The Hundred Herbs Garden stood beside an independent two-story building in the academy's rear courtyard.
Its entrance was a flimsy, weathered arched stone gate. A wooden plaque bearing the three large green-painted characters "Hundred Herbs Garden" hung above it, and an ancient oak tree stood outside the gate, impossible to miss.
Yet aside from students attending Potions Studies practical classes or performing mandatory or voluntary labor, few people came here ordinarily.
For one thing, the garden was filled with precious flowers and plants. Accidentally brushing against one and knocking off even a single petal could cause enormous trouble. Every year, when senior students showed freshmen around the academy, they always told stories about the unfortunate predecessors who had suffered for it. It had become a tradition.
For another, Uncle Stad, who tended the Hundred Herbs Garden, was famous for doing whatever he pleased. Whenever he saw students wandering outside the garden, he loved dragging them inside to weed and water the plants for him as volunteer labor. Any student with even a little experience consciously avoided this place.
Only those clueless, adorable freshmen treated the old wizard's assignments as weighty responsibilities entrusted to them, working with great enthusiasm and never tiring of it.
Zheng Qing trailed at the back of the class line, listening to Fatty Xin mock those foolish freshmen in a sarcastic tone. He wanted to retort that everyone had been that foolish once, but ultimately abandoned the thought.
Rather than argue with the fatty over such a muddled topic, he might as well pay more attention to those two strange paper cranes.
The young scholarship student held a milk tea cup that was nearly empty, narrowed his eyes, and stared uncertainly at the two paper cranes fluttering not far ahead of him.
He had folded those two