That afternoon, the three of them stopped to rest beside a mountain stream.
Xia Xi took several small porcelain bottles out of his pack and arranged them on a flat bluestone.
Shinobu Kocho looked a little surprised, because several of those bottles contained poisons she had prepared.
They were all her latest formulas, more potent and faster-acting.
There were also one or two she had never seen.
In fact, those were concoctions Xia Xi had made in his spare time at the Butterfly Mansion.
Yes, he had personally mixed them following the principles of Shinobu Kocho's Five Poisons Formula.
During his stay at the Butterfly Mansion, many skills that had been stuck at a bottleneck had made breakthroughs.
After he had taken charge of feeding a large group of people, [Cooking] had been the first to finally reach LV.4.
Later, skills such as [Poison-Making], [Insight], and [Breathing Style Research] had also reached LV.2.
It had amounted to another small haul of gains.
"Here, try these."
Xia Xi pushed the porcelain bottles toward Kanae.
Kanae picked up a bottle, looking puzzled for a moment.
"I don't mean for you to try them on yourself," Xia Xi explained. "Apply them to your Nichirin Blade. These are all poisons that work on demons."
"Since you and your sister are both well versed in medicines and poisons, put that advantage to use."
"Besides, your physical fitness is better than Shinobu's."
"Combined with poison, that could give you an advantage greater than the sum of its parts."
In Xia Xi's view, Kanae was a better candidate than Shinobu Kocho for combining [poison] and [swordsmanship].
The former was a physically frail [poison mage].
The latter, meanwhile, was an [enchanted swordsman] who combined both.
If they used the same poison, Kanae, being stronger, would naturally come out