Exotic Beast Meat, Pills, Silver Notes... A Bountiful Haul, the Dragon-Tiger Great Elixir!

Things had happened in a rush earlier.

After Shi Wen escaped Fuxing Wharf, he hurried to Treasure Medicine Pavilion to buy medicine for his wounds.

Now that he was back home and had eaten his fill, he finally relaxed his taut nerves and inspected the spoils he had just obtained.

The pile looked like a little mound of dirt, almost reaching his knees.

It contained all sorts of things.

Shi Wen sorted the items one by one, his eyes shining with barely contained excitement.

There was a lot of exotic beast meat!

Most of the miscellaneous items were bags of sliced, dried exotic beast meat, each piece about the length of a finger.

He couldn't tell what effects they had, but the defeated soldiers had carried them around, so they certainly weren't cheap!

He examined the dried exotic beast meat in the bags.

The meat was dense and bright red. When he held it beneath his nose, he could smell a sweet, savory aroma.

Just from smelling it,

the circulation of his qi and blood seemed to speed up a little!

"This dried meat is extremely high quality, far better than the Fu Bird Meat the owner of Treasure Medicine Pavilion sold!"

"Good thing I didn't buy too much exotic beast meat earlier."

"Damn... Fifteen bags, each weighing around ten pounds. That's about a hundred and seventy pounds altogether."

Shi Wen hefted the fifteen bags.

At a glance, the exotic beast meat didn't look like much packed into waterproof pouches only a little bigger than his palm.

But it was incredibly dense. A single piece probably weighed four or five ounces, and there was over a hundred pounds of exotic beast meat in all—enough to nourish his body for a long time.

At the very least,

it could restore his depleted body

and sustain his martial arts training for a while!

"I wonder where these people got exotic beast meat of such high quality. It's far better than Fu Bird Meat."

"Would a few hundred strings of cash per pound be too much to ask?"

Shi Wen did the math.

At 400 to 500 strings of cash per pound for 170 pounds of exotic beast meat, the whole pile of goods in his hands would fetch at least two thousand taels of silver at market price!

Thinking that there were two thousand taels of silver lying at his feet,

Shi Wen couldn't help drawing in a sharp breath. His eyes practically turned green!

Two thousand taels of silver—if he'd had that much in the past, it would have been enough to buy his life hundreds of times over.

Even if his whole family hadn't had to pay the clerks and the Boat Gang, saving five strings of cash a month would have taken about a thousand years to earn those two thousand taels of silver!

And all this

was only part of the haul!

"Whew... Who were these people, exactly? Why did they have such astonishing wealth?"

Shi Wen steadied his breathing.

He opened the window and whistled. A plump Black Cat raced over from the alley, leaped through the window, then rolled at Shi Wen's feet and begged for affection.

Over the past few days, the Black Cat had stopped by now and then to beg for food.

Shi Wen fed it a tiny bit of exotic beast meat each time, and it had grown round as a ball.

"You're in for a treat tonight."

Shi Wen picked out a few pieces of exotic beast meat from each bag, tore off a small strip, and fed it to the Black Cat.

The Black Cat ate incredibly fast. It polished off the meat in a few bites, then came over to rub against Shi Wen's trouser leg, still wanting more.

"Looks like it's fine. You can eat it."

Shi Wen put the exotic beast meat away at once, then laid out more than a dozen porcelain bottles. Each one had a label thoughtfully affixed to it.

"Nine bottles of Blood-Nourishing Pills, three bottles of Inedia Pills, four bottles of Rejuvenation Pills, and Bone-Melting Powder?"

He took out a small bottle labeled "Bone-Melting Powder," surprised.

Inside was a liquid that looked just like mercury.

He poured a drop onto the ground. Greenish-black smoke billowed up, and the floor was corroded into a hole the size of his palm.

Its corrosive power was plain to see!

"That's a must-have for murder and robbery. If I get the chance, I should get more of this stuff."

Shi Wen tested a pill from each bottle on the cat. Only after confirming that none of them were poisonous did he put them away with peace of mind.

He couldn't help feeling moved.

It would take a year for his breathing technique to evolve.

If he learned it, the ability to resist all poisons alone would let him travel the martial world without worrying about most toxins. He could toss any pill into his mouth and try it for himself~

"Nearly two hundred Blood-Nourishing Pills, forty-five Inedia Pills, and seventy-three Rejuvenation Pills."

"This was dangerous, but the haul is incredible."

Shi Wen swallowed a plump, bright-red Blood-Nourishing Pill, a little bigger than a mung bean. In an instant, the flow of qi and blood through his body sped up.

The moment it went down, warmth spread through his whole body.

"The pills are much higher quality than the ones sold at Treasure Medicine Pavilion. These deserters really did eat well."

"Even if I spent money on pills, I could sell Zhang Sheng and still never scrape together enough to buy this many."

He chuckled and sorted through the remaining odds and ends.

There were some silver notes and loose silver,

a few low-grade, run-of-the-mill martial arts manuals, short blades, daggers, and other worthless knickknacks.

All their silver added up to around a hundred taels, which wasn't much.

As for the run-of-the-mill martial arts manuals,

they were Black Tiger Fist, Black Tiger Long Fist, and the like—low-grade and incomplete. They were probably military routines practiced by low-ranking soldiers stationed at the frontier.

"These things don't look valuable, but together, they could probably fetch several thousand taels."

"Could those deserters have looted everything along the way as they fled? They really did have a lot of good stuff!"

Shi Wen had no idea that these border soldiers were no ordinary men.

He took out a piece of exotic beast meat and chewed on it.

He sorted the things on the ground into their respective bags and stashed them in a hidden corner of the house.

Only then did he empty Ning Da's bag

onto the bed.

There wasn't much in the bag compared to the pile on the ground.

But every item he poured out challenged Shi Wen's understanding.

"Dragon-Tiger True Blood Pill?"

The first thing Shi Wen took out was the most eye-catching: a wooden box.

It was plain and unadorned.

The six grand, sweeping characters "Dragon-Tiger True Blood Pill" were engraved on the box. He opened it, and a pill lay quietly inside!

The pill was the size of a quail's egg, crimson all over, with spiraling patterns engraved across its surface.

A thick, lingering smell of blood hit him.

Yet that very smell made the qi and blood inside him race like a ravenous wolf. He felt like a lecher who had stumbled upon a peerless beauty, overcome by the urge to devour her in one bite!

"Dragon-Tiger True Blood Pill?"

Shi Wen picked up the pill and studied it, his face full of amazement.

It was dense as a lead ball.

Though it looked only as big as a quail's egg, it probably weighed over a pound!

The rich, bloody aroma made every cell in his body blaze with ravenous desire. He wanted nothing more than to swallow it whole!

Thump.

He snapped the wooden box shut, his expression uncertain. "I've never seen a pill that could tempt a person's will. What grade of pill is this?"

"Just one whiff has about the same effect as half a bottle of Blood-Nourishing Pills."

"If I actually swallowed one, wouldn't I explode on the spot?"

"Damn... This man was definitely more than just an ordinary Origin Blood martial artist, as he'd claimed. If he hadn't let his guard down, I'd be the one who died."

Shi Wen resisted the urge to swallow the Dragon-Tiger True Blood Pill.

It was a good pill,

but he was too weak right now.

One pill wouldn't suddenly grant him ten years of power.

It was far more likely to make him explode!

"And this exotic beast meat... It definitely won't be cheap!"

"There are only three pieces, each about as thick as an adult's forearm. They look like lifelike, living snakes, covered head to tail in dark, ink-black scales. Yet the meat is fresh and tender. Each piece weighs around ten pounds, but its effects are more than ten times stronger than the other exotic beast meat."

"Looks like I've really robbed some big shot this time!"

Shi Wen tore off a small strip of exotic beast meat and tasted it, his eyes filled with shock.

A tiny shred, no thicker than a strand of hair, made his qi and blood surge by one percent in a short time. The flow of his qi and blood was five times faster than before, and even a drop of blood essence seemed about to take shape in his dantian!

This was divine meat.

It was even more powerful than the pills he'd bought from Treasure Medicine Pavilion!!