, Chen Xuan immediately learned the properties of this "medicine."

No medicinal properties meant it could not serve as a main ingredient.

No spirituality meant it was basically unusable for pill refinement.

Although the Goji Berry was not much good, he at least knew this method worked.

With his plan decided, Chen Xuan immediately hailed a ride to the largest pharmacy near his residential complex, Hundred Herbs Hall.

The shop stood beside a hospital combining Chinese and Western medicine, in a bustling street-facing location. Six stone lions guarded the entrance, while the interior had red brick walls and green tiles. Wisps of smoke curled beside incense burners, making the place look exceedingly grand. The center of the lobby contained a medicinal herb display area, where thousands of Chinese herbs sat in glass boxes, clean and attractive. Rows of chestnut-colored Chinese-style wooden cabinets stood around the room for employees to retrieve medicine from.

There were quite a lot of customers buying medicine as well. At a glance, there were at least thirty or forty people, with long lines before both the cash register and the decoction room.

"Hello, do you have a prescription?" a sales assistant asked with a smile as she approached him.

"No." Chen Xuan shook his head. "Do I need a prescription to buy medicine?"

The sales assistant looked puzzled, but she remained polite. "Otherwise, we can't exactly let patients mix their own medicine, can we? If you're not sure what medicine to get, you can consult one of our resident doctors."

"Then... can I taste some?"

This time, she froze. "You mean you want to prepare a packet and try its effects?"

"I want to taste the herbs directly... like the ones displayed in those boxes."

The smile vanished from the sales assistant's face. "You're joking, right? Medicinal herbs need to be decocted before they can be taken. How can you eat them raw? You could get poisoned."

Chen Xuan was not too disappointed. He had known it would not go so smoothly.

"Then can I buy one slice of each herb?"

"Sorry, but we can't weigh and price them like that."

"Fine, I'll look around myself first."

After saying that, Chen Xuan walked off to one side, pretending to admire the rows of medicine cabinets.

After dawdling for nearly five minutes, the sales assistant finally stopped paying attention to him and turned to serve other customers. He knew the time had come. He immediately raised his right hand and lightly placed it before a wooden cabinet labeled Dahurian Angelica. Then he slightly bent his middle finger, pressed his fingertip against the cabinet panel, and silently used the Spirit Sword Technique!

An almost imperceptible white glow shot from his fingertip, easily piercing through the one-centimeter-thick wooden board and slipping into the medicine cabinet. The sword qi was about as thick as an injection needle, so there was no visible damage from the outside. It continued forward and soon touched a piece of herb, piercing through it. Since the sword qi was hollow in the middle, it naturally scooped out a bit of "flesh" from it.

Chen Xuan pulled his finger back, and a piece of Dahurian Angelica smaller than a sesame seed was carried out through the tiny hole by the sword qi, landing in his palm.

Since they could not price it by the slice, such a tiny bit of herb could at most count as wastage, right?

Chen Xuan swept his gaze around the hall. Not a single person present noticed his sleight-of-hand trick.

Small as the herb was, it could still be tasted.

Chen Xuan loitered before the medicine cabinets for twenty minutes, sampling more than thirty kinds of Chinese herbs.

Yet to his disappointment, not a single one met the standards for pill refinement. Not only did they have zero spirituality, their medicinal properties were basically nonexistent as well. At most, they could serve as auxiliary ingredients for adjusting the Five Elements.

How could this be?

Chen Xuan could understand the lack of spirituality. According to Alchemy, spiritual herbs were long-lived beings that absorbed the essence of the sun and moon, some of them old enough to even become sentient. The herbs in the shop, however, were semi-finished products that had been dried and processed. Their Spiritual Energy had naturally dissipated long ago.

But the lack of medicinal properties was rather unexpected.

It was not that Hundred Herbs Hall sold fake goods—these Chinese herbs could certainly be made into medicinal decoctions. Yet they could not pass Alchemy's appraisal.

"Still haven't chosen anything?" The sales assistant came over again, saying somewhat impatiently, "Why don't you try the shop next door? They let you taste things over there."

She was essentially chasing him away.

Chen Xuan could not be bothered to argue over her attitude and walked straight out of Hundred Herbs Hall. Back on the street, he casually glanced at the neighboring shop—and the sight made him laugh.

The shop next door was actually a fruit store.

That sales assistant really had taken him for a fool.

But after scoffing a couple of times, Chen Xuan suddenly stopped. He thought for a moment, then entered the fruit store and pointed at some sliced watermelon. "Can I try this?"

"Sure, the toothpicks are on the table," the clerk replied absentmindedly.

He speared a piece of watermelon and put it into his mouth, savoring it carefully. To his surprise, his tongue delivered corresponding feedback as well—two parts water, one part flourishing wood, no medicinal properties, one part spirituality.

That was it! I had been wrong from the start!

Chen Xuan suddenly saw the light.

The medicines sold in pharmacies were selected according to this world's medical knowledge, while Tasting a Hundred Herbs in Alchemy used an entirely different set of standards. By limiting his targets to ready-made medicinal herbs, he had artificially restricted the ability's potential.

As long as they were plants or fruits that could be eaten, perhaps they all had the potential to be refined into pills!

And if he added the conditions of "freshness" and "great age"... the place he should go was not a pharmacy, but the wilderness, where natural vegetation grew in great variety!

There happened to be such a place nearby: Foothill Mountain.

Though it was only a mountain, it had some fame. Its vegetation and trees received corresponding protection, and there were no shortage of ancient trees that had lived for thousands of years. At the same time, it was a scenic area, so hiking there was very convenient. He did not need to risk his life searching deep in the mountains for rare herbs like an ancient herb gatherer.

Once he made up his mind, Chen Xuan hailed a ride straight to the foot of Foothill Mountain. Then, as he walked along the winding asphalt road, he picked and ate whatever he found. Flowers, grass, vines, bark, leaves—if it was plant matter, he tossed it into his mouth. Of course, to follow the rules of protecting nature, he took less than a fingernail-sized amount each time.

"Mom... that man is eating grass..." a little girl cried, tugging at her mother's hand.

"Shh!" The woman hurriedly pulled the child far away. "Be careful, there's something wrong with that man's head."

Chen Xuan did not know whether to laugh or cry.

But his curiosity had been completely aroused. No amount of staring could stop him now.

He kept tasting things all day.

Only when the sky was completely swallowed by night and the time reached 8:30 did he stop by an empty stretch of roadside.

The next second, he was back inside that magical little shop.

It really was a forced check-in...

At least it saved him the fare for the trip back.

Chen Xuan poured all of the day's gains onto the table—two mineral water bottles packed full of grass and leaves, with several crawling insects visible at the bottom. Some leaves came from Camphor Trees, some from Ginkgo trees, while others were nameless weeds from the roadside. They were nothing rare, yet they met the medicinal-property requirements for pill refinement. He had also made an additional discovery: even leaves from the same kind of apricot tree were not necessarily alike. A leaf from one tree being useful did not mean leaves from another would be.

He rubbed his hands excitedly. Now that the medicinal ingredients were ready, he could finally begin refining pills!