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"Why bring this up all of a sudden?"

But Zhao Er immediately caught on. Tiger certainly wouldn't mention this to him for no reason.

"My second uncle has an apothecary in the county town. He said he'd fund my cultivation of the Ginseng Spirit Art, so... I want to give it a try!"

As Tiger spoke, he looked up at Zhao Er's slightly blackened palms. The hesitation in his eyes had already faded.

Zhao Er noticed Tiger's gaze and suddenly didn't know how to dissuade him.

Perhaps he himself had something to do with Tiger wanting to gamble his life on the Ginseng Spirit Art.

After all, the Poison Sand Palm he practiced was also an unorthodox art. It used poisonous substances in place of the resources required for martial cultivation to temper the body, but it was extremely prone to poisonous backlash. A single misstep could leave his guts perforated and his flesh rotting as he died of poison—an utterly wretched end.

But Zhao Er knew his own circumstances. He had a cheat that let him increase his poison resistance while cultivating with poisonous substances, thereby avoiding their backlash.

Obviously, though, he couldn't tell Tiger about that.

"When are you going to the county town?"

In the end, Zhao Er said nothing more about it and simply asked that question.

"First thing tomorrow morning. My dad will take me."

"Then I'll go with you tomorrow. I need to sell some dried centipedes anyway, so I might as well visit your second uncle's shop. I'll learn the way first, and whenever I go to the county town afterward, I can come see you!"

"That's great!"

Hearing that Zhao Er didn't object and would even accompany him to the county town, Tiger nodded eagerly.

Afterward, Zhao Er parted ways with Tiger at the village entrance. His home was at the far end of the village, so he still had some distance to walk.

Zhao Er walked all the way to a house at the rear of the village. It was built of mud bricks, with a wooden roof covered in a thick layer of thatch nearly half a meter deep. Green plants even grew on top.

Outside the house was a moderately sized courtyard, with a well in one corner.

This was Zhao Er's home in this world.

"Second Brother's back! Second Brother's back!"

Zhao Er was still dozens of meters from the courtyard when a little girl squatting beneath its gate spotted him and began shouting. Then she tossed aside the little stick she had been digging with and trotted over to him.

"Shan, have you been good at home today? Look, Brother Tiger gave us this rabbit. We'll stew it for dinner."

A smile appeared on Zhao Er's face as he watched the little girl trot up beside him. He reached out to pat her head, but halfway there, he unobtrusively withdrew his hand, then lifted the rabbit and gave it a shake.

"I've been really good! You're all sweaty, Second Brother. I'll get you some water!"

Zhao Shan looked at Zhao Er with wide eyes, then glanced at the rabbit before turning and trotting back into the house.

"You're back, Second Son. As long as you made it home safely..."

A woman emerged from the house, wiping the water off her hands as she walked. She looked Zhao Er over carefully and only breathed a sigh of relief after confirming he was unhurt.

"Don't just stand there. Bring out the hot water we warmed and process the centipedes first. Don't let them die..."

A somewhat short, thin middle-aged man followed right behind her. He, too, visibly relaxed at the sight of Zhao Er, but he didn't ask about what had happened. He merely told the woman to fetch the hot water while he went aside to pick up the bamboo strips he had whittled earlier.

"Dad, Mom, I had a pretty good haul today. Tiger gave me this rabbit. We can cook it tonight for an extra dish..."

Zhao Er first unfastened the billhook at his waist, then set down the ceramic jar he had been carefully protecting, and finally undid his belt.

By the time he finished, his mother, Zhang Xuane, had brought out the hot water in a wooden basin and set it beneath the eaves.

Zhao Er tested it with his hand. The temperature was just right.

Without bothering with anything else, Zhao Er crouched down, picked up the ceramic jar again, removed the wooden stopper, and pointed its mouth toward the basin of hot water.

He held the jar and shook it a few times over the hot water, sending the centipedes inside tumbling into the basin.

The mass of black, red, and gold centipedes began writhing and struggling the instant they entered the hot water.

Even his parents, who had watched Zhao Er process centipedes many times before, couldn't help swallowing at the sight.

"Second Brother, your water..."

Even Zhao Shan, holding a large bowl, stood off to the side, not quite daring to approach. She merely watched with wide, curious eyes.

"Heh, thanks!"

Zhao Er shook the ceramic jar in his hand. Once he was certain no centipedes remained inside, he took the water and drank in great gulps.

After spending the entire morning in the stifling forest, Zhao Er was desperately thirsty. He drained the large bowl of water in one go.

Setting the bowl aside, Zhao Er held a bamboo strip in one hand and reached into the hot water with the other, pulling out a centipede.

The hot water was just warm enough to scald the centipedes to death. With practiced ease, Zhao Er removed the centipede's mouthparts and venom sacs, placing them in a ceramic bowl prepared beforehand.

Only then did he secure the thoroughly dead centipede's head and tail to the bamboo strip and set it aside.

One after another, he processed all forty-three centipedes. By the time he finished, the sun hung directly overhead.

"Take a rest, Second Son. Leave the rest of this work to me."

His father, Zhao Dazhu, waited until Zhao Er had bowed all the centipedes onto bamboo strips before stepping forward to take over.

These centipedes were valuable things. Once dried and sold to an apothecary in the county town, each one could fetch ten copper coins.

A shi of rice sold for only a little over nine hundred copper coins. These forty-odd centipedes were worth almost half a shi of grain.

The Zhao family scratched a living from the soil all year. At year's end, provided there were no natural disasters, after paying government taxes and protection money to the town's gang, they had only four shi of grain left. Even supplemented with coarse grains, it was barely enough to feed the family.

This money, however, was extra income. If they saved it, they could find their second son a wife when the time came.

His father, Zhao Dazhu, took the centipedes aside to dry in the sun, while his mother went to prepare the rabbit. Zhao Er stripped off his clothes and put them in the wooden basin, leaving himself in only a pair of boxer shorts.

There was miasma in the forest, and some inevitably clung to Zhao Er when he came out. He didn't mind it himself, but if little Zhao Shan came into contact with it, she could easily fall ill.

Leaving his clothes to soak, he drew a bucket of well water and rinsed himself off. The cold water poured over his body, carrying away the last trace of summer heat.

"Second Brother, your clothes!"

Zhao Er had just dried himself when Zhao Shan came over holding up a set of clean clothes.

"Time to eat!"

At just that moment, his mother's voice came from inside the house.

In the past, the Zhao family had eaten only two meals a day, morning and evening, during the slack farming season. Only after Zhao Er began earning money from the mountain and cultivating the Poison Sand Palm had they started eating lunch.

Even then, only Zhao Er and Zhao Shan had rice for lunch. Zhao Dazhu and his wife each drank a bowl of vegetable soup without a single glimmer of oil.

Zhao Er had already stopped trying to persuade them otherwise. In the end, the family was simply too poor, and every coin had to be carefully accounted for.

After the meal, his parents took their hoes to the vegetable plot, while Zhao Er processed the rabbit's blood and innards in the courtyard.

These would be used to make bait for luring centipedes.

Once he had prepared the bait, his next task was to process the fangs and venom sacs he had just removed from the centipedes.