Cultivating Alchemy

After running nonstop for over two hours,

Lin Fan could not help but marvel at how formidable a martial artist's endurance truly was.

Back when he had been on Blue Star in his previous life, he would be exhausted after running three kilometers, collapsing on the ground unable to get back up. But now, he had been running for over two hours, yet his face was not red, his heart was not racing, and he had barely even broken a sweat.

He could not help but think further.

If the Blue Star from when he had transmigrated and the current Zhao Kingdom were to pit their strength against each other, it would be difficult to say who was stronger or weaker. It could only be said that each had its own strengths and weaknesses.

Once martial artists reached the Bone Tempering Realm, the muscles throughout their bodies became compact and tough, their strength comparable to steel. Their speed, explosive force, endurance, and other abilities also surged in tandem.

Not to mention that after breaking through to the Qi-Tendon Three Realms, Inner Qi would be generated within the body. With Inner Qi protecting the body, both defense and attack power would abruptly rise to another level.

Casting aside these stray thoughts,

the outline of the small village gradually appeared before Lin Fan's eyes.

Oil lamps still glowed from within several homes in Small Mountain Village.

Lin Fan returned to his little thatched hut.

"Ruo Ruo, open the door. Big Brother's back."

The Golden Rat seemed to have caught the scent of something delicious. As soon as the door opened, it was the first to dash outside.

It kept pawing at Lin Fan's bundle as it circled around him.

"Big Brother, you're finally back!"

His younger sister stepped forward and hugged Lin Fan's leg.

"Did anything happen while Big Brother was gone these past two days, Ruo Ruo?"

"Here, these are snacks I bought for you two. Hurry up and eat."

Lin Fan grabbed Mao Mao, the Golden Rat, by the scruff of its neck and tossed it aside. Then he opened the bundle, took out some snacks, unwrapped them, and set them on the somewhat shabby table inside the hut.

He lit the oil lamp.

"No. Everyone in the village has been very nice to Ruo Ruo."

Under the bright, faintly yellow lamplight,

there were golden, crispy fried lotus root sandwiches, roasted wild chicken wings, some green vegetables resembling barbecue skewers, and sliced, specially braised and seasoned dried meat.

Once Lin Fan arranged the snacks on the table, their fragrance instantly filled the entire little thatched hut. Mao Mao, the Golden Rat, rolled about, clutched at Lin Fan's clothes, and jumped even more excitedly.

Patting Mao Mao on the head, Lin Fan grabbed some dried meat and other snacks from the table, placed them in a small ceramic bowl beside him, and set it on the floor.

After the two people and one rat had finished sharing the snacks on the table, Lin Fan wrapped up the remaining snacks in the bundle again. He planned to take some out the next day and distribute them to several children in the village. After all, Uncle Wang and the others were usually reluctant to spend money on these foods from town.

After cleaning up, Lin Fan cultivated for a while longer before resting.

Although martial artists were far more energetic than ordinary people, they still needed sleep. It was simply that their sleep quality was much better, so they needed less time than ordinary people.

At the first pale light of dawn, Lin Fan opened his eyes. He looked at his younger sister, who was sleeping soundly in the other small bed, and at the Golden Rat lying on the ground with its belly up atop a pile of straw.

Lin Fan quietly opened the door and walked outside.

After washing up simply,

he said, "Open the panel."

After he clicked start, the countdown on the right side of the pale blue light-screen panel began rapidly decreasing under the thousandfold cultivation enhancement.

Lin Fan did not dare delay.

Facing the morning glow, he began cultivating the Azure Cloud Method in the open space outside the hut.

Cultivation still required perseverance and unwavering persistence.

It was unlike those novels from his previous life, where someone would receive an initiation and become invincible in an instant.

Lin Fan still felt that the martial cultivation he built up through such gradual training was more solid.

By the time the sun rose high in the sky, Uncle Wang and the others had also returned to Small Mountain Village. Smoke began to rise one after another from the village homes. After all, hunting was usually work done in the morning and at noon, so breakfast was quite important.

Lin Fan opened the bundle of snacks.

He took out some, greeted Uncle Wang and the others approaching from ahead, exchanged a few casual words with them, then went to the homes in the village with children and handed out the snacks one after another.

Today, Lin Fan still planned to take Mao Mao out to dig for herbs. While he was at it, he would help the villagers check whether there were any large prey, such as wild boars, in the traps.

His silver was fairly abundant now. With the thousandfold cultivation acceleration that consumed one hundred taels of silver each day, Lin Fan estimated that by the time he had nearly dug up all the herbs in the surrounding area, he should have reached the Late Muscle Refinement Realm.

At that point, he could clear out any Ferocious Beasts that might be nearby. The chances of these prey animals turning into Ferocious Beasts were relatively low. Moreover, Small Mountain Village was not particularly remote, so at most there would only be Ferocious Beasts at the Skin Tempering Realm nearby.

On the mountainside, Mao Mao, the Golden Rat, led Lin Fan and the others as they ran nonstop, digging up one medicinal herb after another.

The villagers in the hunting team had no strict division based on how much each person contributed, nor did they bicker every day over who had done more or less. There were not many households in the village, so whenever prey was sold, the silver was divided equally according to the number of people.

Once the men in the village reached adulthood, they would join the hunting team and take part in hunting. In the end, the silver would be divided equally by headcount.

Thus, the hunting team villagers who followed Lin Fan into the mountains to gather herbs did not need Lin Fan to give them an extra share of the herbs. Like the other hunting team villagers, they shared equally in the silver earned from selling prey.

Moreover, because of Lin Fan's participation and assistance, everyone else in the village hunted much more efficiently as well. They caught far more prey than before, and the average amount of silver each person received was also considerably higher than previously.

After medicinal herbs became somewhat scarcer, the speed of gathering them was slower than before, but they could still dig up herbs worth roughly sixty to eighty taels of silver each day.

Then, at Su Family Shop's purchase price of eighty percent, Lin Fan could receive a little over fifty taels a day.

Thinking of the Su Family, Su Qingwei's figure could not help surfacing in Lin Fan's mind. It had to be said that even Lin Fan, who had lived through the information-bombardment era in his previous life and seen countless beautiful celebrity women, felt that Su Qingwei's looks and figure truly qualified her as a top-tier beauty.

Furthermore, martial arts in this world could slow aging to a certain extent. Combined with the miraculous herbs and wondrous pills unique to this world, even Lin Fan, who had seen plenty of beauties in his previous life, could not help feeling a slight stir in his heart whenever he thought of Su Qingwei.

He secretly smiled.

"Things in the future can wait until the future."

Lin Fan knew full well that only his martial cultivation was fundamental. Everything else was merely icing on the cake. Only once he became strong could he think about other matters.

Having been tempered by the deluge of information, Lin Fan would not naively put the cart before the horse because of a momentary impulse, delay the improvement of his cultivation, or blindly put a flattering filter over someone.

Gathering his thoughts,

Lin Fan continued following Mao Mao through the mountain forest, charging left and right.

It had to be said that the Golden Rat truly deserved its title of Treasure-Seeking Rat. Even medicinal herbs buried more than a foot deep in the earth could be precisely sniffed out and found by the Golden Rat.

After returning to Small Mountain Village in the evening, Lin Fan did not leave the herbs at a villager's home for the people of Small Mountain Village to look after.

This time, Lin Fan had bought many books related to Alchemy. Among them were some techniques for preserving medicinal herbs. Since Lin Fan wanted to learn Alchemy, he also needed to become familiar with the properties of herbs. Only by handling and working with medicinal herbs more often could he lay a better foundation for refining pills in the future.

After activating the thousandfold acceleration, Lin Fan alternated between cultivating the Azure Cloud Method and Alchemy. After cultivating the Azure Cloud Method for a while, he stopped and practiced Alchemy instead.

This would also help him better control his strength. While practicing Alchemy, he could further sense and manipulate his own power.

That way, he would not possess a body full of cultivation yet be unable to properly use and control it, causing his martial cultivation to become hollow and unstable.