Setting Out for Town Again

With the system's 1,000-fold cultivation boost, one day of Lin Fan's training was equivalent to three years of training for others.

Lin Fan rapidly mastered and memorized all kinds of Alchemy knowledge. A day passed, and Lin Fan had successfully gone from a novice to entering the field of Alchemy.

The medicinal herb properties, pharmacological combinations, pill formula secrets, fire control, and taboos for using pills recorded in volume after volume of Alchemy texts surged into Lin Fan's mind like a tide. Relying on the system's powerful comprehension boost, he absorbed and memorized them at lightning speed, thoroughly digesting every bit of the complicated, obscure knowledge.

In the blink of an eye, a single day had passed. Lin Fan, once a novice who knew nothing whatsoever about pill refining, had already firmly stepped through the gates of introductory Alchemy.

With a rustle, Lin Fan closed the yellowed pages of the medicinal tome in his hands, pressed his palm against the paper, and slowly rose to his full height.

Although these Alchemy methods involved pills needed within the Three Body-Tempering Realms, ordinary people would still find them difficult to refine successfully without a certain degree of talent or a long period of accumulated study.

As for the Alchemy methods for the Qi-Tendon Realm that came later, they were exceedingly difficult to obtain in ordinary bookstores. Of course, that realm was still rather far away for Lin Fan at present.

Soft rustling came from outside the wooden hut. It was the Golden Rat, Mao Mao, trotting in on tiny steps. It had become quite intelligent by now. Its brilliant golden fur shimmered with flowing light, its black-bean eyes were lively and bright, and its little nose kept twitching as it sniffed out the medicinal fragrance in the room.

"Squeak, squeak."

Mao Mao scurried up to Lin Fan's feet and circled his boots back and forth, as though asking whether there was anything tasty to eat.

Lin Fan glanced down at the demon beast rat by his feet and reached out to rub its head.

He turned and sorted through the medicinal herbs they had gathered. Another day passed.

Over the following days,

Lin Fan followed Mao Mao, the Golden Rat, and ran through every corner of the mountains surrounding Small Mountain Village. He wore out the villagers who had been following behind him.

Lin Fan was doing fine. The Golden Rat had grown up in the mountains and was skilled at running. It could slip through even the narrow gaps between dead branches and shrubs.

In a little over ten days, Lin Fan dug up more than ten additional baskets of medicinal herbs, carrying a faint air of draining the pond to catch every fish. In the last few days, nearly all the herbs in the forest had been dug up by Lin Fan and the Golden Rat.

The few that remained were either buried too deeply or had yet to mature, making them unusable.

Inside Lin Fan's thatched hut, the Golden Rat, his younger sister Lin Ruoruo, and Lin Fan himself—two people and one rat—sat around basket after basket of medicinal herbs, slowly taking inventory against the herbal illustrations.

The two little ones seemed to be seeing so many medicinal herbs at once for the first time. The fresh fragrance produced by the gathered herbs made one feel refreshed and invigorated after taking a deep breath.

"Brother, we dug up so many medicinal herbs!"

Lin Fan rubbed his younger sister Lin Ruoruo's head.

"Mm, we've nearly dug them all up. From now on, Brother won't go up the mountain so often every day. I'll stay home and keep Ruo Ruo company every day instead. All right?"

"Okay, okay!" His younger sister happily raised her little hands and waved them about. Her fair, jade-carved little face was plump and adorable, making people unable to resist giving it a pinch. She no longer had the frailty and sorrow she had carried when they had first fled here.

Meanwhile, the Golden Rat circled the baskets of herbs, sniffing here and smelling there, as though trying to decide which one would taste better. Its foolish little appearance was endearingly naive.

This Golden Rat resembled the marmots of Blue Star from Lin Fan's previous life. However, its entire body was a brighter golden yellow, and it was far more slender than a marmot. Its head and body were not joined as tightly as a marmot's either, allowing it to turn its head much farther from side to side.

It counted as yet another strange new species Lin Fan had encountered in this world.

After organizing the medicinal herbs in the thatched hut, Lin Fan made a rough estimate. If he sold them to the Su Family Shop at eighty percent of the market price listed in the herbal illustrations, he could probably earn around a thousand taels of silver. That should be enough to support his cultivation until he reached the Bone Refinement Realm within a month.

After all the bustle of these days, they had finally cleared out the medicinal herbs from the nearby forests. The deeper mountains were either dark all year round, never seeing daylight; bare and barren, with little vegetation; or shrouded in drifting miasma throughout the year.

Although Lin Fan had reached the Muscle Refinement Realm, he still had to be cautious when facing miasma. After all, with a system in hand that consumed silver to double his cultivation results, venturing into the deep mountains was not particularly worthwhile.

The medicinal herbs needed to be sold quickly. Otherwise, their potency would slowly seep away after leaving the soil.

After speaking with Uncle Wang and the others from the village hunting party, Lin Fan followed the fully loaded goods carts and once again set foot on the mountain road to town.

"Xiao Fan, the village caught another three wild boars recently. This trip to town should earn us nearly a hundred taels of silver."

"Yes, yes! Our village has never caught so much game at once before!"

A lean hunter from the village chimed in.

"The New Year is almost here. This time, each of us can receive more than ten taels of silver. That's much more than usual."

"Right, we can finally have a fat New Year. Once we get to town, I'm going to buy more cloth and clothes for my family too."

Everyone pushed their fully loaded carts along the rugged mountain road toward town while chatting away.

"It's all thanks to Xiao Fan. Back then, whenever those wild boars fell into the traps, their hides were thick and tough, and they were incredibly good at rooting through the dirt. We couldn't do anything about them and could only lose a trap for nothing."

One villager raised his eyes toward the several wild boars piled on the cart, which had been treated with smoke and plant ash.

"Now, Xiao Fan can pierce a wild boar that falls into a trap straight through with just a few strikes."

"Martial artists are really amazing! If only my kid had some talent in martial roots too."

Hearing the complaint from the man beside him, a sturdy middle-aged man pushing a cart of medicinal herbs said indignantly,

"Pah, you? I heard that even if someone has some martial roots, without those martial pills to help them, it's still harder than climbing to the sky to achieve anything. Maybe by the time they reach my age, they'd only just enter the Skin Tempering Realm. As for your boy, he probably still wouldn't reach Skin Tempering before he was nearly in the grave."

"Sigh, isn't that the truth? Those martial pills are expensive. I heard even the cheapest one costs over ten taels of silver. Only wealthy young masters and people from martial factions can afford them. Their martial roots are already better to begin with, and they have those pills to speed up their cultivation. Ordinary people like us can never compare."

A slightly older villager hunched over as he pushed his cart and sighed.