Plague-Avoiding Pill

The next day.

The Aristocratic Clan disciples of Lingmu Sect had skipped the Enlightenment Hall selection process and entered the Advanced Study Hall ahead of the others, so they had all been assigned to the area in its northeastern corner.

Li Mo rarely came over here, and the Aristocratic Clan disciples who passed by couldn't help taking a second look at him.

He waited for quite a while before Lü Cuicui finally arrived.

"Cuicui!"

Lü Cuicui froze for a moment. When she realized it was Li Mo, she immediately grew nervous, looking this way and that. Only after seeing that there was no one nearby she knew did she hurry over in surprise.

"What are you doing here?"

"Didn't you always want to study the Puppet Technique of Zai Zao Sect in Lu Country?"

Li Mo found Lü Cuicui's timid, furtive manner, as if she were sneaking around behind someone's back, rather amusing. He took a palm-sized Humanoid Puppet from his Storage Pouch. It hadn't been activated yet, so it remained in its miniature form.

"A Humanoid Puppet!"

Lü Cuicui was astonished.

She took the Humanoid Puppet from Li Mo and turned it over in her hands a few times. Her eyes immediately lit up with excitement.

"The skin is made from jade algae mud and colorless glue. This is definitely Zai Zao Sect's craft. The inner mechanical structure is also completely different from the Lü Family's Puppet Technique, and it's closer to the shape of a real human skeleton. Where did you get this?"

Li Mo briefly told her about the trade fair he'd attended.

Lü Cuicui nodded again and again, her eyes shining as she looked at the Humanoid Puppet in her hands.

Seeing this, Li Mo smiled. "All right, I'm heading out to carry out a commission. You can borrow this Humanoid Puppet to study for a while. If you make any discoveries, you have to share them with me."

"Don't worry, hehe. Thank you so much!"

Li Mo could tell that Lü Cuicui was genuinely thrilled.

Just as she was about to say something more to Li Mo, she looked up and suddenly blushed to the roots of her hair. Li Mo also noticed someone behind him and turned to look, only to freeze.

The disciple standing there was half a head shorter than Li Mo, but weighed at least twice as much.

He held a melon in one hand and some dry rations in the other, mechanically chewing as his eyes darted back and forth between Li Mo and Lü Cuicui. A teasing smile played at the corners of his mouth.

"Are you two on a date?"

At his words, Lü Cuicui immediately flustered.

"N-no, we're just friends. Th-this is Li Mo. I told you about him before..."

After thinking for a moment, Li Mo remembered the fat man's identity.

He was Lü Cuicui's older brother, Lu Shun. When Ye Xunhuan had confronted Zhou Zheng and Tao Ran over Zhao Huaxue, Lu Shun had been among the Aristocratic Clan disciples Ye Xunhuan recruited to help him, though he'd only appeared in the background.

Lu Shun rolled his eyes, looking at Lü Cuicui as if she were an idiot.

"So you really are on a date. Whenever you lie, you get nervous and stammer. I'll tell Mother in a few days that you've got someone you fancy. Oh, right, his name's Li Mo, and he's pretty handsome."

With that, the fat man grinned at Li Mo, looking rather good-natured, and headed toward the dormitory on his own.

At his words, Lü Cuicui's hair practically stood on end.

She hurried after him, waving frantically at Li Mo over her shoulder to tell him to leave, while grabbing Lu Shun and pleading with him in a coaxing voice.

"Brother, I'll treat you to Nine-Spice Crispy Pork the next time we go to the market in a few days. Just don't tell Mother, okay?"

"No!"

Lu Shun refused coldly, then turned to Lü Cuicui and grunted, "I want wind-cured civet."

"Fine, fine, fine..."

Watching the siblings leave, Li Mo felt a little envious of their bond.

In the blink of an eye, October arrived.

After the summer flood season ended, the rainy season continued for a while, bringing endless drizzle day after day.

Over the past month, Li Mo had thrown himself into all kinds of commission work, neglecting sleep and meals. By pushing himself to work as efficiently as possible, he'd completed six commissions in a row. Along the way, he'd also found a piece of Thunderstruck Wood, but unfortunately, it hadn't developed a spiritual quality, so it could only serve as an exorcising base material for a low-tier magical artifact.

He sold the Thunderstruck Wood for a bit of extra income. Combined with his commission earnings, he had managed to save a little over sixty Spirit Stones.

But he needed at least eighty Spirit Stones to gather a set of supplementary ingredients for a Qi Refining-level Creation Pill.

According to the Elixir Recipe, a Creation Pill's quality depended mainly on the grade of its Ephemeral Demon Core.

If the Ephemeral Demon Core was Qi Refining-level, the supplementary ingredients needed to refine the Creation Pill were nothing special. Nine spiritual herbs at least thirty years old would do, and they were all familiar varieties—some even cheaper than the ingredients for Qi Gathering Pills.

But if he wanted to refine a Golden Core Stage Creation Pill, or even a Nascent Soul Realm Creation Pill, then even the so-called supplementary spiritual herbs would be priceless treasures.

On top of that, there was another matter weighing on Li Mo: he had been unable to break through the bottleneck at the seventh Qi Refining layer for a long time, and it was making him deeply anxious.

"As expected of a major bottleneck."

Li Mo sighed inwardly, hoping this upcoming commission would bring him an opportunity to break through to the seventh Qi Refining layer—or let him earn enough Spirit Stones to gather the supplementary ingredients for the Creation Pill.

The Flying Ship crossed the sea of clouds, heading toward the Prefecture City of Shangfeng Prefecture.

After resting for a while, the Flying Ship slowly descended. Li Mo made his way to Heaven's Mandate Bureau in the Prefecture City with practiced ease. Using his status as a disciple of Lingmu Sect, he rented a fast horse and rode toward Zizhu Town in Longtan County.

Along the way, he noticed something unusual.

When it was time to stop for an afternoon meal, he dismounted and entered a small roadside shop.

"Boss, a bowl of Yangchun noodles, and four steamed buns to go."

"Coming right up!"

There were similar little husband-and-wife shops along the main roads in every prefecture and county, spaced at regular intervals. The people running them were always well informed.

"Boss, I saw quite a few funeral processions on the road here. Is there a plague going around?"

"Yes."

The old man brought over a steaming bowl of Yangchun noodles and let out a helpless sigh.

"Alas, the flood season's almost over, but Longyang County still got flooded. A lot of people died, and then the plague hit. The court sent quite a few physicians over to help, but they still couldn't get it under control. These past few days, it's spread to Longtan County too. They say people have even died near the Prefecture City."

Li Mo chatted with the old man for a few more moments, a thoughtful look crossing his face.

After eating his fill, Li Mo continued on his way.

Suddenly.

Li Mo, riding atop his horse, froze for a moment. He stopped practicing the Lesser Celestial Circuit and opened his eyes.

"Plague-Avoiding Pill!"

Plague-Avoiding Pills only worked if taken before a person contracted the plague, protecting them from infection for a period of time.

A physician's decoction, by contrast, could only treat someone after they had caught the plague. The two belonged to entirely different systems.

Now that people had died even near the Prefecture City of Shangfeng Prefecture, there was bound to be a shortage of Plague-Avoiding Pills. After finishing this commission, he could try his luck in the Prefecture City.

After galloping all the way to Zizhu Town, Li Mo found the residence of a family surnamed Xiang.

It was clear this was one of the town's prominent households.

Behind its imposing gates stood two stone lions. When the gatekeeper heard why Li Mo had come, he hurried inside to call for the master of the house.

A short while later.

An old man in a long silk robe, leaning on a cane inlaid with jade, came trembling out with several people supporting him and looked toward Li Mo.

"I have come on the orders of Auntie Wang of Lingmu Sect to deliver this Jade Bottle. Please inspect it."

The Jade Bottle was sealed with wax to make sure no one had tampered with it.

After taking the Jade Bottle and inspecting it, the old man turned to the people beside him, his face alight with excitement. "Your paternal aunt has finally sent the Plague-Avoiding Pills! They're worth a fortune, a fortune!"

Li Mo was taken aback.

Still, he didn't forget to take out the receipt and ask the other man to sign his name.

This commission had a strict deadline: it had to be delivered within five days. He needed the recipient to sign as proof, so he could claim his reward after returning to his sect.

"All right."

The old man handed the signed receipt to Li Mo.

After confirming it was in order, Li Mo smiled and put the letter away. That meant the commission was complete.

There was no hurry to return and claim his reward.

Li Mo stepped forward and asked tentatively, "It seems quite a few people have died from this plague. Do you know how much a Plague-Avoiding Pill is going for on the market now?"

Plague-Avoiding Pills were medicines for ordinary people. Under normal circumstances, one could buy a bottle for thirty or forty taels of silver. He had four bottles on hand now. One had been given to him by his sect, along with an alchemy furnace and an Elixir Recipe, when he took the alchemist examination. He still hadn't managed to sell it.

The other three bottles were ones he'd refined before making Qi Gathering Pills, to practice and warm up, just to make sure everything went smoothly.

"Alas, you can't find any Plague-Avoiding Pills on the market now."

The old man sighed and shook his head.

"Plague-Avoiding Pills are elixirs from the immortal realm. Even in ordinary times, they cost at least four or five taels of silver each. How could ordinary people get their hands on them? When there's no illness or disaster, which high-ranking official or noble would use one? Now that the plague is raging and people have died in every village and town, they've finally started to panic. The Plague-Avoiding Pills on the market were snapped up long ago, and the spirit pills Lingmu Sect sent over were all given to court officials and soldiers."

Li Mo thanked him, mounted his horse, and rode away.

He wanted to find out the going price of Plague-Avoiding Pills in the Prefecture City.

As the old man had said, although pills of this kind were sold on the market, ordinary people had no way of getting their hands on them.

All ordinary people could do was rely on fate and pray they wouldn't fall ill. If they were unlucky enough to catch the plague, they could only seek doctors and medicine wherever they could, and hope they survived it.

The rich and powerful, on the other hand, clearly had no intention of leaving their lives to fate. Of course they'd swallow Plague-Avoiding Pills.

Two days later.

Li Mo returned to the Prefecture City of Shangfeng Prefecture.

There was a small market in the city for independent cultivators, cultivators from families, and cultivators stationed outside their sects. It drew cultivators, and every so often even a few high-ranking officials and nobles came by for a look.

After making a few inquiries, Li Mo went to a shop that was still selling pills. He found it packed to the rafters with people, all there to buy Plague-Avoiding Pills.

"Everyone, please!"

The shopkeeper looked helpless.

"Our shop is doing all it can to bring in spirit pills from elsewhere, but we have no stock at the moment. There's nothing we can do. The two alchemists haven't slept in two days, and they simply can't keep going."

"One batch only gives you seven or eight pills. Who's that supposed to feed? There are dozens of people in my household!"

"My master says he has plenty of silver. He has to buy Plague-Avoiding Pills today!"

"If I can't buy any today, I'm not leaving..."

After standing in the crowd for a while, Li Mo got a sense of the current price of Plague-Avoiding Pills. It had soared to more than ten times the usual rate. A bottle that used to cost only forty or fifty taels of silver was now going for five hundred taels—or fifty taels per pill—and still, there were none to be found.

"As expected of Shangfeng Prefecture's Prefecture City. An ordinary country family makes only thirty or forty taels of silver a year, barely enough to get by, with almost no ability to weather a crisis. Yet one Plague-Avoiding Pill here costs fifty taels of silver. Big cities really are different. There are so many tycoons and wealthy merchants."

At this, he thought of the Eighteen Mountains Bandits, who had risked everything and fought each other for the silver they earned. Their take might not even have matched what the city's wealthy magnates spent to reward a performer for a single good turn onstage. A wave of melancholy washed over him.

Perhaps Muzhou wasn't poor. Perhaps it was only the countryside that was poor.

The wealthy magnates in the Prefecture City were so afraid of dying that they were frantically searching for Plague-Avoiding Pills.

But to the court, Plague-Avoiding Pills weren't strategic supplies. The medicinal herbs needed by doctors and physicians to treat the sick were what needed to be regulated. The rich could follow the cultivation world's own rules of survival when it came to life and death.

"Hmph, I've really struck it lucky this time."

Thinking this, Li Mo held up a Jade Bottle.

"I have a bottle of Plague-Avoiding Pills here. I'll sell the whole bottle for six hundred taels!"

An opportunity like this might not come once in decades. Most plagues spread only among a few towns at most, and might cause panic in a single county.

Plagues severe enough to cause panic even in a Prefecture City were rare in the Da Gan Kingdom.

After a moment of stunned silence, the crowd burst out laughing, apparently unwilling to believe Li Mo actually had any Plague-Avoiding Pills.

But after a crack of thunder, Li Mo demonstrated Palm Lightning and then took out his Lingmu Sect disciple token.

"Here's my disciple token from Lingmu Sect!"

The crowd erupted at once. People rushed forward to ask about the pills, and some tried to haggle.

Six hundred taels of silver was no small sum.

That was nothing to the truly wealthy.

But for some of the smaller merchants in the Prefecture City, six hundred taels was already a hefty expense. Many households spent only eight hundred to a thousand taels a year, counting all the servants and retainers. Zhou Zheng and Lu Tianyou's families were probably in that range, though expenses in Anle City were higher.

As for ordinary wealthy households in the Prefecture City, their annual expenses were only around a hundred taels, and they were even lower in the counties.

Wang Qi had already gone through these figures with Li Mo back in Hua'an Town.

A short while later.

Someone couldn't hold back any longer and agreed to Li Mo's terms, taking out a six-hundred-tael banknote first.

Li Mo didn't waste time. He exchanged the money for the pills on the spot.

"I want one too!"

"Don't crowd—there are more here..."

After making a huge profit, Li Mo could hardly hide his delight. It was a classic case of planting willows and getting shade by accident. He'd never dreamed that the Plague-Avoiding Pills he'd made just to practice would now fetch such a sky-high price.

"Shopkeeper."

Unwilling to miss such an opportunity, Li Mo went straight over and listed the spiritual herbs needed to refine Plague-Avoiding Pills.

"Get me one set."

The Lightning Refining Method would inflict some damage on him too, and he didn't want to harm his cultivation. So he asked for ingredients for just one batch.

"This..."

The shopkeeper hesitated for a moment, seeming wary of Li Mo's status as a Lingmu Sect disciple. He looked helpless.

"One set of spiritual herbs is no problem, but their prices have gone up quite a bit too. Please forgive me, Immortal Master."

The shopkeeper named a high price, but it wasn't unreasonable.

Li Mo nodded, agreed, and paid.

A few hours later.

Li Mo was a little weak and tired when he returned to the shop. He again sold a bottle of Plague-Avoiding Pills—ten pills for six hundred taels—and had eaten one himself in the meantime.

This time, however, he waited quite a while before he managed to sell the bottle.

The shop seemed afraid Li Mo would keep competing with them for business. Next, they brought out more than a dozen bottles of Plague-Avoiding Pills all at once, pushing the price down to a little over three hundred taels per bottle. It seemed like a warning to Li Mo.

Li Mo knew that cutting off their source of income was a major taboo. He immediately decided not to linger, lest he invite unnecessary trouble.

Carrying three thousand taels in banknotes, Li Mo sat down for a while at a cheap tea stall near the city gate.

While the owner wasn't paying attention, he mixed the few Plague-Avoiding Pills he had left into the tea.

He didn't know how much effect the pills would have after that, but they were spirit pills, so they should still offer some protection against the plague. Perhaps they might even save someone's life.

At that very moment, a notice was posted in the city: to prevent the plague from spreading, all movement of people would be prohibited starting the next day.

Li Mo had seen this and, relying on his status as a disciple of the Lingmu Sect, secured one last chance to leave Prefecture City.

Several days later.

After returning to his sect aboard a Flying Ship, Li Mo went to the Refining Hall, intending to exchange his banknotes for Spirit Stones.

"Banknotes?"

The senior disciple in charge of exchanging silver and Spirit Stones at the Refining Hall shook his head.

"Junior Brother, our Refining Hall only exchanges silver and Spirit Stones. For banknotes from the Daohua Trading House, you'll have to take them to a merchant association at the foot of the mountain and exchange them for silver first."

Li Mo was taken aback.

He'd thought these banknotes could circulate nationwide.

The Refining Hall disciple on duty seemed to notice Li Mo's confusion, so he explained.

"Our Refining Hall offers exchange services partly to make transactions easier for sect disciples, and partly to help our disciples refine Silver Essence. But we can't refine Silver Essence from a banknote, can we?"

Silver Essence had a wide range of uses, not just in artifact crafting, so its value was very stable.

Perhaps that was why countless mortals and cultivators chose to use silver as an anchor for the value of Spirit Stones. It also made it easier for the imperial court to promote standard weights and measures and unify the dynasty's laws and decrees.

"Junior Brother, remember: things like these are just for merchants outside to do business more easily. We cultivators have Storage Pouches, so we only recognize Spirit Stones. To us, silver is just a commodity. To mortals, though, silver is currency, while Spirit Stones are a luxury. As for banknotes like these... once you get them, exchange them for actual silver as soon as possible. If they're accidentally burned or destroyed, they really will just be a piece of paper."

After thanking him, Li Mo spent another half a day going back and forth, but at last exchanged all the gains from his trip for Spirit Stones.

With three hundred and seventy-seven Spirit Stones to his name, he looked thoroughly satisfied.