Herb Merchant

Chapter 7

The figures over there finally discovered Yu Ci as well. How could half a mile still be called a distance? Even in the dead of night, it took only two or three breaths for both sides to meet face-to-face. The group emerging from the woods all startled, and the atmosphere instantly turned tense. But very soon, someone over there laughed out loud.

"Ha, Brother Yu, long time no see. Your complexion looks pretty good."

It was indeed an acquaintance. Before the other party spoke first, Yu Ci had already recognized them by their auras. The speaker was called Lu Bing, the leader of this group. He was the one who, a few months ago outside the desolate mountain temple, knocked on the doorframe of the empty gates—a fastidious man. Yu Ci had a good impression of him.

Lu Bing was originally a pugilist with the peak Long Breath cultivation. His entire body was suffused with true power, and his strength could literally tear tigers and leopards apart. Except for lacking spiritual resonance, he had no substantive gap with the Orifice Enlightenment realm and enjoyed quite a reputation in the pugilistic world. This time he had also accepted a task from the Bai Ri Mansion, gathering over a dozen fellow practitioners to come to the Sky Rift Valley to harvest herbs. They were a rare kind of team combination in these parts.

Ever since their accidental encounter in the temple that night, everyone had even traveled together for a few days, so they shared a bit of camaraderie. Yu Ci stepped forward two steps, cupped his fists, and smiled. "Greetings, Brother Lu, and everyone else..."

While speaking, Yu Ci cast a glance over and saw that the team's headcount was nearly a half less than initially, causing his brow to wrinkle.

Those who were absent were probably in more danger than not.

One had to know that plucking Shrimp Whisker Grass was by no means easy. Up and down sheer cliffs, one had to constantly be careful of gales and bewildering mists, while also guarding against darting venomous insects, birds of prey, and fierce beasts. With the slightest lapse in attention, the end result would be leaving not even bones behind. Furthermore, when had the Sky Rift Valley ever been a place for simply gathering herbs?

While they spoke, the two sides drew closer. Lu Bing saw through his thoughts, but a pugilistic hero like him had long since taken life and death lightly. He only gave a hearty laugh and shifted the attention:

"Brother Yu, meeting by chance is better than a planned encounter. Ahead by the fire is a bunch of brothers we've recently acquainted ourselves with—all straightforward men. These woods are pitch black, and traveling alone has no meaning either. Why not join us for a gathering?"

The lodging prearranged by Yu You had been occupied, and he was just fretting over how to arrange things for the night. Hearing this, he went with the flow and agreed without hesitation. However, his left hand constantly lingered lightly on the edge of the Zhaoshen Bronze Mirror, always retaining a shred of vigilance—though he figured the other party felt the same way.

After months in the Sky Rift Valley, anyone without this sort of mindset had probably already been wiped out.

Bonfires burned fiercely, wine and meat drifted their fragrances, and voices rose in a din. The firelit radiance contrasted with the surrounding gloomy mountain forests as if they were two separate worlds.

Yu Ci took the wine gourd from the herb harvester beside him and unceremoniously took a large gulp. This was home-brewed rustic wine made by the herb harvesters themselves; it entered the throat burning and pungent, yet carried an herbal fragrance—quite distinctive.

Lu Bing's discernment was indeed trustworthy. Most of the people he had befriended were native herb harvesters born and raised in Juebi City. Over the past decade, they had traveled back and forth between the Sky Rift Valley and Juebi City many times, making them veterans at harvesting Shrimp Whisker Grass and giving them some knowledge of Bai Ri Mansion's background.

With such a group, it was indeed hard for them to commit murder for wealth, and their safety was guaranteed.

Having simply partaken of the evening meal, the twenty-odd people on both sides had nothing to do and began chatting aimlessly. Out of certain considerations, both sides intentionally avoided the topic of each other's harvests, yet couldn't completely ignore it. Thus, after a few turns of conversation, someone from the Juebi City side started chattering about secret anecdotes of the Bai Ri Mansion, laughing and bantering quite lively.

The topic twisted and turned, ultimately falling back onto the Shrimp Whisker Grass, though discussing what medicinal value this herb actually held.

More than half of those present were professional herb harvesters. They knew some herbal properties, and even those who didn't could blindly guess. Thus you spoke of your formula, and I expounded on my pellets. The twenty-odd people split into several factions, gradually shifting from discussion to debate, and then to a quarrel, stirring the atmosphere into a heated fervor.

Just as several arguments reached an impasse, someone suddenly shouted loudly: "Total bullshit! How could it be so simple!"

As soon as the words left his mouth, everyone turned to look. The one who called out was someone from the Juebi City side, seemingly named Li Hong. He appeared to have drunk quite a bit of wine, and at this moment his face was blazing red—he probably didn't even know what he had just said himself.

Seeing that he was thoroughly drunk, the companion beside him hurriedly poked him to make him sober up. But Li Hong was someone who cared about his face, and being truly dead drunk, he found his startling declaration made his urge to talk soar even higher. He thus seized the opportunity to let slip a major secret he had previously heard through the grapevine:

"You lot better not disbelieve this. Ordinarily, combining this Shrimp Whisker Grass into a medicinal formula is fine just to treat headaches and fevers, but the Bai Ri Mansion has a massive estate. In their eyes, pulling out a hundred or eighty of these things is practically no different from roadside weeds. Why on earth would they go to great effort to hire us to harvest them?

"When all is said and done, in our hands this grass is just grass, used at best as a folk remedy. But over at Bai Ri Mansion, it can turn stone into gold..."

Reaching the crucial point, he deepened his tone, yet happened to get stuck right here, putting on a mysterious front. This posture could only provoke annoyance, but what could be done with a drunkard like this?

At this moment, the herb harvester sharing a wine gourd with Yu Ci chuckled softly: "Old Four Li has a younger sister married to a lackey in the Bai Ri Mansion. When it comes to hearsay like this, he has the most..."

Hearing this, Yu Ci found it interesting and wanted to understand a bit more. Over there, Li Hong had sufficiently sold the suspense and felt immensely gratified, so under the urging of many, he laughed heartily:

"Saying it out loud really is nothing much. Actually, the Bai Ri Mansion acquires this Shrimp Whisker Grass entirely because they can brew a kind of medicinal water. As long as you soak a large amount of Shrimp Whisker Grass in it for a period of time, the single plant among them with the best appearance and best preservation has a possibility of being soaked back to life..."

At this moment, seven or eight people asked doubtfully: "Soaked back to life?"

"Heh, whether it lives or not I don't know. I only know that my brother-in-law said this revived Shrimp Whisker Grass will absorb the medicinal properties of all the other herbs into itself. If the medicinal power is sufficient, this Shrimp Whisker Grass will undergo another transformation—just like those caterpillars turning into butterflies—becoming a new kind of herb. At that time, Shrimp Whisker Grass won't be called Shrimp Whisker Grass anymore, but rather... Fish Dragon Grass!"

"Fish Dragon Grass?"

The bonfire side first quieted for a moment, then immediately became noisy. Everyone first questioned Li Hong about the uses of the Fish Dragon Grass, but by this point, whatever was in Li Hong's belly had long since been hollowed out. After barely managing to say a few more words, he began answering irrelevantly. By now, however, the atmosphere had been hyped up; getting no definitive answers, people began letting their imaginations run wild, assigning all sorts of miraculous abilities to the Fish Dragon Grass and fantasizing about what kind of benefits they would reap if they obtained this treasure.

At this time, the drinking companion beside him handed the gourd over again, inviting him to drink together while smilingly asking him: "If Little Brother had this immortal herb, I wonder what you'd trade it for?"

What immortal herb? This fellow was about as drunk as the other.

Yu Ci glanced sideways at him, ignoring the wine companion's face full of heartache, and swallowed the rustic wine in the gourd in one gulp. The burning, pungent wine Qi wrapped in herbal fragrance surged up to his crown, and he suddenly felt a great surge of spirit, letting out a long laugh:

"Your Daddy wants to attain eternal life; who can trade that for me?"

The area around the bonfire suddenly fell dead silent, followed by a chorus of uproarious laughter and bizarre shouts. Nine out of ten people thought Yu Ci was joking. Although the time they had spent together wasn't long, Yu Ci was not only handsome in appearance and formidable in strength, but also quite bold and straightforward in his dealings with others. Everyone felt favorably toward him, responding with well-intentioned roars of laughter that pushed the atmosphere to a high tide.

However, there were also those who could sense Yu Ci's true thoughts—or at least understood that Yu Ci's aspirations in life were extraordinary. Lu Bing opposite him raised his gourd to signal in this direction, and Yu Ci also smiled in response. Everything was tacitly understood without a word.