The Mysterious Liquid

"Ah!" Han Li raised one hand high, clenched it into a fist, and cried out in excitement.

At that moment, his childish nature was plain to see.

It seemed his hypothesis was correct: closed doors and windows hindered the bottle's attraction to the strands of white light. Only in a wide, unobstructed place was the bottle better able to attract the strands and form a larger ball of light.

He still didn't know where the strands of light came from or what use the bottle had for the little specks it drew in, but he should have taken a major step toward uncovering the answer.

Han Li felt he was close to unraveling the bottle's secret, and that made him especially excited.

Not until the sky was nearly light did the glow around the bottle gradually fade, and the bottle returned to its quiet state.

During that time, Han Li watched the bottle change while keeping a constant lookout to make sure no one else discovered what was happening there.

He bent down, picked up the bottle, and examined it.

It was no different from before. The stopper was still firmly stuck, impossible to open.

Han Li was disappointed, but seeing how late it was, he reluctantly put the bottle away.

He still had to hurry back to the stone chamber to meditate and cultivate.

Over the next several days, the same strange phenomenon occurred with the bottle at a certain hour every night. Countless strands of light were drawn to the bottle like moths to a flame. They then turned into a multitude of tiny specks of light, which the bottle greedily devoured.

Just as Han Li thought this phenomenon would continue to occur with the bottle every day, another change appeared on the eighth day.

When Han Li came to the usual spot, took out the bottle, and set it down, the absorption of the specks of light lasted only a short half-quarter of an hour before stopping. Then the dark green patterns on the bottle suddenly gave off a dazzling green light, and several golden characters and symbols appeared on its surface. These strange characters had flowing forms and unusual strokes, containing an indescribable flavor of High Antiquity. They flickered and swam ceaselessly across the bottle's surface.

This different phenomenon also lasted only an instant before disappearing. Only a few raised, strange golden characters remained on the bottle, as though everything had returned to where it had been before it all began.

After the strange things that had happened to the bottle over the past few days, Han Li was no longer as startled by such phenomena as he had been at first. Even stranger things happening to the bottle would no longer leave him very astonished.

He casually picked up the bottle and instinctively tried to open it.

Gently and without the slightest effort, the stopper came off the bottle.

He couldn't believe it! Han Li stared in surprise at the stopper in his hand.

Had he really solved this problem, this great trouble that had defeated him for days, so easily, without the slightest effort or any skill at all?

Once Han Li had confirmed that what had happened before him was real and that the bottle's secret had been placed right under his nose, he could no longer contain his excitement. He brought his eye to the bottle's mouth and looked inside.

Inside the bottle, a drop of emerald-green liquid the size of a soybean rolled slowly about, casting a shimmering green glow over the entire inner wall.

What is this?

Han Li was a little disappointed. After going to so much trouble, all he had gotten was something so uninteresting.

Disheartened, he sealed the bottle with its stopper, put it in his leather pouch, and turned toward his quarters. His earlier excitement had been flung beyond the ninth heaven.

Although he had opened the bottle, he was very dissatisfied with the result.

Han Li decided that, sometime in the future when he had nothing to do and was bored, he would investigate the secret of the green liquid. Perhaps it might give him a small surprise!

What he needed to do now was go back and get a good sleep to make up for the rest he had missed. For the past few days, he had been unable to sleep soundly at night, greatly reducing the efficiency of his daytime cultivation. His lack of spirit had also prompted Doctor Mo to ask him some questions.

Ever since Han Li had become Doctor Mo's personal disciple and broken through the first level of the Mnemonic, he had felt that he had lost his motivation to practice it. Besides, the effects of cultivating the Mnemonic were so unsatisfactory that he could not muster the spirit to practice.

Doctor Mo had given him a severe scolding over this.

Yet whenever it was time to cultivate, he was still drowsy, listless, and utterly without spirit.

This situation drove Doctor Mo a little frantic, leaving him wondering whether he had taken the wrong person as his disciple.

Thinking of this, Han Li also felt somewhat wronged. He didn't want to be like this, but he really wasn't in the right state.

What Han Li did not expect was that, on the day after he returned and woke from his sleep, he would once again throw himself wholeheartedly and of his own accord into frenzied cultivation.

The reason for this behavior was nothing more than a single offhand remark from Doctor Mo.

"Every time you advance a level in cultivating this Mnemonic, I'll double the silver I'm supposed to give you each month." Doctor Mo had finally seen Han Li's desire for money and found a solution at its root. With one simple sentence, he had bound him to the chariot of desperate cultivation.

In the days that followed, Han Li cultivated desperately to master the next level of the Mnemonic.

Every day, from morning to noon and from noon to night, he entered the stone chamber twice to cultivate and meditate. He lived this same dull, monotonous life day after day, putting everything else out of his mind.

To let him concentrate on cultivation without outside matters disturbing him, Doctor Mo temporarily closed the whole of Divine Hand Valley to outsiders. He even examined and treated patients outside the valley, and no longer let Han Li worry in the slightest about his daily food, clothing, and other needs.

And so, Han Li gradually forgot about the bottle.

Autumn passed, winter came, and spring gave way to summer.

In the blink of an eye, four years passed, and Han Li was fourteen.

He had grown into a dark-skinned, quiet, and steadfast country youth. Judging by appearances alone, he was no different from other ordinary farming boys. He was just as unremarkable, neither handsome and dashing nor suave and debonair.

Each day, he merely shuttled between the stone chamber and his quarters, occasionally going to Doctor Mo to learn some medicine and browse through various other books in his room. In this way, the whole valley became his entire world, and his cultivation of the Mnemonic reached the third level as naturally as a channel forming when water flowed.