[Apprentice Grade Potion(E)]

Ring-a-ling-a-ling—

As the scenery outside the window shifted from gold to black, the alarm clock on the desk began to ring.

Following the sound of the alarm, the potion inside the pot emitted a golden glow, just as it had when the base was first ignited.

This was the normal process for a potion once it had finished brewing.

Eight hours had passed; time to turn off the heat.

Lan Qingyou set down the book in her hand and snapped her fingers, causing the flames on the base to extinguish instantly.

A freshly brewed potion cannot be bottled immediately.

One must use a slotted spoon to scoop out all the boiled-down herbs, then use cloth and a funnel to drain the moisture from them.

After that, it needs to cool down, allowing the remaining herbal impurities to settle.

During this time, Lan Qingyou went out to grab a meal.

About half an hour later, she returned with a Wooden Water Ladle, a decanter, and ten test tubes.

Without disturbing the liquid in the pot, she used the Wooden Water Ladle to carefully scoop the potion from the crucible and pour it into the filter.

Once only a bit of herbal dregs remained in the crucible, she had to use a cloth to bundle the dregs together with the previously removed herbs, squeezing them until every last drop of the potion was extracted.

In the words of Albert, the moisture within the dregs contains the most potency; if you skip this step, what you end up with is nothing more than a semi-finished product.

After completing all these steps, all that remained was to wait for the filtration.

Boiling 20 liters of water down to 2,000 milliliters—or four catties of water—didn't take long to filter.

Once the potion in the upper part of the filter had completely drained, Lan Qingyou couldn't wait to use the decanter to scoop some out, fill a test tube, and take it for identification.

[Apprentice-Grade Mana Potion (E)]

[Effect: Restores 5 mana per second for 10 seconds.]

[Description: A standard Apprentice Magic Potion. The dosage is a bit heavy; the one who made this must be an apprentice who just entered the field of alchemy. Too academic, no flair, a bit boring and rigid.]

So, in your eyes, an alchemical potion is supposed to have "flair"?

Seeing the potion's description, Lan Qingyou curled her lip.

The potion this time didn't trigger the Small Screen to complain like last time, so you're just forcing a critique, aren't you?

Lan Qingyou was quite satisfied with her first true attempt at alchemy.

Therefore, she was correspondingly quite dissatisfied with the Small Screen's evaluation.

With the identification results from the Small Screen in hand, the only thing left was the bottling process.

The 2,000 milliliters of potion only required 200 test tubes; compared to the 1,000 tubes from last time, this was a breeze, and Lan Qingyou finished bottling them in no time.

However, she didn't rush to sell them, instead giving ten tubes to Gu Xiaobei first.

Lan Qingyou: "This is the price difference I promised you. May I ask, where did you get your blueprint?"

Gu Xiaobei, who had been boredly scrolling through her chat, became instantly excited when she saw the notification flashing on her friend list.

In reality, compared to Lan Qingyou, who had as many as two friends, Gu Xiaobei only had one friend at the moment.

She could immediately guess who had sent her a message.

While seeing the friend notification flash, she also saw ten potions appear on her Small Screen.

Upon learning the effects of the potion from the Small Screen's identification, Gu Xiaobei was filled with surprise.

Gu Xiaobei: "It restores 50 mana! That's amazing! Thank you, big shot! As for the blueprint, I got it from a Material Treasure Chest."

An excited Gu Xiaobei typed out a string of text, pouring in her amazement, gratitude, and answer all at once.

A Material Treasure Chest?

That thing can drop this kind of stuff?

Lan Qingyou, who had assumed that Material Treasure Chests were only for opening materials, finally understood what the "treasure" in the name really meant.

It seemed that her plan to hunt for treasure chests tonight would have to continue.

Gu Xiaobei: "By the way, big shot, what about herbs? Do you need herbs? I have a lot: Ascetic Herb, Yellow-Tail Flower, Yulan Herb, Thorn Spike, Stone Orchid, and Moonflower."

If you like this book, please remember to add it to your bookshelf so you don't lose it next time.

Lan Qingyou: "How do you have so many herbs?"

Lan Qingyou, sitting before her desk, was also somewhat surprised. Although these were all herbs for making E-grade potions, she had never thought that others would go out and gather them too.

Gu Xiaobei: "It's because of my talent. I went to gather these after I saw that you could make potions."

Lan Qingyou: "I see. Then let's trade one catty for one Mana Potion."

Gu Xiaobei: "Yes, yes, yes! I'm sending the trade request now."

Although the herbs wouldn't be as potent as freshly gathered ones since the other party hadn't processed them, Lan Qingyou ultimately decided to purchase this batch.

Gu Xiaobei's actions reminded her: how could her own gathering ever be as fast as having others gather for her?

If she didn't waste time on that, she could produce two pots a day, and the profit from the price difference alone would be a massive windfall.

Therefore, she had no intention of dampening the other party's enthusiasm.

As for what the other party's talent was, did that have anything to do with Lan Qingyou?

"An alchemist never worries about materials; I am not interested in the materials themselves."

Lan Qingyou chuckled softly, then began to consider how to mobilize those fellows in the Valley of Villains.

There was no doubt that the current Apprentice Magic Potion was enough to stir up their enthusiasm, but the problem was that they didn't recognize herbs; they might just pull up a handful of weeds for her.

To avoid unnecessary trouble, Lan Qingyou decided to first use the camera function on the Small Screen to take pictures of the herbs, then edit the relevant identification methods for these herbs.

Finally, she posted them to her personal homepage.

This homepage was somewhat similar to a blog that could be edited, and anyone could click into it through their own avatar.

Just like how Lan Qingyou had clicked into Shang Chuan's personal homepage back then.

It was just that most people were currently busy upgrading their Earphone Shelter and preparing for the end of the novice period, so very few people were writing things like web diaries.

Lan Qingyou could take advantage of this.

After completing all the preparations, Lan Qingyou put this batch of potions up, with one Magic Potion exchanging for 60 basic units of materials.

She also took the opportunity to edit two trade listings in the shop.

One was 'E-Rank Herb * 500 grams for Apprentice-Grade Mana Potion * 1'.

The other was 'E-Rank Devilish Creature Crystal Core * 1 for Apprentice-Grade Mana Potion * 2'.

In an instant, everyone in the channel was sent into a frenzy.

The previous potion that restored 1 point of mana per second could only be called barely sufficient, but it was usable.

But now, with 5 points of mana restored per second, wouldn't that just be a massive boost!

One had to know that the average mental power of a Blue Star Person was around 5 or 6 points, and their total mana was only 50 or 60 points.

Now, with a 50-point mana potion downed, it was enough for most people to restore their mana to its peak within ten seconds.

"Damn! I just bought ten Crude Magic Potions, and now an Apprentice Magic Potion comes out?"

"Shut up!"

"If you don't buy it, plenty of others will."

"Buy? It's gone!"

"So fast?"

"It's really gone, it happened in an instant."

"There's more, you can exchange using Devilish Creature Crystal Cores and herbs."

"Looks good, one jin for one bottle, but how am I supposed to know what the herbs look like?"

"She has an explanation on her personal homepage, there are even pictures."

"Don't bring dirt and it has to be washed clean, otherwise you'll be directly blacklisted from the shop. Good grief, is she offloading all the work onto us?"

"What else? Half a jin of dirt in a jin of herbs—would you be able to stand that?"

"That's true, I suppose."

"No, doesn't anyone else think this is unfair? When it was 10 mana points, the price was 10 units of material, so why is the price 60 units now that it's 50 mana points?"